Insulin sensitivity is basically how well your body responds to your output of insulin. Whereas insulin resistance is the opposite, it is how poorly your body responds to insulin. 

What this means is that if you have good insulin sensitivity, your body is going to store nutrients such as glucose, in the cells of muscle, organs, fat, and other cells easily and quickly to be used for fuel or repair. Concurrently, if you experience insulin resistance (and there are different degrees of resistance) your body will not be able to store and utilize glucose and it will remain in the blood stream and cause damage.

One of insulin’s most important jobs is to remove glucose from the blood and put it where it is needed for fuel. When the carbohydrate intake is high (almost all carbs become glucose in the body) and the body cannot produce enough insulin, the glucose stays in the blood, hence the “elevated fasting blood glucose”. Excess blood glucose is toxic. Among it’s negative effects are “renal failure, erectile dysfunction, blindness, slow healing wounds (including surgical incisions), and arterial disease, including coronary artery disease.”

Not mentioned in the wikipedia.com article are A.G.E’s, Advanced Glycation End-products. If glucose is left in the blood too long, it begins to oxidize and bind with proteins, forming A.G.E’s and giving off free radicals. Free radicals have been associated with a number of cancers (most everyone one knows that anti-oxidants are supposedly good for cancer prevention). A.G.E’s cannot be utilized or removed from the body. They float around until they get stuck to something (they are sticky). The something may be brain cells, artery walls, hair follicles, skin cells, and for this reasons they are suspects in Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and “aging” (wrinkles, gray hair, and hair loss).

This is one of my reasons for eliminating most carbohydrates (on most days) from my diet yet eat plenty of protien and fat. Excellent sources of carbs are rice, berries, squash, some fruit and sweet or red skin potatoes.

Thanks Paleo Chix