This is where I will post everything on the sidelines to help reinforce healthy habits in myself
This is just after beyond meat and STRAWBERRIES. Last time I did it in SF with raspberries it didn’t budge. I ate LOTS of old chia seed over the last two days
Six ways metabolic health affects longevity - Levels . I finally started using a levels CGM in october 2021 and will report all results here.
OMG I JUST DISCOVERED CASEY MEANS WHY DIDN’T I DO THIS EARLIER. i only did it after another scary glucose spike after oatmeal (this means I’m eating much MUCH less oatmeal from here on out). I’m going to try beans.
I noticed my glucose spikes have been worse recently (than 1 month ago in Europe and than in October-2021 when I was in SF [there, AGAIN, i was surprised by an oatmeal spike to 150, but before then applies didn’t spike my CGM that much]) and I don’t quite know why. I’ve been eating less almonds/nuts now than I did late 2021-11.
Some observations about Europe:
On the flight to Paris (11-21/11-22), I noticed glucose spike to almost 150 after eating two breads, but 150 is not THAT bad compared to what I’ve seen since then. Paris => Kovenhavn: i eat half of a small brownie, no meaningful elevations. It’s the next day and I don’t sleep at all. I explore Kobenhavn (buy LOTS of mushrooms + broccoli) to feast
(11-23) at Kobenhavn: leave my airbnb to meet Morten and all his grad students. I refuse to eat the bread. I email Maggie a lot that day. They show me around his lab, produced an incredible experience for me (Morten showed me SO MUCH about his slides). I hang around for a bit to talk to his grad students (many who I friended on facebook - I didn’t friend many other from Kobenhavn). I finally take the train to Lund and get hosted in Erik’s apartment (we get LOTS of groceries together: LOADS of nuts, broccoli, mushrooms). I catch up with Erik for a few hrs late that night (seeing his neurotech setup and everything). I also get the 7T MRI brain scan I NEEDED [the reason for my ENTIRE swedish trip to begin with]
(11-24) Erik takes me around Lund and lets me visit his mom at his mom’s office (was great). I drink a little of apple juice but not much.
At Erik’s party in Hoor Sweden, I pre-ate lots of nuts/veggies (no spikes).and meet many of Erik’s friends including Mans, who created the european CGM SugarTop to read Abbott meters. It is here where Davide joins in, and invites Alexander Rasmussen to come over. They both spontaneously decide to follow me around in north europe, making the trip funner. I inform my Stockholm and Helsinki hosts, and they are fine with hosting TWO extra people (lol the spontaneity)
(11-25) then in the very early-morning I succumbed to the vegan breadcrumbs. Still, glucose only went up to 150 and no more.
Then I took train back to Copenhagen => ALMOST MISSED THE FLIGHT AND GOT HIIT => ate more tomatoes and nuts in Stora Coop Huddinge, nothing interesting.
(11-26) Next day (full day in Stockholm), I had my typical nuts/avocados + cole slaw, no interesting elevations. Sam Hincks takes me to a coworking space. Visit the EA Party there (I bring patrick hammer and sam hincks w/me to party). Simon Koser says I’m the favorite of everyone at the party. Beatrice Evers also engages with me. Late in the night I get a bean meal which doesn’t increase my glucose too much.
Late in the night, Davide tells me about dropout TKS culture and gives names of TKS’ers I should go after. I am SO intrigued.
(11-27) Wake up SUPER-early for Helsinki flight. The train doesn’t work, so we get a taxi early. Flying to helsinki I took the blueberry drink, not knowing it had added sugar. It was still so low. I ate A LOT of carrots + offered cashews the first day (i buy 1lb of carrots + LOADS of broccoli + my friend got cashews for me and I devour a 450 bag of cashews). I ask the K-Market Meclu cashier (SUPERCUTE btw) about how to find the legendary finnish pulled oats (they point me out to beanit IN ADDITION to pulled oats). I later meet up with the finnish stem cell prof day1.
(11-28) Day2 i go to a tour of downtown helsinki (meet up with someone who DISCOVERED ME ON TWITTER THROUGH my rapamycin.news post), drink a small espresso (I DIDNT KNOW HOW SMALL IT WAS) get lost in a few hours trying to find the 180 bus northwards and visit jette. Later that night, I discover that Alexander will leave soon. I will go to Estonia alone.
on my ESTONIA day (11-29) [which more than one longevity protagonist has had], a friend [who discovers me via EA Essti] takes me to tour Tallinn. I eat my remaining finnish beanit (no real elevations) + remaining mushrooms and tomatoes I bring from finland.
11-30: wake up late in Tallinn, eat loads of broccoli + salsa at the airport, fly to Copenhagen, Alexander picks me up and I run/HIIT to the hacker house and then later to his house that night (where I get a free infusion of nuts). Nothing interesting happens later.
12-02: I eat one of the salads at Kobenhavn airport, then wait for a bit on the Kovenhavn => Paris airport
On the flight back from Paris to Boston (and from Boston to SF), I ended up eating the airline bread again because I couldn’t find anything else, but the spikes were surprisingly not that bad (they went up to maybe like 145 max but nothing as bad as my 1lb of strawberries on the very day I write this)
I replaced my CGM when I arrived in SF on Dec3 for foresight vision weekend. I crash in Genesis later that night to come to foresight institute the next day (12-04) where I eat LOADS of the roasted laver + accidentally drink TOO MUCH caffeine in the oatmilk (NOT GOOD b/c OMG oatmilk spikes calories like crazy).
Oat milk at the foresight vision weekend conference REALLY spiked it to 180 and then it went down to 120 for a while without going back down (usually insulin will take it down to 100, but lately it has gotten down to 120 without going further down). I literally thought the sensor was poorly calibrated, but it did go down the day after.
Memory of what happens later is not as day-to-day precise as what happened each day in Europe.
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In SF when I came from EA => fiftyyears event (2021-12-13), I noticed that the entire 600 calories of beyond meat + berries did NOT increase my glucose. It was stable for a long time (even after the copious fifty years vegetable based meals), but THEN i stayed hungry and ended up falling for an apple. The apple spiked my glucose more than anything else, but it wasn’t THAT bad (ok, like up to 140)
I had a horrid postprandial spike just in response to 1-lb strawberries [also after 500 cals of beyond meat]. I wonder if eating old chia seeds worened my insulin resistance that day. like NORMALLY chia seeds are supposed to promote insulin resistance, but omega-3’s oxidize so easily, and the omega-3’s i ate for christmas were “use by october 2021”… b/c i got them slightly before covid and didn’t store them in the cold… [and stores were closed in christmas]. my fasting glucose right now is in the mid-90s (tho it’s with eating A LOT OF NUTS] - 70 to 85 is normally the helathiest fasting glucose [as casey means says] and mine USUALLY is down to that level during fasts (for the last few years), but this month has been unusually high for some strange reason. Also not that much exercise lately.
This spike after CARROTS in Ottawa! Screenshot_20211229-110148|225x500
Previously ate LOADS of Cole slaw previous day and then didn’t eat at all for the flight to Ottawa asides from 200 cals almonds
you know, MAYBE IT’S THE METFORMIN THAT’S INDUCING MY INSULIN RESISTANCE…
I should stop taking it for now and see what happens (though it will be hard to fully tease out b/c I’m now officially afraid to eat fruit)
Ugh I hate taking fruit out of my diet but it’s not the worst possible thing. It’s far less painful than eating less
If you’re taking acarbose or canagliflozin you’ll see that same flat blood glucose curve if you eat pretty much anything…
Most definitely not with acarbose (it doesn’t blunt the spikes that much).
I just ate a kiwi fruit after a huge meal of celery + nuts (aka a full stomach) and it didn’t increase my BG at all (or only to like 107 and now it’s 92)
fasting finally fell down to 78. God that last “period of unusually high fasting glucose” was frightening (by casey means’ 88% of americans are metabolically unhealthy standards) but I controlled it. I think I can afford to eat fruit again now! (but only after eating lots of veggies/nuts FIRST)
Oddly soluble fiber doesn’t seemed to be considered with the same level of excitement as alpha-glucosidase inhibitors or SGLT-2 inhibitors.
For e.g. I wonder what amount of psyllium consumed prior to a meal is equivalent to 100mg of acarbose, or 300mg of canagliflozin when it comes to blood glucose levels as observed in a CGM (I probably need to buy one already).
A side comment… Mike Lustgarten recommends oligosaccharides fructooligosaccharid like Inulin as the best form of fiber:
Hot pot (only veggies). Watermelon towards the end of it. Lots of nuts from time to time. (I do eat to the pt where I’m full)
Is this with use of any medications?
none other than rapamycin/metformin (which don’t really affect my glucose AT ALL)
Nothing interesting hapepned in the next 8 days (I kept my glucose steady and it never spiked) b/c of a constant diet of nuts, veggies, and salsa. But then I got it replaced today (after an entire day of no recording) and FUCK, I ate someone’s chickpeas + strawberries and it spiked ALL the way to 190 before going down to 89 and then back to 132. UGH. I’m going to need this on all the time
I also noticed my blood pressure seems to have gotten to 130/80 recently. in the past, it was ALWAYS 100/60 or 100/70 no matter what I did, even when I did stimulants (or worse… went through psychedelic nightmares) or was under heavy stress. And now THIS? What the fuck is happening… I noticed an increase to like 120/75 when I was in Sweden late November, it seemed that the increase started to happen then (I also gained some weight in the meantime due to all the heavy nut meals…)
Yes - me too. I just purchased a new blood pressure monitor - and my BP is up to 130 or so over 85.
It seems that this may be a side effect of rapamycin. I wonder if the impact varies by dose or dose timing - e.g. is BP higher close to the peak blood sirolimus levels, does the change go away over the week following the dose?
Holy shit really? Yeah, I dosed 10mg rapamycin with grapefruit juice on Jan2 (day before I left ottawa for toronto). 7 days later I had my BP scare…
Its strange that metformin doesn’t impact your blood glucose. Are you taking the XR (extended release) version? Are you taking it twice a day?
SGLT2 inhibitors lower BP (you mentioned in another thread that you recently ran out empagliflozin, so maybe that’s why?). At first my BP seemed to go up after starting rapa, but it’s fantastic these days, maybe due to addition of SGLT2 (yet another reason these two seem like such an ideal combination).
