Svati wrote a great sharepost on an article discussing insulin sensitivity—and I really wanted to write about the topic too because I’ve been learning a lot about this through my own “experiments” lately!

See, here’s the thing: the benefits of taking less insulin only work if your blood sugars are also under control. If your glucose is at 230 and you take half or none of your correction factor (the amount of insulin you need to bring it down to 120), then obviously you are not extending your life or increasing your health in any way.

So how can you increase your sensitivity to insulin?

Here are two things I’ve found have had a significant impact on my own sensitivity:

1. Exercise. This is very simple but HUGELY important. If you don’t exercise regularly, you will inevitably have to lower your insulin amounts after you make exercise a consistent part of each week. Mainly, in your overall basal rate total or long-acting injection. Before I exercised regularly, I was taking about 35 units of Lantus insulin each day. Today, where I spend a couple hours each day exercising between weightlifting, yoga and walking, I take 25 units of Lantus. Can’t argue with that!

2. Less carbs. Now I’m not saying you should go on the Atkins diet and eat bacon all day, but if you take a look at how many carbs you eat each day and how many of those are actually coming from healthy sources (whole grains or fruit), you might see that there are places you could cut back and add a little more lean protein to your diet instead. As your decrease your carbs, you will naturally decrease the amount of insulin you take because you don’t need insulin for most fats or proteins.

And it is true that insulin will turn carbohydrates into fat. Eating less carbs and exercise will also decrease your glycogen levels (the glucose stored in your liver). When you exercise, you essentially deplete your glycogen storage each time, and when you eat carbs afterwards, a good portion of those carbs go towards refilling your glycogen storage. If you aren’t exercising and using carbs as immediate fuel, they are essentially extra, and the insulin you take to cover them will turn these carbs into fat.

This DOES NOT mean you should stop taking your insulin, because having a little extra fat is better than diabulimia which will lead to blindness, kidney failure and so on before you’re even thirty years old.

What it does mean is that regularly exercise and a healthy diet really do make a huge impact on the way you can control your blood sugars. These things are important for everyone, but for us, with diabetes, they are HUGE and we should all aim to make living healthfully an important focus of our lives! It’s WORTH IT!!!!!!