Fasting Insulin

[Greg Davis]

So I finally got around to getting a doctor to do some bloodwork including fasting insulin. I haven't heard any specifics on this metric from people on this board but just thought I would share since it seems relevant and I did some quick research on it.

fasting insulin

Note what these have said:
DeVany- should be below 5
Rosedale- sees improvements in patients when they get it below 8
Eades- aim for < 10

I'm assuming being American they are referring to mcIU/ML which has a normal testing range- ~ 6- 35. But everywhere else I think they use pmol/L which has a normal testing range ~ 40-190pmol/L. (conversion factor is 6.945)

My fasting insulin came up at 6 pmol/L (converts to 0.86 mcIU/mL?)
i suspect this is not accurate at this low end and just reflects the fact that I bottomed out on their scale? don't exactly know what to make of it since my(most) doctor(s) thinks its absurb to be looking at it.. the other thing is there is an "R" beside the 6 on my test results.. not sure what that means.

Has anyone else been keeping track of this test?

[Jason Naubur]

strange since I assume you are in Canada.

I just had my Glucose-fasting and hit 4.8mmol/L. The little chart on the page reads:

3.6-6.0 Normal fasting glucose
6.1-6.9 Impaired fasting glucose
>6.9 Provisional diagnosis of diabetes mellitus.

Are you sure it was in pmol/L?

From wikipedia:
The U.S. uses mg/dL. The rest of the world, including Canada and Mexico, uses what is referred to as the "World Standard" of mmol/L.[citation needed]

To convert blood glucose readings:

* Divide the mg/dL figure by 18 (or multiply by 0.055) to get mmol/L.
* Multiply the mmol/L figure by 18 (or divide by 0.055) to get mg/dL.

[Greg Davis]

glucose is a different test than insulin

[Mark Gebhard]

When I had my fasting insulin tested it came out off scale, <2 mcIU/ml (or maybe it was <5, I don't remember exactly). I'm pretty sure the R next to your number means it was retested, since they usually do that with unusual readings. As long as you don't have Type 1 diabetes, the lower the number the better for health, I would guess. But I'm not a doctor.