Blood Glucose and Insulin Resistance

In people who are not diabetic nor pre-diabetic, low insulin from not eating tends to drive the hormone glucagon. It tells the liver to make sugar while you are fasting, and it usually does this from glycerol. However I suspect that in us lactate is a sometimes a more important source.

For those of us who are type 2 diabetic, insulin resistance in the pancreatic alpha cells means they do not sense insulin, and produce glucagon lots more. Which means the liver is on, making glucose, all the time. Metformin and GLP-1 agonists counter this liver production of glucose.

Now in healthy people protein also drives glucagon release. I seem to need a lot of protein, so that becomes an issue. If some of the data on citric acid cycle intermediates and low aminos feeding into them is reliable, then we need the aminos to keep our mitochondria functioning.

So, theoretically, in a metabolically healthy person eating a little protein as a late snack might help keep the glucose up, but as cortisol is released overnight I think this will usually take care of itself. Conversely eating a starch or sugar snack will briefly drive glucose up, but the rising insulin will drive it down again and may lead to hypoglycemia.

Fructose is a special case, the fruit sugar, which is one out of two of the molecules in sucrose or table sugar. With a meal that spikes insulin the body always turns it to fat, which can drive weight gain and fatty liver unless the person is very physically active, such as an athlete. However when otherwise fasting it might keep blood glucose up all night. This is theoretical, it would need to be confirmed with actual blood glucose data.