Early Retirement Extreme Forums

since brute kind of derailed the other thread, here's a new one just for our old friend insulin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_index

it turns out that neither "only carbs" nor "only meat" raise insulin. specifically, almost all carbs raise insulin, and as expected, the more they tend towards the sugar side, the more they raise insulin. but proteins also raise insulin to a degree, though not nearly as much as e.g. white rice or other typical carbs. whole grain carbs (brown rice) seem to have a lower insulin response than many meats.

BRUTE wrote:whole grain carbs (brown rice) seem to have a lower insulin response than many meats.

Yep. When we pick apart the "wheat is poison" and "grains will kill you" memes, they do not stand up to the scrutiny. Finding ways to work whole grains into the diet can be fun and interesting when they are not the cultural norm. Substituting buckwheat noodles for ramen or rye and barley pilaf for white rice can make dinner interesting and healthy.

There are multiple factors impacting how food releases insulin. If you notice, the chart in the link shows a much larger fluctuation in the numbers for proteins than carbs, even though most proteins have much lower base number.

Protein can cause a small spike in insulin (always increases insulin, just not always a spike), but it's not guaranteed too. It causes the spike in insulin by being converted to glucose by the liver. If the body doesn't need more glucose it won't necessarily manufacture more just because protein is available.

Another variable for insulin spikes is how quickly something is digested. Carbs are digested the quickest and protein next. Fat and fiber will slow down the digestion of everything. Thus, whole grain carbs are better than processed grain carbs. So, if you can stomach plain All-Bran enjoy!

If you notice, Special K cereal has a slightly lower glucose and insulin number than Corn Flakes. This is probably due to the extra protein added to Special K, as they are almost identical other than that.

How something is cooked also matters for some foods.

The way you prepare sweet potatoes makes a difference in their GI. The GI of a 150-g sweet potato, boiled with its skin for 30 minutes, is 46. That number rises to 94 if the same sweet potato is baked for 45 minutes. These dramatic differences come from the way the starches in sweet potatoes gelatinize during cooking. Foods that turn viscous, or jelly-like, in your digestive tract have a lower GI because the gelatinous substance slows the release of the nutrients in the food. Baking your sweet potatoes instead of boiling them changes the quality of their starches and transforms this root vegetable from a moderate-GI food to a high GI-food.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/29502 ... -potatoes/

There is also the genetic factor.

Though, I think Wiki messed up the chart with the white pasta. There is no way brown pasta, assuming it's whole grain, is higher than white.
http://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-e ... _100_foods

I've always found that interesting that modes of preparation may have a significant impact on how your body processes particular foods.

We know that adopting a diet that causes you to release insulin all the time is probably bad for you, and may lead to diabetes.

But the release of insulin is a natural function that is "normal". I was curious if there had been any studies done on "how much" or "how often" would be optimal as far as releasing insulin is concerned, or whether its just kind of "the less often the better". Anyone know anything about this? Bueller?

Interesting. I was just thinking about that question today, as I like to eat a bunch of small meals throughout the day (makes me less likely to overeat). Though, even healthy food causes a bump in insulin. So, is it better to spread out your food to have smaller spikes or one big meal with a bigger spike? I don't know.

Fasting research may have the answer, but I haven't seen it yet.

Intermittent fasting improves insulin sensitivity and decreases insulin resistance.

http://www.mangomannutrition.com/you-ar ... t-fasting/

That may suggest that its better to reduce the number of insulin releases, which could be done with fasting or with "non-insulin-inducing" meals.

But you would also need to look at how long it takes the insulin to dissipate. And physical activity is probably a confounding factor as well.

Ok, so fasting helps. Makes sense.

Exercise is interesting concerning blood glucose. It can spike it a little initially during/after, but over time it will make you more sensitive to insulin.

I used to really subscribe in the many meals throughout the day plan, but more recent research points/I've learned that it's not likely a good idea to always be constantly grazing(excessive amount of small meals throughout the day) for sake of having constantly elevated blood sugar levels, not to mention for your teeth.
*edit*didn't update thread last few hours, looks like this^ has been covered!


Some people say that fat shouldn't increase insulin levels at all (and when eaten with other macro's, it will dampen their insulin response) yet for me, if I eat a lot of fat, I still seem to have very similar symptoms to eating too much of anything where I know my insulin has had to surge to deal with the food. Whether that is simply the protein or whatever that I'm eating with it is in large enough quantities to conjure such a spike without many carbs at the time, or the liver is simply tying up too many resources because it's overwhelmed trying to deal, so I feel like taking a nap, I don't know. Or maybe something else is going on I've overlooked, but for practical purposes towards health I don't think I need to know exactly why.

***As an aside, we seldom ever eat 'only protein' or 'only carbs' each meal and for things like glycemic index quotations and the rest, is all very portion dependant. If you eat a big(high calorie) meal of nearly anything, your insulin will go up to deal with it, probably to a much larger degree than a much smaller portion of something with a higher GI rate (albeit not necessarily going up and down at the same rate). I think paying attention to personal trial and error will probably tell more than just looking at studies. That said, I appreciate the wisdom available because just because our bodies respond to a certain way of eating doesn't mean that it should respond that way. Nor does it mean it will always respond that way. Seeking and applying the knowledge can be useful in learning to recognize where we are as we navigate towards where we want to go. Personally, I'm trying to undo much damage from lots of bad choices and short-sighted goals for the sake of getting bigger and stronger, at nearly any cost. Pretty stupid reason, but gives me a project now haha

Dragline brought up an interesting point with food preparation as well. I don't remember who but somebody else was going into a bit more detail about that regarding resistant starches and the conversion of said starches. I've only recently heard about these but it's pretty neat to hear of such significant changes depending on cooking, or cooking and cooling, etc. Almost hard to believe but pretty cool!

There was an interesting documentary on BBC some time ago. Here's the reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/ ... igh_sugar/

From this came that people on a high fat diet are maybe/probably more susceptible to diabetes than people on a high sugar diet.

Quite the reverse of what is popular now in the US it seems.

The link to the video was broken, but I found it here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1amh2 ... _lifestyle

Besides the overall conclusion that you should avoid processed foods and transfats, what I got out of it was that you are better off on a mostly fat/protein diet, but need some carbs, especially if you are expending a lot of energy, and that carbohydrate content should be varied with the amount of activity. It also confirmed that people lose more weight due to satiety on a low/no carb diet, but need to be careful about not losing muscle. It would seem that issue could be remedied by a few more carbs and/or protein.

There were a couple design flaws, I thought. First, they should have tried to equalize fiber content. The fat diet was essentially a zero carb/zero fiber diet that I don't think anyone would eat for any length of time or recommend. The sugar diet was more similar to what people actually might eat. A better comparison would have been either to restrict fiber on the sugar side and/or add some on the fat side.

This may have also skewed the insulin test, because low carb and no carb are really not the same as to whether your body is regularly releasing insulin or not. It seems to confirm that you don't want to retard the insulin mechanism so much that it is not working at all.

Second, the study did not go on long enough for the subjects to completely adapt to their diets. In particular, it is well known that the first couple weeks of a low carb diet cause brain fog, but that this tends to go away the longer one is on it as the body adapts by generating ketones. They should have put both subjects on their diets for a month for adaptation and THEN began testing in a second month with the brain and physical activities.

The reddit comments were funny to read and show you how people can watch the same thing and cherry pick the data that supports their pre-existing conclusions.

Ego wrote:Intermittent fasting improves insulin sensitivity and decreases insulin resistance.

Yeah, if you ever want to SWAT me, just show up around noon with a case of doughnuts and wait for me to pass out a couple of hours later. No need for tear gas(*) or whatever.

I've been at the WD for about 10+ years now. I think that effect was pretty fast (on the order of months). I've actually/somewhat reversed it (by random eating of lunches at random days to train my body to expect randomness in terms of food intake) so I don't crash whenever I "have" to eat around lunch for social reasons. That transition also took on the order of months.

(*) I got that covered too.

Dragline wrote:But the release of insulin is a natural function that is "normal". I was curious if there had been any studies done on "how much" or "how often" would be optimal as far as releasing insulin is concerned, or whether its just kind of "the less often the better". Anyone know anything about this? Bueller?

Optimal for who?

The six-meals-a-day is like doping to an athlete who do two 90 minute workouts per day. Compared to fat-burning, instant carbs directly from the digestive system are the bomb!! Sugar is used immediately without needing the insulin to store it. It's probably not as good for anyone who doesn't burn it off continuously. As an office worker, you'd have to keep the intake on the very low rate for such a grazing effort. You don't want continuous bombing

jacob wrote:Optimal for who?

This is why health topics confuse me. The more research that gets done, the less consensus there seems to be.

jacob wrote:

Dragline wrote:But the release of insulin is a natural function that is "normal". I was curious if there had been any studies done on "how much" or "how often" would be optimal as far as releasing insulin is concerned, or whether its just kind of "the less often the better". Anyone know anything about this? Bueller?

Optimal for who?

The six-meals-a-day is like doping to an athlete who do two 90 minute workouts per day. Compared to fat-burning, instant carbs directly from the digestive system are the bomb!! Sugar is used immediately without needing the insulin to store it. It's probably not as good for anyone who doesn't burn it off continuously. As an office worker, you'd have to keep the intake on the very low rate for such a grazing effort. You don't want continuous bombing

Now, now -- you are free to qualify "optimal" with whatever factors you choose. Yes, I would think different levels of activity might require different approaches.

Ego wrote:

BRUTE wrote:whole grain carbs (brown rice) seem to have a lower insulin response than many meats.

Yep. When we pick apart the "wheat is poison" and "grains will kill you" memes, they do not stand up to the scrutiny. Finding ways to work whole grains into the diet can be fun and interesting when they are not the cultural norm. Substituting buckwheat noodles for ramen or rye and barley pilaf for white rice can make dinner interesting and healthy.

brute just re-read the wiki chart, and realized a mistake: brown rice itself releases tons of insulin, lots more than beef. supposedly, brown pasta does not. whole-meal bread is 98% as bad as white-flour bread.

so brute stands by the "wheat is poison" hypothesis. but not all grains are the same - even though rice releases tons of insulin, for example, brute tolerates it much better, whereas he does not tolerate any wheat at all. barley or other "special grains" might act very differently on the stomach. but brute agrees that not all grains are the same.

Hefty servings of Basmati white rice doesn't really have any negative impacts on me that I can notice. Large amounts of pasta or bread however cause me a lot of gut irritation and drowsiness.

I watched my dad eat white rice/vegetable stir fry's every night on his way to losing 40 pounds and improving his mental fitness markedly. Between that and marrying a Brazillian i've gotten on the rice train after being a strict paleo type of guy.

My father and I are Irish as Irish can be so i'm not sure why we would be pre-disposed to tolerating white rice but we do.

Please recall, that Osiris only called upon mankind to give up the practice of cannibalism after Isis brought forth the gifts of food and beverage made possible by the cultivation of wheat. Therefore, I gravely fear the likely consequences of this anti-gluten movement!

simplex wrote:There was an interesting documentary on BBC some time ago. Here's the reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/ ... igh_sugar/

From this came that people on a high fat diet are maybe/probably more susceptible to diabetes than people on a high sugar diet.

Quite the reverse of what is popular now in the US it seems.

It's really interesting that the facts about meat and low carb diets seem to be completely different to what the low carb community state. It's actually meat that can cause insulin spikes.

Healthy foods are fine. Healthy Carbohydrates are fine. You should be able to tell the difference between a chocolate bar and a piece of fruit. Your body definitely can tell the difference.

Maybe it's better though to state what is a healthy meal. Last night I cooked. I used onions as a base and added some garlic, ginger, sugar, chilli and salt. I cooked that down with some water and canola oil. When that was all cooked down (no water and starting to get to the stage where it could burn) I added a moderate amount of grass fed beef. Then I put a lot of broccolini and some red pepper and let that cook, I added some oyster and soy sauce, then when that was basically cooked (really quick) I added some corn, some cashew nuts, some basil, some spring onions and some sesame seeds. I then served this with some white rice.

At a high level it's basically just white rice with a lot of vegetables and limited amounts of meat. I also cook this without a recipe and it tastes great.

We also try not to eat meat every night and really try to just eat meat at night if we have it on that day.

If you want to eat some white rice that is fine. If you want to eat some gluten that is in bread or whatever it is fine. Very few people are gluten resistant.