Insulin is released by the pancreas- an organ playing a major part in digestion and governing blood sugar. Many hormones increase your blood sugar level- growth hormones, adrenalin, glucagon, just to name a few. Many health hazards, such as diabetes are correlated with high blood sugar. So all of these hormones are capable to increase your blood sugar level what is not good for you.

Just one hormone aids you to get lower blood sugar levels- insulin. Insulin scales down blood sugar levels. Therefore it is crucial to balance your blood sugar.

After eating, sugar is entering the blood stream- for example as a result of digesting starchy foods. To deliver energy to your body, this blood sugar needs to go into the cells of your body. And that's exactly what insulin does: It promotes the transfer of sugar from the blood into the cells.

Insulin has more tasks to do. To store fatty acids, it helps in getting the fat into the fat cells to store it. In addition, it prevents burning fat. So, insulin is a leading player in the old orchestra of players raising fat storage- very useful for our ancestors who were threatened by starving all the time, but causing too much fat on our bodies nowadays.

Too much insulin contributes to belly fat, being overweight and diabetes, disorder in fat metabolism, heart attacks and strokes.

The endocrine system in women over 40 can get out of balance much easier than in women of younger age. If you are a women over 40, you need to look at your insulin level. There are two major errors in nutrition leading to a high insulin level:

* High glycemic index (GI). The easier sugar contained in food gets in the blood, the quicker and higher the insulin level grows. To measure how easy sugar from foods gets in the blood commonly the glycemic index (GI) is utilized. Some common foods with a higher GI are most sweets, white bread, cakes or sweet fruits. In general, the more processed a food is, the higher it's GI is. Avoid foods containing syrup, fructose, saccharose etc.

*Eating artificial sweeteners fools your mind into thinking sugar has entered the blood stream. The insulin level grows, and, as you know by now, you will burn less fat because of that. That's one of the reasons diet sodas do not contribute to losing weight permanently in a healthy way.

In addition, if you're eating lots of fat a high insulin level will stimulate the fat to be stashed away in fat cells- making it impossible to lose weight permanently over 40. So- keep your insulin levels in check. And when preparing the next shopping lost, think of low GI foods.