4 ms·

A low-carb diet? (Tongue-in-cheek, but not really.)

philip1209 9y ago
A low-carb diet app for treating type 2 diabetes already launched (with $37M in funding): http://virtahealth.com http://virtahealth.com
- amalag 9y ago
  This is great, we need more lifestyle approaches to disease. Not just people hoping a magic pill will fix it without them having to change their behavior.
  - andyfleming 9y ago
    Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are completely different conversations, but regardless everyone should try to take lifestyle approaches to improving their health (in addition to whatever is medically necessary).
    - patrickmn 9y ago
      Yes, this is very important: Diet can be a complement to medical treatment, not a replacement. Don't make Steve Jobs' mistake!
  - tracker1 9y ago
    Even going very low carb, gluconeogenesis paths can still cause a diabetic to have very elevated blood sugar... It's about keeping things as level as possible and a non-invasive monitoring path can help a lot... I was very low carb (fewer than 30g/day) for over a year, and was still hospitalized for ketoacidosis.
DiabloD3 9y ago
Yeah, I've been saying for years now we've cured most modern diseases, including diabetes: follow a strict low carb variant of the Paleo diet. No grains, no refined sugars (that means no fruit juices as well), no legumes, no garbage oils (canola, corn, soy, etc); moderate protein, high (quality) fat (meat itself, olive oil and coconut oil), low carbs (and only healthy sources from whole actual foods). Every diabetic, no matter how severe, who has successfully adopted this diet has gone on to not only managing their diabetes, but frequently moving on to no longer needing any medicine, and sometimes even healing at least some of the damage (something modern medicine claims is impossible). Don't believe the hype that a cure is coming soon: it already came, and it isn't something you can shove into a pill, market, and sell for high prices.
- esm 9y ago
  Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease. The body kills all of its insulin-producing cells, often in childhood. No matter what sort of food you eat, you need insulin if you want your cells to use the building blocks! As an aside, the story of how insulin was discovered is super interesting. Diabetes used to be an incredibly lethal disease (part of why there were so many nobel prizes given out for insulin research)
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Type 1 diabetes can't be managed with diet. It also is the main market for improved glucose monitoring. And it isn't particularly well established that Type 2 diabetes is reversible.
srssays 9y ago
The average person eats a diet primarily of carbohydrates, particularly rice. Humans have been high carb diets for the entirety of recorded history. It would be quite the failure of natural selection if eating a normal human diet caused type 2 diabetes.
- patrickmn 9y ago
  In paleolithic times, the average human diet included a lot of fatty meats. When the fatty game went extinct, and protein-heavy diets failed (protein isn't a fuel source except through gluconeogenesis,) carbohydrate-heavy diets became more common. It's not clear that a carbohydrate-heavy diet is the ideal human diet, just one we're compatible with. The human body can make almost anything work, for a time. At the same time, tribes in Papua New Guinea who eat almost exclusively carbohydrates have been shown to be virtually free of heart disease. Zooko and Amber Wilcox-O'Hearn maintain a fascinating blog on the science of ketogenic (very low carb) diets that I can highly recommend: http://www.ketotic.org/ http://www.ketotic.org/
- tgragnato 9y ago
  A high-carb diet may be appropriate for someone who perform a constant degree of physical activity. > https://www.iifym.com/iifym-calculator/ https://www.iifym.com/iifym-calculator/ It's alleged but unknown if the metabolism can be (cumulatively or not) damaged over the long term if the diet is unbalanced to our needs. And in the human history no population has had a lifestyle as sedentary as we have now. The natural selection adapted to something else. The mutation of ApoA1 in ApoA1-AS [http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/197579 http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/197579 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/snp/28931573 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/snp/28931573] is an example of how the body is adapting to our new diet-lifestyle.
- kennywinker 9y ago
  Ah yes, we would run across the savannahs, with our flint-tipped spears and hunt the wild HIGH_FRUCTOSE_CORN_SYRUP. At night, we would build a big cooking fire to roast they days catch of fresh MALTODEXTRIN. I joke. But really, access to high carb, low fibre diets is pretty new. Too new for much natural selection, anyway. We've been eating rice for a long time, but brown rice. I can't find a definite source, but at least in Japan white rice only came into production in the 17th or 18th century. > According to the New York Times, a 2010 Harvard study showed that people who consume white rice at least five times a week “are almost 20 percent more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than those who eat it less than once a month.” http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/john-cavanagh-and-robin-broad/the-story-of-refined-white-rice http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/john-cavanagh-and-robin-bro...
MBCook 9y ago
Diets don't cure auto-immune diseases like Type 1.
- patrickmn 9y ago
  Diets have been (anecdotally at least) shown to be effective in the treatment of autoimmune diseases like Type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Chron's disease, and many others. A popular book on the subject is The Wahl's Protocol: https://www.amazon.com/Wahls-Protocol-Autoimmune-Conditions-Principles/dp/1583335544 https://www.amazon.com/Wahls-Protocol-Autoimmune-Conditions-... Now, that's mostly anecdotal. There are very few studies on diet in general. As far as type 2 diabetes is concerned, though, low-carb diets have empirically been shown to reduce the need for insulin injections, slow progression of disease, and prevent the disease in the first place.
- jlebrech 9y ago
  you can reduce your need for insulin with diet, but no it's not possible to fully cure. but with monitoring and an a needle to hand it's pretty close.
perilunar 9y ago
Serious question: how does a ketogenic diet work for people with type 1 diabetes? Can you achieve stable blood sugar levels? Does it mean lower insulin doses and less blood glucose testing? Does it make you more vulnerable to hypos? Is it too easy to slip from ketosis to ketoacidosis? Can it be done safely?
- 1123581321 9y ago
  Low carb or keto is helpful for type 1 (or any of the low/no insulin production types.) Low carb means the range of readings the patient has to control is generally narrower. Lows are the result of too much insulin. Trying to get to 100 from 300 without going below 70 is riskier than from 150. Low carb/low insulin intake makes exercise safer. Operating in a narrower potential range of readings means less development of insulin resistance and easier exercising safely. It's challenging to start a low carb diet while taking insulin, so please be careful and talk to your doctor. For me, reducing my insulin "too much" while starting the diet made the transition nearly free of lows at the acceptable expense of fasting too high for a few days until the new situation became stable, but I realize not everyone can do that.
jlebrech 9y ago
plenty of rice in china, almost no diabetes till they adopted a more westernised diet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study
- rmm 9y ago
  wow, can't believe China Study is still being referenced. It's been a while since my data stats class, but it was used as a case study for how data can be manipulated to explain a pre-conceived idea. From memory entire counties were removed that didn't fit, one I recall ate more animal protein than whats found in Western Diets, yet had lowest incidence of heart disease, and some statistical correlations of higher significance were removed, because they didn't fit the narrative.

A low-carb diet app for treating type 2 diabetes already launched (with $37M in funding): http://virtahealth.com http://virtahealth.com

amalag 9y ago
This is great, we need more lifestyle approaches to disease. Not just people hoping a magic pill will fix it without them having to change their behavior.
- andyfleming 9y ago
  Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are completely different conversations, but regardless everyone should try to take lifestyle approaches to improving their health (in addition to whatever is medically necessary).
  - patrickmn 9y ago
    Yes, this is very important: Diet can be a complement to medical treatment, not a replacement. Don't make Steve Jobs' mistake!
- tracker1 9y ago
  Even going very low carb, gluconeogenesis paths can still cause a diabetic to have very elevated blood sugar... It's about keeping things as level as possible and a non-invasive monitoring path can help a lot... I was very low carb (fewer than 30g/day) for over a year, and was still hospitalized for ketoacidosis.

DiabloD3 9y ago

Yeah, I've been saying for years now we've cured most modern diseases, including diabetes: follow a strict low carb variant of the Paleo diet. No grains, no refined sugars (that means no fruit juices as well), no legumes, no garbage oils (canola, corn, soy, etc); moderate protein, high (quality) fat (meat itself, olive oil and coconut oil), low carbs (and only healthy sources from whole actual foods). Every diabetic, no matter how severe, who has successfully adopted this diet has gone on to not only managing their diabetes, but frequently moving on to no longer needing any medicine, and sometimes even healing at least some of the damage (something modern medicine claims is impossible). Don't believe the hype that a cure is coming soon: it already came, and it isn't something you can shove into a pill, market, and sell for high prices.

esm 9y ago
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease. The body kills all of its insulin-producing cells, often in childhood. No matter what sort of food you eat, you need insulin if you want your cells to use the building blocks! As an aside, the story of how insulin was discovered is super interesting. Diabetes used to be an incredibly lethal disease (part of why there were so many nobel prizes given out for insulin research)
maxerickson 9y ago
Type 1 diabetes can't be managed with diet. It also is the main market for improved glucose monitoring. And it isn't particularly well established that Type 2 diabetes is reversible.

srssays 9y ago

The average person eats a diet primarily of carbohydrates, particularly rice. Humans have been high carb diets for the entirety of recorded history. It would be quite the failure of natural selection if eating a normal human diet caused type 2 diabetes.

patrickmn 9y ago
In paleolithic times, the average human diet included a lot of fatty meats. When the fatty game went extinct, and protein-heavy diets failed (protein isn't a fuel source except through gluconeogenesis,) carbohydrate-heavy diets became more common. It's not clear that a carbohydrate-heavy diet is the ideal human diet, just one we're compatible with. The human body can make almost anything work, for a time. At the same time, tribes in Papua New Guinea who eat almost exclusively carbohydrates have been shown to be virtually free of heart disease. Zooko and Amber Wilcox-O'Hearn maintain a fascinating blog on the science of ketogenic (very low carb) diets that I can highly recommend: http://www.ketotic.org/ http://www.ketotic.org/
tgragnato 9y ago
A high-carb diet may be appropriate for someone who perform a constant degree of physical activity. > https://www.iifym.com/iifym-calculator/ https://www.iifym.com/iifym-calculator/ It's alleged but unknown if the metabolism can be (cumulatively or not) damaged over the long term if the diet is unbalanced to our needs. And in the human history no population has had a lifestyle as sedentary as we have now. The natural selection adapted to something else. The mutation of ApoA1 in ApoA1-AS [http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/197579 http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/197579 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/snp/28931573 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/snp/28931573] is an example of how the body is adapting to our new diet-lifestyle.
kennywinker 9y ago
Ah yes, we would run across the savannahs, with our flint-tipped spears and hunt the wild HIGH_FRUCTOSE_CORN_SYRUP. At night, we would build a big cooking fire to roast they days catch of fresh MALTODEXTRIN. I joke. But really, access to high carb, low fibre diets is pretty new. Too new for much natural selection, anyway. We've been eating rice for a long time, but brown rice. I can't find a definite source, but at least in Japan white rice only came into production in the 17th or 18th century. > According to the New York Times, a 2010 Harvard study showed that people who consume white rice at least five times a week “are almost 20 percent more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than those who eat it less than once a month.” http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/john-cavanagh-and-robin-broad/the-story-of-refined-white-rice http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/john-cavanagh-and-robin-bro...

MBCook 9y ago

Diets don't cure auto-immune diseases like Type 1.

patrickmn 9y ago
Diets have been (anecdotally at least) shown to be effective in the treatment of autoimmune diseases like Type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Chron's disease, and many others. A popular book on the subject is The Wahl's Protocol: https://www.amazon.com/Wahls-Protocol-Autoimmune-Conditions-Principles/dp/1583335544 https://www.amazon.com/Wahls-Protocol-Autoimmune-Conditions-... Now, that's mostly anecdotal. There are very few studies on diet in general. As far as type 2 diabetes is concerned, though, low-carb diets have empirically been shown to reduce the need for insulin injections, slow progression of disease, and prevent the disease in the first place.
jlebrech 9y ago
you can reduce your need for insulin with diet, but no it's not possible to fully cure. but with monitoring and an a needle to hand it's pretty close.

perilunar 9y ago

Serious question: how does a ketogenic diet work for people with type 1 diabetes? Can you achieve stable blood sugar levels? Does it mean lower insulin doses and less blood glucose testing? Does it make you more vulnerable to hypos? Is it too easy to slip from ketosis to ketoacidosis? Can it be done safely?

1123581321 9y ago
Low carb or keto is helpful for type 1 (or any of the low/no insulin production types.) Low carb means the range of readings the patient has to control is generally narrower. Lows are the result of too much insulin. Trying to get to 100 from 300 without going below 70 is riskier than from 150. Low carb/low insulin intake makes exercise safer. Operating in a narrower potential range of readings means less development of insulin resistance and easier exercising safely. It's challenging to start a low carb diet while taking insulin, so please be careful and talk to your doctor. For me, reducing my insulin "too much" while starting the diet made the transition nearly free of lows at the acceptable expense of fasting too high for a few days until the new situation became stable, but I realize not everyone can do that.

jlebrech 9y ago

plenty of rice in china, almost no diabetes till they adopted a more westernised diet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study

rmm 9y ago
wow, can't believe China Study is still being referenced. It's been a while since my data stats class, but it was used as a case study for how data can be manipulated to explain a pre-conceived idea. From memory entire counties were removed that didn't fit, one I recall ate more animal protein than whats found in Western Diets, yet had lowest incidence of heart disease, and some statistical correlations of higher significance were removed, because they didn't fit the narrative.