My glucose says pre-diabetic. My insulin says otherwise. The same number can mean opposite things. Here's how to tell.
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Hey Reader, Dr Karl here. My fasting glucose came back 102. If that were your panel... most practitioners would start the conversation about carbohydrates and metformin Now here are the numbers that were on the same page: fasting insulin 4.5. HDL 117. Triglycerides 51. Read together, that's not insulin resistance. That's a metabolism running on fat. The glucose reading isn't a warning — it's what a fat-adapted body looks like when you measure it with a tool designed for a sugar-burning one. This is the whole shift, and it's worth sitting with: a single lab value is the lowest-resolution reading in medicine. The same number means opposite things depending on what's next to it. Glucose 102 with an insulin of 4.5 and an HDL of 117 is one story. Glucose 102 with an insulin of 18 and an HDL of 38 is a completely different story — and the same doctor would read them the same way. Look at the pairs. Not the values. The pairs. There's a second example in the video that's even sharper — IGF-1, the marker most practitioners are afraid to order, where a "high" result can mean you're thriving or in trouble depending on one other number: Talk soon, That's the whole reason I wrote Unlocking Optimal Metabolic Health: A Data-Driven Approach to Thriving at Any Age — to show you how to read your own labs, see the patterns, and act on real data instead of generic reference ranges. 📗 Grab the book Here: website
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Salamander Bay LLC
Hey Reader, Dr Karl here. Flat and boring. If you have ever worn a continuous glucose monitor, you already know what I am about to show you, and you probably did not know it was the point. Four years ago her CGM trace was jagged. Peaks, drops, more peaks. Today it is a low flat line that barely moves all day. Flat and boring. That is the target. I have been saying it since before CGMs were fashionable, and I still say it. Put two people in front of the same ice cream cone. Both spike. But the...
Hey Reader, Dr Karl here. Nine point six. That is where her fasting insulin sat four years ago. On a Labcorp range runs 2.6–24.9 µIU/mL so 9.6 prints without a flag. Nobody called. Nothing was said.Four years later it is 3.4.Her glucose came down 16 points, from 108 to 92. Her CRP fell from 3.6 to 0.47, which is an 87 percent drop. She was 35 pounds over her ideal body weight and she is now 24. No medication for any of it. She takes progesterone for a twenty-year history of endometriosis,...
Hey Reader, Dr Karl here. It shows up in the data, and it's the opposite of what most people track. When I plot my clients by age, something shows up that I didn't go looking for. The older people in my data — the ones still healthy, still going — have a much lower fasting insulin. Not lower cholesterol. Not lower weight, particularly. Big difference between fasting Insulin levels between Insulin Resistant people versus Non Insulin Resistant ones. Lower insulin. The same pattern shows up in...