01/19/2026
This. Basically- this is stating that insulin being spiked and increased over a continuous time frame is what we are trying to avoid.
This is why I go over the hormone cycle with my clients. Eating protein in the morning to balance the level of insulin and cortisol first thing helps to keep it low throughout the day and keeps you from continuous snacking.
Insulin Spikes Arenāt the Problem.
Your Baseline Is.
Everyone is terrified of insulin spikes. Charts, CGMs, fear-driven food rules. Yet very few people understand insulin physiology well enough to fear the right thing. That misunderstanding is quietly fueling poor metabolic advice, flawed testing strategies, and unnecessary dietary dogma.
Insulin is not a single reaction to food. It is a continuous hormonal signal, and the body treats it that way. Broadly, insulin secretion operates in two modes: meal-stimulated secretion and basal secretion. Confusing these two is where most insulin conversations collapse.
Meal-stimulated insulin secretion is fast, sharp, and purposeful. Within 15 to 20 minutes of eating, insulin rises abruptly. This first-phase response exists to immediately blunt the post-meal glucose surge. A second, slower phase follows around 90 to 120 minutes later to clear residual glucose. This is not dysfunction. This is metabolic health. A pancreas that doesnāt spike insulin after a meal is not efficient, it is impaired. The narrative that insulin spikes are inherently harmful ignores basic physiology.
Basal insulin secretion is a completely different story. This is the background insulin signal present throughout the day, independent of meals. Its job is to regulate glucose between meals and during fasting. In the early morning hours, the liver releases glucose into the bloodstream. This is normal. Basal insulin counters that release. When basal insulin action is inadequate, fasting blood sugars rise.
Now introduce hepatic insulin resistance, most often driven by fat accumulation around the liver. The pancreas is forced to secrete more basal insulin just to keep fasting glucose in check. The result is elevated fasting insulin and elevated fasting glucose. This is not a food problem. This is a storage and signaling problem.
Fasting insulin, therefore, is deeply revealing. It represents two things combined: the insulin required for basic physiological function plus the insulin required to overcome insulin resistance. This is exactly why fasting insulin and fasting glucose are used to calculate HOMA-IR. They expose the hidden workload placed on the pancreas long before overt diabetes appears.
Post-prandial insulin tells a different but equally important story. PP insulin reflects the insulin required to manage dietary glucose plus the insulin required to overcome existing metabolic resistance. In simple terms, PP insulin equals basal insulin, meal-stimulated insulin, and resistance-driven insulin demand. Testing PP insulin without a proper carbohydrate-containing meal is metabolically meaningless. If you want to understand carbohydrate tolerance and metabolic health, the test must stress the system.
Ideally, fasting insulin should be below 5 and PP insulin below 30. These values reflect metabolic efficiency, not moral superiority. And this leads to one of the most misunderstood concepts in metabolic health: basal insulin is not the average of your insulin levels. If you treat it as an average, every spike appears pathological. It isnāt. Insulin spikes do not elevate fasting insulin. Chronic caloric excess, visceral fat accumulation, and sustained insulin resistance do.
In type 2 diabetes, one of the earliest defects is the loss of the first-phase insulin response. The pancreas loses its ability to rapidly suppress blood glucose after meals. This failure is not caused by insulin spikes. It is caused by prolonged metabolic overload that gradually erodes pancreatic function.
So hereās the uncomfortable question worth debating: are insulin spikes demonized because they cause disease, or because they are easy to see and fear? If basal insulin and hepatic insulin resistance are the real drivers of metabolic dysfunction, then our obsession with spikes is not just misguided, it may be delaying meaningful intervention.
If this challenged what you think you know about insulin, share it, argue with it, or test it. Metabolic health improves faster when beliefs are questioned, not protected.
