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You can measure your own Insulin Resistance !

CherryAA

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,170
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
I've been puzzling at this for a while - i.e. when did I become insulin resistant and why did no-one test me for it.

It turns out they do - the figures are available just that for some godforsaken reason they don't actually calculate it from the data available and they don't tell us about it.

There is another formula to calculate insulin resistance .

The formula is : log normal of (your fasting blood glucose x your triglycerides ) *2
eg sample calc

LOW
MG/DL
Fasting Blood Glucose 68.4
Fasting Trigs 39.88
=(FBG x FT)/2 1,364
LN function - Log Normal 7.22

The log normal function is available in xl or I assume any phone system with some maths.
Glucose converter
http://unitslab.com/node/1
TRIGS converter
http://unitslab.com/node/53

There is then a "normal range " which takes on the characteristics of the normal population range 7.22 to 9.3
and a cut off point above which you either already are, or are likely to become diabetic

I have my fasting blood glucose and my triglycerides numbers going back to 1995.

Sure enough calculated this way it shows I became diabetic in 2014 and it should have been spotted then - which I already knew.

It also shows the steady track back to normality since adopting LCHF. see the attached chart which covers 1995- 2017 for me .

So it seems that if you still have those old blood tests, you can see for yourself when it all started to go wrong and how long you were insulin resistant before diagnosis and indeed how insulin resistant you are now.

It also means that it is pretty easy to find out if anyone else is either diabetic or likely to become so, just based on two bits of data in a normal health check.

http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/insulin-resistance-tests-rev-3-15-17.pdf

WHO KNEW !!!
 

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I calculated mine as 8.64

Not sure why you had the LDL converter. Maybe you should have used the Glucose converter : http://unitslab.com/node/1
as the formula uses glucose and trigs. Log normal seems to be the LN function in Excel

Your worked example seems to be: log normal of (your fasting blood glucose x your triglycerides ) /2

In SI Units

= LN(Glucose mmol/l x Trigs mmol/l * 796.5)
 
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Where does this calculation come from? What have triglycerides got to do with insulin resistance?
 
yes sorry , just picked up the wrong link! I've corrected it now. and thanks for the number for log normal . I don't have the slightest idea what it means

The interesting point is that you can see how this changes over time.

It might also be useful for TOFI people to check this . I.e. Maybe they have high triglycerides - perhaps through eating quite a lot of carbs, but they don't actually eat too much overall and thus end up fat on the outside and thin on the inside.
 
Mr_Pot said:
Where does this calculation come from? What have triglycerides got to do with insulin resistance?
Click to expand...

http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/insulin-resistance-tests-rev-3-15-17.pdf

her website has lots of other info on it.

It makes lot of sense that it must be connected to trigs . They appear when your body converts carbs to fats. The more carbs you eat, the more it has to work to deal with the resulting trigs.

So on a low carb diet your trigs should go through the floor - for me dramatically so directly alongside the fall in Hba1C.
 

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January 2011 = 8.0
January 2012 = 8.3
January 2013 to May 2014 cancer treatment
January 2014 (diagnosed) = 8.85
December 2015 = 7.8
November 2016 = 7.85
My current situation also gives me 7.85

No idea what it all means, or if I have worked it out properly.
 
One other thought -

Many people like Metformin and continue its usage regardless of actual need for it for diabetes, one of the things metformin does is to bring down triglycerides in blood ( an average of 16% ) - LCHF brings it down even more - hence thinking metformin is probably marginal use for anything if you get the diet part right.

(it may be other things - med diet, VLC, fasting etc etc do the same thing- just I don't have the data! )
 

yes you did
and your chart looks like mine

much healthier now than before, above the line at the point you were diagnosed . You don't have the data for the worst bit
 

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CherryAA said:
yes you did
and your chart looks like mine

much healthier now than before, above the line at the point you were diagnosed . You don't have the data for the worst bit
Click to expand...

Thank you for doing my chart! Yes, 2013 is missing entirely. I was on cancer treatment all that year, and despite having blood tests every 3 weeks not one was for glucose or cholesterol. They were more bothered with FBC and liver & kidney functions. Seems a bit odd considering it involved steroids! That year tipped me over the edge, so shame I have no data.
 
This is interesting, I will be giving it a go to see what I can find out. I have all my data from the last 3 years only but I will give it a go.
 

.
Psychiatrist - Georgia Ede MD
https://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/georgia-ede-md
This Insulin Resistance ( IR ) Test is not recommended by the Diabetes Sciences
Worldwide as by such as the NIH.Gov the worlds medical reference !
http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/insulin-resistance-tests-rev-3-15-17.pdf
( It is just as a self-made interpretation matter by some MD )

Here The Facts From NIH.Gov
https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-in...iabetes/prediabetes-insulin-resistance#tested

Any OGTT Test combined with Peptide-C Test Is A Reference, the Georgia Test Not !!

Please do not mislead the forum.

.
 
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So I put in =LN(5.1*1.07)*2

I got 8.3. Does that tell me that I have normal insulin resistance?
 
I am sceptical about this calculation (admittedly I am sceptical about most things). It seems very convenient that it is BG x Trigs without any weighting factor so they must have equal significance. If you were tending towards diabetes then your BG might increase from say 5 to 7 but the normal range of Trigs is 0.45 to 1.82 ( a factor of 4) so the calculation is largely affected by Trigs.
If for example your Trigs were 1.0 then you could have to have a BG of 13.73 and your IR would still be normal according to this calculation.
 
Fleegle said:
So I put in =LN(5.1*1.07)*2

I got 8.3. Does that tell me that I have normal insulin resistance?
Click to expand...

Did you convert your FBG and trigs to the American measurement units of mg/dl first?

Convert levels to mg/dl using the correct converters
Multiply these 2 converted levels
Divide the result by 2
Enter in the log
 

Have you got the trigs at all ?- you could probably make a reasonable guess - given its fasting glucose - which rises gradually as Hba1c gets out of control - in my own case the trigs highlighted what was going wrong - that's why when I had the bloods done in 2014 the dr did not make the diabetes diagnosis, whereas if I'd known this I would have been shouting from the rooftops about the steep rise in my trigs .
 
@Art Of Flowers has already made this easier with her formula
= LN(Glucose mmol/l x Trigs mmol/l * 796.5)
18 x 88.5 x 0.5 = 796.5

I still don't think the calculation is of much use unless Trigs are a better predictor of Diabetes than BG.
 
I don't think I am misleading anyone.

Just because a GP made some self made interpretation- that does not make her wrong . It probably means she looked at this statistic for her patient database and she saw a pattern which she thinks is worth pointing out.

If people do not want to look at it they don't need to - in my own case it resonates entirely with my own data.

In the end I already know i have diabetes, thus this is not a question about self diagnosis, simply looking at what things do I know about my own body and whether I can see if the things I am doing to it seem to be beneficial or not with the information I have.

I agree entirely that of course an OGTT and a Peptide -C test would have been helpful to diagnose me and of course they should be used. Had I known that one could do the simple maths I outlined here back in 2014 I would also have known to ask for those things.

I would also have spotted a worrying upwards trend dating right back to 2001- which would have showed how these figures changed when I put weight on and what happened when I lost it. It would have put some "concrete" info alongside the doctors fairly woolly statements about - "you will get diabetes if you don't lose weight"

In my own case no doctor ever thought to give me either of those tests and I never knew to ask. What I do have is my fasting glucose and my trigs - and this method seems to have some sensible correlation to those things. even if it simply alerts one to think about asking the question about diabetes if trigs go up .

Dr Unwin himself said in a recent lecture that he had never got any idea of what to tell his patients when their trigs went up and now through LCHF he does - i.e reduce carbs and your trigs will go down. reduce carbs and your hba1c will go down too. Ergo it appears entirely reasonable that there would be some connection between the two- that is precisely why I tried to see if anyone had done any work on it and came across this.

In my case it is quite clear my trig/ diet and diabetes are correlated - as such I choose to look at the data I do have ,

In the end we can all divide what ever numbers we have on our blood tests by any other numbers if we feel like it - none of that changes the basic need to get the proper tests done by the medical profession at the proper time by a fully engage health professional who looks very carefully at your blood results as presented to him as opposed to completing a box ticking exercise which sadly has been my own experience. .
 
Mr_Pot said:
@Art Of Flowers has already made this easier with her formula
= LN(Glucose mmol/l x Trigs mmol/l * 796.5)
18 x 88.5 x 0.5 = 796.5

.
Click to expand...

That doesn't work the same. You can't use use the same conversion principles for trigs and BG even those both are in mmol/l. I know that sounds illogical., but it gives a different amount than the Unitslab converters.

Using the same BG figure of 5.4 I entered this in both converters.
The BG one said 92.2864
The trigs one said 477.9
A huge difference.

I seem to recall in the dark recesses of my mind that the American trigs are calculated in a peculiar way.
@Art Of Flowers
 

No, I have no trigs and no BG for the whole of 2013.
 
Mr_Pot said:
@Art Of Flowers has already made this easier with her formula
= LN(Glucose mmol/l x Trigs mmol/l * 796.5)
18 x 88.5 x 0.5 = 796.5

I still don't think the calculation is of much use unless Trigs are a better predictor of Diabetes than BG.
Click to expand...

In my own case, this ratio was shouting loud and clear before I was diagnosed. That was because my doctor chose a liberal interpretation of what fasting blood sugar was normal , I did not know that I needed to ask and I had never heard of an hba1C until the day I was diagnosed. I have had my trigs and blood glucose figure for years.
 
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