What is a Kraft Test?

If you’d like to live a long, healthy life, we suggest you might want to learn the answer. Know your Kraft Pattern!

When glucose enters the body in the form of the carbohydrates it’s important that its concentration in our bloodstream is kept under control. The body therefore quickly responds to the glucose influx with a regulating hormone called insulin. Most of us associate insulin with a treatment for diabetes, and it is. However everybody naturally produces insulin - it is a crucial hormone that essentially regulates our body’s fuel. But some of us need more insulin than others and the particular “pattern” of its response is very informative and telling as to the status of our metabolic health.

The reason it is so important is because the behavior of insulin is essentially an early-warning of chronic disease risk. A Kraft Test, which measures this behavior, can reveal if you have a condition known has hypersinsulinemia, which is known to increase the risk of a host of conditions including diabetes but also hypertension, heart attack, stroke, neuropathy and even things like tinnitus, vertigo and hearing loss. In fact, Dr. Joseph Kraft the doctor and pathologist who discovered these patterns, took to calling hyperinsulinemia “occult diabetes”, or “hidden diabetes”.

Kraft Patterns and what they mean

In his original study Dr. Kraft grouped patients into five broad groups. (A later study gave six patterns, and we follow that here).

These patterns were established after asking his patients to take a glucose drink while in a fasting state. This allowed him to isolate the behavior of insulin as it responds to glucose over the subsequent three hours and is almost exactly the same protocol you will follow to discover your Kraft Pattern with Meterbolic.

His discoveries were remarkable.

He found that of patients who had normal blood glucose levels (about half the population in his study), and who therefore were thought to be in a “normal” or healthy metabolic state, 50% actually had hypersinsulinemia, and a further 25% were borderline for the condition.

Effectively these people had an early form of diabetes and didn’t even know it. They thought they were fine!

But what do these patterns actually look like and what do they mean? Let’s take each one in turn.

What follows are high level descriptions and meaning of each Kraft Pattern as described in Crofts et al, Identifying Hyperinsulinemia in the absence of impairted glucose tolerance: An examination of the Kraft database (2016).

Pattern I

This is the pattern observed in normal, metabolically healthy individuals. Note how the insulin responds to the consumption of glucose but does so in a moderate way and rapidly declines after it has done its job.

Pattern IIA

This pattern is observed in patients who have a “borderline” degree of insulin resistance. Here, we see a higher fasting level of insulin (not a good sign), and stronger initial insulin concentration in the blood, for the simple reason that more of it is needed to keep glucose under control.

Pattern IIB

This pattern is observed in patients who have what is called hyperinsulinemia - an early biomarker for diabetes risk. Here we once again see a higher fasting level of insulin. Importantly we also see an even stronger initial insulin “spike” in the blood compared to that in Pattern IIA.

Pattern III

This pattern is also observed in patients who have hyperinsulinemia. Here we see once again the characteristically higher fasting and initial insulin levels. But we also see a delayed “tail-off” in insulin as the hormone remains longer in the blood. This is a more pronounced form of hyperinsulinemia and people with diabetes typically have this kind of pattern.

Pattern IV

A more rare pattern with which some patients will present. Here, we see a very high fasting level of insulin, a non-delayed peak and then a long tail-off. Again, this is likely to be a sign of diabetes.

Pattern V

Pattern V is actually a special case. Note how insulin stays very low throughout the test. This is because these individuals are likely Type 1 diabetics.

Conclusion

By taking a Kraft Test with Meterbolic at one of our Clinics in the UK or Ireland, you’ll be able to discover and understand your Kraft Pattern. This will give you a much more precise and actionable view of your metabolic health than any other blood test and will set you up for some great conversations with our nutritionists and metabolic coaching partners if your pattern suggests you might need some help.

Book a Kraft Clinic or get an initial consultation with our nutritionists today.

Citations

Detection of Diabetes Mellitus In Situ (Occult Diabetes) Joseph R. Kraft, M.D.

Laboratory Medicine, Volume 6, Issue 2, 1 February 1975, Pages 10–22

Postprandial insulin assay as the earliest biomarker for diagnosing pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes and increased cardiovascular risk DiNicolantonio JJ, Bhutani J, OKeefe JH, et al Open Heart 2017

Identifying hyperinsulinaemia in the absence of impaired glucose tolerance: An examination of the Kraft database. Crofts C, Schofield G, Zinn C, Wheldon M, Kraft J. Diabetes Res Clin Pract. 2016 Aug;