does insulin cause weight gain?

Re:

young17 said:

does insulin cause you to put on weight?
has any one suffered with this ? i am new and just curious..

xx

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hi i'm quite new to this too, i'm type 2 and injectable currently on 36 clicks twice a day of humalog mix 25 and i've only been injecting since 15th January but i seem to have put on a belly whilst i've been injecting although have not eaten anything differently to before i wasn't injecting and on glicazide

i seem to think its because my body is adjusting, but my blood readings are still high and have only just gone down to 11.8 is the lowest reading i've had

anybody else help?

I have read that whilst your body has insulin floating around in the bloodstream it cannot burn fat. Check out Dr Bernstiens's book, The Diabetes Solution, that covers a lot of medical stuff on what is happening in your body when you have diabetes.

Insulin is a steroid body builders are known to use it during intensive training to build muscle so it can if floating around in the body cause weight gain, its hard my weight has been up and down for years.
Type 1 for 18 years

I'm a brand new type 1 diabetic who confessed I'd eaten some chocolate in my first couple of weeks; my diabetic nurse explained that people using insulin have a tendency to turn sugar into fat more readily so it's best to avoid sugar. That must be the answer. Also if you're type 1 you're likely to have lost weight before diagnosis as part of the illness, so you rightly should gain some weight once you start treating it - I've gone from underweight to normal in a very short space of time.

I am a long time type 1 diabetic. when I was a teenager I was told that to reduce weight an individual would have to reduce their insulin. this of course then became something that it seemed in particular teenage girls were and are doing to reduce their weight. very foolish of course as this method of weight loss can make you seriously ill.
So now I am in my 30 's and my weight has gone up and up. My diabetes team tell me its probably because I am on too much insulin. then when I point out my height it 5ft 6", they work out that I should be on approx 50 -65 units of insulin total a day.

I am on approx 65 units per day. I am on the DAFNE program. the only time I found my blood sugars simple to control was during my pregnancies. what an emotional weight off that was.
daily blood control seems a constant battle. I have now got to the biggest I have ever been. I am over weight and desparatly want to lose it but no matter what I manage to do, it seems only a tummy bug will shift the weight, and it seems in question that that may have been the original cause of my diabetes in the first place!

so in answer to the question, yes I think that insulin can cause weight gain. and my medical team are always saying that if the insulin goes up, so does the weight.

any other feed back or tips always gratefully received. I am now also on thyroxine.

ever trying to stay healthy and on my feet :lol:

To Moonstone and Megan,

Yes, insulin certainly does result in weight gain. When it comes to reducing your insulin dosage, the only way you can achieve this is to reduce your carbohydrate intake. All carbohydrates that we eat convert to blood sugar. Sugar itself is just another form of carbohydrate, so doesn't need to go through the conversion process and results in an immediate increase in blood sugar. The more blood sugar you have then the more insulin you need to take.

On the DAFNE course you will have been taught how to carb count. i.e. how to match how much insulin you need to the amount of carbohydrate you are eating in each meal. However it also works in reverse - rather than eat whatever amount of carbs you want and raise the insulin amount to match, you can just as easily reduce the amount of carbs you eat, so then you can reduce the amount of insulin you need.

The most important thing for any diabetic to understand, whether type 1 or type 2 is the effect that carbohydrate has on your body, your blood sugar level, and the amount of insulin that your body needs to counteract the increase in your blood sugar level. Have a look in the topic "General Links for Diabetics" and you will find loads of information on carboyhdrates.

To Moonstone, it appears your DN didn't explain the effect of "sugar" very clearly. When she said sugar what she actually meant was blood sugar and this is not the same thing at all. As a result you have made the common mistake in thinking all you need to do is to cut out eating sugar and all will be well. If only life (and diabetes) was that simple. As I said above you need to reduce your carbohydtrate intake, not just your sugar intake, if you want to avoid the weight gain that often goes with insulin.

I only find that I gain weight from having to eat extra carbs because of hypos. Aslong as I can exercise I can burn most of this extra weight off. Exercise is a key point in weight and diabetes control.

Insulin does play a crucial role in weight gain, just as Dennis described.

Just a few extreme examples, type 1's always lose weight dramatically before the condition is daignosed. This is because they produce no insulin, so glucose cannot be delivered to the body's cells the body thinks it is starving and it begins to metabolise its own fat and protein stores for energy. In some ways, sufferers from obesity have the oppopsite problem - they almost invariably overproduce insulin which, once the bodys basic energy needs have been met, will make fat out of the leftover glucose.

A further problem is that high levels of insulin prevent the body from using glucagon to release energy from its fat stores - so it can create fat, but it can't use it.

I lost 4 stones in weight some years ago when I suddenly figured this out. I had to use much less insulin, but still eat a healthy, nutritious and filling diet. That''s why I'm low-carb and I'm staying that way.

All the best,

Fergus

Hi Dennis,

I'll be going on the DAFNE course in about a year apparently, and I know two people who've been on it and have only good things to say about it, so I'm looking forward to it. I'm also now in the honeymoon period so am treating myself to a few things here and there :-D My Novorapid is at 2, 2, 2 and Lantus is at 6.

The nurse definitely was referring specifically to sugar when she was talking about the weight gain, because we were talking about my accidental chocolate intake over easter ;-) which produced some higher readings, this was before the honeymoon thing. She also knew that I was essentially eating an almost non-sugar and non-carb diet anyway; I have PCOS which caused huge problems 3 years ago and I knew I was in line for type 2 diabetes, so I saw a 'natural nutritionist', did everything she said, lost loads of weight and my hormones were totally controlled for the first time in my entire life (I'm now 36). It was an absolute miracle, you have no idea what my hormones were doing to me up until then. The nutritionist's advice wasn't all about carbs though, there are other elements to it. I've rarely eaten a 'white' carb of any description since then, I had pasta and crackers made of something called 'spelt' rather than the normal wheat (it's low GI and much nicer than wholemeal), and granary type breads, if I had them at all. My only weakness was brown sugar or acacia honey in my coffee cos it just doesn't taste right otherwise... so it's a bit of an irony then, after all that hard work, to have gone and got myself type 1. I'll listen to anything anyone says about weight control because the last thing I need is to end up with both types of diabetes, the stuff of my nightmares...!! I've had a thought.... maybe the nurse was just trying to make me stop eating chocolate whilst we're still trying to get my insulin levels sorted out! It wasn't really helping, having massive spikes....

P.S. at least my hormones are under control even if nothing else is!!!

Hi Moonstone,

From what people say about the DAFNE course you should enjoy it. The fact that you will be going into the course with a really good understanding of carbs and their effect should help also help you to get the most out of the course.

SarahQ said:

Lantus is well known for pileing on the pounds.
But disregarding Lantus, if you are using the correct amount of insulin for the amount of food and exercise you are doing then no you will not gain weight unless you are over eating.
I'm 5'6 and take 35 units in total/day as an upper limit. I'm not over weight and eat over 200 carbs/day but am very active as well.
With everything diabetes wise balance is the key to everything.

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can I just double check and do you mind me asking, 35 units of insulin total in a day, what is that broken down ie, between slow and fast acting? and on 200 carbs a day?

I know after getting advice from all over the place, that eventually this year a kinesiologist told me that my body was not making very good use of the insulin. something that already seemed quite obvious, but i don't really know what to do about it. (the practioner at the time said she had re aligned my body points and that I should proceed with caution as now as my insulin would be working better for me I would need less - this hasn't happened yet and that was about 6 weeks ago)

but still the way you work out how much insulin you should be on weight/height ratio etc that my diabetes team explained to me does not seem to tie in with what you are saying and I am interested to understand better. ( they told me I would become very ill on less than 38 total units of insulin in a day) my team has given me some conflicting information over the years.
look forward to hearing from yourself or anyone else with thoughts on this. thanks

Hi,

I am newly registered, my main reason for logging onto the forum is that I am putting on a llb per week at the moment and cannot understand why.

I am 5ft6, 10.10 now (my heaviest ever, apart from when pregnant !) yet was perfectly happy at Christmas when 9.8llb. I take 150mcg thyroxine for an underactive thyroid and my insulin levels are presently Lantus 10 & Novorapid 8 before breakfast, Novorapid 12 at Lunch, Novorapid 14 for tea and Lantus 14 before bed. I eat approx 12 units of carbs a day and am manically testing my bloods 8/9 times a day to monitor the pattern as my hba1c was horrendous at 8.9 a couple of weeks ago. The doc is not worried as not really OVERWEIGHT as such but it is getting me down for sure !

I work full time and have a toddler aged 20 months who takes all my time when not in work and I am constantly worn out !

I really just wanted to thank all who contribute to this discussion as I will be watching with great interest.

Kind Regards
Dawn

Age 36 Type 1 for 25 years.

Yes insulin does cause weight gain but for many reasons!
1) if you have been recently diagnoisesed with Type 1 insulin dependent your body has been in starvation mode for a while, which means when you are able to proccess your food again (thanks to your insulin) your body will store everything to prevent you from starving again. This happens fast... I gained 30 pounds in about 2 months because of it even though I was working out and eating right!
2) Insulin naturally causes your body to store fats and if you are eating alot of carbohydrates then your body is converting it into fat no matter what you do!
3) Becasue you have been crazy starving and eating whatever you want you probbley are used to that and you can't eat the same things when your body goes back to insulin.
4) Insulin is an anabolic steroid that reduces your metabolism so you are not motabolizing at the same rate as a normal person so the weight gain.
Your doctors will tell you that it does not cause weight gain but that is because they want you to take it, if you stop taking insulin you will experience rapid weight loss but this is also dangerous and could kill you... I almost died and the side effects are just not worth it! However there is a solution and I found it in this book THE pH Miracle For Diabettes by Robert O. Young, PhD, and Shelley Redford Young. This book changed my life and it is really helpful in understanding everything that is going on and why diabettes runs rapant in industrial societes.

I hope this info helps someone cause it was what I didn't have when I was first was diagnosised and I became dia-bulimic a year after diagnosis and it nearly killed me. I am now recovering but it is hard and adictive to not take insulin to lose weight... I was LUCKY many others die... Please if you suffer from this disease or are consindering it contact me, I will tell you how I suffered for a year and almost died, maybe and hopefully I can persaude you not to do it! Stay healthy everyone!

hello, this link may be some help:
http://health.yahoo.com/experts/diabetesmckinney/988/you-can-avoid-insulin-weight-gain/

Lindsay23 wrote:

4) Insulin is an anabolic steroid that reduces your metabolism so you are not motabolizing at the same rate as a normal person so the weight gain.

hi Lindsay, are you absolutely certain about this statement?
sorry to nit-pick.
(welcome to the forum by the way)

Strictly speaking, insulin is an anabolic hormone, not an anabolic steroid, but no need for biochemical nitpicking. Bottom line, it's probably the single most important hormone in the human body because of its importance in carbohydrate metabolism, fat metabolism, cardiac risk factors, hypertension and just about anything else you can think of.

Pretty sure it's behind the credit crunch too, somehow.

All the best,

fergus

in response to sarah Q ;

yes it does seem like a big waste of money, but I have had some very good word of mouth reports on kinesiology as long as they are reputable.

I am well aware of the carbs, insulin and exercise triangle. I have got over so many difficulties. I am willing to take advice and give things a go. well except the pump at the moment as I have no funding for this. great shame, but I am not under the NHS and there is nothing I can do about this.
I've even attempted to try for private funding.

so in my situation, scraping my bank account to try something - anything, I had to do. I saved for a year to do that.
if it seems desparate, thats because it is.

always grateful for any advice or helpful hints.

fergus,
you're bang on the money there mate. Insulin is an anabolic agent but not a steroid and it is
nit-picking - but if someone who's just been put on insulin comes on the forum and reads
that insulin is an anabolic steroid it's gonna freak them right out. :shock:

Insulin behind the credit crunch! fergus, are you absolutely certain
about this statement? :mrgreen: