Posts Tagged ‘healing founder with herbs’
Healing Laminitis & Metabolic Syndrome with Nutrition: Part 3
By Marijke van de Water, B.Sc., DHMS
Insulin Resistance
When a horse (or human for that matter) ingests sugar or starch the blood receives sugar very rapidly from the small intestine. Once in the bloodstream the sugar must find its way into liver and muscle cells where it is either burned for immediate energy or is stored as glycogen and used later. In healthy animals this is accomplished with insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas that regulates blood sugar by attaching itself to specific receptors in the liver and muscle, thereby opening those receptors and allowing the passage of sugar from the blood into the tissues. Eventually, in the presence of a long-term high sugar diet, these cell receptors become damaged by increasingly high insulin levels, at which point they can no longer open – the receptors are now resistant to the effects of insulin. Read the rest of this entry »