Liver, pancreas, insulin resistance? Hormonal balance

If you are getting insulin resistance rather than lack of insulin, it should be possible to distinguish these cases by testing insulin levels (c-peptide test).

High SHBG is often a reaction to a hormonal imbalance rather than the cause. If you are getting acne maybe your testosterone levels are temporarily high? This can happen due to borrelia picking up steroid hormones as it scavenges cholesterol, then the testosterone gets released during a herx, and this spike in testosterone levels can cause acne and SHBG production. Insulin resistance would be more likely due to cortisol or endorphins.

Hard to guess what might be causing the pain, but you might want to test 25-hydroxyvitamin D and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D to look for signs of hypercalcemia, which can injure your pancreas. If you suspect a fat metabolism disorder, then check for low carnitine.

Gallstones, or gallbladder dysfunction, can cause blood sugar issues. The pain of gallbladder issues would come on within an hour or two after eating, and would involve the locations you referenced. I experienced this, and it was absolutely miserable. The pain began on the right side (so I worried about my liver) and became more severe on the left (so I worried about my pancreas) because this is the direction in which things move through the biliary tract, so if there's inflammation originating around the gallbladder, then the whole biliary tract can become irritated or inflamed. Sometimes gallstones do not show up on ultrasound and other types of imaging, and "sludge" that can also stifle gallbladder function doesn't typically show up. Maybe explore this angle? People can resolve gallbladder issues with TUDCA, unfiltered apple juice, flushes involving olive oil, many herbs (easy to find lists online), and even yoga poses that mechanically stimulate biliary tract function. (Contrary to what most medical websites report, surgery is not always necessary!)

I hope that whatever you are experiencing passes quickly!

And they took my gallbladder last year for causing pains, being “hyperkinetic,” or overworking.

My gastric pains and function only seem to have gotten worse.

Thanks, astroman. I’ll be 33 in January. Definitely starting to feel it.

I’ve read a few places mentioning Bart possibly causing insulin resistance. Then, I was ketogenic due to suspected fungal colonization in my sinuses from living in moldy buildings (whenever I’d eat anything with sugar or starch, I’d get pressure, crawling, and inflammation in my sinuses).

Though, I didn’t realize that super high fatty foods, greasy foods, and dairy, might potentially have an impact on the liver and insulin resistance.

I don’t really know enough about the physiology, but I’ve seen some speaking of that. So, when I started eating high carbs all of a sudden last year (the desert healed my colonization, ‘cause no reactions after 8 years of living with them)…

I think it was really bad for my pancreas. I was eating ice cream all of the time. A whole tub. Tons of Mexican food this past year. I think Accutane just tipped the scales.

The ER said my pancreas and liver looked fine, though. It doesn’t feel like gastritis, or the symptoms I’ve read. Today, I ate a whole meal of chicken and brussel sprouts and it didn’t bother me.

I’m wondering how autoimmune pancreatitis would present. Or maybe it’s all just from my infections flaring, which they have been since about a year ago, and worsening…

Poorly treated, 16 year old infections. The most that helped was disulfiram, but afraid to take it now due to the side effects, as I was on it pretty regularly for 5 years.

Chronic inflammation. High cortisol. Poor diet. The 5.6 isn’t terrible, but I’d be happier with a lower number, so I’m going to eat something of a pancreatitis diet… forever.

And exercise and everything still too. The weird thing is my heart seems really affected after these digestive episodes.

My heart rate and BP were always 50s-60s sitting, 80s-90s standing… and BP 100s/60s. Now, the HR is 80s sitting and 100s standing, BP up 20 points on both numbers.

And I feel my heart bounding all day. Not as bad today, but still there. I’m worried Bartonella is finally ruining that too…

NotQuiteAntonio said...
I used to think it was okay to put tablespoons of oil (like 8) on my foods every day or eat 20 cheese sticks. Everything in moderation, right? 😭

i dont think there is evidence that healthy high fat foods, that people ate for the majority of our history, cause insulin resistance, especially if eaten along with other natural unprocessed foods.

insulin release is mainly driven by sugars from carbohydrates - and metabolic syndromes like Type 2 diabetes are largely driven by high carbohydrate consumption, especially consumption of highly processed and therefore highly available carbohydrates that are known to spike blood sugar and insulin - or at least we have a huge amount of observational studies and underlying mechanisms that point to that being the case.

that is not to say it's good for us to eat fats from any source though
some common oils are not good for us - several vegetable oils are linked to health issues - like colon cancer and inflammatory bowel disease.

cheese sticks and ice cream are ultra processed food - consumption of which are increasingly associated with a wide array of health issues.

just one example of processed food ingredients previously thought to be inert, but now starting to understood to have profound effects on human health, are artificial sweeteners. latest high quality research shows that these supposedly harmless substances drive insulin dysregulation and diabetes in a large subset of lab animals and people, depending on what gut bacteria reside in their guts.

the food industry wants you to believe all fat is fat and all cabs are carbs, and it doesn't matter where they come from as they are all the same - and not to look too closely at the labels for all the other junk that is in 90% of what is on the supermarket shelf as they are all harless anyway. This is complete tosh - just look around you at how well that is working for the average person.

so, i would say - if you are facing chronic health challenges - whichever school of thought you fall into -
high carb / low carb / vegetarian etc
don't focus on that - instead, one of the best things you can do for yourself in terms of stabilising and starting to recover from chronic disease - is to modify your diet to exclude as many of the modern processed foods as possible and eat only the things that were around when your grandparents were growing up.
ie real whole unprocessed foods.

What about bloating and excessive gas?

The two or actually now there’s three types of SIBO can do a lot of things depending on an individual. You would be fueling that with carbs

This fall I found out I had methane SIBO for 2 to 3 years, which is actually not SIBO but they still call that. It was causing all types of digestive and toilet problems, even on the keto diet.

Now I can eat anything and it comes out the other end normal.

However, I still have elevated fasting glucose. My after meal peaks are not that high though. It’s weird. So I limit carbs but not as far as Keto again. I will soon be trying a Continuous arm glucose monitor (and making notes on food to glucose levels).

If I can’t fix it, I will start my LDN, which sometimes helps blood glucose.