People with type 2 or prediabetic

(Myth Buster ) #1

Why people with type II react to insulin injections if the root cause is that their cells became not sensitive to insulin?. Why their cells are sensitive to the injected insulin but not sensitive to their own insulin?

(Bob M) #2

The cells are still insulin resistant, but the extra insulin causes them to work properly. The extra insulin does cause yet more insulin resistance, however, which is why T2 diabetes is considered to be a progressive disease – you need more insulin over time.

(Myth Buster ) #3

That means people who get injected with x amount of insulin, will progressively increase the dose.

Something does not sink in. I am sure it is me.

(Joey) #4

No, I think you get it - it was a paradox of guidance and treatment from the outset. :wink:

What you’re pondering is the result between the body not being able to produce enough insulin to meet and ultimately overcome the accumulated insulin resistance of tissues - hence the need for supplementation - and yes, therefore increased insulin needs may well be in the cards. Especially if the diet continues to demand elevated insulin to lower elevated serum glucose.

Decades-long guidance from diabetes specialists had been: (1) eat all the carbs/sugar you want and then (2) shoot up enough insulin to lower your blood glucose again. You become addicted: (1) when you crave more sugars/carbs, eat them then (2) shoot up more insulin. Rinse, repeat.

Over time, your body can’t keep up and your tissues grow increasingly resistant in response to all these assaults. Eventually you lose any natural control of your glucose levels as system-wide insulin resistance mounts and your own insulin production continues to fall short.

It would be like following this exercise program:

(1) Run until your are exhausted, then (2) take amphetamines so you can run some more. Eventually you will need higher levels of amphetamines as you become addicted. Rinse/repeat… (1) Keep running until you can’t run anymore, (2) take more amphetamines and keep running. Not a good plan for longevity.

Instead: Stop running and wean off the speed.

Cut out the offending carbs/sugars before you get beyond the point of possible healing.

#5

It is not you.

I have a close family friend who is about 80. BMI of under 30. Has had T2 for at least 5 years. He is on a ridiculous amount of insulin to the point that a retired MD friend of his suggested he may want to get a second opinion. We were at lunch and he was eating some mediocre marble cake (I mean it was really nothing special), he pointed to the cake and said, as long as I can continue to eat this I am happy to keep injecting myself!

While these people may not feel great, they do not see the connection with getting your glucose under control and feeling better. Part of it is that it is not immediate so they do not realize

(Bob M) #6

I first heard this from Dr. Fung, who said that injecting insulin causes insulin resistance. Even for T1 diabetics, keto works well because there’s less insulin resistance caused.

#7

If you’ve lost 40% of your hearing, you may not hear me at normal volume, but if I talk louder, you will. That’s exactly what’s happening in that case.

(KM) #8

Exactly. And if I scream at you long and loud enough, I may actually further damage your hearing, but it still appears to be “working” until you’re stone deaf (pancreatic failure) or I rupture a vocal cord.

#9

That was the first thing to resolve itself for me on Keto - prediabetes. It was so easy…

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #10

Is that how Metformin is sold to people? Carry on eating sugar and medicate … then medicate more, and more. Then we can step up to insulin. And more and more… jeeeez

(Myth Buster ) #11

Great

So it is a comination of insulin resistance and low secreted insulin.

That makes more sense.

(Myth Buster ) #12

I agree

I feel lucky that keto avoided me insulin injections.

But again my mom get insulin injection for I think 20 years maybe more. She increased the dose but not too much.

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

You are right; doesn’t make sense, but the medical profession has profoundly misunderstood the nature of Type I diabetes versus Type II diabetes, and they treat Type II improperly.

The problem is with history. Type I diabetes has been with us at least since classical antiquity. It is an autoimmune disease characterised by excessive glucose in the urine (which is sweet to the taste). “Diabetes” is derived from an ancient Egyptian word for “syphon,” presumably on the image of the body’s syphoning sugar into the urine. Nowadays, we know that it results from the inability of the pancreas to secrete any insulin at all. Before the discovery of insulin in 1921, and the first treatment of a Type I diabetic in 1923, Type I diabetics used to die of starvation, because the body requires insulin in order to assimilate food.

Type II diabetes, on the other hand, is a metabolic disease, and it has been with us only since refined sugar became part of the human diet, and really only became common after cheap refined sugar started flooding the market in the middle of the 19th century.

Unlike Type I, which is characterised by an absence of insulin, Type II characterised by an excess of insulin. When we eat too much glucose (also called “carbohydrate”), the pancreas secretes insulin to drive excess glucose out of our blood, before it can kill us. The problem is that Type II was discovered only at the point where glucose levels start to get out of control, because (1) if was the 19th century, and (2) no one knew of the existence of insulin until 1921, and (3) there was no way to measure people’s insulin levels until the 1960’s. So the only way to know that Type II was happening was by looking at patients’ glucose levels. But even though we know that insulin starts to go haywire up to two decades before glucose starts to rise, the diagnosis still uses the 19th century paradigm, and the treatment still uses the paradigm from a century ago. However, diabetes drugs are such a profitable part of the pharmaceutical industry, the official understanding of Type II diabetes is not likely to change anytime soon.

As Upton Sinclair once remarked, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it,” and there is no profit to be made from telling people to eat better.

(Myth Buster ) #14

:grinning:

A medieval Arabic scholar once said that people adapt and adjust their religion to the practices that allows them to earn living. In other words people will honestly belive a lie that they will not be able to sustain living without it. Most people think they dont fall in this category, but it is basic human psychology It is hard coded in the chip of the brain.

#15

Insulin resistance is diagnosed with HIGH insulin levels.
Pre-diabetese is insulin resistance by another name.

The pharmaco-medical approach of giving insulin to early type 2 diabetics (who have HIGH insulin levels if their doctors bothered to check) is completely mad, doesn’t help, causes untold damage and people are dying because of it.

Keto diet works to reverse type 2 diabetes…because it drops insulin levels…

I reversed my diabetes type 2 with keto and carnivore diets.
If I eat carbs, my blood glucose rises very quickly.
I no longer try to explain to doctors how this diet works to reverse diabetes if there isn’t damage caused by insulin. I now pay above the odds to see doctors who understand this, where they are available.Unforttunately , endocrinologists aren’t a brave or well informed lot, mostly, perhaps because they have to spend years studying to get qualified and it is challenging to go against the pharmaceutical research.

The best doctors I could find told me to keep doing what I am doing cause it is working.

It is proven science that reducing insulin stops type 2 in it’s tracks IF YOU DON”T STIMULATE IT BY REVERTING TO A CARB LADEN DIET….but many doctors are in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies and diabetes is a great big money spinner. Frightened people are quite compliant and take what their doctors advise, mostly.

I tried that, didn’t work and I kept on reading and made it to keto via fasting.

Happy to say I spend not a cent on diabetes meds these days…and I was diagnosed a long time ago.

(Myth Buster ) #16

This is me

I don’s argue with doctors who hate keto. If the doctor say to me keto is bad, I say yes but I already quit keto :grinning: I am the one who went to the doctor to seek help. So I am not in a position to argue.

I also dont take medicine for type II, simply because I am on keto since 2017.

even for being on keto for very long time, if I eat carbs my blood sugar rises. So I dont call it reversing type II. It is a kind of cease fire.

#17

Actually Metformin is a different animal as it is being investigated as a longevity drug (which we could discuss if we had a Longevity Sub Forum, LOL!) by a number of scientists, most famously by Nir Barzili. The reasoning comes from a study where they found that diabetics on metformin actually lived longer than healthy controls. Metformin regulates insulin levels and may reduce cravings in some people

#18

Try using that longevity thread. The longer it lives, the more it may impress people. :slight_smile:

#19

Metformin shredded my colon wall.
I won’t take it again for that reason.

(KM) #20

Peter Attia wrote this Metformin post questioning metformin’s longevity usefulness in his decision not to take metformin any more.

The study he’s citing in this article is https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36287641/