Have you seen those marbles hitting one object and triggering many responses as a result? In many ways that is how our body works. That is how all the eleven systems in our body collaborates beautifully. Are you wondering how do they do that? The quick answer is hormones.
Hormones are chemical messengers secreted by a network of glands located throughout the body. The system that produces hormones is the endocrine system.
The endocrine system is responsible for regulating a range of bodily functions like metabolism, growth and development, sexual function and reproduction, heart rate, blood pressure, appetite, sleeping and waking cycles, body temperature through the release of hormones. The hormones then travel through the bloodstream to various organs and tissues in the body. The hormones then tell these organs and tissues what to do or how to function.
So what does this got to do with food and weight loss? There is a connection and that is what we want to explore today. So let us get back to digestive system…
One of the endocrine system’s most important hormones is insulin, which plays a critical role in how our body uses food. When we eat, our digestive system breaks food down into glucose, and the glucose circulates in our bloodstream (aka blood sugar). In response to the rise in glucose after a meal, the pancreas (located in the abdomen behind the stomach) releases surges of insulin, whose job is to clean the glucose from the blood and control the blood sugars.
Insulin directs some of the glucose to the body’s cells, which it uses for energy. Some of the glucose is diverted to the liver, where it’s converted into glycogen (stored glucose) for later use by the muscles. Insulin then helps turn any leftover glucose into fatty acids and stores them in fat cells, where they can be tapped later for fuel. All goes well, if we eat the right quality foods in the right quantity. The problem comes when the quality and quantity goes for a toss. Let us dig deep into what happens in a worst case scenario next.
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