Do insulin injections worsen insulin resistance?

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Consistency is important as doing things differently can affect the outcome. Even in something as simple as making a solution for an experiment with only 2 components it could make a difference if A was added to B or B added to A. Students sometimes didn't quite grasp that and then wondered why their results were all over the place.
 
silentsquirrel said:
I think the issue is consistency. I understand the DAFNE course, of which I have no personal knowledge as a T2 on insulin, advises against counting carbs in most veg. Unless you eat an unusually high proportion of your meal as veg, this just makes life easier. Less work weighing/measuring and calculating. Your insulin:carb ratio will allow for this approach; if you were to count absolutely every carb your ratio would be slightly different. ………. Not counting relatively low carb veg saves time, effort and stress.
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Thanks for that explanation
 
Inka said:
Let me try again @HSSS I am talking about comparing. We (not you and me, me and OP) can’t compare or discuss if we’re not both talking about the same thing - that is, if I’m talking about countable carbs and OP is talking about every single carb in veg. So we’re happily discussing and comparing but unknown to both of us we’re comparing ‘apples and oranges’ rather than ‘apples and apples’.
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Yep I agree in any discussion all parties do need to be discussing the same thing.

Let me try asking my question another way. Why are only some carbs countable by your explanation? It may be that silent squirrel has already answered now - if the answer is DAFNE guidance to make life simpler.

I’ve come a position of doing keto whereby the veg in carbs may well kick you out of ketosis if they are the higher carb ones or a lot of them so they do matter (and the issue of balancing carbs and insulin isn’t the same as in type 1). So simplicity may be overrated in some situations and warranted in others. As the op doesn’t yet know which type they are dealing with an awareness of all positions may well be useful til things are clarified.
 
When my daughter was diagnosed we were told not to bother counting the carbs in most veg, the reason being that they only contain a tiny amount of carb per portion and they digest slowly so will have no effect on the amount of insulin you need to take. We were also told that a difference of up to 10g between the amount of carb you have counted and what is actually in the food will make virtually no difference to your blood sugar or insulin dose. Apart from which, if a portion of broccoli contains 2g of carbs and you are on an insulin ratio of 1 unit to 10 grams you can't make an adjustment to your dose that small if you aren’t on a pump. So you might as well make life easier and just count the big stuff. It's all educated guesses anyway, you can never be sure of the precise count no matter how much you weigh things, foods and portion sizes aren't all exactly uniform.

Maybe for a type 2 not on insulin it's different, I have no experience of that myself, and certainly if you found by trial and error that a particular veg always puts your BG up then you'd have to change tactics. As with everything diabetes related, everyone is different!
 
I think again much of this comes down to if you are type 1 without sufficient insulin but little to no resistance or type 2 with plenty of insulin but plenty of resistance to that too. The symptom of high blood glucose is the same in both but the cause is different hence the approach is different.

Type 2 usually (at least in the early years) are aiming to reduce blood glucose not just as a goal in its own right but to reduce the circulating insulin to in turn reduce resistance, ultimately to allow their natural insulin to work properly. Which is why giving insulin injections might lower blood glucose in the short term but doesn’t address the underlying problem (IR) and potentially in the long term can make it worse. Here the additional carbs in veg can make a difference not just to the amount of circulating glucose but also to circulating (resistance raising) insulin too.

Type 1 are aiming to simply to replace their missing insulin as the underlying issue, which in turn sorts out the blood glucose, no IR to inherently consider. The amount of carbs in veg doesn’t add to their fundamental problem in the same way so long as enough insulin is injected. (I know I know - it isn’t simple at all in reality but the goal and the treatment are more clear cut in a sense)
 
My view is that is takes a couple of secs more to include the vegs carbs, and one less decision...like, do you start to count at carrots? At onions? At peas? At sweet potatoes?

I have emough decision to make, to be honest, and deciding what to count and what not to is another decision
 
Tdm said:
My view is that is takes a couple of secs more to include the vegs carbs, and one less decision...like, do you start to count at carrots? At onions? At peas? At sweet potatoes?

I have emough decision to make, to be honest, and deciding what to count and what not to is another decision
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In principle I agree: there are more than enough decisions to make. However once I've decided to include all veg that means further decisions such as what weight is the portion, how fully are they being cooked (eg roasting pretty well makes all fibre become digestible, whereas blanched probably doesn't), so what carb rate is applicable? Hence when veg aren't included the workload is minimal from that 1st decision.

I have developed over the last 3+ yrs of carb counting an awareness of which veg are low enough to ignore; and I do ignore them because it is simpler and one less decision point. However there is a clear boundary, for me; sweet potatoes are high carb root vegetables and I can't ignore those, nor can I ignore roasted parsnips. Garden peas at face value are a lower carb veg - except they are not a true veg but a legume; and experience has shown me that the legume characteristic simply won't allow me to ignore them. In practice I love peas and instinctively have a generous 100gm portion; and for that 100 gms weight I routinely add 10 gms carbs. This is a conscious decision, but barely a decision; I just know I need to add something for peas - so add 1 unit more bolus, which seems to work well enough for me.

Elsewhere it has been said the essential thing is to be consistent and I also strongly agree with that. For me most below ground veg are to be counted. (I happen to dislike cooked carrots so I don't willingly choose those, but eat raw carrots happily without counting their carbs - presumably when raw they are higher in fibre and so their glucose making capability is diminished.) Most above ground veg are ignored, but not garden peas. These sort of decisions are very minimal, in much the same way I make a myriad of minimal decisions when I drive a short distance without any pre-planning.

As an insulin dependent T3c with no panc'y I am oblivious to whatever my natural insulin resistance might be and so unaware of any alterations of my natural insulin resistance as a result of my insulin injections. Despite that, I have found this discussion intriguing, reminding me that T2 is far from being simple - unless you effectively ignore it (like a good friend of mine foolishly does!) and the variations within the T2 diagnosis label seem, to my perception, to make the treatments for this diagnosis a lot more than the widely trawled videos and books from those "experts" with their all-purpose solutions, would have one believe.

This thread has come a long way from @Vectian's initial potentially innocuous opening question - "Do insulin injections worsen insulin resistance?" The answer is complex and seems to need the caveat of "Perhaps". We're all different and only the individual can balance their treatment actions from the necessary period of trial and learning - regardless of whether T1 or T2, or insulin dependency.
 
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