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The insulin index


Can you point me to where they say producing " no insulin " or hardly any ? are they only recruiting people who are already injected insulin dependent who have been proven to have a failed pancreas through actual testing?

All of the Kraft curves illustrate a degree of first phase failure, that is why the initial response is higher and it takes longer for glucose to come down. i.e. first one, then two then three hours. All these stages of failure are still producing a lot of insulin and will likely have a high fasting insulin unless they are only recruiting those already close to stage 5.
 

There are a set of graphs on the University web site which show how they hardly produced any insulin and very little first phase and how they got their insulin levels up. See the graphs at the bottom and the huge increase in insulin output to near normal levels. I found on holiday I could clear some of my BG by eating some cheese and I thought that was entirely as a result of it stimulating insulin release. Did I get that all wrong and why did cheese work almost as well as walking.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21656330

But I am not the first to read the data - surely the entire point of the ND is that they suggest it is about producing more insulin.
In none of the announcements videos etc I have seen does he say - it will not work if you are already producing loads of insulin (which you say is most Diabetics)

I am a simple person - I just read what is posted and some how I cannot square the whole insulin resistance v not enough insulin thing.
 

Hi @Fleegle
You are not as dim as you say, just asking something that can be contrived to be confusing.

A lot of metabolic conditions that have a poor first insulin response along with high blood glucose levels, as well as insulin resistance, will be treated with a drug that increases or persuades your pancreas to get your beta cells to push out more insulin to help with your first response. Then because the first response counters the glucose the need for a second response lessens. This is what happens to non diabetic patients with no metabolic conditions.

Lowering the insulin stimulating food from your diet helps that first response because the level of glucose is low enough not to trigger too much insulin.

That's why low carb works in a non scientific description. No high spikes, lower hba1c levels. More time around normal levels, the endocrine system is happier and healthier.

There is a lot more, but that is the basics.
 

I don't think this is necessarily inconsistent with the theory that the individuals concerned can still have too much background insulin ( i.e. hyperglycaemia.)

If you look at the first graph - the non diabetics, you will see that after the first and second spikes you see that non diabetic people return back to baseline. Then you see in the study that gradually people start to get some responses but the number does not go back to baseline - that means that the level of insulin in their body must be getting higher , eventually as the diet works, they return back to baseline. but that baseline of background insulin could be high because they spent an unknown amount of time at the first stage before this began - continually producing second phase insulin but not getting back to base we do not know because they do not give us measures for that, only measures of change.

The LCHF diet shows pretty much the same changes in glucose and triglycerides as the ND does - 8 weeks on LCHF pretty dramatically changes both of those in most diabetics. I've not seen any studies that compare the two in terms of relative efficacy.

In the end the prime goal of ND is stated to be "lose weight" .the goal being to get rid of visceral fat the quicker the better. so if you can do that , its likely you get similar results from other diets too.
 
It looks as though meat and cheese have much higher insulin loads than I thought just following LCHF. Maybe this is where I am going a little astray. May have to cut back slightly on these and see if it makes a difference.
 
CoastGirl said:
It looks as though meat and cheese have much higher insulin loads than I thought just following LCHF. Maybe this is where I am going a little astray. May have to cut back slightly on these and see if it makes a difference.
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In my long journey of exploration into why, I've found that most of what we have been told about food is total rubbish and akin to propaganda by whoever is trying to get you to eat certain types of food!

A lot of importance on eating regularly and having this, that, the other of course, will help you with your condition. It might work for some, but for most, the western diets won't work, because of the impact of high carb, high insulin creation and portion size.

We don't need to eat three square meals a day.
We don't have to eat regularly, we can fast, we can skip meals, we can choose to eat or not. We can eat a lot of food but we will live healthier if we adapt to having a few bites of fresh vegetables and protein, a little bit of fruit and water.

I'm never hungry, I fast intermittently, I skip meals, I only eat when and if I want at any time of day. My body has adapted to my new (ish) lifestyle.

Having to avoid foods that are to suppose to be the staple diet, I would like to think that diagnosis of my condition has helped because of what I avoid rather than eating what is really good for MY health.
 
The thing that I am having difficulty understanding is that, in general terms, insulin reduces blood glucose, so why is eating foods with a high Insulin Index not a good thing?

(By the way I don't like the term "real food". All food is real unless it is virtual. "Processed " food is not much better as most food is processed in some way. I think I know what you mean I am just hoping for a better term if we are recommending people eat it.)
 

In people with normal level of insulin, glucose balance the amount of hormonal response doesn't effect health.
If you have high circulating insulin levels or hyperinsulinaemia or even with insulin resistance, the lower the insulin on second response the better.
If your first response is too much as it is with most carbs, the amount of glucose left, the second insulin response is just adding more insulin into the blood. It then starts to gather into your organs as fat. Insulin resistance occurs and your pancreas keeps production up for the glucose, glucose levels rise, more insulin. More fat.

The lower the first insulin response, the need for more insulin reduces.
Over time eating low carb reduces insulin, insulin resistance, glucose levels.
 
CoastGirl said:
It looks as though meat and cheese have much higher insulin loads than I thought just following LCHF. Maybe this is where I am going a little astray. May have to cut back slightly on these and see if it makes a difference.
Click to expand...
That was the final key to get my bg back in range when I was type 2. Lowering protein to .8-1 g per kg LEAN bidy mass. For me it's a measly 5 oz a day but it works just fine. As a type 1 now I still weigh my protein as it has a profound effect on me. If I over eat it I have a higher fasting as well as higher levels the next day and sometimes a few more!!
I recently started enjoying a cheese snack with a cocktail before dinner but I keep thenportions around 1 oz.
 

If you can find a better term for it - great. I personally think the definition is simple. If it is purchased raw it is a real food. If someone else applied a process to it first it is not.
It is fully accepted that even real food is currently tainted by farming methods, but one has to start somewhere.

Your comment about insulin reduces blood glucose and therefore must be a good thing, is at the heart of the misunderstandings about insulin .

The attached print outs stratifies 122 foods by the food insulin index lowest first.
It is utterly plain from this that the higher the FII the worse the food - I doubt you would have any debate about that.

I.e. if eating foods that produced insulin was a good thing then the correct diet for a person with diabetes would be potatoes, mars bars, rice crispie, bananas and jelly beans and the NHS advice that one should eat plenty of carbohydrates with every meal and no fats would result in massive weight loss and reversal of diabetes - it doesn't. If one has ought into the general theory of LCHF even to some degree that that is precisely the reverse of that carbohydrate heavy meal.

Instead insulin makes people fatter, because insulin is a fat making hormone and the more of it you have circulating in your body, the fatter you are likely to get and the harder to lose weight. Its my personal opinion that one gets fat because one's insulin levels become too high through eating processed foods, rather than that becoming fat gives you high insulin.

The further confusion arises because at the more detailed level in ketogenic diet debates "real food" are stratified by their insulin index in that instance it is called % insulogenic - so for example in this table below - skimmed milk is shown as 58% insulinogenic and it doesn't immediately look relateble to the other table.
https://public.tableau.com/profile/christoffer.green#!/vizhome/InsulinogenicFoodData/Dashboard1
reconciling the two tables.

I have uploaded the table of foods from the mainly processed food study and stratified that by the FII index% starting a the lowest insulinoegenic - butter followed by olive oil . If you look up skimmed fat free milk you will see its score is 60% - i.e. pretty much the same as the other table.

Looking at the tables together you can see that some " real foods " i.e. those without labels still score very high in the FII , e.g. bananas at 60% and honey dew melon at 93%.

I hope that helps in understanding it
 

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Thanks @CherryAA

That is very helpful.
 
CherryAA said:
Your comment about insulin reduces blood glucose and therefore must be a good thing, is at the heart of the misunderstandings about insulin .
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My comment was supposed to be ironic, which obviously wasn't clear in print, maybe I should have included a smiley face or something.
The thing that I don't understand is probably best explained by an example......
Your Table 2 shows that white fish (one of your "real" foods") has a FII of 43%. If I am understanding this correctly, and I may not be, it means that white fish triggers 43% of the insulin that the same energy value of white bread would do. The table also shows that white fish contains no carbohydrate and hence no Glycemic Load. I would therefore expect that eating white fish would generate insulin at the same time as no extra blood glucose and would reduce the blood glucose already in circulation. A "good thing" as I put in my excessively brief comment. Let's ignore for a moment the fact that extra Insulin circulating is not desirable, are we saying that eating white fish will lower my blood glucose in the same way that Type 1's inject insulin to lower theirs?
 

yeah its hard getting nuances in print !

My understanding of above would be as follows:

"Your Table 2 shows that white fish (one of your "real" foods") has a FII of 43%. If I am understanding this correctly, and I may not be, it means that white fish triggers 43% of the insulin that the same energy value of white bread would do. " - yes agreed "

"The table also shows that white fish contains no carbohydrate and hence no Glycemic Load. I would therefore expect that eating white fish would generate insulin at the same time as no extra blood glucose and would reduce the blood glucose already in circulation. - not agreed

That is not what I understand it to mean . I understand that to mean that it simply shows that because the glycemic load focuses on the insulin requirements for eating carbohydrates alone - it is an incomplete measure . Generally speaking as far a I understand it, many people with T1 not only have to count the carbs, but they also pay attention to the protein load too. I have seen numerous papers which suggest a formula of circa 50% of carbs for the protein. I am not T1 so I have no idea how how reasonable in practise that is - but assuming it has some basis on what happens then that would be entirely consistent with the idea that in order to get insulin down and thus improve weight loss one should focus to the most nutrient dense meats and fishes as opposed to the least nutrient dense ones becuase these are the foods with the least insulin generating requirements.

eg fatty fish instead of lean, chicken thigh with skin instead of skinless chicken breast. Again exactly the reverse of the high carb low fat approach
 
I am type 1 and I do bolus for 50% of my protein. BUT , is that because I'm type 1? Or because I'm ultra low carb?
Of course I couldn't bolus for protein before I started injecting but protein DID raise me and once I lowered it my bg behaved much better.
I also find animal fats to make me far more IR than plant fats. At both periods of my D. If I eat chicken skin I'll need a lot more insulin and it will carrryninto further meals and sometimes a few days. I can clearly see this now that I inject because I need much more. As a type 2 I had no idea what was going on and why my fasting and days were higher after a juicy fatty burger rather than chicken or shrimp.

So my latest hypothesis is it's not the type of D but rather the amount of carbs. The type 1's I've seen saying you don't have to bolus for protein are eating shed loads more carbs than me. And this would all make sense as the body will always go to carbs first but if they're not there it'll go to protein.

I could be completely wrong but this is what I've found with my diet.

If I eat just protein I will spike just as high and just as fast as if I ate carbs. Been there, done that. This is where the fat and fiber elements comes in and slows things down.

But again, this all come be dependent on the amount of carbs eaten in a meal.
 
Kristin251 said:
But again, this all come be dependent on the amount of carbs eaten in a meal.
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Our livers normally only dump stored glycogen in the absence of carbs, or VLC, in other words when our blood stream is short of glucose for the body's needs at that time. So yes, the amount of carbs eaten will make a difference.
 
@Bluetit1802, so would I be correct in thinking that if I upped my carbs ever so slightly I MAY avoid a liver dump? I have been wondering for some time whether my levels are affected by liver dump or maybe eating a little too much protein ..... I think when I have some uninterrupted time I need to do testing of both these scenarios.
 

Yes, experiments are a good thing because not one of us is the same. Are your liver dumps a real problem?
 
And are your dumps more in the morning ? Or do you just see higher numbers after a larger protein meal. Could be HOURS after.

For ME, I would never be able to tell if it were a dump other than mornings. I just assume it's from my last meal. An animal fat rich meal I will see my highest levels four or more hours later. I have tonsplit my insulin doses to cover the late rise. I know you're not on insulin but goes to show how long a large protein/ fat meal can rise for.
 
Bluetit1802 said:
Yes, experiments are a good thing because not one of us is the same. Are your liver dumps a real problem?
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They certainly can be in the morning. I will always get a dump on rising and by having a coffee with cream or piece of cheese this will halt it but my bg can stay near or slightly above 7 for most of the morning. I am trying 18/6 intermittent fasting at the moment but sadly no improvement in the situation at present.
 
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