Originally Posted by glenntaj

--to really get a look at your patterns and see what stage of metabolic dysfunction you may or may not be at, you might want to try a longer glucose tolerance test, with draws of both glucose and insulin every half hour through four hours.

This is the way I get it done, to monitor the reactive hypoglycemia I tend to get due to insulin resistance. In the insulin resistant/pre-diabetic, often the pancreas can produce enough insulin to keep blood sugar relatively in check, but often, due to resistance of the cells, it has to overproduce to do so, and so there is a big insulin spike in the first to second hour, followed by a considerable dip in blood sugar in the third to fourth hour, often down to hypoglycemic levels, then a re-normalization. But these patters are often missed unless one takes more frequent measurements and includes both a a fasting insulin level pre-drink, and insulin levels with the other draws for glucose levels.

Admittedly, sitting for four to five hours to do this is boring--and one cannot exercise, even walk much, during the process or the results get skewed. Bring a good book or an ipod.