Your Liver is Awesome (at Preventing Hypoglycemia)

hen I teach my students about carbohydrate use for energy production during exercise, the discussion always starts with where, how much and what form carbohydrate is stored in the body. Carbohydrate is stored in three locations: as glucose in the blood (about 4-5 grams in total during fasting conditions of 90 – 100 mg/dL of blood), as many glucose molecules linked together to form glycogen as muscle glycogen (~400 grams) and liver glycogen (~100 grams). If we then convert the grams to calories (~4 calories per 1 gram of carbohydrate), we have 20-24 calories worth in the blood, 1,600 calories in muscle and 400 calories in the liver worth of stored carbohydrate. The amount is surprisingly little considering approximately