Potassium Or Insulin As The 'insulin' Effect

nigma

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There is a somewhat well known idea of Ray's that says insulin plays a smaller part in the insulin effect than insulin itself. While potassium looks to be the main actor in getting glucose into cells.

from 'Glycemia, starch, and sugar in context'
"Insulin is important in the regulation of blood sugar, but its importance has been exaggerated because of the diabetes/insulin industry. Insulin itself has been found to account for only about 8% of the "insulin-like activity" of the blood, with potassium being probably the largest factor. There probably isn't any process in the body that doesn't potentially affect blood sugar."

I've been looking into the interaction between insulin, potassium and glucose and reading some papers. Was looking for the original paper which found that an atom of potassium is needed for every glucose molecule to enter a cell. Haven't found it yet but did find some interesting stuff. Such as, in low potassium people a fraction of the insulin they produce is of an 'abnormal molecular species' which is 'poorly active'. Is this describing insulin resistance? I thought it was considered that something was wrong with the insulin receptors rather then insulin itself.

Kidney Int. 1977 Jun;11(6):443-52.
Role of glucoregulatory hormones in potassium homeostasis.
Knochel JP.
Role of glucoregulatory hormones in potassium homeostasis. - PubMed - NCBI

upload_2018-10-6_20-21-47.png



This got me thinking of Gilbert Lings model. As he sees K+ adsorbing onto proteins inside the cell in the resting state, I wonder how general this idea is. I know the extra cellular fluid such as blood has less potassium than inside the cell, but is it possible other proteins also have potassium adsorbed to give them the correct conformation? In the case of insulin, could this abnormal species that was found have some missing potassium? Or perhaps the receptor is missing some adsorbed K+ resulting in lowered function?

Does anyone know how they characterize proteins? Would electrolytes like K, Na, Mg, Ca come off the protein due to the way they are characterized?.

There are lots of hints in this paper that support the idea that diabetes is caused by potassium deficiency. The fact that Ray Peat's father and others were treated with brewers yeast for diabetes is also supportive of the idea since brewers yeast has a very high K/Na ratio.
 
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I’ll dig deeper here, VERY interesting theory. Potassium:Sodium ratio is quite the central equation to get extracellular material into the cell

Also is a cofactor for cholesterol metabolism as per some rat studies I’ve seen.

The Western diet has far too much sodium, too little potassium, and a bunch of fat on top. No wonders CVD,T2D,metabolic syndrome, auto immune disease et al. exploded.
 
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nigma

nigma

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Reference [7] from the reference [65] paper:

Diabetologia
October 1974, Volume 10, Issue 5, pp 469–474 | Cite as
Circulating proinsulin-like component in man: Increased proportion in hypoinsulinemic states

The authors propose that these proinsulin-like components are produced from immature B-cell granules.

upload_2018-10-7_9-11-29.png


and they explain that there are at least 2 types of insulin found by radio-immunoassay:
upload_2018-10-7_9-33-44.png


Wikipedia:
'Proinsulin is the prohormone precursor to insulin made in the beta cells of the islets of Langerhans, specialized regions of the pancreas. In humans, proinsulin is encoded by the INS gene.[1][2] The islets of Langerhans only secrete between 1% and 3% of proinsulin intact.[3] However, because proinsulin has a longer half life than insulin, it can account for anywhere from 5–30% of the insulin-like structures circulating in the blood.[3] There are higher concentrations of proinsulin after meals and lower levels when a person is fasting.[3] Additionally, while proinsulin and insulin have structural differences, proinsulin does demonstrate some affinity for the insulin receptor. Due to the relative similarities in structure, proinsulin can produce between 5% and 10% of the metabolic activity similarly induced by insulin.[3]'

So I think proinsulin-like component is what they called proinsulin in the 1970's.

Its interesting that these papers talk about how serum potassium is not representative of total body potassium. I have not seen any evidence that it is able to be measured even today. This is a big problem as you cannot definitively make the case that low total body potassium is the cause for any disease. Also if one is trying to replete themselves by supplementing potassium, they will not be able to know when this is complete. Serum potassium will be high initially but only because the body is not used to putting away so much into the tissues. I guess if you knew how much potassium a healthy body contained, and you measured how much was lost in urine, poop and sweat, you could try intake an appropriate amount. A healthy body is a subjective thing though, would you take an American or an amazonian who eats 8.5g+ K a day and almost no Na, whats the correct baseline?

Research by Bruce Ames has shown widespread magnesium deficiency, and it is known that magnesium is needed to retain potassium. It is also known that most western people do not meet the RDI for potassium, so it would be expected that most western people would be low potassium.


 
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Nice reference.

I can’t tell what the perfect amount of potassium is, in today’s context of high sodium availability then more K+ sure sounds better.

One of the biggest variables for a better health is indeed Magnesium. I’m shooting for over a gram a day without supplements... as of now I’m pretty close with:
- magnesium rich waters
- buckwheat
- tubers
- bananas
- cocoa
- trace magnesium in other plants

It happens that most of those are loaded with potassium (potatoes!).
 

fradon

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There is a somewhat well known idea of Ray's that says insulin plays a smaller part in the insulin effect than insulin itself. While potassium looks to be the main actor in getting glucose into cells.

from 'Glycemia, starch, and sugar in context'
"Insulin is important in the regulation of blood sugar, but its importance has been exaggerated because of the diabetes/insulin industry. Insulin itself has been found to account for only about 8% of the "insulin-like activity" of the blood, with potassium being probably the largest factor. There probably isn't any process in the body that doesn't potentially affect blood sugar."

I've been looking into the interaction between insulin, potassium and glucose and reading some papers. Was looking for the original paper which found that an atom of potassium is needed for every glucose molecule to enter a cell. Haven't found it yet but did find some interesting stuff. Such as, in low potassium people a fraction of the insulin they produce is of an 'abnormal molecular species' which is 'poorly active'. Is this describing insulin resistance? I thought it was considered that something was wrong with the insulin receptors rather then insulin itself.

Kidney Int. 1977 Jun;11(6):443-52.
Role of glucoregulatory hormones in potassium homeostasis.
Knochel JP.
Role of glucoregulatory hormones in potassium homeostasis. - PubMed - NCBI

View attachment 10880


This got me thinking of Gilbert Lings model. As he sees K+ adsorbing onto proteins inside the cell in the resting state, I wonder how general this idea is. I know the extra cellular fluid such as blood has less potassium than inside the cell, but is it possible other proteins also have potassium adsorbed to give them the correct conformation? In the case of insulin, could this abnormal species that was found have some missing potassium? Or perhaps the receptor is missing some adsorbed K+ resulting in lowered function?

Does anyone know how they characterize proteins? Would electrolytes like K, Na, Mg, Ca come off the protein due to the way they are characterized?.

There are lots of hints in this paper that support the idea that diabetes is caused by potassium deficiency. The fact that Ray Peat's father and others were treated with brewers yeast for diabetes is also supportive of the idea since brewers yeast has a very high K/Na ratio.

an article i read I remember them saying that cortisol has the ability to allow glucose to enter the cell even if the person has insulin resistance and it does it with potassium as cortisol either raises or releases potassium to antagonize aldosterone which raises sodium in times of stress.

insulin is mainly focussed on amino acids and glucose while potassium can allow everything in.

here's another discussion on the topic

Potassium and Insulin resistance? : nutrition
 
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If Cortisol releases potassium, does potassium keep Cortisol in check?

A high sodium high potassium (high calcium high magnesium) diet sure looks better by the day. Cheese and tubers...
 
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nigma

nigma

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an article i read I remember them saying that cortisol has the ability to allow glucose to enter the cell even if the person has insulin resistance and it does it with potassium as cortisol either raises or releases potassium to antagonize aldosterone which raises sodium in times of stress.

insulin is mainly focussed on amino acids and glucose while potassium can allow everything in.

here's another discussion on the topic

Potassium and Insulin resistance? : nutrition

Interesting, I'll have a look at the reddit.

Cortisol is catabolic, and since potassium is the dominant ion in the cell it would be released into the blood stream when a cell is goes through apoptosis, but I'm not actually sure if cortisol triggers apoptosis.
 

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