The relationship between dairy consumption, insulin, and our health can be confusing. It\u2019s easy to see why: The most common types of dairy undeniably spike our insulin levels, and elevated insulin has been linked to dozens of diseases\u2014most diseases, in fact. When insulin is high, your body holds onto body fat. And insulin resistance, which is when your body doesn\u2019t respond to insulin and must release large amounts of the hormone, makes it harder to lose body fat and is the precipitating factor in a host of degenerative diseases.<\/p>\n
So, dairy is bad, right? No. The opposite, in fact.<\/p>\n
Insulin is an old, old hormone. Evolution has preserved its structure across hundreds of millions of years and hundreds of thousands of species. Fish, insects, reptiles, birds, and mammals all secrete insulin with fairly similar amino acid arrangements (insulin from certain species of fish has even been clinically effective in humans), so, clearly, it is a vital hormone required by life to flourish and prosper.<\/p>\n
What is insulin good for?<\/p>\n
We need insulin to shuttle all sorts of nutrients into cells, like protein and glycogen into muscles.<\/p>\n
We need insulin to activate certain antioxidant systems.<\/p>\n
We need insulin to optimize our cognitive function.<\/p>\n
In other words, insulin is there for a reason, and \u201cspikes\u201d of insulin are normal as long as they go back down.\u00a0It\u2019s chronically elevated<\/em> insulin, especially fasting insulin <\/em>(high insulin levels in the absence of food), and insulin resistance that are harbingers of disease.<\/p>\n When you\u2019re insulin resistant, insulin is less effective at shuttling nutrients into cells.<\/p>\n When you\u2019re insulin resistant, those antioxidant systems dependent on insulin can\u2019t switch on.<\/p>\n When your brain is insulin resistant, as Alzheimer\u2019s patients\u2019 brains are, your cognition suffers.<\/p>\n Insulin isn\u2019t the problem. Improper, dysregulated insulin signaling is the problem.<\/p>\n Which brings us to dairy and its effect on insulin.<\/p>\n Dairy intake, you see, stimulates insulin secretion. Depending on the type of dairy, it can stimulate insulin a lot or almost not at all. And although we usually think about carbohydrates stimulating insulin, with dairy, it\u2019s the combination of protein (whey and casein) and carbs (lactose) that stimulates insulin secretion.<\/strong><\/p>\n In one study, milk was even more insulinogenic than white bread, but less so than whey protein with added lactose and cheese with added lactose. Another study found that full-fat fermented milk products and regular full-fat milk were about as insulinogenic as white bread.<\/p>\n What\u2019s going on here? <\/strong>It comes down to the amino acid composition of dairy proteins, specifically the amino acids leucine, valine, lysine, and isoleucine. These are the truly insulinogenic proteins, and they\u2019re highest in whey (which is probably why whey protein elicits the biggest insulin response).<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t new. I\u2019ve written about protein\u2019s insulinogenicity before, but dairy goes above and beyond Primal protein sources like meat, eggs, and fish. The question we should be asking is this: how important is the acute insulin response?<\/p>\n A glass of milk and a comparably caloric slice of white bread elicit the same insulin response, but the comparisons stop there.<\/p>\n The milk gives you bioavailable protein, lots of calcium, healthy dairy fats, riboflavin, B12, and small but significant amounts of other vitamins and minerals<\/strong>. That protein will improve muscle protein synthesis. That calcium will improve skeletal health. Those fats will improve metabolic rate. That riboflavin will help you turn the fats and carbs into useable energy. All of which translates to better metabolic health.<\/p>\n The slice of white bread gives you carbs and little else<\/strong>. Maybe some vitamins and minerals from industrial fortification in a form your body has trouble assimilating.<\/p>\n The two foods do not have the same metabolic impact despite having similar effects on insulin.<\/p>\n Or let\u2019s look at kefir, a food high in dairy proteins which stimulate insulin secretion<\/strong>. When you feed kefir, insulin rises. And yet when you feed kefir to rodents, it directly increases their insulin sensitivity, reduces their blood pressure, and lowers their waist circumference. An insulin spike happened, but insulin signaling improved. Foods are far more than just their effects on insulin levels.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n A 2019 review of available research asked this very question. After reviewing 30 randomized controlled trials, the authors concluded that dairy intake \u201chas a beneficial effect on HOMA-IR, waist circumference, and body weight.\u201d On average throughout the studies, subjects who were randomly selected to eat dairy improved their insulin sensitivity, lowered their waist circumferences, and lost body weight.<\/p>\n This study found that dairy did increase insulin resistance, but there are some holes. Children were given strict diets of either lean beef or skim milk, and the skim milk diet induced hyperinsulinemia and insulin resistance after just seven days. It sounds troublesome, but they used skim milk \u2013 a refined, fundamentally altered food. The milk group also ate 13% more calories than the meat group. Seeing as how excess calorie intakes are a reliable way to trigger insulin resistance, I\u2019m not convinced that milk was the culprit.<\/p>\n Another study found that dairy improved blood pressure but failed to improve insulin and other metabolic risk parameters in overweight and obese subjects, but it used low-fat dairy instead of full-fat dairy. And again, the insulin numbers didn\u2019t get worse; they just didn\u2019t improve.<\/p>\n If full-fat dairy really did induce insulin resistance, we\u2019d see it in the literature. You wouldn\u2019t see studies showing that people who ate the most dairy fat were at the lowest risk for diabetes. You also wouldn\u2019t see studies suggesting that if anything dairy\u00a0reduces<\/em> the risk of diabetes and heart disease.<\/p>\n Acute insulin spikes are different from chronically elevated insulin levels, especially when it comes to appetite regulation and metabolic derangement. Insulinogenic foods and insulin spikes can be problematic if you\u2019re insulin resistant, but dairy seems to improve insulin resistance.<\/strong><\/p>\n Dairy\u2019s not for everyone. I don\u2019t like milk, so I stick to good cheese, pastured butter, cream and the whey in Primal Fuel when I\u2019m in a hurry, while avoiding most straight-up milk, but I think good milk may be fine for many people. As always, experiment. Dairy seems to stall weight loss for some people, so you might try taking it out of the diet if you can\u2019t lean out. <\/strong>Dairy also seems to improve strength and mass gains for lifters, so you might try adding it if you\u2019ve been lifting particularly hard. See what works, and what doesn\u2019t. Insulin doesn\u2019t have to be feared as much as it should be managed, just so long as the rest of your metabolic toolkit is in order, you\u2019ve got stress dialed in (or out), you\u2019re getting good sleep, and you\u2019re putting in the necessary physical work.<\/p>\n In the end, personal results matter most.<\/strong> Health outcomes concern us; detached insulin response numbers sitting in a table in some paper mean little if your personal experiences corroborate the evidence that consistently shows that untouched, full-fat dairy likely promotes better glucose tolerance, better weight control, and more resistance to chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease. On the other hand, those studies mean little to the person whose weight loss stalls after a couple glasses of non-homogenized, raw pastured milk. Try as we might, we can\u2019t ignore our own experiences. Have your experiences with dairy been positive or negative? Let the answer to that question supersede what PubMed says.<\/p>\n Some suggestions:<\/strong><\/p>\n What are your experiences with dairy\u2019s insulinogenic effects? They are very real, but do they seem to bother you? Are you worried about insulin spikes in response to dairy protein?<\/p>\n\n
Do Insulin Spikes Make a Food Unhealthy?<\/h2>\n
Does Dairy Cause Insulin Resistance?<\/h2>\n
Does Dairy Work For You?<\/h2>\n
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