My glucose says pre-diabetic. My insulin says otherwise. The same number can mean opposite things. Here’s how to tell.

Hey Reader, Dr Karl here.

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My fasting glucose came back 102.
The lab flags that high — technically pre-diabetic. My A1c is 5.6, which sits one tenth of a point below the pre-diabetes line.

If that were your panel… most practitioners would start the conversation about carbohydrates and metformin

Now here are the numbers that were on the same page: fasting insulin 4.5. HDL 117. Triglycerides 51.

Read together, that’s not insulin resistance. That’s a metabolism running on fat. The glucose reading isn’t a warning — it’s what a fat-adapted body looks like when you measure it with a tool designed for a sugar-burning one.
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This is the whole shift, and it’s worth sitting with: a single lab value is the lowest-resolution reading in medicine.

The same number means opposite things depending on what’s next to it. Glucose 102 with an insulin of 4.5 and an HDL of 117 is one story.

Glucose 102 with an insulin of 18 and an HDL of 38 is a completely different story — and the same doctor would read them the same way.

Look at the pairs. Not the values. The pairs.

There’s a second example in the video that’s even sharper — IGF-1, the marker most practitioners are afraid to order, where a “high” result can mean you’re thriving or in trouble depending on one other number:

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Talk soon,
Dr. Goldkamp

That’s the whole reason I wrote Unlocking Optimal Metabolic Health: A Data-Driven Approach to Thriving at Any Age — to show you how to read your own labs, see the patterns, and act on real data instead of generic reference ranges.

📗 Grab the book Here: website​​

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