What raises insulin?

(just call me bbb :)) #1

A friend sent me the following post from a Facebook keto group. I was wondering if the science behind this article is correct. Can the kind folks here please comment on the various points raised in the article? I am a bit skeptical because I was told that someone commented that he " read a study that even thinking of food can increase your insulin "

I think this topic had been discussed to death many times already. What raises insulin? I would like to touch on this topic again.

Anything we put into our body will raise insulin. The question is how is it been raised? Whether it is GI vs GL? Whether it is in the absence of carbs and glucagon do its part to raise blood glucose and then, insulin is raised to stop it or taking sweetener with zero calories.

Whatever we put in our mouth, it will raise insulin.

  1. Whether artificial or natural sweetener, it will raise insulin. The brain cannot differentiate whether when you eat that sweet food, it has carbs or not.

  2. Anything that has carbs will raise insulin. Everyone knows.

  3. Even if you are on a zero carbs diet, insulin will still be raised because of glucagon. However, this is different because it does not spike like eating carbs. It does not have that rush that the pancreas have to keep up to produce the insulin to bring the blood glucose down.

  4. If you are a diabetic, more than 50% of your beta cells are already gone. The only objective you want to do in a low carbs way of life is to preserve your pancreas. Losing weight, losing fat, stop taking medicine and etc… is the positive side effect of doing low carbs. If the day your pancreas can no longer produce insulin, your life will become like a type 1 diabetics. When you reach there, you will need to follow a strict protocol of low carbs and manage properly. So think about it.

  5. And then, apart of having your beta cells dead, your alpha cells maybe malfunction as well. There are people who have reported with higher HbA1c in a higher protein almost zero carbs diet. So, if they don’t eat carbs, isn’t logical that HbA1c should drop but some reported higher? That means, there is a high possibility of alpha cells have malfunctioned as well. This is still one area under research. And that means, it become logical that their HbA1c will be higher if they are insulin resistance or Hyperinsulinemia and their alpha cells are unable to function properly.

Lastly, stay away from sweet stuff if possible. Whether Keto baked or not. If you really want to eat keto baked stuff, ensure your fasted insulin and HbA1c are at a healthy level. If not, think thrice before you eat.

#2

Everything. Didn’t you know. :woozy_face:

(Carl Keller) #3

Simply stated, a rise in blood glucose triggers an insulin response. There are various ways for our body to naturally raise BG levels without even eating a bite of food: glucagon, cortisol, lactate and andrenaline can all play a role in this process.

I would like to see that study if possible.

#4

In a way it does make sense knowing that our bodies often prepares us in advance. Like when ur making food, during this time our senses are stimulated by the looks, the smells while u make it and thoughts of the food once its done etc, our bodies start to lubricate our throats, stomach starts to get ready, mouth watery etc…

To say for sure i wouldnt know, but from logical perspective it sounds possible to me, but even then id expect it to be sucha minimal ammount it wont affect much. Link any studies covering that subject if u have.

#5

So they’re saying I could have just been loading up with Diet Dr. Pepper and thinking about food instead of using the hundreds of vials of insulin I needed before going to keto?

Yeah, right. /s

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #6

Glucose in the bloodstream above the U.S. teaspon needed for proper functioning is a metabolic emergency, which is met by an increase in insulin secretion, with the purpose of forcing the glucose out of the bloodstream and into either muscle (to be metabolised) or adipose tissue (for storage).

Protein in food also stimulates insulin secretion, though apparently at half the rate of glucose. In the presence of enough dietary carbohydrate to stimulate insulin, excess protein stimulates even greater insulin production. In the absence of dietary carbohydrate, excess protein stimulates both insulin and and glucagon. In the former case, the elevated insulin/glucagon ratio halts gluconeogenesis and ketogenesis, to prioritize the metabolism of glucose. In the latter case, the low insulin/glucagon ratio is preserved (because the two hormones are secreted in matching amounts), thus preserving gluconeogenesis (which we need, because of the absence of dietary carbohydrate) and ketogenesis (for the cells that need the ketone bodies).

Fat has a very small effect on insulin secretion, but it is negligible in comparison to the effects of the other two macros. Note that a certain minimal level of insulin in the bloodstream is required for survival. Before the discovery of insulin and its use as a treatment for Type I diabetes, diabetics used to starve to death no matter how much food they ate, because, lacking any insulin at all, they could not store any of their energy intake. (The name diabetes mellitus refers to the siphoning of glucose into the urine in the absence of insulin.)

The difference between diabetes Type I and Type II is that the former is an autoimmune disease, in which the β-cells in the Islets of Langerhans in the pancreas have been attacked and destroyed, so the Type I diabetic is incapable of making any insulin. Type II is a disease of insulin resistance; until the very late stages of the disease, the pancreas is still capable of making insulin; the problem here is that the muscle tissue, adipose tissue, and organs are all so full that they have down-regulated their insulin receptors, and it takes ever-increasing amounts of insulin to get glucose out of the bloodstream.

When I joined these forums two years ago, discussions about what caused insulin secretion to rise took it for granted that thinking about food could spike insulin. I don’t know if there’s actual science to back that notion up, but it’s not all that far-fetched. I mean, we may have been wrong, but it was common knowledge on these forums, and I have always assumed that people knew what they were posting about.

The reaction to non-sugar sweeteners seems to be wholly idiosyncratic, judging by posts on these forums, in any case, with one person reacting with an insulin spike to a sweetener that others can use with impunity. As far as I know, glucagon has no insulinogenic effect, though the two hormones regulate each other’s effects, according to Prof. Benjamin Bikman. As far as I know, our HbA1C reading is a measure of the glycation of our hemoglobin. I don’t think it has anything to do with insulin or glucagon, except as those two hormones manipulate the metabolic milieu.

Anyway, @burnbabyburn, that thing you quoted is incoherent and mostly wrong, as far as I’m concerned. But isn’t it illegal to post accurate information on Facebook? :grin::grin:

If I didn’t cover it all, perhaps someone else could deal with what I’ve missed?