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Should we worry about insulin resistance?

enzo233

Member
Messages
20
Does artifical insulin have the excactly same features as human insulin, so that higher artificial insulin doses also leads to more fat produced in our body? like what human insulin does to people?
IF I don't apply low carb diet, rather than that, I eat a lot carbs like normal people, and always add the insulin dose to keep my bg stable in target range. should I worry about the extra insulin amount added will lower my insulin sensitive?

I'm asking this because, I let my T1d daughter have same meals and snacks as her brother, but apparently my daughter is gainning weigh faster than her brother at the same age. She isn't overweight though, I'm merely curious of the trend.
 

Hi,

How old is your child? & when was she diagnosed with T1?
 
Children grow at different rates. As she is not overweight, I would not worry.
Matching insulin to the food we are eating does not cause insulin resistance.
 
I'd agree that you shouldn't compare your daughter to her brother. I have 3 kids with very different body compositions with one that fattens very easily! Your girl may simply be growing heavier in preparation for a growth in height for example.
I'd focus on giving them both as little processed food as possible and keeping track of their growth as individuals. I think paediatricians tend to be concerned if a child stops tracking in their usual percentile of weight/height i.e. if they were in the 50th percentile for weight and height but then suddenly jump into the 95th for weight but not for height over a period of months for example. Hopefully your doctor will be keeping an extra close eye on this because she is diabetic.
I believe as type 1s we should be concerned about insulin resistance just like the rest of the population should. It is estimated that a majority of the population now have symptoms of this and plenty of type 1s follow a low carb diet based on non processed food both to prevent IR but also to make dosing and therefore blood sugars, easier to manage e.g. TypeOnegrit (facebook) who follow Dr Bernstein's ideas. In the UK Dr Ian Lake who is also type 1 is a proponent of this approach and has done some talks on YouTube if you are interested.
Re artificial insulin being more fat producing (lipogenic), not sure. We know that around injection sites we can see excess fatty lumps over the long term and we know that exogenous insulin takes longer to act than the endogenous kind which may lead to more correction does, more hypos and therefore more consumption of sugar/starchy correctives. I don't know if it is inherently more lipogenic though. The confounding thing here is that high blood sugars cause us type 1s to pee out some excess sugar that otherwise might bave turned into fat!
My own peer group of type 1s are pretty trim in general again possibly because we are hyper aware of our health risks and controlled around food in many cases.
 
In Response said:
Children grow at different rates. As she is not overweight, I would not worry.
Matching insulin to the food we are eating does not cause insulin resistance.
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I agree with you, and "matching" is not easy though. Like NicoleC1971 said, we don't have perfect re artificial insulin yet, I sometimes give my daughter too much insulin for a stable BG within 2 hours of eating, then I have to give her extra food after 2 hours to avoid hypo. That's not a good thing, seems that I have to work harder on her diet.
 

Thank you, this is so helpful.
I'm following Typeonegrit on facebook now, quite mindblowing, and Dr Ian Lake's speech is also a gem to me.
I have to admit that, I didn't give her very thoughtful diet plan in the past, because I believed in the "let her enjoy being a child" thing. But kids are easier to be reasoned with than I thought, my daughter doesn't get sad by not having same icecream like her brother anymore( some times it's just not pratical to give her insulin 20 minutes before snacks). Guess it's time to give her a completely diffrent diet.
 
Regarding low carb and Type 1. I think is another example where we are all different. I tried it and found insulin dosing much much much more complex.
enzo233 said:
I sometimes give my daughter too much insulin for a stable BG within 2 hours of eating, then I have to give her extra food after 2 hours to avoid hypo. That's not a good thing, seems that I have to work harder on her diet.
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I agree that your daughter's bolus dose appears to be a bit high if you are having to feed her later.
However, please bear in mind that "fast acting" insulins last for 4 hours so it is unusual to test after 2 hours. This is the advice for someone wit type 2 (as you know a completely different condition) to check the impact of food on the insulin their body produces.
I guess if you are feeding your daughter's insulin every 2 hours, she will be eating more than her brother.
 
Glad you got a different viewpoint and yes I think you will get resistance from the Let Them Eat Cake brigade (grandparents) but I don't think you can equate giving them sugar with your love and attention. I think one of the things the T1Grit people advocate is that the family should follow the low carh high fat way of life too which I appreciate is a big jump!
I eat this way and don't have diabetics amongst my kids but compromise by not having crisps, biscuits and ice cream as standard just treats when we go out. The other thing I really regret doing when they were little is giving them 'sugar free' but very sweet drinks as this has just gotten them somewhat addicted to the sweet stuff!
 
Wow, why is that even more complex? I'm so curiou. I'd be really appreciated if you could share your experience.
Faster insulin aspart, E.g Fiasp and Lyumjev are still not available in my country. I guess the slight diffrence between them on their action 2 hours post injection gives me the headache.
She usually uses 2-3 units before the meal, which can keep her post meal BG peak value under 9mmol(162mg/dl), but then it keeps going down to under 4.5mmol(80mg/dl). However, sometimes shut down the basal insulin right away after the bolus dosing can pevent this potential hypo.
 
Good point! Sweet things as little treats rather than regular.
As for the sweeteners, I always put Erythritol in my daughter's cake or soup or whatever. Haha, have no idea if I will regret this later.
 
Oldvatr said:
And in this report they discuss weight gain in T1D being linked to insulin treatment
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5579671/
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32.3% of the adults T1D patients having MS, that is a shocking number.

"Although we found significantly lower doses of daily insulin in the group with MS compared to the group without MS, HbA1c levels were similar in these groups and the small difference does not seem to have a clinical impact. "
Like the quoted line said, I guess low carb or keto is the only solution.
 
It is a solution, bur one of many possible ways. I think this report is emphasising that anyone can suffer metabolic syndrome, and it is not just limited to T2D. The cause of MS is unknown. We suspect it may be diet related, but it is not proven.
 
enzo233 said:
Like the quoted line said, I guess low carb or keto is the only solution.
Click to expand...

I agree with @Oldvatr , it is by no means the only solution for T1s. With the advent of cgms and insulin pumps control is a lot easier than it used to be, and many T1s achieve excellent bgm results on a diet that includes carbs. (I would certainly encourage you to teach your daughter to carb count when she is older, so that she can cope with a non keto diet should she wish to. (I may be lowish carb now, but 30 years ago I got through two T1 pregnancies on a traditional NHS low gi but not particularly low carb diet.)
 
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