What is insulin resistance?

Is it the inability to produce enough insulin to deal with the sugars in a meal?

Are there blood tests to confirm this condition? My blood/sugar (without fasting) is around 90 - at this lab under 140 is normal.

Information most welcomed, thank you.

What is insulin resistance?

Is it the inability to produce enough insulin to deal with the sugars in a meal?

Are there blood tests to confirm this condition? My blood/sugar (without fasting) is around 90 - at this lab under 140 is normal.

Information most welcomed, thank you.

It the inability of the body's insulin to lower blood sugar due to its ineffectiveness. Someone can turn out excessive insulin but it can't lower the blood sugar.

Your blood sugar number is fine. Why were you concerned?

70-100mg/dL is considered normal, with 100-120 being pre-diabetic and 120+ diabetic. I don't like the pre-diabetic classification, because to me all it is is a reason for doctors to feed you more pills. 90 mg/dL is a perfectly fine blood sugar level. I assume this was a 12 hour fasted blood test?

Your blood sugar number is fine. Why were you concerned?[/quote]



I am concerned as after meals especially breakfast which serves as my preworkout meal I don`t feel full of power but sleepy and lethargic.

I am told my meal has too many carbs in it (about 90) - but isn`t the carbs that provide power? Maybe I am eating the wrong kind of carb.
(there was mention of insulin restance and crashing)

Breakfast 1 cup of oats/1/2 cup milk/2 slices of bread/little margarine/2 egg whites and a smidgen of honey for the oats.

I don't like the pre-diabetic classification, because to me all it is is a reason for doctors to feed you more pills. Pre-diabetic should be a warning to adjust diet. If it's caught early enough, a person could prevent ever needing drugs to manage diabetes.

I am concerned as after meals especially breakfast which serves as my preworkout meal I don`t feel full of power but sleepy and lethargic.

Breakfast 1 cup of oats/1/2 cup milk/2 slices of bread/little margarine/2 egg whites and a smidgen of honey for the oats.
Your breakfast sounds good. The wrong kind of carb is one that has a high glycemic load, which is the case if your meal is made up on mainly refined grains and/or sugar (eg. white bread and jam, pancakes and syrup, cornflakes and milk). Oats are good; the larger the flake the better (steel cut > old fashioned or rolled > quick cooking > instant)
Milk is okay, especially since you also have margarine and egg whites in your meal. Bread is alright if it's 100% whole wheat. Honey won't hurt you in small quantities. You might consider replacing the bread with equivalent calories worth of a protein powder (or just more egg whites) and see if that changes anything.

Pre-diabetic should be a warning to adjust diet. If it's caught early enough, a person could prevent ever needing drugs to manage diabetes.

I know what the range is meant to be, but I also know in most cases I've heard the doctor forgoes dietary changes. Hell, even the "recommended" diet for diabetes is probably the silliest thing I've ever read, I think they still recommend 60% of calories from carbs.

So it's low carb :D

I know when my dad was borderline he got a nice big handout of what to eat and what not to eat.

So it's low carb :D


Mannish might have something to say about that :)

I know when my dad was borderline he got a nice big handout of what to eat and what not to eat.My father-in-law got a nice big handout too. With really weird suggestions.

I think diabetics are usually recommended to eat a low glycemic diet, but not combined with a low carb diet. Many dieticians still believe it's irresponsible to advise people to eat more protein and more fats.

Do you think that if we tried hard enough we could get the forum here to be required reading at dietician school?:lol:

insulin resistance is the body's inability to utilize insulin. Insulin is a hormone that attaches to the outside of cell membranes, particularly muscle cells during physical activity. When insulin binds to the cell membrane GLUT-4 hormones migrate from the inside of the cell to the inside cell membrane making the cell permeable to glucose which is an important energy source. As you can see, in a normal body, insulin levels help to determine glucose levels, but as insulin resistance increases glucose levels will continue to rise after a meal to higher than normal levels.

There are several tests for insulin resistance. Fasting Plasma Glucose is considered normal at less than 100mg/dL. Impaired fating plasma glucose is between 100 and 125 mg/dL. Above 125 mg/dL is considered diabetic imparired fasting glucose. There are other tests for fasting glucose, and if you want more details let me know.

Your breakfast sounds good. The wrong kind of carb is one that has a high glycemic load, which is the case if your meal is made up on mainly refined grains and/or sugar (eg. white bread and jam, pancakes and syrup, cornflakes and milk). Oats are good; the larger the flake the better (steel cut > old fashioned or rolled > quick cooking > instant)
Milk is okay, especially since you also have margarine and egg whites in your meal. Bread is alright if it's 100% whole wheat. Honey won't hurt you in small quantities. You might consider replacing the bread with equivalent calories worth of a protein powder (or just more egg whites) and see if that changes anything.[/quote]


Today I modified my breakfast by replacing the bread with 30 gr ground
almonds and I felt completely different, no tiredness at all; I don`t know if I felt much because of the change or because of the bread. See what happens tomorrow.

The nuts are better than egg yolks as they don`t contain cholestral but do have a lot of `good` oil.

Today I modified my breakfast by replacing the bread with 30 gr ground almonds and I felt completely different, no tiredness at all; I don`t know if I felt much because of the change or because of the bread. See what happens tomorrow.

The nuts are better than egg yolks as they don`t contain cholestral but do have a lot of `good` oil.Hey, that's great news! I hope it works out for you.

Dietary cholesterol is not necessarily as closely related to blood cholesterol levels as nutritionists once thought, so egg yolks might not be a problem. But, so far, everyone agrees that the fat in nuts is good. (Except that too many nuts will put your omega-6 intake at a much greater proportion than your omega-3 intake, which is not necessarily all that great either. Flax oil or fish oil supplements might be of value to you if you don't eat a lot of fatty fish.)

Mannish might have something to say about that :)



I'm becoming the low carb nut around here. I see. :)

Thing is, I eat about the same amount of carbs before I started doing AD. They are just all on the same day or two of the week instead of spread out.

I just hate to see people make fat out to be evil and assume it should be left out of a "clean" diet. Hence me harping on not totally avoiding fats to new posters here.

Carbs are fine if you can handle them and use them wisely, just as fat is.

I generally feel better once I've adapted to higher fat, and low carb diets are showing to be anti-cancer which is important to me considering history.

My lipid panel of my blood work has also improved as a result of a diet that's high in fat and even saturateds.

I'll probably change it up at some point and add more carbs day in and day out for awhile.

The nuts are better than egg yolks as they don`t contain cholestral but do have a lot of `good` oil.

Don't fall for "egg yolks are evil". I eat 6+ a day and my lipid panel has never been better and my triglycerides are very low. You need saturated fats in some level to make hormones like testosterone.

Nuts are good, but then so are eggs and beef (especially grass fed).

Compared with how it was when I was first diagnosed, my diabetes has improved a lot on a low fat diet - and later continued to improve on a high fat diet.

During all the time of improvement, the only really objective things that have been constant are: cutting out trans fats; doing regular exercise; and getting a decent amount of protein. Probably there have been other factors (e.g. specific foods I have avoided or nutrients I get more of) but I couldn't say for sure which ones were significant. Who knows - maybe even mental attitude was a factor.

Regarding fats, I used to be very cautious of saturated fats but when I added them back into my diet I didn't have a relapse of my diabetes or other known bad effects. I think the main things to definitely avoid are: a) foods that contain hydrogenated fat; b) rancid or heat-damaged oils; c) oils with excessive concentrations of omega-6.

Hey, that's great news! I hope it works out for you.

Dietary cholesterol is not necessarily as closely related to blood cholesterol levels as nutritionists once thought, so egg yolks might not be a problem. But, so far, everyone agrees that the fat in nuts is good. (Except that too many nuts will put your omega-6 intake at a much greater proportion than your omega-3 intake, which is not necessarily all that great either. Flax oil or fish oil supplements might be of value to you if you don't eat a lot of fatty fish.)




However by eating nuts I might be swapping a cholestral problem with gout - I`ll have to watch my uric acid I take about 6 to 8 flax capsules a day; don`t know what is better salmon oil (omega 3) or flax seed but after taking flax seed for a while my HDL rose to 55 after staying 40 for years and years.

Anyway they got a new cholestral test - apoliprotein B, I going to try it next Monday.

My suggestion - assuming you still have trouble - would just be combo-carbs. I like Scivation's recommendation of combining low-GI carbs with moderate-GI carbs. For example, in my breakfast I start out with 200g of grapefruit (GI 25), then eat Scottish oatmeal with cinnamon, blueberries, skim milk and iodized salt. Those are considered moderate carbs, but with the grapefruit, it lowers the GI activity.

The exception being during and after working out. Other than that, if I have carbs in a meal - which four of my meals do - I always eat the fibrous vegetables first (green beans, asparagus, limited broccoli as I had thyroid issues with it). It does blunt any insulin spike or resistance and helps fill you up and keep you more stable.