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Monday, February 6, 2012

Insulin Resistance

I have struggled most of my life with carrying a bit more weight than I should--and short of heroic exercise programs, I have never had much luck reducing it.  Part of the problem has been continual hunger--and some of that was not just, "I'm hungry," but I would feel stupid and unable to think well unless I kept eating at least small quantities of sugar in either soft drinks, coffee, or tea.

I recently went to an endocrinologist who ran a glucose tolerance test.  This is one of those things where you fast all night, then drink something disgustingly sweet at 8:00 AM, they draw blood, and then draw blood again at 10:00 AM, and see how much your blood sugar spiked.  They concluded that I have an insulin resistance problem.  What is that?  To quote WebMD:
Normally, food is absorbed into the bloodstream in the form of sugars such as glucose and other basic substances. The increase in sugar in the bloodstream signals the pancreas (an organ located behind the stomach) to increase the secretion of a hormone called insulin. This hormone attaches to cells, removing sugar from the bloodstream so that it can be used for energy.
In insulin resistance, the body's cells have a diminished ability to respond to the action of the insulin hormone. To compensate for the insulin resistance, the pancreas secretes more insulin.
The treatment is an out of patent (way out of patent) medicine called Metformin.  And wow!  What a difference!  I have been taking it for a week now, and I can feel the difference.  I have lost at least two pounds, and I am again on the innermost belt notch of a new belt.  More importantly, I am often hungry during the day now, but so what?  I can still think clearly, and do my job without having to put any sugar into my system.

Insulin resistance is often a precursor to diabetes (which my father had) and plays a part in elevated trigylcerides and high cholesterol--which are matters that have concerned my GP for some time.  I have some hope of taking off the extra weight over the next year or so.
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4 comments:

  1. Rob KFebruary 6, 2012 at 11:02 AM

    You might find this series really interesting:

    http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/11/what-causes-insulin-resistance-part-i.html

    It is from a Ph.D. neurobiologist who studies body fat regulation and obesity. I've been following this guy for awhile and he's very good.

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  2. asdfFebruary 6, 2012 at 3:20 PM

    Good for you, Clayton. I'm on the South Beach diet, and I lost 40 lbs, but for some reason my Cholesterol is still high. My GP put me on Crestor. It was that or 80 mg of Zocor which I read is not safe. I'm not sure if its my age (I'm 60 now), but my muscles just aren't what they used to be.

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  3. Clayton CramerFebruary 6, 2012 at 4:32 PM

    Rob K: Thanks! Very useful technical discussion of insulin resistance and current work.

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  4. Rick CFebruary 6, 2012 at 5:05 PM

    Clayton, watch where you're getting Metformin. It's on Wal-mart's $4 prescription list, and if you have health insurance, they'll automatically give you the better price. (By contrast, Walgreens will give you the $4 price only if you buy into their generics program at $30 a year (last I checked; maybe they stopped doing that) and they'll cheerfully charge you your insurance copay (which for me was $15) without calling out what they're doing.)

    You won't save a lot of money that way but it's worth doing--plus, I was so fed up with wait times at CVS and Walgreens I just switched all my family's prescriptions and am probably saving $50 or more a month now.

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