insulin res

, the liver is constantly producing blood sugar to keep our brain alive between meals. As soon as we eat breakfast, though, the insulin released to deal with the meal normally turns off liver glucose production, which makes sense since we don’t need it anymore. But when our liver is filled with fat, it becomes insulin resistant like our muscles, and doesn’t respond to the breakfast signal; it keeps pumping out blood sugar all day long on top of whatever we eat. Then, the pancreas pumps out even more insulin to deal with the high sugars, and our liver gets fatter and fatter. That’s one of the twin vicious cycles of diabetes. Fatty muscles, in the context of too many calories, leads to a fatty liver, which leads to an even fattier liver. This is all still before we have diabetes.