When people are extremely overweight, their muscles are much worse at pulling sugar out of the blood — even when insulin is present — but this gets much better after they lose weight.

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Pro

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Against

Evidence from Studies

Supporting (1)

40

Community contributions welcome

40

Restoration of insulin responsiveness in skeletal muscle of morbidly obese patients after weight loss. Effect on muscle glucose transport and glucose transporter GLUT4.

Cohort Study

Human

1992 Feb

This study found that severely overweight people have much lower muscle ability to use insulin to take in sugar, but after losing a lot of weight, their muscles got much better at it—proving the problem isn’t permanent.

Contradicting (0)

0

Community contributions welcome

No contradicting evidence found

Gold Standard Evidence Needed

According to GRADE and EBM methodology, here is what ideal scientific evidence would look like to definitively prove or disprove this specific claim, ordered from strongest to weakest evidence.

Source Study

Restoration of insulin responsiveness in skeletal muscle of morbidly obese patients after weight loss. Effect on muscle glucose transport and glucose transporter GLUT4.

Score: 40

DOI: 10.1172/JCI115638

Similar Assertions

When very overweight people lose a lot of weight, their muscles get much better at using insulin to pull sugar out of the blood, which helps fix their diabetes or prediabetes.

40

0

90%

After losing weight, muscles get better at using sugar not because they make more GLUT4 proteins, but because the existing proteins move to the right place or work better.

40

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77%

Even people with type 2 diabetes can see their muscles start working like healthy muscles again after losing a lot of weight — and it’s not because they make more sugar transporters, but because the ones they have work better.

40

0

73%

Skeletal muscle mass is a primary determinant of whole-body glucose disposal capacity, and higher muscle mass is inversely associated with visceral adipose accumulation via reduced insulin demand.

40

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72%

Even though muscles get better at using sugar after weight loss, the amount of the GLUT4 sugar transporter protein in the muscle doesn’t change — so something else must be making it work better.

40

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71%