Insulin and psychiatric disorders

Insulin is a hormone central to regulating carbohydrate and fat metabolism in the body. Insulin also inşuences other body functions, such as enhancing acute thermoregulatory and glucoregulatory responses to food intake. It is also a neuropeptide transmitter and enhances learning and memory.

Hypoglycemia is a lack of sufficient glucose and a scarcity of the sources of glucose, which can dramatically manifest itself with impaired functioning of the central nervous system and can cause dizziness, speech problems, and even loss of consciousness. While producing those symptoms, hypoglycemia also provokes a rapid increase in epinephrine secretion, which leads to tremulousness, lightheadedness, perspiration, anxiety, hunger, nausea, and tachycardia. These symptoms present like a panic attack, suggesting that if hypoglycemia does provoke anxiety attacks it may be through its action as a nonspecific stressor, perhaps by interacting with an underlying CNS disorder that predisposes to panic. The fear of hypoglycemia-induced bodily symptoms of arousal has been implicated in the pathogenesis of both spontaneously occurring and experimentally provoked panic attacks. The fear of bodily symptoms may be a characteristic of panic disorder and is hypothesized to predict state anxiety and panic frequency during experimentally induced peripheral arousal.

Insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome (MS) have become worldwide problems. MS is a cluster of risk factors associated with increased risk of cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes. Based on research data from 2004, 40% of adults in Turkey meet the criteria for diagnosis of metabolic syndrome. The use of certain medications, such as atypical antipsychotics, may increase insulin resistance and the risk of the metabolic syndrome.