I was hoping you could tell me a little about glucagon and how or if it relates to weight loss. I heard in a lecture recently that it works against insulin and helps people to lose weight. Is there any truth to this?
Could you just give me a little more information about it and its function in the body? Thanks so much for all the great information you supply!
Sounds like the person giving the lecture had bad information.
Glucagon increases blood sugar, not weight loss. BTW, both glucagon and insulin hormones are regulated by your pancreas. You have no control over either unless you injected insulin or glucagon as prescribed by a physician. A person with type 1 diabetes would inject glucagon during a low blood sugar episode to restore normal glucose levels. Insulin injections are used to lower high blood sugar to normal glucose levels. It is these 2 hormones that regulate your blood sugar automatically unless you need insulin injections due to type 1 diabetes. Read my diabetes topic for more on the interaction between insulin and glucagon.
Additional glucagon would not affect weight loss especially since your liver only stores about 1500 calories of glycogen (stored blood sugar glucose). It is liver glycogen that refuels your blood sugar when it is low and glucagon is released from your pancreas.
