Anyone know about the Uric Acid connection with insulin resistance?


#1

I have just ordered a few books…

“Nature Wants Us To Be Fat” by Richard Johnson

“Drop Acid” by Dr. David Perlmutter.

Has anyone read either of these and formed an opinion on the theory, which I believe came from Richard Johnson’s research?

My interest is due to my extreme insulin resistance and high uric acid and homocysteine levels and low folate.

I have recently adopted a carnivore diet, due to high inflammation caused by rheumatoid arthritis and IBD.

I also have very low iron levels (due to IBD and poor absorption of nutrients).

Have been eating a lot of liver to try to get iron levels up but resorted to an iron infusion this week, when I realised that purines in organ meats raise uric acid levels and if Johnson is correct that is why my insulin has skyrocketed.

Another catch 22. Seems like the more I learn the less I can eat!
Taking Quercetain to drop the uric acid and folinic acid to get my Folate up and homocysteine down.

And recently started on compounded Low Dose Naltrexone, 2 mg a day, to address the IBD (hopefully).


(Doug) #2

I’ve had gout for 23 years. My uric acid is high, usually around 8 mg/dl, but that’s not much over the high end of the normal range at ~7. Biggest thing for me is no alcohol - if there’s anything that will bring on a gout attack, that’s it.

I’ve had attacks eating ketogenically, and when fasting, but nothing major. It seems capricous - you never know what’s going to happen. It really is a Catch-22 situation, since a diet high in meat and purines in general increases the chances of gout attacks, but it’s also the way (in my opinion) to lose weight, and losing weight itself helps lower blood uric acid levels.


#3

There is a medication for reducing uric acid levels (if you have gout) but I don’t, so my gp wouldn’t prescribe it for me. I would take it if I could get it but I am at the high end of the range, which just means 85percent of “normal”, whilst I prefer to be in a more optimum bracket to avoid the trajectory I am on.
I have to introduce one new idea at a time to my GPs…and I was asking for a script for Low Dose Naltrexone at the last visit, to drop inflammation.
So I started to take Quercetain 500 mg a day, which apparently drops uric acid levels and is sold over the counter as a supplement.

If I understand the theory (haven’t read enough yet, waiting on books) then uric acid is the key or precursor to the insulin problem chain.

I am very new to this info and finding my way because I am motivated to avoid a heart attack or stroke. And I haven’t given up on truly reversing my diabetes. If I can, I want to head all this stuff off as early as possible.

Apparently beer contains purines and the Japanese, who are onto this info re uric acid, now make purine free beer but it tastes not so good I heard.


#4

YouTube has 3 lectures by Dr Richard Johnson entitled Nature wants us to be Fat.
They are way over my head but very interesting and I will keep watching them til I understand all of what this guy is saying.

Seems important, including that our bodies manufacture fructose!!!

And, that it ain’t just glucose or fructose but also salt that is fattening!!!

Where is Richard?

I seem to recall he is busy with a biochemistry degree and hence would be able to offer an informed opinion as to whether I should struggle on with trying to understand the implications of all this info.

I think it runs counter to what my keto informed dietician and carnivore informed doc are proposing. Carnivore doc is not available til August, regular doc isn’t into all this…and keto informed dietician has me eating 3 grams of salt a day cause you apparently excrete it when eating low carb keto.

Hoping the brains trust here can inform me!!!


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #5

The best way to lower insulin resistance is to stop exposing the body to excess glucose. Worrying about glucose intake (i.e., carbohydrates) is likely to be more productive than trying to influence uric acid directly, since it is a downstream effect. But lowering insulin resistance takes time, so it’s important to be patient.

I wouldn’t go overboard with organ meats. Many carnivores do just fine on muscle meats alone. If you need to supplement iron, just make sure that it’s in a form easily assimilable by the body. But I was under the impression that purines in food don’t affect the purine level in the blood, so are you sure you have to worry about that?

And you have it right, @richard is working on a joint master’s degree and doctorate, so he’s rather occupied. But he does pop in from time to time. Perhaps he’ll see this thread an comment.


#6

I’ll try to find it, but a while back heard a whole podcast on Uric acid, I remember it convinced me it was something I should look into.

I’ve also read on other places of a lot of people having great results with LDN, I considered it for my never ending low back pain.

Don’t fall victim to that trap! People read something, or listen to a doc on a podcast then all of a sudden have lactose issues, gluten issues, they’re “allergic” to things that they’re not etc.

I’ve ruled out stuff before to test, but I’ve also done food sensitivity testing, I won’t rule out anything for good unless I see proof my body has an issue with it.

Have you used digestive enzymes? Also may want to consider Glutamine for the gut, helps a lot of healing. If you’re not opposed to non mainstream (but incredibly popular) the peptide BPC-157 is very well-known for healing/fixing gut issues, leaky, IBD, bloating, digestion etc. I’ve used it a ton for that purpose as well as it joint healing benefits.


#7

Thanks Paul. Purines stimulate uric acid production apparently.
Inflammatory bowel disease is interfering with iron absorbtion from food currently.


#8

No, I had 14 pages of blood tests and the results were interpreted by a well known keto informed doctor. My current carnivore diet and iron infusions are an attempt to heal, with his supervision.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #9

There are two approaches to healing the colon: one is to eat plenty of fibre, so your intestinal bacteria can generate butyrate, which is good for the lining of the bowel. The other way is to eat a ketogenic diet, because the β-hydroxybutyrate produced by the liver is even better for the bowel lining.

Some people find that they still need fibre on a ketogenic diet, while others find that fibre actually makes their IBS/Crohn’s disease/etc. worse.


#10

My best doctor thinks that if I remove the foods I show in blood tests to be reacting to, my colon may heal. The info re Uris acid creating insulin resistance isn’t from him, just came across it.

Thanks for the helpful suggestions.
Ifod14
I am trying the LDN for reducing very high inflammation levels…but it has been good for pain…. (have only been taking it for a week) and all sorts of other things like sleep patterns have become better regulated.
I will check out the peptide-157

No, that is what is interesting about Professor Johnson’s research…uric acid is causative in the chain, his research has proven that I believe and he lays it out quite clearly in the 3 lectures I mentioned.

His research upends the commonly accepted theories regarding insulin resistance causes. I believe it is solid but I have no chemistry background.

I will have insulin tests again in a few weeks. I am taking 50mg of Quercetain and that is supposed to reduce Uris acid levels. I have been avoiding carbs for quite a long time but my insulin levels have shot up and I didn’t’ t understand why til I came across Johnson…have been eating more liver to address very low iron, with a keto dieticians supervision.

If my insulin levels have dropped then it will be proof for me of the practical application of Johnson’s research in a long term diabetic, :grinning:

Will return when I know more.
I


(Doug) #11

Definitely - the body digesting purines produces uric acid as a by-product. I’m not a doctor, but being at the 85% level of the normal range isn’t necessarily bad at all. Hereditarily, we’ll have tendencies to run in a given range, and many people do fine even while being higher than you. About 1 in 5 men are above the normal range, and about 1 in 8 women, the difference primarily being estrogen in the women, which increases uric acid excretion.

Interesting - I’ve never heard that. On the one hand, I really question it, and would like to see a sensible machanistic explanation of it - how does that really work? On the other, for many people insulin resistance and diabetes is the result of eating a diet relatively low in meats (for example). Their problem is the high amounts of carbohydrates they’ve eaten, usually for a very long time, not their uric acid levels.

@PaulL is correct about lowering insulin resistance by cutting down on glucose, which means cutting way down on carbohydrates. Specific to carbohydrates, fructose (like glucose) is a form of sugar, found in many fruits and honey, etc. In the modern world, it is added to a vast amount of processed food, as with high fructose corn syrup. When the human body breaks down fructose, purines are produced.

A 2008 study of 46,000+ men found that the difference between no sugar-sweetened soft drinks and two servings per day (which is only 16 oz or 454 grams) was almost a doubling of risk for gout.

The study can be found by googling “Soft drinks, fructose consumption, and the risk of gout in men.”

Beer does have purines. For gout, beer is worse than wine, which is worse than hard liquor. But alcohol itself reduces the amount of uric acid removed from the bloodstream by the kidneys.

Checking into the uric acid --> insulin resistance thing, I did find a < 6 minute YouTube video from David Perlmutter where he goes right into the fructose stuff. “These 3 Sources of URIC ACID Are Making You Fat & INSULIN RESISTANT”


#12

Hi Old Doug,

Dr Richard Johnson has three lectures on YouTube under the title of his book "Nature wants us to be fat" 1, 2, 3

There is also an interview with him by David Perlmutter (who has his own book out now on this topic: title Drop Acid), which is less dense.

And there are various Youtube videos of various people interviewing both of them on this topic cause they both published books on it last year. Perlmutter is a neurologist and focusses on the dementia prevention implications of this,

Johnson is a researcher and a nephrologist and far more interesting in my opinion, because he tells the whole story of how his discoveries were made and he has a very broad overview, having conducted all the research.

Unfortunately, I am not well enough to give the degree of concentration these deserve and am getting both their books so I can delve deeper and more slowly. Reeling and rocking with carnivore early stages.

I find it exciting to finally understand what caused my diabetes.


(Doug) #13

I started watching a long video by Johnson today. :+1:


#14

Will be interested in your take on it OldDoug.


#15

OldDoug, “Nature Wants Us to Be Fat” arrived today.
I skimmed it and think it may be very helpful for anyone with insulin resistance or elevated Uric acid levels.

It requires close reading but so far, it is offering valuable insights including that the levels of uric acid that are considered in the top of the normal range lead to heart attacks and strokes amongst other nasties. I am at the top of normal for women, which Johnson considers at risk. This fits with my recently raised homocysteine level, associated with heart attacks.


(Bob M) #16

@anon38787346 So, you’re calling a higher fasting insulin as “insulin resistance”? How high is your fasting insulin?


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #17

Well, Bikman does say that hyperinsulinaemia and insulin-resistance are pretty much synonymous, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a definition of hyperinsulinaemia.

The Cleveland Clinic site says the following:

Hyperinsulinemia can be tricky to diagnose since it often doesn’t have any symptoms unless it results in prediabetes or Type 2 diabetes. There’s also no common test to check for excess insulin levels specifically, especially since insulin levels can vary widely throughout the day.

Healthline mentions hypoglycaemia as a symptom of insulin resistance.

Apparently neither Healthline nor the Cleveland Clinic is aware of the oral glucose tolerance test, nor of the work of the late Joseph Kraft. The symptoms the Cleveland Clinic does mention, acanthosis nigricans and skin tags, are signs of the beginning of the loss of glucose control, right? Hypoglycaemia definitely is. But Kraft always maintained that an OGTT could diagnose insulin resistance many years earlier than that.


#18

My insulin resistance was diagnosed in ‘96, from blood tests and type 2 diabetes in 2004 from a glucose tolerance test.

I am not near my recent blood tests to look at the insulin numbers for you right now but it is higher than it has ever been. I/ am onfident I/ can get it down with metformin, carnivore diet and later when I get my nutrient deficiencies covered, fasting.

The new information from Johnson regarding uric acid is a missing piece of the puzzle for me and had I had it 20 years ago, I would not have become diabetic, I would have had another pathway to intervene.

I am taking Quercetin to reduce my levels of it now and combined with metformin and carnivore diet I am confident I can get my insulin levels down.

I have no difficulty following difficult regimens but I am tired of it all, it has been a long road and at 72, I want to be able to take it easy. Not happenning!


(Bob M) #19

Ok, but these are the fasting insulin tests I got (yellow = fasting 4.5 days, rest about 12 hours):

image

Been keto the entire time…

Has my “insulin resistance” really varied that much?

What affects fasting insulin? Could something you ate the day before affect it? What about 2 days before?

I think fasting insulin CAN BE a poor marker of “insulin resistance”. In carb-heavy folks, it’s probably a good metric.

But in my case, I have no idea how I got that 33, then went on vacation and ate worse (in terms of carbs) than I normally do, came back, got a 23.8. Insulin went down?

Not to mention that my HbA1c went DOWN for the day I got the 33 from previous tests. How could my HbA1c go down when my fasting insulin went up?

A Kraft test actually would be a good gauge of “insulin resistance”, but I don’t think fasting insulin necessarily is.

(And I’m keeping “insulin resistance” in quotes, since I no longer know what it means.)


#20

To answer your specific question regarding my own insulin levels Bob, it was 19 ml/L fasting in my last blood test. (I think we use different measures in Australia to the US. Mine is 26 years after being diagnosed with insulin resistance and having crossed the line into type 2 in 2004.

Have you had a 3 hour glucose tolerance test (requesting insulin tests too)? That would track what is happening for you ie does your insulin work to lower your blood glucose). Do you have a doctor looking at your data?

My questions and intention in starting this thread were regarding Johnson’s information based on his research.
I am already keto and eating a lot of liver due to low iron levels…which seems to have triggered uric acid and a higher insulin level for me, so I am again taking metformin but was looking for informed opinion about the uric acid relationship (per Johnson and Perlmutter).

As a result of recent tests I am now eating carnivore, but taking Quercetin to lower uric acid…which is involved …but that is the query I had …that is the new information that Johnson’s research has revealed…and it is hugely important (I believe) for anyone who is insulin resistant or diabetic because as far as I know, no-one checks Uric acid levels as indicators of metabolic dysfunction and it is intimately involved if I understand Johnson correctly. No guarantee of that at all…I am quite confused and have no biochemistry background whatsoever.

No idea why my iPad keeps on changing uric to Uris every time I write it.
I will go and read the Johnson book and have the Perlmutter one arriving today.

Sorry I can’t help with the insulin resistance query, my focus is on the uric acid place in all this …so I may not be back for a bit til I can get my head around it.