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Dear Horse Mom,
Horses with insulin resistance and glucose intolerance have excess fat. Excess fat is an impairment of the hormone insulin’s ability to properly process fuel or fat and sugars. Insulin resistance is fast becoming a buzzword as the culprit behind easy keepers.
The pituitary gland has nothing to do with this disease. Instead, as its name suggests, cells become resistant to insulin.
Insulin resistance derives from insulin insensitivity at the cell surface, which regulates glucose availability inside the cell, or from insulin ineffectiveness due to disruption of glucose metabolism inside the cell. When this happens, sugar circulating in the bloodstream is no longer drawn into the cells by insulin.
It is Insulin’s job to unlock the tissues and let the sugar in. When the sugar can’t get in the cell it leaves excess sugar in the blood that gets converted to fat. In horses this often causes a cresty neck and large fat pads in abnormal places.
Mustangs are genetically engineered for this condition so that they can put on fat stores in times of plenty to rely on when food is sparse. This leads us to believe that genetics play a large role in insulin resistance.
Insulin resistance/IR has been implicated in the pathogenesis of equine diseases, such as laminitis, pituitary adenoma, hyperlipidemia, and osteochondritis dessicans.
In this view, no appropriate evidence is available for the prevention or treatment of insulin resistance in an equine disease. Evidence is available, however, to justify avoidance of high-glycemic feeds, such as high starch intakes in grains, clover, and alfalfa, and high fructan intakes in grasses, to decrease the risk of acute digestive disturbances associated with rapid fermentation, and chronic metabolic disorders associated with insulin resistance.
During sub maximal exercise, high-glycemic meals have been shown to increase glucose utilization immediately. On the other hand, chronic adaptation to feeds that exchange oil and fiber sources for sources of sugar and starch confers benefits to athletic performance that may be due to several aspects of fat adaptation, including the regulation of insulin sensitivity, as well as glycolysis and lipid oxidation by signals from insulin receptors. By adding the oil and/or fiber to the horses’ diet you are controlling the speed in which the horses’ body gets the sugars.
If the horses’ body experiences a fast infusin of sugars, a lot of insulin is required. If the sugars are metabolized more slowly, the insulin is released gradually. When the sugars are absorbed slowly, the rise in blood sugar is gradual and so is its descent once the insulin begins to do its work. But when the sugars are absorbed quickly there is a rapid rise in blood sugar the pancreas pumps out a correspondingly high level of insulin to do the job of lowering the blood sugar.
This leads to a vicious cycle of more fat, more insulin resistance, more hunger and more weight gain. By manipulating your horses’ diet you can control how fast and how often insulin is released to lower your horse blood sugar.
Information regarding insulin resistance suggests methods for protecting health and promoting horse performance. Endotoxin administration. It also influences reproductive efficiency and probably exercise.
A provocative hypothesis is that genetic predisposition to IR is aggravated by a higher-carbohydrate diet. The hypothesis resonates in the horse because an increased risk of several digestive and metabolic disorders has been associated with feeding meals of grain and molasses. Thus, the safe use or avoidance of rapidly digested, high carbohydrate meals, which induce insulin insensitivity, offers management opportunities with regard to avoiding certain diseases and promoting performance.
Insulin resistance alludes to insensitivity at the cell surface and to several disorders inside the insulin-sensitive cells, notably in muscle, adipose tissue, and liver.
A proper diet and supplementation program can go along way in reducing symptoms of insulin resistance and/or glucose intolerance.
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