Dairy, Insulin, Salt and Potassium

#1

Hello All,

I am a 29 year old 6ft male weighing 176lbs for context.

I am currently experimenting with a modified zero carb diet. Basically meat, water, coffee (BPC), fats (Butter, Olive Oil, Coconut Oil). Then the odd experimentation with berries, herbs, and mushrooms. I am doing this because I did Carnivore for (almost) 30 days twice and both times noticed difficult feelings after eating. Now I seem to have narrowed this down to higher protein = insulin spikes. On my adapted diet I’m very stable. Keeping daily protein below 140g and eating no more than 60g per sitting. I seem to manage that rather well. On Carnivore I was +200g and +100g respectively. I think I’ve got an insulin problem.

Questions:

  1. I had some Manchego cheese tonight. High Fat, High Protein Sheep’s milk cheese (Fat 33g:27g Protein per 100g). The first time I’ve had cheese in a while. It hit me like a rock! I felt awful. I’ve been trying to get some conclusive info on here but I’m reading full fat cheeses can be very insulinogenic to some people?

  2. And on that subject. Raw Dairy. Let’s go one step further and say A2 Raw Dairy. Does this have a differing Insulinogenic effect to the commercial pasteurised A1 Dairy products? What about Goats Milk Kefir say? This question is a mine field I understand.

  3. How does fasting effect Insulin? I’m thinking more IF than longer periods.

  4. How does exercise effect insulin? And post exercise meals? Are you more sensitive? I seem to manage better after running but then wonder if that’s just the positive endorphins flooding my brain making everything seem rosey.

  5. The Salt & Potassium Tango. Do I feel better with reduced salt because I am low on potassium rather than being sensitive to salt? I can go a couple of days without salt feeling remarkably better but then the headaches appear and brain fog. This is combined with 6-10km runs. I know everyone says to salt everything. Even your toothpaste. But I do noticeably better without for 48-72 hours and then slowly fade. Thinking perhaps including things like Avocados and Mushrooms as well as bone broth to help this. I don’t do well on leafy greens and I think I’m still struggling to digest and process read meat enough to extract all of it’s nutrients and minerals.

  6. What effects do certain plant foods have on insulin? Berries? Avocados? Mushrooms? Herbs?
    I suppose Berries more so. Lets say 100g of Raspberries for instance. 6g Net Carbs.

  7. Is it Insulin that knocks you out of Ketosis or Blood Sugar? Or both?

  8. Is there a link between Insulin Sensitivity and Testosterone? Is it a chicken or the egg thing. Does Insulin Sensitivity improve testosterone or vice versa?

That should keep you busy. Now I am well aware that everyone is different and the best way to determine my safe foods, boundaries and thresholds are to get a meter and start measuring. But given I seem to have a severe Insulin issue going on here. At least I suspect. It would be a benefit to talk to the experts as well to get their own personal experiences.

On a side note the extent of my issues have really shocked me. I have always been quite active. Run Marathons during 2016 and 2017. Played football all my life. I’m only 29 and within a healthy BMI. Yet I seem to be very reactive. Hope it’s a good thing that I’ve caught it now and not the beginning of the end!

Thanks for reading and for any replies. Need some counsel.

(Christina) #2

Wow. Well I’m far from an expert. I’m a Type 2 diabetic, not over weight. I’m not active at all due to a chronic illness that keeps energy stores very low. I can only stay slim with my insulin challenges with diet. All that said, you are definitely reacting to something. Your choice of foods is interesting to me: berries and mushrooms? Also, dairy has been noted in many posts, blogs, and podcasts to be a problematic inflammatory food, so I’d blame that first. It is also very possible you are allergic to one or more meats.

From the experts I’ve listened to, I’d suggest a full panel allergy test for foods. See what is off the charts.

As far as potassium, one expert I follow says we need 2 to 1 potassium to salt, so it would be ok to cut salt as long as you’re keeping the potassium up. I take potassium citrate powder and it’s been a game changer for me. It is important to start low and work up slow. I take 2 tsp.

I’d agree that glucose is not the issue, but insulin is. I do think it’s a reaction to something your body is rejecting. I know for me, I can have a reaction to foods that should be ok. We each are different.

Hope that helps!

(bulkbiker) #3

Ever had your fasting insulin measured? Might be worth it

#4

Haha not together I have to add! I’m just trying to find things my stomach can process and which don’t effect my mood. Berries because they are in season here in the UK right now. Seems logical we would have consumed them over the ages. Mushrooms. Again can be picked here in the UK. Low carb. Low fibre. Good sponge for butter.

I considered this. I just thought a hard sheeps milk cheese like Manchego would have 99% of its lactose removed. So close to butter which I have no problem with. And all sheeps milk is also the A2 protein so potentially better. But maybe I’m looking for loopholes because I miss cheese so much. What is it that makes cheese so addictive though?

I haven’t Mark. Is that something you can request from a doctor. I’m in the UK so I suspect you wouldn’t know the answer to that from me.

Thanks for your contributions guys. Open to more input!

(bulkbiker) #5

On the contrary I’m UK based too… you can unfortunately only get it privately from Medichecks. for £39. Might be worth asking your GP but from my experience in a room of 50 GP’s not one had ever had the fasting insulin done on the NHS and this was at the Public Health Collaboration conference in London!

#6

Oh interesting. A brit!
Ok. So what does fasting insulin tell us? Sorry to sound uneducated but I am exactly that.
I actually stumbled across your advisories for the CareSens Ketone Meter last night. Sadly it no longer appears to be free on Spirit Healthcare

(Christina) #7

Well I also love fruit, but with your challenges I would steer clear of it for now. But that’s just my 2 cents. The mushrooms are awesome!

I agree a fasting insulin test would be a great piede of info for you, but I still recommend food testing.

And I do like dairy as well and have not determined whether it is problematic for me so I cycle on off every few weeks. No good data yet.

(bulkbiker) #8

I have a slightly unconventional view on this.
If fasting insulin is high then you have a “Classic” Type 2 diabetic with insulin resistance so treating them with more insulin would be crazy.
If insulin is very low or non existent then you have a Type 1 or someone with an insulin production problem who will at some time in the future probably benefit from exogenous insulin injections.
If you want to measure ketones then I’d still plump for the Caresens Dual even if you have to pay for it. But for measuring blood glucose the SD Codefree from home-health is cheaper to “run” there are discount codes for the strips I can give you. But it only measures blood glucose not ketones.

#9

That’s good information. Sounds like something genuinely worth getting. How long of a fast is required to attain a reliable test?
Also does measuring blood glucose give any indication of insulin resistance? My thoughts are the higher the blood glucose after eating, the less likely you are to have good insulin sensitivity shipping that glucose around the body where it’s needed?
So in your experience is Keto found to be so beneficial because of the presence of Ketones? Or more so the control and limitation of Insulin?

(bulkbiker) #10

I just did an overnight fast before my two.
You can work out your Insulin resistance using your blood glucose and fasting insulin Medichecks will do that for you too if you select that test.
I think that pushes the price up to £49 but you get an accurate Insulin , blood glucose and then Insulin resistance calculation too. Might be worth it.
In my case a ketogenic way of eating lost me about 8 stone, Type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, acid reflux, dreadful snoring (part of the sleep apnea) and high blood pressure. I just regained my life, health and energy.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #11

While ketones are great fuel for the body, the control of insulin is the great benefit, from the point of view of health. If you are insulin resistant or have been diagnosed with metabolic syndrome or even just one of its component diseases, control of insulin brings the greatest improvement of health—over any available medication.

The presence of ketones in the blood is a good indication of insulin control, since a high insulin level prohibits the liver from making ketones.

If I understand correctly, insulin resistance is tricky to measure. Dr. Joseph Kraft, whose name you will encounter if you watch any of Ivor Cummins’ lectures, claimed that it was possible to diagnose incipient diabetes years before other symptoms showed, by measuring insulin. Forgive me, but I don’t remember the details.

Lastly, more and more I am hearing that diabetes is a disease of insulin rather than glucose, as used to be thought. Type I is the failure of the beta cells in the pancreas, usually from an autoimmune problem; Type II is the development of insulin resistance in the liver, muscles, and adipose tissue; I have heard Type III—Alzheimer’s disease—described as insulin resistance of the brain. In Type I diabetes, the treatment is to administer insulin, because it is missing, but for the other types, insulin is the last thing the patient needs, since it is the source of the problem.

#12

Thanks for the thorough reply Paul. That’s a load of good information. Makes a lot of sense to me.
I was completely sold on the Zero Carb/Carnivore philosophy. Makes complete sense to me but then I’d be feeling terribly fatigued after eating. That’s what led me to question Insulin. So then I ask the question of how come so many others are experiencing great health on Carnivore. Now I’m led to thinking that the great majority of them are transferring over from an already low carb/Ketogenic diet and have restored their Insulin sensitivity enough for it to perform its job efficiently. I am not. I am coming from a carb heavy vegan diet. Perhaps that’s why I struggled. I don’t know. But seems plausible.

Are you able to answer any of my other questions from the start of this thread @PaulL? Seems like you’ve got a good grasp on this and have some depth of knowledge.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #13

Sorry, I haven’t checked this thread in quite a while, not sure why. I don’t know if you still need answers to the questions in your original post, nor can I answer all of them, but here’s a stab:

I don’t think cheese is any more insulinogenic than any other food with a similar macro profile. It is pretty clear, however, that many people have a reaction to dairy, quite apart from lactose-intolerance. It sounds more like an allergic reaction to me, than it does like an insulin one. But I’m just guessing here. As for raw dairy, I don’t know that it’s any different from pasteurized in its effect on insulin. It might be, or it might not.

Fasting seems to raise blood sugar in some people, but what that does to insulin is an open question. Since there is no home test for insulin level, nor is there likely to be one any time soon, the only way to get an idea would be to test glucose before, during, and for a while after, in order to try to infer what the insulin is doing from the pattern of glucose levels.

Exercise has a number of positive benefits, even though it’s useless for weight loss. For one thing, it reduces insulin resistance, and it helps promote the healing and growth of new mitochondria, so it also speeds up the basal metabolism.

Sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium are all managed by inter-related bodily systems. The easiest way to keep the other three at the proper level is to be sure to get enough sodium. Two-and-a-half teaspoons of table salt a day (inclusive of salt already present in food) will keep a human being at the best level of health. Unless you have high blood pressure, the risk curve is “J-shaped,” meaning that the risk of morbidity and mortality from too much sodium rises fairly slowly as the dose rises above the sweet spot of 5 g/day, but the risk from not getting enough rises very steeply as the dose declines. If you have high blood pressure, however, the risk of too much rises at the same rate as the risk of too little.

Fruits, being carbohydrates, spike insulin levels if eaten in quantity. Many fruits, however, are fairly rich in fiber, so they are safer to eat. The Diet Doctor site has a good list of better and worse fruits for a keto diet.

It is insulin that inhibits the liver from making ketones. Glucose causes an insulin response because too much of it in the blood is very dangerous; this is why the body switches so readily to dealing with it, even when we are fat-adapted. Hyperglycosemia can cause coma and death, so insulin mobilizes to get it out of the bloodstream. The point of halting ketone production is to help force the muscles to metabolize glucose, and to persuade the liver to produce triglycerides from it for the adipose tissue to store. So the effect of glucose on ketones is indirect, through the stimulation of insulin secretion. It’s the insulin that talks to the liver.

I don’t know of any link between insulin sensitivity and testosterone. However, there is a link between the standard American diet and testosterone, for anyone who follows the guidelines for reducing fat consumption. The reason is that the body makes cholesterol out of fatty acids, and cholesterol is the precursor molecule from which testosterone is manufactured by the body. Low cholesterol levels therefore result in low testosterone levels, because other organs, such as the brain, need cholesterol at a higher priority than the reproductive system. The body can put reproduction on hold, but if the brain stops working . . . .

(Bunny) #14

We also have an 80% endogenous source of cholesterol being manufactured by our liver, intestines and body fat being converted into cholesterols and why eating more does not matter…

I do wonder if our body might become more or too dependent on an external/exogenous 20% source as long as were not eating massive amounts of sugar on top of it (very dangerous thing to do)? Is there an effect on our endogenous production?

Testosterone issues are most likely caused by obesogens, insulin and androgen over-powering T (it’s fighting but it’s overwhelmed) along with exogenous xenoestrogens and very complex pregnenolone, cortisol to progesterone, estrogen and aldosterone conversionary processes ect…

”… “It’s also used to make vitamin D, hormones (including testosterone and estrogen), and fat-dissolving bile acids. In fact, cholesterol production is so important that your liver and intestines make about 80% of the cholesterol you need to stay healthy. Only about 20% comes from the foods …” …More

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(Edith) #15

They” say that people often crave the thing to which they are allergic.

Lactose isn’t the only issue with dairy. Lactose is an issue if you’re lactose intolerant but if you are allergic, it would be the milk proteins causing trouble and cheese still has plenty of protein. I have dairy issues and unfortunately, the proteins in goat and sheep milk are similar enough to cow’s milk that I can’t tolerate them either. :pensive:

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