I’m going to give blogging another go. To minimize the risk of getting overwhelmed/too busy, I’m going to start slow with a weekly post on what I’m tracking, observations, and active & planned experiments. I’ll supplement that with other ad-hoc posts.
Sleep was way down this week. My family was on vacation Sunday through Wednesday, which typically results in me sleeping poorly.
Blood glucose:
TIR & CV% are much better this week. Introspection suggests this is due to a combination of eating smaller meals and the fact that I’m paying more attention now that I’ve resumed aggressive self-tracking.
Body:
Still seeing steady drop in weight and waistline. I’m very happy with my progress here.
I had higher insulin sensitivity when I was at my target weight, so I need to keep a close eye on my time low as I continue to lose weight.
Blood:
My hemoglobin is on the high end of normal range. Nothing to be concerned about, but interesting. I’m curious if there are any dietary interventions that would significantly boost hemoglobin. Maybe in studies on athletic performance?
Total cholesterol is staying steady at ~160 mg/dL, which is fine.
The Curo L5 has failed to read my HDL & triglycerides three weeks in a row, with no obvious reason why. The Cardiocheck PA was was able to read both and with sensible numbers (close to my lab test last week). It also gave the same total cholesterol and was easier to use. I will switch to the Cardiocheck going forward.
HDL is a bit low & LDL a bit high. Nothing super concerning, but I will look into ways to improve.
Blood pressure continues to run slightly high. Not sure if I trust the absolute value of the home meter. Will need to check against the Dr’s at my next appointment
Urine:
Nothing interesting in this data. My values for biotin, pH, & Vitamin C are outside of the “normal” range, but I haven’t been able to find any literature indicating that this is even correlated with medical issues I would be concerned about.
In 4 tests, I’ve only gotten a reading on cortisol once. That measurements seems to be extremely unreliable.
All-in-all, I’m not getting much value out of the vessel tests. I will finish out the back I bought and then stop.
Active & Planned Experiments
Comprehensive bloodwork:
Goal: Establish baseline for a broad range of biomarkers and check overall health
That was a single experiment, though, so I over the last two weeks I repeated the experiment and also tested the effect in combination with insulin.
The results were very consistent, with 10g MSG causing a 30 mg/dL (2x) increase in peak blood glucose over 2h. This was 3x higher than the rise observed from MSG alone.
Surprisingly, when I tried the same experiment, but with my standard insulin dose, the MSG had virtually no effect (there was an ~10 mg/dL drop in the first couple hours, but this was followed by a rise to the same peak and is within normal day-to-day variation).
I was really surprised by these results, particularly the fact that MSG has such a drastically different effect when taken with vs. without insulin. I’m really not sure what to make of that. The only two hypotheses I can think of are:
MSG inhibits endogenous insulin production (leading to the higher blood glucose rise), but does not impact insulin sensitivity (and therefore doesn’t impact blood glucose in the presence of injected insulin).
MSG promotes gluconeogenesis when insulin concentration is low, but not when it’s higher.
I’m not sure how to test these hypotheses with what I have available (blood glucose meter).
Does anyone have other hypotheses as to what might be going on or how to test it? I’m also looking for anyone who might be interested in helping me test this effect. There’s a huge range of variables here (amino acid type, quantity, protein/carb/fat ratio of the meal, whether the person has diabetes and what type).
If you have any ideas or would like to help out, please let me know.
As always, if you have any comments, suggestions, ideas for new experiments, or want to participate, please let me know in the comments or send a PM via the contact form or to quantifieddiabetes_at_gmail.com.
Figure 1. Change in blood glucose vs. time for Ketochow + butter (blue), with MSG (orange), with my standard dose of insulin (brown), with insulin & MSG (red), and MSG alone (green).
Figure 2. Peak blood glucose for Ketochow + butter (blue), with MSG (orange), with my standard dose of insulin (brown), with insulin & MSG (red), and MSG alone (green).
Figure 3. iAuC for Ketochow + butter (blue), with MSG (orange), with my standard dose of insulin (brown), with insulin & MSG (red), and MSG alone (green).
Ingredient Background
Ketochow is a low-carb meal-replacement that is designed to have all the macro- and micro-nutrients you need to stay healthy. I have it for breakfast and lunch most days. It’s extremely convenient and surprisingly good.
Butter is a solid fat source. I use it with my ketochow meals as it doesn’t mix with the powder until melted, giving the mixture excellent shelf-life.
Monosodium glutamate (MSG), is the sodium salt of glutamic acid (an amino acid). It’s primarily used in cooking as a umami flavor enhancer. It’s also been reported to reduce blood glucose when ingested along with a meal (references here). Most of the reported studies were done with high carbohydrate meals and on non-diabetics, so I was interested to test its effect with low carbohydrate meals for myself.
Procedure
Meals were prepared by mixing the specified quantities chocolate ketochow, butter, and enough hot water to reach a total volume of ~12 oz. MSG was dissolved in ~250 mL of water. Insulin was injected 20 min. prior to the meal. Blood sugar every 30 min for ~270 min.
Quantities:
Control meals (labeled “ketochow + butter” or “+insulin” in graphs:
54g chocolate ketochow, 28g butter
54g chocolate ketochow, 56g butter
54g chocolate ketochow, 56g butter
54g chocolate ketochow, 56g butter, 2.25 units of Novolog insulin
Experimental meals (labeled “+MSG” or “+insulin, +MSG” in graphs:
54g chocolate ketochow, 28g butter, 10g MSG
54g chocolate ketochow, 56g butter, 10g MSG
54g chocolate ketochow, 56g butter, 2.25 units of Novolog insulin, 10g MSG
MSG control (labeled “MSG” in graphs:
10g MSG
Results
In a previous post, I reported that consumption of MSG significantly increased the rate of rise, peak, and iAuC of my blood glucose. This was really surprising, as the reported literature indicate that MSG reduces blood glucose when ingested with a meal (references here), though all studies I found were done high carbohydrate meals and on non-diabetics.
That was a single experiment, though, so I over the last two weeks I repeated the experiment and also tested the effect in combination with insulin. The results of these experiments are showing in Figures 1-3. The replicates of the previous experiments were extremely consistent: Ketochow + butter causes a consistent rise of ~30 mg/dL over ~2h, while the same meal with 10g MSG resulted in a rise of 60 mg/dL in the same time period. This is a 2x increase.
As a control, I tested consumption of 10g MSG with no accompanying meal. This resulted in a rise of ~10 mg/dL over ~2h, only 30% of the increase caused by consuming MSG with a meal. This indicates a synergistic effect of consumption of MSG with a meal.
As a second test, I tried consuming MSG with my normal meal and insulin dose. Surprisingly, in this case the MSG had virtually no effect (there was an ~10 mg/dL drop in the first couple hours, but this was followed by a rise to the same peak and is within normal day-to-day variation).
Discussion and Next Steps
I was really surprised by these results, particularly the fact that MSG has such a drastically different effect when taken with vs. without insulin. I’m really not sure what to make of that. The only two hypotheses I can think of are:
MSG inhibits endogenous insulin production (leading to the higher blood glucose rise), but does not impact insulin sensitivity (and therefore doesn’t impact blood glucose in the presence of injected insulin).
MSG promotes gluconeogenesis when insulin concentration is low, but not when it’s higher.
I’m not sure how to test these hypotheses with what I have available (blood glucose meter).
Does anyone have other hypotheses as to what might be going on or how to test it? I’m also looking for anyone who might be interested in helping me test this effect. There’s a huge range of variables here (amino acid type, quantity, protein/carb/fat ratio of the meal, whether the person has diabetes and what type). If you have any ideas or would like to help out, please let me know.
While waiting to see what others think, I’m going to test the bounds of the effect. I took a huge amount of MSG, far more than is used in cooking. I’m going to evaluate smaller quantities as well as alternate amino acids to better understand the effect.
I’m about a week late on this, but here’s an update on my monthly blood glucose stats. As before, I’ll be looking at average blood glucose, coefficient of variation, and time in range.
Here’s the data broken out by month:
Figure 1. Average blood glucose (blue) & coefficient of variation (orange) by month.
Figure 2. Time-in-range vs. month.
Figure 3. Time-in-range vs. month, excluding “in-range.”
No improvement vs. August. However, I had two bad sensors in September, which resulted in periodic large mismatches between my CGM and fingerstick meter. I don’t have the data to quantify the impact, but I suspect that that was responsible for a substantial fraction of the Low and High time. A quick look at the first 1.5 weeks in October shows that I’m on trend for a meaningful drop in Low (currently 3%) with no change in average glucose (still 90 mg/dL). We’ll see if it holds up.
Planned Experiments:
Baseline:
Glucose re-test
Fasting re-test
Low-carb foods:
Carbquick
Eggs
Supplements:
Vinegar
MSG: Preliminary tests here. I tried again, but this time while taking insulin, and saw no effect. I’m going to repeat the original test and then other variations to try to figure out what’s going on.
As always, if you have any comments, suggestions, ideas for new experiments, or want to participate, please let me know in the comments or send a PM via the contact form or to quantifieddiabetes_at_gmail.com.
This post is an update on my experiments measuring the effect of dietary supplements and low-carb foods on blood sugar. This is going to be an on-going exploration. Rather than wait for complete sets of data (which would take a long time), I’m going to post each weeks worth of data as I collect it in the hopes of soliciting feedback to guide later experiments.
As always, if you have any comments, suggestions, ideas for new experiments, or want to participate, please let me know in the comments or send a PM via the contact form or to quantifieddiabetes_at_gmail.com.
Planned Experiments
Baseline:
Glucose re-test
Fasting re-test
Low-carb foods:
Ketochow: This post
Carbquick
Eggs
Supplements:
Vinegar
MSG: Started 10/2
Preliminary Results: Ketochow, Butter, & MSG
Figure 1. Change in blood glucose vs. time for Ketochow by itself (blue) and with 28g butter (orange), 73g butter (light blue), and 28g butter + 10g MSG (red).
Figure 2. Peak blood glucose for Ketochow by itself (blue) and with 28g butter (orange), 73g butter (light blue), and 28g butter + 10g MSG (red).
Figure 3. iAuC for Ketochow by itself (blue) and with 28g butter (orange), 73g butter (light blue), and 28g butter + 10g MSG (red).
Ingredient Background
Ketochow is a low-carb meal-replacement that is designed to have all the macro- and micro-nutrients you need to stay healthy. I have it for breakfast and lunch most days. It’s extremely convenient and surprisingly good. I prepare 16 meals at a time and keep them in the fridge. When it’s time for a meal, I just add hot water, mix, and wait for my insulin to kick in; about 1 min. total prep. time (all-in). It also comes in 18 different flavors, so I can rotate through the ones I like and not get bored. I’ve been using Ketochow for years, so I’ve got my insulin dose pretty well tuned for it. However, following a Reddit post by Chris Bair, the owner of Ketochow on its Glycemic Index, I decided to do a detailed test of its impact on my blood sugar.
Butter is a solid fat source. I use it with my ketochow meals as it doesn’t mix with the powder until melted, giving the mixture excellent shelf-life.
Monosodium glutamate (MSG), is the sodium salt of glutamic acid (an amino acid). It’s primarily used in cooking as a umami flavor enhancer. It’s also been reported to reduce blood glucose when ingested along with a meal (references here). Most of the reported studies were done with high carbohydrate meals and on non-diabetics, so I was interested to test its effect with low carbohydrate meals for myself.
Procedure
I consumed 1.1 servings of the chocolate ketochow (54g, my normal amount) and the specified quantities of butter and MSG mixed with hot water to a total volume of ~12 oz. I then monitored my blood sugar every 30 min for ~270 min.
Results
As shown in Figure 1, plain Ketochow shows a slow rise of ~40 mg/dL over ~2h. As discussed previously, this is similar to whey protein (the primary caloric ingredient in Ketochow is an 80:20 mix of casein & whey protein) and pretty much what you’d expect from the nutrition label and the amount of insulin I use to cover the meal.
Much more interesting is the impact of butter and MSG. The addition of butter significantly slowed the rise in blood glucose and gave an ~25% reduction in peak blood glucose and 30% reduction in iAuC. Interestingly, increasing the amount of butter from 28 to 73g did not increase the effect, though that was only a single experiment and I need to repeat it to confirm.
For MSG, in contrast to the reported literature, it significantly increased the rate of rise, peak, and iAuC of my blood glucose. This was a single experiment and I haven’t yet done the proper controls (e.g. MSG by itself), but the magnitude of the effect was much larger than I would expect from the amount of amino acid consumed, suggesting it is real. Going forward, I’m going to test MSG by itself, smaller quantities, and also combined with glucose instead of protein fat (more similar to the literature.
Interim Thoughts and Next Steps
From this preliminary data, it looks like there are meaningful effects of combining macronutrients as well as supplements. Given that, I’m going to stick with this line of experiments. I also like this approach of posting interim data as I collect it, then writing up a more detailed report & analysis once there’s enough data to merit it.
As always, please let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions.
I’d like to continue these kind of experiments, but they were very time consuming and the frequent extended fasts were disruptive to my normal routine. To get around that, I’m going to focus on foods & supplements where I’m looking for relatively binary outcomes (i.e. large effects) and therefore can accept the larger uncertainty associated with not fasting and lower numbers of replicates.
With all that, my plan is to test the effects of popular dietary supplements and low-carb foods to see if claims about them really hold up. To avoid wasting a lot of time chasing after BS fads, I’m going to focus on supplements & foods that are either reasonably supported in the academic literature or otherwise appear to have solid data backing them up.
Lastly, it’s widely believed that the relative blood sugar impact of foods varies from person-to-person. If you’re interested in helping me to quantify that, let me know in the comments or send a via the contact form or to quantifieddiabetes_at_gmail.com.
Planned Experiments:
Baseline:
Glucose re-test:
Fasting re-test
Low-carb foods:
Ketochow: Started 9/26
Carbquick
Eggs
Supplements:
Vinegar
MSG
If you have any suggestions for supplements or foods to add, please let me know in the comments or send a PM via the contact form or to quantifieddiabetes_at_gmail.com.
Preliminary Results: Ketochow
I don’t want to go a week without posting any data, so here’s some preliminary results from my Ketochow experiments.
Figure 1. Change in blood glucose vs. time for glucose (blue), whey protein (orange), and Ketochow (brown).
Ketochow is a low-carb meal-replacement that is designed to have all the macro- and micro-nutrients you need to stay healthy. I have it for breakfast and lunch most days. It’s extremely convenient and surprisingly good. I prepare 16 meals at a time and keep them in the fridge. When it’s time for a meal, I just add hot water, mix, and wait for my insulin to kick in; about 1 min. total prep. time (all-in). It also comes in 18 different flavors, so I can rotate through the ones I like and not get bored.
I’ve been using Ketochow for years, so I’ve got my insulin dose pretty well tuned for it. However, I’ve never actually measured it’s BG impact directly. A couple days ago, Chris Bair, the owner of Ketochow posted to Reddit about the Glycemic Index for Ketochow. You can’t do a standard glycemic index test, though, as that requires measuring the impact of an amount containing 50g of digestible carbohydrate. For Salted Caramel, that would 62 servings or 2.75 kilograms of Ketochow, which would be impossible to eat.
That said, while the blood sugar rise from carbs should be near zero, the protein should have a small effect due to gluconeogenesis. Since have Ketochow twice a day, I figured I should test it. Towards that end, I consumed 1.1 servings of the chocolate ketochow (54g, my normal amount) mixed with hot water to a total volume of ~12 oz. I then monitored my blood sugar every 15 min for ~270 min.
I’m going to run additional tests with other flavors and with fat sources added, but you can see the preliminary results in Figure 1. The Ketochow was comparable to a similar mass of whey protein, but with a slightly faster rise. This is consistent with the bulk of the macros coming from protein and dietary fiber.
All-in-all, pretty much what you’d expect from the nutrition label and the fact that I need such a small amount of insulin to cover the meal. Someone without diabetes would almost certainly not be able to observe and blood sugar impact at all.
