Saliva Insulin Responses to a Standardized Meal Tolerance Test in Humans

Recent evidence suggests that hyperinsulinemia (i.e., elevated insulin levels) is the primary causative factor in obesity. Insulin promotes fat storage and prevents fat breakdown, suggesting that weight loss would be optimized if insulin levels are managed and kept low. Understanding how different foods impact insulin levels could therefore aid in personalized weight loss (or weight maintenance) advice. It has been shown that salivary insulin can track plasma insulin following different meals and can delineate between lean and obese people. Thus, it was suggested that salivary insulin could be a potential surrogate for plasma insulin. The purpose of this study is to measure fasting saliva insulin, and salivary insulin responses to a standardized meal tolerance test in individuals with different body mass index (BMI).