What's your insulin protocol?

BanditNOLIMIT said:
as far as i know, exogenous insulin use doesn't impact natural insulin secretion
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If your eating very high carbs, the argument can definitely be made that insulin use has the opposite and actually prevents diabetes.

Eating high carbs and high volumes of food all the time leads to consistent high blood sugars, which makes your body need to increase insulin output, which can take a toll on the beta cells in your pancreas and can burn them out. Burned out beta cells = lower and less efficient insulin production.

Adding exogenous insulin relieves stress of high work load on your pancreas beta cells so your body doesn't burn out the cells that create natural insulin.
 
Cumminstech2 said:
If your eating very high carbs, the argument can definitely be made that insulin use has the opposite and actually prevents diabetes.

Eating high carbs and high volumes of food all the time leads to consistent high blood sugars, which makes your body need to increase insulin output, which can take a toll on the beta cells in your pancreas and can burn them out. Burned out beta cells = lower and less efficient insulin production.

Adding exogenous insulin relieves stress of high work load on your pancreas beta cells so your body doesn't burn out the cells that create natural insulin.
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There are arguments to be made for both sides of the issue,

I first read about non-diabetics use of insulin in Dr Jason Fung's book "the diabetes cure", he quoted studies that showed fairly rapid onset of insulin resistance, which if left unchecked could lead to diabetes. Makes sense, with the homeostatic mechanism of the body trying to keep too much glucose from being stuffed into the cells.

But there are non diabetic uses in legitimate medical settings, like wound healing, aftercare for surgery, and to help prevent muscle wasting in temporarily bedbound patients.

This was a paper published in the U.S. but it was by Indian physicians so... I don't know how often it's used in Western clinical settings.

I'm particularly skeptical of it's use by psychologists to facilitate better therapy sessions by dis-inhibition of the "higher cognitive functions"

I know psychiatrists, in the past, used high doses of insulin to initiate seizures before and alongside electro-shock, but I even the paper mentions that insulin shock therapy is considered too dangerous now, even though as a side note electro-shock is still used, albeit rarely, in cases of intractable depression.

Here's the paper. (God I love the internet.)

A grand dame with hidden aces: The non-diabetic uses of insulin - PMC

This brief communication reviews the non-diabetic uses and utility of insulin. It highlights the lesser known uses in medicine, psychiatry, suregery and diagnostics that this versatile peptide has. Keywords: Applied pharmacology, insulin, ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
 
Bigbear said:
Could regular Joe's use insulin to just pound back carbs and have no health issues or would the insulin use eventually dry up their endogenous production?
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Actually the opposite, utilizing insulin for the average joe will protect pancreatic function, reducing diabetic likelihood by taking load off the pancreatic beta cells when they being forced to produce large amounts of insulin due to the typical high carb body builder diet. I learned about this in school as the same reasoning also applies to a T2D prescribed insulin. Yes their a1c may be a tad high, as are most body builders over 250lbs so the same principles apply.

Thus, insulin can be beneficial for the average joe looking to pursue a long term bodybuilding career in hopes of one day retiring without being diabetic and having full pancreatic function preserved.

And no I'm not advocating everyone should jump on insulin. Become well educated with proper schooling or seek professional guidance to implement and deploy it's use properly.
 
I did insulin to try it out on just 200 test and I gained a bunch of weight, I found it to be about equal as a low dose blast, I've been curious to try it on a real blast with GH but I just hit my goal weight 2 weeks ago so idk if I'll ever get the chance lol, idk if my goal will change!

I did 10ui in the morning and 12ui post workout. On my workout days

The fear of going hypo during my workout made me say fuck doing it pre workout, just didn't make a whole lotta sense to me. People preach safety but what's safe about taking a bunch of insulin and waiting till after your workout to eat... having carbs in a locker, while you're underneath a weighted bar, no thank you..... especially since they say you get really confused and dizzy when u go hypo.
I was thinking it would be a good replacement when I'm older and I don't wanna take higher doses of any steroids
It was humalog
I had about 10/1, in a shake but I also was eating a meal within an hour of taking the shot
 
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Palmer1991 said:
I did insulin to try it out on just 200 test and I gained a bunch of weight, I found it to be about equal as a low dose blast, I've been curious to try it on a real blast with GH but I just hit my goal weight 2 weeks ago so idk if I'll ever get the chance lol, idk if my goal will change!

I did 10ui in the morning and 12ui post workout. On my workout days

The fear of going hypo during my workout made me say fuck doing it pre workout, just didn't make a whole lotta sense to me. People preach safety but what's safe about taking a bunch of insulin and waiting till after your workout to eat... having carbs in a locker, while you're underneath a weighted bar, no thank you..... especially since they say you get really confused and dizzy when u go hypo.
I was thinking it would be a good replacement when I'm older and I don't wanna take higher doses of any steroids
It was humalog
I had about 10/1, in a shake but I also was eating a meal within an hour of taking the shot
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Was it quality weight?
 
Palmer1991 said:
The fear of going hypo during my workout made me say fuck doing it pre workout, just didn't make a whole lotta sense to me. People preach safety but what's safe about taking a bunch of insulin and waiting till after your workout to eat... having carbs in a locker, while you're underneath a weighted bar, no thank you..... especially since they say you get really confused and dizzy when u go hypo.
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Are you not having a pre workout meal with an adequate amount of carbs? Its not that complicated with moderate doses
 
Some people can't feel a low bg some do. I feel a peak in anxiety a little trembling and start feeling sick and lightheaded. It's important to dose for the activity level and macros. 1unit of humalog per 15g of carb is a good starting point for a meal bolus
 
Cumminstech2 said:
Was it quality weight?
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It was definitely much leaner than my last bulk, reminded me of bulking in my early 20's.
I dropped like 6-8 pounds or something so I kept quite a bit of it.
The biggest difference I noticed was it didn't help me at all in terms of strength
 
BanditNOLIMIT said:
Are you not having a pre workout meal with an adequate amount of carbs? Its not that complicated with moderate doses
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Ah, maybe that's why I couldn't wrap my head around it... I could never eat a pre workout meal, I'd wanna sit around for a bit, go for a walk at the most lol
 
BanditNOLIMIT said:
Humalog starts actively working about 15 mins post injection. Personally I take my shot either with or before preparing my meal.
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I've been doing it pre with a meal or carb drink with my hgh shot so they're in synergy with eachother and then again after my workout with a high carb meal . I was doing it wrong forever . Once I started doing it this way I started to see better results..
 
Currently using 5 units of lantus in the morning and then again 12hr later. I'm off all anabolics right now. This is just to get me in a decent range for my fasted glucose readings and between meals.

Docs wouldn't diagnose me as diabetic, but I've never really been able to handle carbs and thus chronically underate(no to low carbs) to not get fat which leads to a slower metabolism. Which also affects my ability to lose body fat.

Not that I'm huge or anything but how I grew to be the size I currently am while not being able to handle my food properly I have no idea. I can't wait to see what i can do once i can actually eat.

There's a lot of good information in this thread that helped me, thanks a lot guys 👍
 
So let me try to get my head around this insulin use for bodybuilding

Is it as simple as 2 doses a day? Seems anywhere from 5 iu to 30?? And you just have to make sure you eat carbs, a lot of carbs with the doses. For fast acting insulin I guess u want fast acting carbs. And for the long acting the slow acting carbs. Or is that again too simple?

I've always completely had insulin off the table but I hear it's incredibly anabolic and can really add a level.

Just seeing if I have any of the basic organized right in my head or if in way off on the basics that I thought I was understanding here

Thanks!
 
backintime said:
So let me try to get my head around this insulin use for bodybuilding

Is it as simple as 2 doses a day? Seems anywhere from 5 iu to 30?? And you just have to make sure you eat carbs, a lot of carbs with the doses. For fast acting insulin I guess u want fast acting carbs. And for the long acting the slow acting carbs. Or is that again too simple?

I've always completely had insulin off the table but I hear it's incredibly anabolic and can really add a level.

Just seeing if I have any of the basic organized right in my head or if in way off on the basics that I thought I was understanding here

Thanks!
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No, you eat the amount of carbs you need to eat. Anymore than that you'll just get fatter. You need insulin to absorb the food you're eating. The larger and more food you require, you need more insulin. You dont need exogenous insulin if you are handling your food ok. Now these kinds of carb loading protocols with fast acting insulin is another thing altogether and I'd want to work with a coach to figure out how to do that. Personally I don't think its necessary.

Tldr: Basically without insulin you cant get nutrients into the cell, but adding more in wont make you more anabolic if you don't need it.

Now the issue arises when the body can no longer produce enough insulin or becomes insulin resistant and the person starts to malabsorb their food. In my case I'm basically type 2 diabetic and I need it anyway. I suspect I'd be much bigger if i could actually eat and absorb my good properly. It upsets me docs couldn't figure this out, but I'm happy I did it on my own. Insulin will absolutely be a game changer for me. 🙂
 
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backintime said:
So let me try to get my head around this insulin use for bodybuilding

Is it as simple as 2 doses a day? Seems anywhere from 5 iu to 30?? And you just have to make sure you eat carbs, a lot of carbs with the doses. For fast acting insulin I guess u want fast acting carbs. And for the long acting the slow acting carbs. Or is that again too simple?

I've always completely had insulin off the table but I hear it's incredibly anabolic and can really add a level.

Just seeing if I have any of the basic organized right in my head or if in way off on the basics that I thought I was understanding here

Thanks!
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Well, I guess technically it could be that simple but implementing it with such little attention to detail certainly isn't the best approach.

Some prefer long acting, some prefer fast acting, some prefer a mix of both.

At the end of the day, the goal is to manage your blood glucose, so it's not elevated when you're ready to eat your next meal.

So essentially, as @CoolRick mentioned, you don't scale your food based on your insulin dosage, you do the opposite. You eat the required amount of food you need to grow, and then add in insulin, scaling the dose to meet your required need.

Here's a scenario.
You want your blood glucose to be down to 4.4-5.0 when youre ready to eat your next meal. Without insulin, lets say your BG is ringing in at 6.0-7.0, 2.5-3.5 hours after your previous meal. This is when insulin might be appropriate. You would have to do some experimenting to find what dose of insulin is going to bring you down to your desired BG levels. Over time you gain experience and learn what foods/portions will require what doses and what to expect your levels to be.

A good way to put it is, you want to use an amount of insulin that you're "flirting with hypoglycemia" but not actually going hypo.

I'm not sure if I explained things clearly, but I feel like thats as simple as I could make it.
 
Thanks CoolRick and banditnolimit. I appreciate the insight.

I'm trying to do some research, get my head around it. It seems like insulin is the anabolic, helps force nutrients into our cells. But the side effect of insulin is low blood sugar. So for us to take extra insulin for the extra nutrient partitioning, we want to take as much as the amount of carbs we are eating at that meal will allow. The carbs being what seems to immediately counteract the low blood sugar.

That's what I'm starting to understand so far. So if someone was having a huge heavy carb meal they could take more insulin right before it than someone taking a small to medium carb meal. The insulting helps the nutrients but lowers the blood sugar and carbs help raise the blood sugar. So with extra insulin to help our nutrients we try to balance the other two factors. Like you said, flirting with low blood sugar from the extra helpful insulin, but not quite, by knowing how many carbs were eating will keep the peace with our levels. And I guess steroids with gh on top of it just adds to the symbiosis.

Am I a little more on point now? Haha. I'm kicking the idea around of adding it, but now where near ready to take action yet. I need a lot more knowledge then I'll see.

My next questions would be, how do you decide between fast and slow acting?

And how do you get it? Do you literally walk up to the pharmacy and ask for a box of insulin please?? Lol.
 
backintime said:
I'm trying to do some research, get my head around it. It seems like insulin is the anabolic, helps force nutrients into our cells. But the side effect of insulin is low blood sugar. So for us to take extra insulin for the extra nutrient partitioning, we want to take as much as the amount of carbs we are eating at that meal will allow. The carbs being what seems to immediately counteract the low blood sugar.
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thats one way to look at it, but like we mentioned before it should be seen as the other way around. As in the insulin should be used to counteract the HIGH blood sugar.

Regardless, I think you're understanding that it's a balancing act of carbs and insulin. At the end of the day its a trial and error process, learning how your body and blood sugar responds to certain foods and then learning how to dose the insulin accordingly.

backintime said:
And how do you get it? Do you literally walk up to the pharmacy and ask for a box of insulin please?? Lol
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It's legal to buy OTC but if you approach them like that, they might refuse.
Before you go to buy it, do your research so you know A) which type of insulin to ask for, B) standard dosing protocols for diabetics if the pharmacist happens to be suspicious of you.
When I was more intimidated by buying it, I would use the excuse that I was picking it up for my bedridden father. A good ol sob story usually works well.
 
last year I did something like
40iu lantus morning
20 ish humalin R with meals X 3 or 4meals
Some humalog here and there too 10iu minimum


I find it somewhat tedious to manage all meals and lantus and humalin R and BG monitor tests

next time around I think I’ll probably just stick to insulin timing around workouts, maybe pre /post or with post workout meals
I usually pair insulin with hgh

Don’t really use it on its own unless less than 30iu and solely around workouts

Sometime this year I’d like to do 6-8iu pharma HGH and then probably 20iu insulin morning /pre
And 25-30 post

Lantus is great but doesn’t work with my lifestyle and busy job anymore so I probably won’t use it for foreseeable future
 
backintime said:
Thanks CoolRick and banditnolimit. I appreciate the insight.

I'm trying to do some research, get my head around it. It seems like insulin is the anabolic, helps force nutrients into our cells. But the side effect of insulin is low blood sugar. So for us to take extra insulin for the extra nutrient partitioning, we want to take as much as the amount of carbs we are eating at that meal will allow. The carbs being what seems to immediately counteract the low blood sugar.

That's what I'm starting to understand so far. So if someone was having a huge heavy carb meal they could take more insulin right before it than someone taking a small to medium carb meal. The insulting helps the nutrients but lowers the blood sugar and carbs help raise the blood sugar. So with extra insulin to help our nutrients we try to balance the other two factors. Like you said, flirting with low blood sugar from the extra helpful insulin, but not quite, by knowing how many carbs were eating will keep the peace with our levels. And I guess steroids with gh on top of it just adds to the symbiosis.

Am I a little more on point now? Haha. I'm kicking the idea around of adding it, but now where near ready to take action yet. I need a lot more knowledge then I'll see.

My next questions would be, how do you decide between fast and slow acting?

And how do you get it? Do you literally walk up to the pharmacy and ask for a box of insulin please?? Lol.
Click to expand...
I order from diabetes express for insulin usually
Easy website online
 
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