Together with the liver Insulin resistance impacts on glucose metabolism in other tissues such as muscles and the adipose tissue.

As people grow older glucose tolerance (GT) declines gradually and plasma insulin concentration increases. They require much more insulin to achieve normal levels of blood glucose than they did when they were younger. The pancreas has to make more insulin as the sensitivity of the peripheral tissues to the action of insulin also declines. Can the sensitivity be increased?

Evidence is accumulating that shows that you can prevent the decline in glucose tolerance and increase insulin sensitivity by regularly performing vigorous exercise. Long-term, demanding and frequent exercise can also completely normalize GT by decreasing resistance to insulin. Exercise does not work for everyone. It appears to be effective in normalizing GT only if your pancreas can synthesize insulin.

How much exercise does one need to normalize blood glucose levels? The amount of exercise required to normalize GT appears running of 4-5 km per day of running, or a comparable amount of another form of exercise, performed on a regular basis.

Let’s look at relationship between insulin and high blood pressure. In itself high blood pressure in does not indicate that you have insulin resistance but if you have high blood pressure as well as high cravings for carbohydrates and you are adding much weight you may have insulin resistance. In addition if you have undesirable blood fats (triglyceride ) fats levels you most likely have insulin resistance. Abdominal obesity is being used as a clinical marker for insulin resistance.

Excess insulin that is secreted into the blood due to insulin resistance appears to lead to high blood pressure in three different ways.

Firstly insulin high insulin levels can cause high blood pressure by narrowing the arteries through which your blood flows. Insulin has been shown to stimulate the production of cholesterol and the build up of plaque in the walls of the arteries. As the space of blood flow decreases due to narrowing of the arteries the blood pressure normally rises.

Secondly insulin may stimulate the sympathetic nervous system causing it to respond by making your heart to beat faster. It would also cause your blood vessels to narrow and therefore increase your blood pressure. If there is a history of high blood pressure in your family, high insulin levels could be causing the blood pressure to rise.

Thirdly insulin assists to control the salt levels in the blood. The more insulin you have in the circulation the more is the salt retained in your body and therefore more water remains in your bloodstream.

Obviously if you have low or normal levels of insulin in your blood you will have a lower degree of salt retention and therefore barely any excess water retention.

Its no secrete that no matter how vigilant you are with your salt ingestion, you may be surprised that excess levels retained salt in your body helps to retain fluid, more fluid will be flowing through your arteries than when you did not have insulin resistance. The increase in fluid flowing through the same space causes an increase in blood pressure therefore high blood pressure.

From this we can see that high blood pressure is not a physical disorder but a symptom of powerful underlying insulin imbalance