Insulin sensitivity tracking — cheapest reasonable proxy
51 posts
Cheap, actionable proxy for IS tracking across a cycle. Full HOMA-IR is fasting glucose + fasting insulin (expensive if not covered). Anything cheaper that's useful?
5 Replies
35 posts
HbA1c is cheap (~$20 at most labs, sometimes pharmacy-run) and gives you 90-day average glycemia. Not IS per se but the best cheap proxy available.
45 posts
CGM for 10 days at ~$80 gives you post-prandial excursion data which is IS-adjacent. Actionable within a cycle.
34 posts
TG:HDL ratio from standard lipid panel is a decent IS proxy. Cheap because it's bundled.
51 posts
Good suggestions. Probably going to use HbA1c + 10-day CGM as my standard IS tracking going forward.
32 posts
honestly the cgm route is kinda underrated for this. yeah it costs a bit but you actually see what your body's doing in real time instead of just guessing based on a number. fasting glucose tells you almost nothing about how you're handling carbs mid-cycle when you're probably hammering them. hba1c is useful but it's lagging so much you won't catch problems until they're already baked in. if you're running a cycle and actually care about insulin sensitivity and not just the number, the cgm data is way more actionable imo