My question was about the statement "insulin is toxic to the cells". I found interesting theses, but no medical explanation. Toxic means "doing something biological harm to it". What is the damage which insulin makes to the cells? Without this, it is a thesis. Probably worth to make research on it, but not enough to say "it is toxic"
Fair enough. My science-trained Mr Svea would agree with you. He didn't like the use of the term toxicity for it either. So, I researched further online and found a paper which talks about insulin toxicity in neural/ brain stem cells. As we probably all know there is a lot of talk and scientific activity around the connection between impaired BG (and insulin resistance) regulation and brain cell problems and alzheimers/Type 3 diabetes.
http://www.nature.com/cddis/journal/v4/n8/full/cddis2013295a.html
"Insulin-mediated cell death manifested not only in all human NSCs tested, regardless of origin, but also in differentiated human neurons. The underlying cell death mechanism at high insulin concentrations was similar to insulin resistance, where cells became less responsive to insulin, resulting in a reduction in the activation of the PI3K/Akt pathway critical to cell survival signaling.
Keywords:
human neural stem cells; insulin; insulin resistance; cell apoptosis; PI3K/Akt intracellular signal"
I liked this paper for dealing with the full-on complexity of beta cell failure:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3900074/
But no - not a word of insulin toxicity.
Dr Fung does introduce the concept of insulin toxicity, basically. It is his theory, which he says is based on logic. I like his logic! It seemed pretty convincing to me. Watch and see?
I attach Fung's slide on references used in that lecture. (I'm a very thorough reader and viewer! And as well as great fat storage in my cells, alas, I also have good storage in my computer. I screen shot as I watched.)