Was I ever insulin resistant?

(Sarah) #1

Hi. This is my first post. I hope I have chosen the right place.

I have been low carb eating since May. I started on a lowish carb program then moved to keto after a few months.

I have not tested whether I am in ketosis but I am losing weight, feeling good and am much less hungry.

I have been overweight or obese my whole life so I assumed I was insulin resistant. I changed to a new doctor recently and she did a range of blood tests including fasting glucose and fasting insulin (my old doctor did not test insulin).

They are both completely fine my doctor says (fasting insulin 4mU/L and glucose 4.9mmol/L).

So is she right? And is that the effect of low carb eating for 5 months or was I never insulin resistant, just fat?

I am sticking with this diet because I feel so much better.

(Duncan Kerridge) #2

I don’t know the answer to your question Sarah but I’m in the same boat - about six months into keto I got my A1c and fasting insulin tested assuming neither would be great but A1c was 4.5% and a fasting insulin of 2.06.

My diet previously was constant snacking on high carb foods, which would have kept my non-fasting insulin high which would explain my weight gain over the years I guess. I just finished reading Tim Noakes new book, he estimates that maybe 60%+ of the human population is predisposed to insulin resistance - maybe we’re in the 40% and didn’t develop it even with a crappy diet.

(Jen ) #3

Welcome, Sarah!

Do you have previous lab results you could compare with your current labs?

I’m obese but I’ve never been insulin resistant, had diabetes or metabolic syndrome.

(Todd Allen) #4

The 5 signs of metabolic syndrome correlate well with insulin resistance. If you had 3 or more of hypertension, high fasting blood glucose, high triglycerides, low hdl and visceral fat (high ALT strong indicator) then you were probably insulin resistant. And the degree to which those are improving indicates a reduction in insulin resistance.

(Chris) #5

Todd, how about skin tags? I heard they were pretty much a sure sign of resistance. Mine all went away over a few months after changing my diet.

(jilliangordona) #6

I only have one but it just won’t budge! Hoping it will soon haha. Been keto for over a year

(Todd Allen) #7

There is correlation between skin tags and insulin resistance though I don’t know how strong. I don’t know the odds of having insulin resistance without skin tags or the odds of having skin tags without insulin resistance. But the questions are relevant, a quick search of pubmed found this:

Cutaneous manifestations of metabolic syndrome

(Damon Chance) #8

Your HOMA-IR score is .9 which is less tha n 1.0 and is considered optimal.

I’m sure it has improved somewhat over this time but you may notbhave been super IR to begin with.

Out of curiosity how has the weight loss been for you as far as rate and plateaus? A lot of highly IR folks hit a fairly hard stall at some point after the first considerable losses. Happened to me after losing about 20% of my body weight. Now the losses are much harder to come by

(Sarah) #9

Thank you JayBee,

My frustration is that I have no previous fasting insulin results. My new doctor is the first one that would test it. I do have a fasting glucose from before I started low carb eating and it is 4.8.

So I have nothing to compare it to.

(Sarah) #10

I just assumed I had metabolic syndrome. But my blood pressure has been historically on the low side but has come up into high normal over the last few years (it is coming down on this way of eating so that is terrific).

I have only had my triglycerides tested once and it was 0.9mmol/L.

(Brian) #11

There is really no way to answer your question in a definitive yes or no.

I suspect you probably were at least somewhat resistant to insulin. It’s not an “on or off” kind of thing for most people. It come gradually over time. Some have speculated that over 80% of the population will start showing insulin resistance if they live long enough, even if they’re at what is considered a healthy weight. I’ve seen it show up as a complete surprise to several people I’ve known that appeared to be a completely normal weight.

It’s very likely you could have felt pretty decent and functioned fairly normally with insulin resistance and wouldn’t have known unless you got tested. I had thought I was doing pretty well until about 2-1/2 years ago, when I was in the hospital with a badly broken leg, that my BG numbers were a little higher than I had thought they should be. No one bothered to mention it to me, I wasn’t there for that. But I noticed. And though it took me some time to do something about it, I did.

Was I diabetic? I don’t know. Was I pre-diabetic? Probably. Was I insulin resistant? Mostly likely. I don’t really worry much about it. At some point, I’ll probably get curious and find a way to check again. I’m going by the general progress I’m making. In August of this year, I was 285 pounds. The scale said 239 this morning. (I haven’t seen the 230’s in like a decade.) Feeling good. Keeping calm and ketoing on.

:slight_smile:

(Sarah) #12

Thank you all for replying!

I lost weight so easily at first and then stalled (still losing cm though).

I just going to keep going.