Never shoot insulin as an AAS. Its a global player in tissues, and a bolus effect ain't what you're after. Why do you think the medical technology folks developed pumps for diabetics?
Insulin plays a role in the direct regulation (at the cellular receptor level) in both glucocorticoid and mineralcorticoid function - some of the most important hormones in the body.
More importantly, it plays an leading role in in the control of cholesterol biosynthesis in liver, and through it, production of bile acids, retinoids, and the precurors for fat soluble vitamins..and steroids.
Seventy percent of your cellular energy is driven by fatty acids (FA). The hormone that is fundamentally involved in FA synthesis, its storage in various tissues and its release is insulin.
Fatty acids, you want them babies in control. You got excess...you got all the bad bits of the catabolic side of insulin (the side where you're cells are more likely to eat protein for energy than either fats or glucose), and where immune system function goes very wrong.
Insulin, in excess, promotes high plasma concentrations of FA...and they inturn, take the place of *other* lipids (some already identified here) in binding to what we call orphan nuclear receptors (high level gene control).
You push insulin, cholesterol biosynthesis goes out of whack, and with it, the devious slide into a fatty acid dominated (can we say "Metabolic Syndrome"?) cellular cascade headed right towards pathophysiology, and disease.
Bottom Line: You do not fuck with your liver by use of exogenous insulin.
You want the anabolic effects of insulin? You control it with diet, exercise, proper sleep and stress management, supps if necesssary, to *keep* it from being present in excess and screwing with lipid biosynthesis and metabolism in liver, in fat and other tissues. Note that when you have impaired insulin, you also have impaired glucose uptake. Much of that is directly converted to FA, and these are built up into higher storable fats. When present in blood, along side elevated glucose (that can't get into cells because insulin itself doesn't bind to cell surfaces to chaperone in glucose) causes plaque and clogged arteries in the body..and in the brain. Cardiovascular disease.
The alteration of immune control, thats tied into cancer.
Why? Because our diet has seriously eroded and physical activity has become a luxury, not a lifestyle staple.
Therein lies the supreme rub. We are hardwired and geared for a diet that features a select mix of fat tyoes and carbs that mostly fiberous and slow release. Life on the farm, the way of living for countless generations, fined tuned our metabolic control, way on the top shelf gene level, to expect a certain mix of fat *types* and carb *types*.
See? Lipids rule. They're probably the first self assembled organic layers on earth.
We're just now figuring out, that the dietary fats/lipids themselves are critical in their role of gene control.
Remove the traditional fat mix from the picture by a poor diet....replace them with unhealthy fats that also increase insulin release (yep. ain't just carbs that does it, some amino acids do as well...) and compete for binding with the fatty acids released by insulin in excess, and you have molecular mayhem.
That, my fellow forum members, is much of the disease cause we see in our modern age. About three quarters of it.
See my point? You got fucking EXCESS of insulin in most cases, it jest don't work quite right.
You wanna be big? You get your metabolic house in order, get your insulin control down and get that sucker to function correctly, you'll see what I mean by anabolic action. Recall my point - insulin has a hand in the control of sex hormone anabolic action. It can promotenatural production of the testosterone and estrogen, hGH / IGF-1, and it can shut 'em down.
Key point: its the erosion of insulin control is correlated to changes in testosterone production throughout middle age and into advanced age (yeah, thats right, thats why viagra and cialis are big sellers, eh?)
Insulin, its what NOT for dinner.