Isn't it fairly well agreed upon that physical exercise is important for improving all of these insulin related markers? I might be mistaken but I recall that not being much part of your process.
I think you need to find a better lab/doctor to do the Kraft assay. I did an "Executive" physical with Dr. Terry Grossman (Denver) years ago and I was there all day anyway. They just put a do-hicky in my arm and took a SMALL sample at each hour. Look up longevity docs in your area, they do that sort of thing. The peripheral insulin resistance one develops on Keto is poo-poohed by most Carnivores/Ketovores but I find it a bit concerning. I Am interested to see your future results.
I don't think so, but am not sure. The unit for my insulin tests was uIU/mL, which I gave once. Further down I was too lazy to type it out every time, my mistake because now you interpreted it as "insulin units" :)
I think 18 units of insulin would be an extreme amount. A quick search says that 1 unit of insulin would lower glucose by 50mg/dL, which is quite a bit - 100mg/dL is the border to prediabetic. So if I gave myself 2 doses of insulin fasted, I would probably die because my glucose would go to 0.
I should've typed out the units every time like I do with mg/dL, it's just that I've typed mg/dL so many times it's just in my muscle memory (same with mmol/L) but ulU/mL is new for me :D
If you're not eating any carbs, I'm not sure how well you can expect your body to process them. In fact, I'm surprised how well you're doing -- I agree with your 'pattern 1.5' assessment. That might be 99th percentile (in the good direction) for subjects at your current body fat percentage. Given that you're still focused on losing fat, and have only found extremely low carb effective for that, it seems to me that you're doing as well as possible in this area, and you can wait until you achieve your body fat goal before trying to become more metabolically versatile.
It's a short-term study. It would be more relevant to your situation if there was a study where the subjects also varied in long term diet coming into the evaluation (in particular, high vs. low protein and high vs. low carb). Then we could see if subjects adapt to the diet they've been on, and reduce their ability to process alternative macro ratios.
Yea, good point. I'm one of the most metabolically healthy obese people I know :D
I guess at least I got that going for me..
It would be interesting to carb-up for 3 days and then do the test again, just to see the difference. Unfortunately, doing the test is impractical as hell :(
Also, they took six separate blood draws? Usually if medical types want to take blood regularly they'd fit a cannula, leaving one hole instead of a moonscape.
Maybe it's not insulin...maybe it's cortisol. Have you looked into high dose Thiamin? Dr Constantini, Dr Derrick Lonsdale, Elliott Overton? I'm currently studying high dose thiamine and the ability to turn back on the enzyme that breaks down thiamine. Thiamine is needed to break down carbs.
I get that 6.9 insulin isn't great. But, it *is* nice.
On a serious note, I'd never heard of this test, and I can see why. You'd almost need to be hospitalized just to have that kind of time.
I'm convinced to get the test -- if I can get a 3 hour version. Even that, sitting on my ass for 3 hours, sounds like unholy nails scraping the chalkboard of my soul
Well you're not on the needle the whole time - they poked me with a fresh needle every hour on the hour. So you can wander around the place for 45 min and then you need to come back.
6.9 I was fine with - but it's gone up since then! Not exactly what I suspected, haha.
You and me both ;) No clue? The first time I thought it was just a fluke, but now there's kind of a trend.. I'll keep testing it every couple months and see where it goes. Hopefully it'll go back down.
If you were a system I didn't understand and was trying to debug, my first idea would be that it somehow takes more force to get your glucose-clearing to work, but it does still work well given the extra pressure, and that the control system already "knows" this, and provides the extra pressure.
Like driving a car where the gearbox takes too much force to change gear, but the driver is used to this, and uses the right amount of extra force on every gear change. (My van was like this. When I drive a car I tend to use far too much force on the gear stick out of habit)
To explain it, I think we'd need to know more about the system involved. Where are the feedback loops? Where could this 'force constant' be stored?
Thinking about it, could the extra force be required just because your fat cells are already full?
Maybe they have got little homeostats of their own, and are all like: "We got enough already, try some other cells to store your crap". But they are all saying this, and the glucose has got to go somewhere, so your body is like: "Dudes...."
Doesn't explain why your system already knows to try harder before it's even got time to see that it's not working as fast as it should.
Except maybe it does. If you've already got insulin at 90 wossnames in your normal state just to keep the fat in the cells, maybe whatever is like: 'glucose alert!' is just upping the pressure from its normal level.
Prediction: fasting insulin is higher in the obese, and roughly proportional to obesity.
I think what you're describing is one leading theory of what the mechanism of diabetes/hyperinsulinimia is: the cells are "full" and yet there is still glucose in the blood stream, so the pancreas thinks "I must not be getting the message across" and sends more insulin.
Yea I'd expect fasting insulin to be higher in the obese. I wonder if it's cause or effect though. Is high insulin causing me to be fat, or is the constant fat flux from my body fat causing the body to constantly release insulin to deal with it? (effectively, put it back in, lol)
Thinking about it, could the extra force be required just because your fat cells are already full?
Maybe they have got little homeostats of their own, and are all like: "We got enough already, try some other cells to store your crap". But they are all saying this, and the glucose has got to go somewhere, so your body is like: "Dudes...."
Doesn't explain why your system already knows to try harder before it's even got time to see that it's not working as fast as it should.
Except maybe it does. If you've already got insulin at 90 wossnames in your normal state just to keep the fat in the cells, maybe whatever is like: 'glucose alert!' is just upping the pressure from its normal level.
Prediction: fasting insulin is higher in the obese, and roughly proportional to obesity.
Isn't it fairly well agreed upon that physical exercise is important for improving all of these insulin related markers? I might be mistaken but I recall that not being much part of your process.
Yea, I think you're right.
I am planning on starting some physical exercise soon. I just wanted to not confound my experiments.
I think you need to find a better lab/doctor to do the Kraft assay. I did an "Executive" physical with Dr. Terry Grossman (Denver) years ago and I was there all day anyway. They just put a do-hicky in my arm and took a SMALL sample at each hour. Look up longevity docs in your area, they do that sort of thing. The peripheral insulin resistance one develops on Keto is poo-poohed by most Carnivores/Ketovores but I find it a bit concerning. I Am interested to see your future results.
Oh, that sounds much more pleasant! Yea that lab had never done a Kraft test before, or even heard of it.
When your insulin is tested and the result is 18 units. Are those units the same as a diabetic giving themselves 18 units of insulin?
I don't think so, but am not sure. The unit for my insulin tests was uIU/mL, which I gave once. Further down I was too lazy to type it out every time, my mistake because now you interpreted it as "insulin units" :)
I think 18 units of insulin would be an extreme amount. A quick search says that 1 unit of insulin would lower glucose by 50mg/dL, which is quite a bit - 100mg/dL is the border to prediabetic. So if I gave myself 2 doses of insulin fasted, I would probably die because my glucose would go to 0.
I should've typed out the units every time like I do with mg/dL, it's just that I've typed mg/dL so many times it's just in my muscle memory (same with mmol/L) but ulU/mL is new for me :D
If you're not eating any carbs, I'm not sure how well you can expect your body to process them. In fact, I'm surprised how well you're doing -- I agree with your 'pattern 1.5' assessment. That might be 99th percentile (in the good direction) for subjects at your current body fat percentage. Given that you're still focused on losing fat, and have only found extremely low carb effective for that, it seems to me that you're doing as well as possible in this area, and you can wait until you achieve your body fat goal before trying to become more metabolically versatile.
I was wondering if Dr. Mike T. Nelson (Flex Diet Podcast host) might have something relevant. Best I could find was this: https://miketnelson.com/does-what-you-eat-affect-what-you-burn/
It's a short-term study. It would be more relevant to your situation if there was a study where the subjects also varied in long term diet coming into the evaluation (in particular, high vs. low protein and high vs. low carb). Then we could see if subjects adapt to the diet they've been on, and reduce their ability to process alternative macro ratios.
Yea, good point. I'm one of the most metabolically healthy obese people I know :D
I guess at least I got that going for me..
It would be interesting to carb-up for 3 days and then do the test again, just to see the difference. Unfortunately, doing the test is impractical as hell :(
Also, they took six separate blood draws? Usually if medical types want to take blood regularly they'd fit a cannula, leaving one hole instead of a moonscape.
7
Maybe it's not insulin...maybe it's cortisol. Have you looked into high dose Thiamin? Dr Constantini, Dr Derrick Lonsdale, Elliott Overton? I'm currently studying high dose thiamine and the ability to turn back on the enzyme that breaks down thiamine. Thiamine is needed to break down carbs.
I'll add cortisol to my list to get tested, thanks!
http://haidut.me/?p=1543 Links to studies
I get that 6.9 insulin isn't great. But, it *is* nice.
On a serious note, I'd never heard of this test, and I can see why. You'd almost need to be hospitalized just to have that kind of time.
I'm convinced to get the test -- if I can get a 3 hour version. Even that, sitting on my ass for 3 hours, sounds like unholy nails scraping the chalkboard of my soul
Well you're not on the needle the whole time - they poked me with a fresh needle every hour on the hour. So you can wander around the place for 45 min and then you need to come back.
6.9 I was fine with - but it's gone up since then! Not exactly what I suspected, haha.
I figured you wouldn't be trapped in a chair the whole time. But, that sounds like hell to me, being in a lab with just my phone for hours.
I sat in the lounge area with my book or laptop most of the time :)
But yea it's definitely not convenient.
Should you repeat this test why not have glucose monitored as well as insulin?
Oh I did, the one curve is glucose.
As your glucose and insulin curves track each other I would say you are not yet diabetic and that you are still insulin sensitive.
I wonder what is the reason your fasting insulin almost tripled between march and july?
You and me both ;) No clue? The first time I thought it was just a fluke, but now there's kind of a trend.. I'll keep testing it every couple months and see where it goes. Hopefully it'll go back down.
Fascinating.
If you were a system I didn't understand and was trying to debug, my first idea would be that it somehow takes more force to get your glucose-clearing to work, but it does still work well given the extra pressure, and that the control system already "knows" this, and provides the extra pressure.
Like driving a car where the gearbox takes too much force to change gear, but the driver is used to this, and uses the right amount of extra force on every gear change. (My van was like this. When I drive a car I tend to use far too much force on the gear stick out of habit)
To explain it, I think we'd need to know more about the system involved. Where are the feedback loops? Where could this 'force constant' be stored?
Thinking about it, could the extra force be required just because your fat cells are already full?
Maybe they have got little homeostats of their own, and are all like: "We got enough already, try some other cells to store your crap". But they are all saying this, and the glucose has got to go somewhere, so your body is like: "Dudes...."
Doesn't explain why your system already knows to try harder before it's even got time to see that it's not working as fast as it should.
Except maybe it does. If you've already got insulin at 90 wossnames in your normal state just to keep the fat in the cells, maybe whatever is like: 'glucose alert!' is just upping the pressure from its normal level.
Prediction: fasting insulin is higher in the obese, and roughly proportional to obesity.
I think what you're describing is one leading theory of what the mechanism of diabetes/hyperinsulinimia is: the cells are "full" and yet there is still glucose in the blood stream, so the pancreas thinks "I must not be getting the message across" and sends more insulin.
Yea I'd expect fasting insulin to be higher in the obese. I wonder if it's cause or effect though. Is high insulin causing me to be fat, or is the constant fat flux from my body fat causing the body to constantly release insulin to deal with it? (effectively, put it back in, lol)
Thinking about it, could the extra force be required just because your fat cells are already full?
Maybe they have got little homeostats of their own, and are all like: "We got enough already, try some other cells to store your crap". But they are all saying this, and the glucose has got to go somewhere, so your body is like: "Dudes...."
Doesn't explain why your system already knows to try harder before it's even got time to see that it's not working as fast as it should.
Except maybe it does. If you've already got insulin at 90 wossnames in your normal state just to keep the fat in the cells, maybe whatever is like: 'glucose alert!' is just upping the pressure from its normal level.
Prediction: fasting insulin is higher in the obese, and roughly proportional to obesity.