How Does Insulin Resistance Cause Coronary Heart Disease?
Insulin resistance causes narrowing of the blood vessels and puts you at high risk for a heart attack due to the following. 1. High level of insulin. Insulin resistance means that your body becomes less sensitive to certain actions of your own insulin. One of these actions is to drive glucose from blood into the cells. In order to compensate for this insulin resistance, your pancreas is able to produce large quantities of insulin, which keeps blood glucose normal for a long time. This compensatory high level of insulin, however, is not good for the body. A high insulin level in the blood due to insulin resistance is now a well-established risk factor for heart disease . A high level of insulin stimulates smooth muscle cell proliferation in the arterial wall and causes thickening and stiffness of the arterial wall which in turn, contributes to narrowing of the coronary blood vessels. Several, large excellent clinical studies have clearly shown high insulin level to be a major risk facto
