Jones, Christian Samone2023-06-052023-052023-05-18May 2023http://hdl.handle.net/10342/12879Insulin is a hormone that plays a role in the regulation of glucose homeostasis, through the regulation of blood glucose levels³⁶. Insulin sensitivity is defined as how well the body responds to insulin, and when this is impaired, it results in insulin resistance. Insulin resistance refers to a decrease in insulin-mediated glucose disposal in insulin-sensitive tissues². Impaired insulin action can result in insulin resistance, which can lead to illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and metabolic syndrome. PURPOSE: The purpose is to explore various training modalities and their effects on insulin action, with the intent to answer the question which mode of training, aerobics or resistance has a greater impact on insulin sensitivity. I speculate that the resistance exercisers will show greater improvements in insulin action, compared to the endurance and control groups. METHODS: To examine insulin action, glycogen synthesis was performed on primary human skeletal muscle cells that were derived from 3 groups: high active endurance, highly active resistance, and sedentary control. The samples underwent proliferation and were grown in a cell culture media incubator. After reaching 70-80% confluency, myogenic cells were isolated and differentiated. After cells went through five days of differentiation, they were ready for glycogen synthesis, which was determined using liquid scintillation counting. RESULTS: There were 11 participants in the highly active endurance group, 10 participants in the highly active resistance group, and 4 participants in the sedentary control group. The sedentary group had a greater BMI than the endurance and resistance groups. There was an increase in glycogen synthesis in all groups when stimulated with insulin (p < 0.0001). There was a significant difference between the highly active resistance and sedentary control groups, when fold change was calculated (p = 0.0060), with the change in the sedentary controls being greater than highly active resistance group. There were no significant correlations between the results and the group characteristics (age, BMI, and oxygen consumption). CONCLUSION: The present study showed that there was an increase in glycogen synthesis in all subjects, regardless of group, when comparing basal to insulin stimulated values. The results of this current study line up with results found in several others that have looked at aerobic trained individuals, however; they have failed to investigate resistance training. It is evident that resistance training has the same effects as aerobic training, but the topic needs to be further explored to confirm this finding.application/pdfenResistance exerciseAerobic exercisePrimary Human Skeletal Muscle CellsInsulin sensitivityGlycogen synthesisMaster's Thesis2023-06-02