Type 2 flours and unusual blood glucose spike

I am a T2 in remission with a1c of 5% (30 mmol) for the last year and a half now. I started my journey with 30 gms of carbs a day when i was diagnosed with a1c of (78 mmol). However, now i can eat double the amount of that and still stay within non diabetic range. The only surprise i get is when it comes to flour whether its wheat or barley, wholemeal, organic or whatever, it always spikes me to the roof and Im trying to understand whether its some sort of grain intolerance or hormonal reaction to flour? eg yesterday i put 20 gm of Tesco whole-wheat flour which says 32 gm carbs/100. Now 20 gm (a spoonful) can not have more than 7 gms of carbs theoretically. This spike my BG to almost 10 mmol postprandial. If i eat the same 7 gms of pure sugar, fructose, or any other high GI carb, i will never cross 7 mmol in worse case. Can anyone explain what's going on or do i need to have any test to understand why wheat triples my sugar with the same gram of carb count? Normally, a grm of carb will raise your BG to 5 mg/dl and the equation doesn't fit in this case at all. Any suggestions? Did you try this and had some similar results? Some may argue that GI of flour is higher than pure sugar because of 50% fructose element, BUT i used whole-wheat and very low GI flours in my experiments, still the result is same. I just had a bite of bread and BG went to 7.5 in no time. Can someone guide me to the right path on exploring this further or any studies that will give me more insight on where to go ?

Oldvatr said:

We are all different, and i can eat small amounts of flour without flinching. But what may be happening in your case could be that the flour, being low GI, may not be triggering an amylase release in your saliva which is what sets off the insulin Stage #1 response. Try with white processed for comparison.

I recently had a fajita mix in a tortilla wrap which i made with wholemeal flour, and my sugars were ok. I repeated with a pancake also home made but bigger, and it spiked me. i suspect the egg protein suppressed my insulin too.

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Thanks, phase-1 insulin could be a very good starting point to understand my situation. Talking of that, are there any hacks to improve your phase-1 insulin response?

Oldvatr said:

Roy Taylor reckons he has cracked it, but I have my doubts as I have discussed in other threads. Certainly LCHF seems to have improved mine. What hacks? Well, our forebears used to follow the meal with sweet puddings which should trigger things if the meal did not. Coffee and after eights? Suck a sugar lump? Ignore since this advice is not Low Carb or keto compatible? The amylase is in the saliva and is detected by sensors in the tongue contacting simple carbohydrates.

Note: while we are fasting, our pancreas plods on producing insulin for use in advance of the next meal. The insulin it makes is stored locally in granules in the isles of Langrahans awaiting amylase trigger, which opens the flood gates. So if you habitually snack you may be leaking and weakening this storage facility, and as an adjunct, the fatty liver syndrome may also fill this storage area with fat (back to Roy Taylor here)

I suspect that this opinion of mine is of little interest seeing how successful you have already been in tackling the problem.

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TBH, its amazing information you just shared, i will look out for Taylor as well. I have no issue in controlling my T2 (so far), however, because of my G6PD enzyme deficiency (that affects oxidative stress and some other stuff in Kreb cycle), i am just trying to see which carbs i can eat to still keep my BG in check. If you listen to Dr. Gundry i agree that we should not be in ketosis all the time and we should have a little spike of insulin once or twice a day, so i am trying to figure out my life of those carbs that i can use, so far the grains have been an utter disappointment (hard to believe) so need to try now rice, potatoes or maybe white bread (crazy i know). I have tried starch root veggies and im perfectly fine with them. I am just trying to understand my pancreas and more so the phase-1 insulin where i have the issue as my 8 hr fasting is at 4.8 if im eating low carb. I needed a starting point, which you definitely provided, any further information will help, much appreciated.

Oldvatr said:

Roy Taylor reckons he has cracked it, but I have my doubts as I have discussed in other threads. Certainly LCHF seems to have improved mine. What hacks? Well, our forebears used to follow the meal with sweet puddings which should trigger things if the meal did not. Coffee and after eights? Suck a sugar lump? Ignore since this advice is not Low Carb or keto compatible? The amylase is in the saliva and is detected by sensors in the tongue contacting simple carbohydrates.

Note: while we are fasting, our pancreas plods on producing insulin for use in advance of the next meal. The insulin it makes is stored locally in granules in the isles of Langrahans awaiting amylase trigger, which opens the flood gates. So if you habitually snack you may be leaking and weakening this storage facility, and as an adjunct, the fatty liver syndrome may also fill this storage area with fat (back to Roy Taylor here)

I suspect that this opinion of mine is of little interest seeing how successful you have already been in tackling the problem.

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Also can you point me to some other threads which talks about phase-1 insulin as i can not find it through search functionality.

Oldvatr said:

Here is the Roy Taylor study that he used to explore First Phase Insulin Response
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00125-011-2204-7

You can see that the insulin response uses units of measurement that include the term /m^2. My investigation into this determined that he was dividing the actual physical response by a term called Body Surface Area (BSA) and so this directly manupulates the results by BMI or body mass. So as weight drops, insulin response appears to improve purely by the use of BSA in the equation. This effect has been confirmed by Roy Taylor, who reckons the result is small. I have manually churned the formula and found that a 15% weight loss corresponds to around 8% improvement in perceoved insulin response, so is not insignificant IMO. There are 3 different formulae for calculating BSA but the all evaluate to give around the value I report here, assuming a person of 100kg starting weight falling to 85 kg at the end of the diet. Persons with higher BMI will see a better improvement.

That criticism aside, the Newcastle Diet does seem to improve insulin response. I have issues with the explanations offered by Roy Taylor, thats all.

Other studies into insulin response do not divide the result by BSA, which seems to be unique to the Taylor experiment. IMO the result should be mmol/s for a rate.

To find out more about this subject you need to research Beta Cell function. Warning, it is not an easy subject to follow at the level of interest.

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Excellent and thank you. If you have any other resources, i would appreciate as well. I am enrolled in a nutrition degree after going through my own metabolic syndrome, so i am very much into exploring anything and everything to help diabetes. On the other hand, if the insulin response improves due to BSA, the blood glucose rise is increased as well if you go small (dr. richard k Bernstein). So one gram of carb may raise BG of a higher BMI/BSA to 4 mg/dl but may increase BG to double in a shorter, slimmer person. So won't that then negate the affect of higher insulin response, assuming that you are keeping the same amount of carbs?

Oldvatr said:

What hacks? Well, our forebears used to follow the meal with sweet puddings which should trigger things if the meal did not. Coffee and after eights? Suck a sugar lump? Ignore since this advice is not Low Carb or keto compatible?

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What's the science behind it? Any references?