What does it mean to have insulin resistance?
Nearly everybody with Type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes has what we call insulin resistance. Insulin resistance means that the cells don't respond to insulin normally, so it's as though normally, when you open a door to put glucose into the cells, you have to push it very lightly. When you have insulin resistance, you have to push really hard. That means you have to use lots of insulin molecules to open up the cells for glucose to go inside, and what we think that that does over time is that it may burn out the pancreas. It may make the body unable to make quite enough insulin to help the glucose go into the cells. So, insulin resistance is a resistance to the effectiveness of insulin to get glucose into the cells. Everybody who has diabetes knows that, for instance, if they have a high blood sugar and they go jogging around the block, that in general, their blood sugar will fall because exercise lowers insulin resistance and now their sugar can go into their cells and everything is just right. So it's an interesting problem, insulin resistance. In people with type 2 diabetes, at least, the high blood sugar levels need to be treated.
