Alec, thanks for sharing your experiment. Its always interesting to see how people respond to artificial sweeteners. I heard on a podcast (don’t remember which one) someone theorize that the idiosyncraticity may be due to variances in gut flora.
For those who might not have seen them, here are a links to a couple of folks who posted videos on their n=1 experiments.
Thanks for those links. I have seen the top one, but not the bottom one. I will take a look at what he’s doing and how.
Cheers
Alec
One very interesting potential confounding factor that I thought about this morning was that at T+120 in this experiment I had just prepared and carved a gorgeous roast pork meal and was about to eat it! So the last result of 4.6 could well have been confounded by “expectation insulin”: I am sure I have heard a few people say that you get a shot of insulin when you see and expect food inwards. In this case I would definitely have been expecting food! And delicious food at that, roast pork fat… numnumnum…
But I ain’t gonna do the experiment again, I think the result is clear for me.
I am intrigued by the 2nd guy’s logic. He seems fixated on his BG level, and not on the mechanics here and what it means. He didn’t really seem to come to any firm conclusions, but his graph at the end seems to be implying that he thinks lower BG result is better (but I am not sure on this: he didn’t really explain). If that is his reasoning, I am not sure I would agree with that. A lower BG level implies an insulin response, and what we care about here (mostly) is insulin levels. So I would not automatically think that a lower BG level was better.
Other people’s thought on this?
Cheers
Alec
Alec,
I am perplexed also. What I am wondering is if we might not be looking at it from a damaged insulin function as opposed to a healthy one. If you are insulin sensitive and insulin is doing what it is supposed to do by balancing BG levels then the body is functioning properly?
Alec, your overall blood sugar range in this thread, 4.5 to 5.2, seems good to me. Things must be working decently for you, at the least. I agree with Ron - is there a substantial reason to be concerned with insulin levels and sensitivity, for you, at the current time?
Even from a standpoint of insulin resistance, your experience doesn’t seem bad at all to me, i.e. if you are having some insulin response, then down goes your blood sugar, and over time that’s what encourages the body to secrete less insulin - we hope to see blood sugar levels, insulin levels and insulin resistance all declining together.
Doug
That’s an interesting challenge. Am I concerned about my current insulin levels and IR in general? No, because in the last year on fasting and then keto, I have brought my body back to some semblance of balance.
But, and it’s a big but (or should that be butt? 
), my problem my whole life has not been losing weight. I have done that 10 times or more. Admittedly not to this level, nor so easily as this time around. But there’s the catch: “this time around”. My problem is maintenance. Always has been. I am a fairly driven person, so if I decide on something I usually prioritise things enough to get roughly to where I want to be.
So, I want to make sure I am building the toolset for maintenance for life, and that includes identifying a sweetener that is not insulogenic for me. At the end of the day, my understanding of insulin and keto is the more we control insulin downwards the better ie the more opportunity the body will have to burn fat.
So, for me, this is not a T2D remission program like it is for some folks here. For me it is much more about bodyfat loss. But also, knowing what I know now about carbs and insulin, I am also targeting the general health benefits of low insulin.
In that regard, finding a sweetener that doesn’t increase my insulin seems like a reasonable goal.
And this experiment and the information and lesson it taught those of us who, although we eat keto, may not always understand how it all works, has been amazing.
If you look up “Stevia” on the internet, it says how great it us because it lowers blood sugar; it never tells you it does that because it induces insulin. And for those of us who stalled, dropping all sweeteners was the answer.
Heck yes, indeed, Alec!