54yrs T1, survived despite best efforts of NHS and Novo ,

No idea what bulletin you are on about, so you will have to enlighten me and a few others I suspect.

Insulin is only associated with weight gain if you have too many carbs unles you have a very unusual condition. There are loads of people on this forum who are on insulin including myself who don't have a weight problem. Yes, diabetes requires discipline but that includes diet.

Barrie Smith said:

In the latest bulletin some one is asking if Insulin makes you put on weight . It certainly does , the synthetic insulins are the worst , but diabetes is about discipline and balance when you become diabetic you cannot just carry on as normal , sacrifices have to be accepted , if you don't then you are going to shorten your life .

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Without Insulin you will lose weight , before type 1 diagnosis I must have lost 2 stone but as soon as insulin treatment started and your body starts to recover you will put back the weight you lost and if you control this as well as you can, [Its not easy] I don't see any reason why you should put on any more weight than a non diabetic.

Same as above, re-gained the weight I lost at diagnosis, but, if anything I find it a struggle to keep the weight on, and really struggle to gain more. As someone has pointed out, without using insulin type 1s would waste away. Used correctly no problem, used to cover a poor diet and eating more than a person needs will result in weight gain, the same as what happens to non diabetics.

Brett perhaps you are not putting the weight on because you are watching what you eat now and eating more healthy foods, that must be a good thing. I sometimes think what I would have been like without the diabetes not watching my diet and little exercise and the health problems that would have caused me, So perhaps something good came out of it.

Have been shot down in previous threads for saying this, but I definitely think taking artificial insulin has made me put on weight. I gained the weight I lost pre diagnosis, and have put more on, not loads, I'm 6'3 and 14.5st, but had always been lean pre T1. I find it difficult to lose weight despite having less carbs, than pre diagnosis. I am also more disciplined about exercising, and exercise more.

As a matter of fact, I do not know a single T1 that is overweight !

JRW Pre diagnosis your body was not working at its most efficient , now you are running it at it full capacity and hopefully everything is working as it should including your whole metabolism so perhaps 14st 5 is your ideal weight, at 6ft 3 it sound quite good!

JRW said:

Have been shot down in previous threads for saying this, but I definitely think taking artificial insulin has made me put on weight. I gained the weight I lost pre diagnosis, and have put more on, not loads, I'm 6'3 and 14.5st, but had always been lean pre T1. I find it difficult to lose weight despite having less carbs, than pre diagnosis. I am also more disciplined about exercising, and exercise more.

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Some people do put on loads of weight and have dreadful side effects from the synthetic insulin's If you think logically some people are allergic to penicillin others are not. The same applies to many drugs and products.
This site is worth a read http://iddt.org/publications/30-years-of-synthetic-insulin

I am Type 1 and take synthetic insulins. I weigh 2 stone less than I did before diagnosis 2.5 years ago and have maintained my lower weight. I watch the carbs I eat and exercise more. Most type 1's I have met appear not to be overweight.

CarbsRok,thanks for the link.I guess this will make a lot of people think,it certainly made me think.

JRW said:

Have been shot down in previous threads for saying this, but I definitely think taking artificial insulin has made me put on weight. I gained the weight I lost pre diagnosis, and have put more on, not loads, I'm 6'3 and 14.5st, but had always been lean pre T1. I find it difficult to lose weight despite having less carbs, than pre diagnosis. I am also more disciplined about exercising, and exercise more.

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I won't shoot you down... because you are sort of correct. Although it probably isn't insulin but the action of it .

When you start taking insulin and get your blood glucose under better control, you start over-retaining fluids initially to make up for your dehydration, which makes you think you've rapidly gained a lot of weight. You associate it with taking insulin, but really what is happening is taking your insulin properly is just enabling your body to better use food and maintain a proper water balance.

Once you start taking insulin injections and start getting your blood glucose under control, you now have enough insulin circulating in your blood to help the glucose get into the body's cells where it can be used as energy. So the glucose produced by the food you eat is no longer spending time in your bloodstream and being excreted out as urine. You gain weight because glucose is stored as fat .


Your high blood glucose may have also made you feel more hungry because not all the food you were eating was able to get into the cells as energy to nourish the cells. Then, you started taking insulin — and continued to eat the same amount of food.

I have alot of insulin and im still underweight so I don't think theres a connection

nmr1991 said:

I have alot of insulin and im still underweight so I don't think theres a connection

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With an A1c of 14% it's hardly surprising you are underweight.

CarbsRok said:

Some people do put on loads of weight and have dreadful side effects from the synthetic insulin's If you think logically some people are allergic to penicillin others are not. The same applies to many drugs and products.
This site is worth a read http://iddt.org/publications/30-years-of-synthetic-insulin

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I would have appreciated if the report had come from a balanced institute with objective listing of facts and figures representing both sides equally.
Please note just as an example: Proportionally more diabetics experienced insulin allergies when on bovine/pork insulin than when on the 'human' insulin. Those many that were relieved of suffering when switching to human insulin are happily ignored in this report, just highlighting the now smaller 1% diabetics that experience some level of allergy using the human analogues. Also important to note: The vast majority of human insulin allergies observed are not due to the human insulin itself. But the choice of stabilisers/fillers the manufacturer may have chosen to support it with. Most will therefore succeed getting rid of the allergy by switching to another manufacturer as they for marketing/patent reasons use different stabilisers/fillers. Further: Several well documented and important benefits of human insulin are completely ignored or even claimed not to be there:

• Human insulin is absorbed more rapidly and show its effectiveness in shorter duration.
  (better matching real human insulin response to glucose challenge) and allowing tighter control to stay <10mmol/l.

• Human insulin causes fewer allergic and autoimmune reactions as compared to animal insulin.

• Human insulin is less expensive than animal insulin. (allowing more to afford being treated world wide!)

Last but not least: It has been reported that human insulins may lead to side effects such as hypo-unawareness, tiredness and weight increase that may not be found when taking animal insulins, however, as yet there hasn’t been conclusive research to either back up or knock down the claim.

CyberDyme said:

would have appreciated if the report had come from a balanced institute with objective listing of facts and figures representing both sides equally.

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They are very well balanced I can assure you of that. IDDT fought hard to keep animal insulin for those that can not use synthetic/GM modified insulin. The daughter of the founder actually uses synthetic insulin.

CarbsRok said:

They are very well balanced I can assure you of that. IDDT fought hard to keep animal insulin for those that can not use synthetic/GM modified insulin. The daughter of the founder actually uses synthetic insulin.

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I know that they have been fighting hard to keep animal insulin on the market, and I totally respect that, as some diabetics clearly have the need. Even forwarded several diabetics to the English company producing the animal insulin. But their language and one-sided views as in this report in very aggressive terms are not balanced in any way. But that is maybe required for them to be heard somehow, as recognize they are up against some strong industry players.

CarbsRok said:

Some people do put on loads of weight and have dreadful side effects from the synthetic insulin's If you think logically some people are allergic to penicillin others are not. The same applies to many drugs and products.
This site is worth a read http://iddt.org/publications/30-years-of-synthetic-insulin

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As someone who has both gained and lost weight (managing to get back to the weight I was twenty years ago in the last six months) and never used animal insulin, I suspect that a large amount of the issues with weight have much less to do with insulin than many people think.

I suspect that MDI and being told that you can eat what you want (within moderation) has a lot more to do with T1 weight gain than insulin type, along with the changed diet of the western world.