Insulin index rather than carb counting?

[phoenix]

This might prove a useful bit of research.
Some years ago Jenny Brand-Miller (the GI researcher ) did some work on developing an insulin index.. a way of ranking the insulin response to various foods .Put simply they fed people(non diabetics) with samples of the food and measured how much insulin was produced to 'cope with it.
One of the things they found was

"protein-rich foods and bakery products (rich in fat and refined carbohydrate) elicited insulin responses that were disproportionately higher than their glycemic responses."

There were only 38 foods so it was really little more than a pilot study. David Mendosa writes about it here
http://www.mendosa.com/insulin_index.htm

She has recently returned to this research but this time she tested the foods in mixed meals finding that the insulin response (in non diabetic people) created by the mixed meal correlated highly with the demand the researcher's predicted from the individual foods (from the insulin index)
She is now about to ' start studies in individuals with Type 1 diabetes who use an insulin pump. We predict that adjustments to insulin dose with the FII(food insulin index) will provide better blood glucose control than carbohydrate counting'

http://www.diabetesincontrol.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8611&catid=1&Itemid=17

 

[AndyS]

Oooh... now that is interesting. Though its not clear.. do you have to take the carb content and the insulin index into account or is the insulin index effectively calculated per gram of food in the same way as carbs?

Either way I can totally agree with this because I think we have all seen the pizza effect.
I know there are certain foods that I tend to tag an extra 2 units on for but I split it by taking some before eating and some amout 30 minutes after eating. This seemed to prevent the crash then subsequent bounce. Though I guess if you are on a pump you could just program an extended bolus release (do they work like that?)

Would certainly be cool to have a better figure for tighter control though I suppose we would need a full pocket data base since I cant see food manufactureres sticking in on the packaging too soon.

Very interesting research though

A