Possibly Insulin Resistant

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to the board and have a cat who was diagnosed with diabetes a few months ago. I use to work at the vet hospital so I'm pretty familiar to diabetes and know the vets know very well what they are doing. Bubba is on Lantus insulin and gets EVO dry and moist food as I don't like the ingredients in the prescription foods. His numbers are not changing very much and the vet has advised that we should be seeing some response by now. He is up to 5 units twice a day and his curves are still in the 400s the whole day. We have gone to 6 units for about a week now and this weekend I'll be doing another curve and then also checking once or twice in the middle of the night. The vet is not giving up hope but has a feeling he is insulin resistant. Has anybody else dealt with this and what did you do about it?

 

The easiest way to determine if he's resistent is to get the IGF-1 and IAA tests performed. The blood needs to be drawn, spun, and sent to Michigan State University. This link has information and the link to MSU: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=375

The tests are fairly cheap, and it would certainly let you know what you are dealing with. The tests could also come back negative and you might just have a high-dose cat w/o any underlying condition. There have been several cats that got up to "high" doses (6 u on the last one, Randi & Max) and then went into remission.

 

Dry food of any sort is a no-no first of all so the techs/vets don't know exactly what they are doing. Secondly, there are some cats that do poorly on one insulin and much better on another type. Good luck. It is possible that your cat may be insulin resistant, but I'd surely try another type before labeling him that. Also, an underlying infection as mentioned is a possibility as that would keep the numbers high w/o much effect from insulin doses.

I'm not familiar with the tests Boo mentioned, but that sounds like a viable option.

 

Hi
Any way of getting your kitty off of the dry food?
How were your increases done to get to the 6u? Were you following the Tilly Protocol?
My Max started at 1u in november. worked himself up to 6u by March and then started running down the dosing ladder and has been off insulin since April 3.
Definiately you should look into the testing as Boo discussed just to rule things out our as she said, your kitty could be a high dose kitty.

Have a look at Max's spreadsheet in my signature and see how our dosing went.
Hope all goes well.

 

how old is your insulin - when was your vial or cartridge started?

 

I thought buddy was insulin resistant...until I found this board.

Buddy was on too much insulin, 5u BID, my vet had no clue what he was doing and buddy ended up in the hospital. He was on way too much insulin.

The members of this board told me to get him off dry food, i was feeding evo dry by the way, and to start over at 1u BID once on the all wet diet.

I did just that...and thank god I did because I truly believe if I had kept increasing his insulin like the vet suggested he would be dead.

My suggestion is to stop feeding dry and go to a low carb wet...I use Janet and Binky's food cart with Fancy Feast below 10% carbs...the same day I took the dry food away I started buddy over on 1u BID. We use the tilly protocol here...we hold a dose for 6 cycles, meaning 3 days, if we don't see the action we want during the cycle, not the pre-shot number, we increase the dose by .25u.

My vet started buddy on 1.00u and never even suggested .25 or .50u increases...we totally missed buddy's perfect dose and we would have never found it if it weren't for the people on this board...

I thought buddy was resistant to insulin as well...but it turned out he was being overdosed everyday because we missed his perfect dose which ended up being 3.25u...

check out our spreadsheet...you can see our journey for yourselves...

 

Harley was (at first) thought to be insulin resistant. At one point, he was on 12 units NPH twice a day. He was eventually diagnosed with IBD. He is on 6.5 units Lantus AM, 6 units PM and 1 ml budesonide every evening. He is doing great but bg still in the 300's but his vets do not seem to think it is a problem. You might want them to check out IBD.

Pattie