Abstract:The insulin resistance (IR) and the active ingredients of traditional Chinese medicine and their mechanisms to improve IR in the last 3 years are summarized. Retrieve, classify and arrange the recent documentations of china and abroad. IR can drive the occurrence and progress of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), and there are several molecular mechanisms for the occurrence of IR. IR has been a research focus of diabetes, the control strategies of T2DM have been changed from the "hypoglycemic therapy" into "improve the IR and IR-related metabolic abnormalities, and make a comprehensive prevention and treatment of cardiovascular risk factors." It is demonstrated by experiments that a variety of active ingredients of traditional Chinese medicine can improve IR through different mechanisms to treat diabetes mellitus.