On Eating - a row of smithereens about hunger and eating No 04

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oranges, apples, pineapples, mandarines , bananas c ignazwrobel

Yesterday: salivary production.

Today: insulin and glucose.

Whatever we may eat, the chemistry in our digestive system is set to produce the energy supplier number one our muscle cells are able to process: glucose.

Glucose is like the wood in a woodfire, like the fuel oil in the central heating of our house (outside temperatures today in Holzkirchen, Bavaria, Germany, Europe: -1,5 degree Celsius central heating very welcome), like the gas in our cars.

The glucose is being produced by splitting in our food long molecule chains into shorter ones or extracting glucose from food.

Let´s assume we ate, our digestive system produced glucose, now the fuel is in our system- our regulatory system.

But where is it? The walls of our intestine are permeable.

The glucose diffuses through theses walls into the medium available everywhere in our body, the medium that reaches every single cell of our body: our blood.

So we might imagine what happens.

The blood is a delivery system not only for nicotin, but also for glucose. Assume we ate, assume a tankful of glucose rushes through our blood vessels, but – what next?

The glucose molecules still haven´t found the combustion chambers in our muscle cells, the so called mitochondria. Mitochondria are like the combustion chambers in our cars (remember? engine, cylinders, valves, fuel, explosion: turning high energy liquid into motion energy of the piston rods…. ).

The glucose in our blood needs a door opener into our muscle cells: the door opener is a hormone called insulin.

Back to the fact our system is a regulatory circuit system. Our intestine releases the complete amount of glucose into our blood. No regulation here, no caring for tolerable amounts of glucose, the whole load.

Now insulin has to do it´s job.

Think of insulin as of transport ships. These transport ships patrol in our blood and take glucose as cargo on board, then sailing to our cells, open the doors and help glucose get into our cells.

now comes the trap:

The thing is, if there´s a very rich disposability of glucose, insulin addresses in first place another type of cells: our body fat storage cells.

Tomorrow: insulin and hunger.