12 guides
Metabolic health
Blood sugar, insulin resistance, prediabetes and visceral fat: what the tests show and where the thresholds sit.
Tests and markers
Triglyceride-to-HDL Ratio: What It Reveals About Insulin Resistance
It's arithmetic anyone can do from a routine lipid panel, and online it circulates as a stand-in for an insulin-resistance test. No major guideline body has adopted a cutoff for it, and that gap changes what a single number from your own labs can honestly tell you.
Limited evidence18 Sept 2026
What Counts as a Normal A1C Level?
The lab slip says 'normal' or it doesn't, but the number sits on a continuum most people never see, and the cut points depend on which body drew the line and why.
Strong evidence18 Sept 2026
What Is a Glucose Tolerance Test, and What Do the Results Mean?
A fasting glucose gives you one number at rest, and an A1C averages three months of it. This test asks something neither can: how fast your body actually clears glucose once it has real work to do.
Strong evidence18 Sept 2026
What Is HOMA-IR, and How Do You Calculate It?
A HOMA-IR score can read 'optimal' on one calculator and 'resistant' on another from the exact same blood draw. The formula isn't the confusing part — the missing agreement on what the number means is.
Moderate evidence18 Sept 2026
Conditions and symptoms
Dawn Phenomenon: Why Blood Sugar Is Highest in the Morning
A high reading on waking looks like last night's food catching up with you. Usually it isn't — it's a hormone surge that starts hours before you're awake, and it is not the only mechanism that can produce the same number.
Moderate evidence18 Sept 2026
Early Signs and Symptoms of Insulin Resistance
Search this phrase and you get the same recycled list: fatigue, sugar cravings, brain fog, a sudden appetite for carbs. Almost none of that comes from a diagnostic source. Two things that do.
Moderate evidence18 Sept 2026
Reactive Hypoglycemia: Why Blood Sugar Crashes After Eating
The shakiness that lands an hour or two after a meal gets called reactive hypoglycemia by almost everyone who has it, and confirmed with an actual glucose reading by almost no one — which turns out to be two different diagnoses wearing one name.
Moderate evidence18 Sept 2026
Skinny Fat: When Visceral Fat Is High but Weight Looks Normal
A body-composition scan can flag real metabolic risk in someone whose scale and BMI both read completely normal — because neither of those numbers was built to measure what actually predicts it.
Moderate evidence18 Sept 2026
The 5 Metabolic Syndrome Criteria, Explained
Meeting three of the five checks earns the label, but which three you meet, and whether a number you already treated with medication still counts, changes what the diagnosis is actually telling you.
Strong evidence18 Sept 2026
The Prediabetes Diet That Actually Lowers Blood Sugar
Prediabetes diet advice online is mostly generic clean eating with a diagnosis attached. The trial evidence says something narrower: which part of that advice actually moves your risk, and which part is noise around it.
Strong evidence18 Sept 2026