To understand insulin resistance, you can imagine every single cell in your body as a tiny little house (0:06). Just like a house needs power to run, your cells need fuel to function properly (0:14). In your body, this essential fuel comes in the form of sugar, which is called glucose (0:14). For this fuel to be useful, it cannot just sit around outside; the glucose actually has to get inside the front door of the cell (0:14).
To help the sugar get inside, your body produces a special hormone known as insulin (0:22). You can think of insulin as a helpful guide that walks up to the cell's door and knocks on it (0:22). This knock tells the cell to open up so the glucose can be let inside to do its job (0:22). Normally, this system works smoothly, and your cells get the energy they need (0:14). However, things change quickly when you experience stress (0:35).
When you are under stress, your body goes into a fight-or-flight mode and dumps a massive amount of glucose and insulin into your system all at once (0:35). Your blood sugar starts flowing rapidly, and your pancreas works overtime secreting insulin (0:43). Your body is trying to hurry up and push all that sugar through the doors to give you plenty of extra energy to fight or run away from a threat (0:43). If this stressful dumping only happens once in a while, it is not a big deal for your health (0:50). It is similar to receiving a bunch of delivery packages at your house once a month; the delivery driver constantly knocks, which might be annoying, but you can handle it because it does not happen every day (0:58).
The real problem starts when this intense bombardment happens all the time (1:20). If the door to the cell is knocked on too often by insulin, the people inside the house eventually stop listening (1:20). They get overwhelmed and decide to ignore the knock entirely, leaving the door completely shut (1:20). Because the cell ignores the knock, the glucose is stuck waiting outside (1:37). The sugar wants to enter the cell to help fuel your body's daily processes, but it simply cannot get through the locked door (1:37).
To make up for this locked door, your body tries to solve the problem by sending even more insulin to knock much louder (1:43). Now, you have a massive crowd of insulin hormones knocking on the doors and even tapping on the windows, trying desperately to force the glucose inside (1:50). At first, this extra noise might work, and some glucose finally gets in (1:57). However, the cells inside the house grow increasingly tired of constantly opening the door (1:57). This overwhelming situation is exactly where insulin resistance begins to develop in your body (1:57).
Eventually, your body reaches a breaking point where it completely quits listening to the chemical signals (2:03). Your cells basically decide they are not going to respond to insulin anymore today (2:03). At this stage, no matter how much insulin your pancreas creates, it can no longer knock loud enough to get a response (2:13). As a result, the glucose is completely abandoned and left sitting out in your bloodstream instead of getting inside to give you physical energy (2:13). This is why you will see that people with insulin resistance have very high blood sugar levels; the sugar is trapped in the blood because it has no way to enter the stubborn cells (2:20).