9 ms·

Well, I'd say that the endocrine reason sounds like a valid one. I can at least be counted in that group. Last December, I was diagnosed with T2 diabetes. Afte

by kefka 10y ago

Well, I'd say that the endocrine reason sounds like a valid one. I can at least be counted in that group. Last December, I was diagnosed with T2 diabetes. After talking with a researcher about this (have worked with diabetes research school locally due to job), I came across a few things: 1. Damage is done to the pancreas at 140mg/dL 2. Too long at 140mg/dL or above can cause permanent damage to the pancreas. 3. Early estimates indicate that 110mg/dL is a lower limit of beginning damage to the pancreas Ok. There's a lot of moving parts in food. Nutritionists will tell you all sorts of bunkum, other than mineral assays and tests have discovered. But there's a simple way here: keep blood sugar under 140mg/dL, no matter what. Is that possible? To keep your blood sugar under 140mg/dL? Yes. The answer is "Don't eat foods that raise your blood sugar above 140mg/dL". That's interestingly easy. What it amounts to, is cutting out sugars and carbohydrates out of your diet, and extensively testing when you come across foods you're unsure of. My research shows that all the standard sugars are bad for me (Sucrose, glucose, fructose, lactose). I spike, and then fall. It also depends on what I'm eating with them. In those cases the rise and fall are longer. Some complex carbohydrates I can handle. Potatoes are a nope, as are bread products. But spaghetti squash works with me well. I can handle it nicely, with a very low rise and fall. I also end up eating a lot of fats, protein, and veggies. But I don't crave sugar at all. I've always liked meats, and this gives me the ability to continue that.

atria 10y ago
^ This times 1000000. There is so much chicanery and malfeasance in the nutrition and fitness industry. I was diagnosed with T2 diabetes a few years ago. I went to dietitian who prescribed a diet with 60% carbs (I believe its roughly the same as the ADA dietary guidelines). The standard treatment is medication, followed by more medication, then insulin shots. Frustrated, I read everything I could get my hands on, and found two books that I'd highly recommend: 1) Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution, and 2) Think Like a Pancreas by Gary Scheiner. Dr. Bernstein is notable because he was diagnosed with T1 when it was a fatal condition. He survived, became an electrical engineer and ultimately went on to become an MD. He lobbied the AMA to allow patients to have blood glucose meters, when the AMA wanted them to be restricted to doctors offices. I stopped listening to medical practitioners and starting experimenting with the foods I ate, using pairs testing with a glucose monitor. There is no question that a low carb diet is the way to go.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  > I stopped listening to medical practitioners and starting experimenting with the foods I ate, using pairs testing with a glucose monitor. I sometimes wonder if the state of medical ethics is killing us. We've made it so expensive to do a medical study that nobody is going to do it unless the end result is something they can sell, so the only "solutions" we get are drugs because there is no money to be made in prescribing diabetics a diet of fish and vegetables. It's a sad state if an individual can learn more by experimenting on themselves than their doctor knows because the doctor isn't allowed to participate in or publish the result of the same experiment without a multi-million dollar budget.
  - TearsInTheRain 10y ago
    Generally I would say the responsibility of doing something that is beneficial to society but not economical rests on government. Vote for politicians that will increase research funding
    - slededit 10y ago
      That is a very low standard of morality. Historically private institutions had greater trust and expectations from society. They may have abused that trust - but the solution is not to absolve them of what was their historic responsibility.
  - andrei_says_ 10y ago
    > "...no money to be made..." That's the ethics of business. We have no healthcare; there's a healthcare industry and we are how it extracts its profits. This inevitably corrupts the goals of an "ideal world" healthcare system which would exist to provide efficient and affordable healthcare.
  - burkaman 10y ago
    Aren't there tons of studies on whether some particular food is good for the heart, good for the brain, etc.? It's not that nobody does them, it's just really hard to get a conclusive result that applies to everyone. There are lots of foods that are both good and bad for you, depending on the study. I think the problem might be more that there aren't very many universal results, and the fish and vegetables diet that works for one person won't work for others.
xlm1717 10y ago
Buying a blood glucose meter is not an expensive investment (provided you don't really need it, ie. don't have diabetes) and it will pay dividends in terms of health. With a meter and about 200 strips and lancets, you can determine a big list of foods that raise your blood glucose and foods that don't. I've been customizing my meals based on what my glucose meter tells me raises my blood glucose the least and I am losing weight. The weight loss is gradual, but the most important thing is I am doing it eating foods I will eat, setting up a diet I can stick to long term, and I know that this will be good for me because the numbers back it up. Like you, I've always liked meats and testing myself with the glucose meter shows that eating more meats and less carbs is good for me personally. I should note I am not diagnosed with diabetes, I just bought the glucose meter to guide me in what I eat.
- alva 10y ago
  This is the first time I have heard glucose meters being used specifically for weight loss, very interesting. If this is a safe and effective way to encourage weight loss, this could be a huge business opportunity.
  - pc86 10y ago
    > If this is a safe and effective way to encourage weight loss It is, presuming that your macros and micros are still in line. It's easy to eat the same meal for lunch and dinner every day and lose weight but be very unhealthy while doing so.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - toothbrush 10y ago
      Could you elaborate? What are macros and micros, and how can i measure them? Assume i'm hypothetically interested in trying the (C)GM method of diet modification.
      - 10y ago
criddell 10y ago
> The answer is "Don't eat foods that raise your blood sugar above 140mg/dL". Is that related to glycemic index?
- jerf 10y ago
  Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index: "The GI represents the total rise in a person's blood sugar level following consumption of the food; it may or may not represent the rapidity of the rise in blood sugar. The steepness of the rise can be influenced by a number of other factors, such as the quantity of fat eaten with the food." But only "related to". GI is complicated. The whole blood sugar thing is complicated. I don't just mean in principle, I mean in practice, too. Measuring your own body's own reactions to foods may be the most practical route to go; reading that page leads one to the conclusion that any concrete numbers for GI you ever see are at best weak approximations even under the best of circumstances. Which is a pity, seeing as how it seems like it would be very useful.
- MustardTiger 10y ago
  Sort of. The glycemic index is not really useful because it is based on arbitrary quantities of food. Glycemic load was created to be useful to people, as it is based on reasonable quantities people would eat. Like GI says watermelon is bad because its calories come from sugar. But it is based on eating 100g of carbs from watermelon. That's a huge amount of watermelon, which is mostly water. GL shows watermelon is fine, because you only eat 10g of carbs from it in a normal serving.
  - criddell 10y ago
    Thanks. I never realized that glycemic index and load were different things.
  - rcthompson 10y ago
    So glycemic load is more or less glycemic index times carbohydrate density times the quantity of food you'd need to eat before feeling full?
pitchka 10y ago
I was diagnosed with T2 diabetes. Changed my diet to lots of veggies, fruits, beans and legumes. Symptoms disappeared. At first I was heavy on meat when I removed the carbs but it didn't help at all.
- wnevets 10y ago
  if you eat too much meat it just gets converted to sugar anyway
utternerd 10y ago
I came here to say very similar to what you're saying. I'm down 50 pounds in a little over a year after being obese my entire life, with very minimal exercise (I walk to and from work, about 3 miles a day, but only walking) but weight-loss and slimming has accelerated greatly after cutting out carbs and sugars, which wasn't as painful as it seemed - replacing carb-rich noodles with Zucchini or Spaghetti Squash is amazing. Lots of fats, proteins, and veggies, staying away from carbs and sugar, and I feel better than any other time in my entire life (at 34). I'm no longer eating simply to eat, and at this point I'm not craving the crap I used to. The sickness that now ensues after ingesting processed sugars or carbs, does make it easy to skip. While this story is anecdotal, it seemed worth a try because I kept stumbling on research supporting it.
- ck2 10y ago
  you did it right - pound per week - it's a lifestyle change you'll be able to maintain just shave 400-500 calories per day and sure enough, each week on average you'll lose a pound hmm spaghetti squash, I'll have to try that
  - massysett 10y ago
    The whole point of the article is that this isn't true. The article says the body resets its metabolism so that it survives on less food, making weight loss more difficult.
    - crikli 10y ago
      The body resets its metabolism to survive on less food IFF you're burning enormous amounts of kcals daily while on an extremely restricted diet, as these subjects were. "His routine went like this: Wake up at 5 a.m. and run on a treadmill for 45 minutes. Have breakfast — typically one egg and two egg whites, half a grapefruit and a piece of sprouted grain toast. Run on the treadmill for another 45 minutes. Rest for 40 minutes; bike ride nine miles to a gym. Work out for two and a half hours. Shower, ride home, eat lunch — typically a grilled skinless chicken breast, a cup of broccoli and 10 spears of asparagus. Rest for an hour. Drive to the gym for another round of exercise." This is crazy. Huge caloric burn, but no calories to coming in, so your body burns fat and muscle, but there's still a deficit, so the metabolic rate starts lowering. I really hate TBL for so a many reasons. As this research is showing, it's a total sham that hurts the participants for life. And for the millions of people watching, it creates completely unrealistic expectations, eg "Kenny lost 180 pounds, I can't lose 50 in the same amount of time."
itchyouch 10y ago
I think the problem with most sugars is that most people don't understand that the bulk of it is stored as glycogen in the muscular system. Sugars really only have several places to go once they are ingested: Held in the fiber of undigested food, blood stream, liver and muscles. We do really well with vegetables even though they are carbs since veggies are mostly fiber and very low carb. The high glycemic foods are okay provided that muscle glycogen is going-to-be/has-been depleted in the form of physical exertion. Building muscle would also increases ones capacity for storing said glucose, but it's not easy or popular since the rate of muscle growth at best is about 1-2lbs/month under ideal conditions of physical exertion, nutrition and rest. However, exercise and low-glycemic diets do explain the efficacy of reveesing t2 diabetes.
- revelation 10y ago
  CHO storage in muscles and mostly kidney only amounts to about 2000kcal worth of energy. So there is a very high turnover and already over a week it's averaged out to the point where it doesn't really matter if what you eat is carbs or fat. So for healthy, non-diabetic people it really doesn't matter. (With the obligatory addendum that going all "low-carbs" or "keto" is a very, very bad idea if you expect to do any exercise at all)
  - sz4kerto 10y ago
    Why would keto be a bad idea? Genuine question. A friend of mine just run a 54k mountain track (2600m elevation) after 7 months keto. I have barely eaten carbs for 2 weeks now, and just cycled 120 km two days ago.
    - revelation 10y ago
      The short summary is that aerobic exercise performance in humans is limited by the maximal rate of oxygen uptake or VO2max. Oxidation of fatty acids requires more oxygen per unit of "energy" produced than glycolysis; they are simply less bang for buck (or oxygen). Hence chronically depleted (particularly muscle) glycogen stores are a great recipe for bad exercise performances as you force the body into deriving more energy from fats. Now, in reality, energy during exercise is always derived from a mix of both fatty acids and glycogen. In general, as exercise intensity increases (you are getting closer to VO2max), a larger ratio of energy will be derived from glycogen. So for your friend, running 54k of mountains is only going to be done at rather low intensity (50-60% of VO2max), where ~60% of energy will be from fatty acids, saving glycogen and preventing hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia, incidentally, is also known as "bonking". It's rather unpleasant. On long, high intensity exercise sessions you can't usually replace all the glycogen you deplete through food intake. So if you start with lower glycogen stores through a low carb diet, what you are doing is priming your body for hypoglycemia.

by kefka 10y ago

atria 10y ago

^ This times 1000000. There is so much chicanery and malfeasance in the nutrition and fitness industry. I was diagnosed with T2 diabetes a few years ago. I went to dietitian who prescribed a diet with 60% carbs (I believe its roughly the same as the ADA dietary guidelines). The standard treatment is medication, followed by more medication, then insulin shots. Frustrated, I read everything I could get my hands on, and found two books that I'd highly recommend: 1) Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution, and 2) Think Like a Pancreas by Gary Scheiner. Dr. Bernstein is notable because he was diagnosed with T1 when it was a fatal condition. He survived, became an electrical engineer and ultimately went on to become an MD. He lobbied the AMA to allow patients to have blood glucose meters, when the AMA wanted them to be restricted to doctors offices. I stopped listening to medical practitioners and starting experimenting with the foods I ate, using pairs testing with a glucose monitor. There is no question that a low carb diet is the way to go.

AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> I stopped listening to medical practitioners and starting experimenting with the foods I ate, using pairs testing with a glucose monitor. I sometimes wonder if the state of medical ethics is killing us. We've made it so expensive to do a medical study that nobody is going to do it unless the end result is something they can sell, so the only "solutions" we get are drugs because there is no money to be made in prescribing diabetics a diet of fish and vegetables. It's a sad state if an individual can learn more by experimenting on themselves than their doctor knows because the doctor isn't allowed to participate in or publish the result of the same experiment without a multi-million dollar budget.
- TearsInTheRain 10y ago
  Generally I would say the responsibility of doing something that is beneficial to society but not economical rests on government. Vote for politicians that will increase research funding
  - slededit 10y ago
    That is a very low standard of morality. Historically private institutions had greater trust and expectations from society. They may have abused that trust - but the solution is not to absolve them of what was their historic responsibility.
- andrei_says_ 10y ago
  > "...no money to be made..." That's the ethics of business. We have no healthcare; there's a healthcare industry and we are how it extracts its profits. This inevitably corrupts the goals of an "ideal world" healthcare system which would exist to provide efficient and affordable healthcare.
- burkaman 10y ago
  Aren't there tons of studies on whether some particular food is good for the heart, good for the brain, etc.? It's not that nobody does them, it's just really hard to get a conclusive result that applies to everyone. There are lots of foods that are both good and bad for you, depending on the study. I think the problem might be more that there aren't very many universal results, and the fish and vegetables diet that works for one person won't work for others.

xlm1717 10y ago

Buying a blood glucose meter is not an expensive investment (provided you don't really need it, ie. don't have diabetes) and it will pay dividends in terms of health. With a meter and about 200 strips and lancets, you can determine a big list of foods that raise your blood glucose and foods that don't. I've been customizing my meals based on what my glucose meter tells me raises my blood glucose the least and I am losing weight. The weight loss is gradual, but the most important thing is I am doing it eating foods I will eat, setting up a diet I can stick to long term, and I know that this will be good for me because the numbers back it up. Like you, I've always liked meats and testing myself with the glucose meter shows that eating more meats and less carbs is good for me personally. I should note I am not diagnosed with diabetes, I just bought the glucose meter to guide me in what I eat.

alva 10y ago
This is the first time I have heard glucose meters being used specifically for weight loss, very interesting. If this is a safe and effective way to encourage weight loss, this could be a huge business opportunity.
- pc86 10y ago
  > If this is a safe and effective way to encourage weight loss It is, presuming that your macros and micros are still in line. It's easy to eat the same meal for lunch and dinner every day and lose weight but be very unhealthy while doing so.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - toothbrush 10y ago
    Could you elaborate? What are macros and micros, and how can i measure them? Assume i'm hypothetically interested in trying the (C)GM method of diet modification.
    - 10y ago

criddell 10y ago

> The answer is "Don't eat foods that raise your blood sugar above 140mg/dL". Is that related to glycemic index?

jerf 10y ago
Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index: "The GI represents the total rise in a person's blood sugar level following consumption of the food; it may or may not represent the rapidity of the rise in blood sugar. The steepness of the rise can be influenced by a number of other factors, such as the quantity of fat eaten with the food." But only "related to". GI is complicated. The whole blood sugar thing is complicated. I don't just mean in principle, I mean in practice, too. Measuring your own body's own reactions to foods may be the most practical route to go; reading that page leads one to the conclusion that any concrete numbers for GI you ever see are at best weak approximations even under the best of circumstances. Which is a pity, seeing as how it seems like it would be very useful.
MustardTiger 10y ago
Sort of. The glycemic index is not really useful because it is based on arbitrary quantities of food. Glycemic load was created to be useful to people, as it is based on reasonable quantities people would eat. Like GI says watermelon is bad because its calories come from sugar. But it is based on eating 100g of carbs from watermelon. That's a huge amount of watermelon, which is mostly water. GL shows watermelon is fine, because you only eat 10g of carbs from it in a normal serving.
- criddell 10y ago
  Thanks. I never realized that glycemic index and load were different things.
- rcthompson 10y ago
  So glycemic load is more or less glycemic index times carbohydrate density times the quantity of food you'd need to eat before feeling full?

pitchka 10y ago

I was diagnosed with T2 diabetes. Changed my diet to lots of veggies, fruits, beans and legumes. Symptoms disappeared. At first I was heavy on meat when I removed the carbs but it didn't help at all.

wnevets 10y ago
if you eat too much meat it just gets converted to sugar anyway

utternerd 10y ago

I came here to say very similar to what you're saying. I'm down 50 pounds in a little over a year after being obese my entire life, with very minimal exercise (I walk to and from work, about 3 miles a day, but only walking) but weight-loss and slimming has accelerated greatly after cutting out carbs and sugars, which wasn't as painful as it seemed - replacing carb-rich noodles with Zucchini or Spaghetti Squash is amazing. Lots of fats, proteins, and veggies, staying away from carbs and sugar, and I feel better than any other time in my entire life (at 34). I'm no longer eating simply to eat, and at this point I'm not craving the crap I used to. The sickness that now ensues after ingesting processed sugars or carbs, does make it easy to skip. While this story is anecdotal, it seemed worth a try because I kept stumbling on research supporting it.

ck2 10y ago
you did it right - pound per week - it's a lifestyle change you'll be able to maintain just shave 400-500 calories per day and sure enough, each week on average you'll lose a pound hmm spaghetti squash, I'll have to try that
- massysett 10y ago
  The whole point of the article is that this isn't true. The article says the body resets its metabolism so that it survives on less food, making weight loss more difficult.
  - crikli 10y ago
    The body resets its metabolism to survive on less food IFF you're burning enormous amounts of kcals daily while on an extremely restricted diet, as these subjects were. "His routine went like this: Wake up at 5 a.m. and run on a treadmill for 45 minutes. Have breakfast — typically one egg and two egg whites, half a grapefruit and a piece of sprouted grain toast. Run on the treadmill for another 45 minutes. Rest for 40 minutes; bike ride nine miles to a gym. Work out for two and a half hours. Shower, ride home, eat lunch — typically a grilled skinless chicken breast, a cup of broccoli and 10 spears of asparagus. Rest for an hour. Drive to the gym for another round of exercise." This is crazy. Huge caloric burn, but no calories to coming in, so your body burns fat and muscle, but there's still a deficit, so the metabolic rate starts lowering. I really hate TBL for so a many reasons. As this research is showing, it's a total sham that hurts the participants for life. And for the millions of people watching, it creates completely unrealistic expectations, eg "Kenny lost 180 pounds, I can't lose 50 in the same amount of time."

itchyouch 10y ago

I think the problem with most sugars is that most people don't understand that the bulk of it is stored as glycogen in the muscular system. Sugars really only have several places to go once they are ingested: Held in the fiber of undigested food, blood stream, liver and muscles. We do really well with vegetables even though they are carbs since veggies are mostly fiber and very low carb. The high glycemic foods are okay provided that muscle glycogen is going-to-be/has-been depleted in the form of physical exertion. Building muscle would also increases ones capacity for storing said glucose, but it's not easy or popular since the rate of muscle growth at best is about 1-2lbs/month under ideal conditions of physical exertion, nutrition and rest. However, exercise and low-glycemic diets do explain the efficacy of reveesing t2 diabetes.

revelation 10y ago
CHO storage in muscles and mostly kidney only amounts to about 2000kcal worth of energy. So there is a very high turnover and already over a week it's averaged out to the point where it doesn't really matter if what you eat is carbs or fat. So for healthy, non-diabetic people it really doesn't matter. (With the obligatory addendum that going all "low-carbs" or "keto" is a very, very bad idea if you expect to do any exercise at all)
- sz4kerto 10y ago
  Why would keto be a bad idea? Genuine question. A friend of mine just run a 54k mountain track (2600m elevation) after 7 months keto. I have barely eaten carbs for 2 weeks now, and just cycled 120 km two days ago.
  - revelation 10y ago
    The short summary is that aerobic exercise performance in humans is limited by the maximal rate of oxygen uptake or VO2max. Oxidation of fatty acids requires more oxygen per unit of "energy" produced than glycolysis; they are simply less bang for buck (or oxygen). Hence chronically depleted (particularly muscle) glycogen stores are a great recipe for bad exercise performances as you force the body into deriving more energy from fats. Now, in reality, energy during exercise is always derived from a mix of both fatty acids and glycogen. In general, as exercise intensity increases (you are getting closer to VO2max), a larger ratio of energy will be derived from glycogen. So for your friend, running 54k of mountains is only going to be done at rather low intensity (50-60% of VO2max), where ~60% of energy will be from fatty acids, saving glycogen and preventing hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia, incidentally, is also known as "bonking". It's rather unpleasant. On long, high intensity exercise sessions you can't usually replace all the glycogen you deplete through food intake. So if you start with lower glycogen stores through a low carb diet, what you are doing is priming your body for hypoglycemia.