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Yes - I mean if diet doesn't contribute to diabetes, then why has there been a correlation between obesity, type 2 diabetes incidence, and increased sugar and s

by skohan 7y ago

Yes - I mean if diet doesn't contribute to diabetes, then why has there been a correlation between obesity, type 2 diabetes incidence, and increased sugar and simple carbs in the standard American diet? I am not an endocrinologist, but the idea that habitual abuse of the body's insulin system causes a pathology in that system - at least in vulnerable individuals - is much more plausible than the idea that we're all getting diabetes from the water or something and that's why we're drinking soda and eating unhealthy foods. If there is some plausible alternate theory, or some contradicting evidence I would be very interested to hear it.

calibas 7y ago
In my opinion at least, the science is clear. The human body isn't built for large amounts of heavily processed foods, and consuming them in excess causes a whole spectrum of health issues. This is all made worse because health science is heavily influenced by the same industries that profit enormously off of processed foods.
- gowld 7y ago
  "Heavily processed" is not a scientific term. People don't eat boxes (but perhaps they should, because the actual danger in processed foods is removing fiber.) Fruit juice is terrible but not heavily processed. Sugar is not heavily processed. Baking cakes and deep frying everything at home is not heavily processed.
toast0 7y ago
If you have type 2 diabetes, and your diet is not high in carbs/refined sugar, you may never experience significant symptoms and never seek diagnosis or treatment. If you then add refined sugar to your diet in a big way, you would likely start seeing symptoms, and might seek diagnosis and claim eating lots of candy caused diabetes, but it could have already been there.
- skohan 7y ago
  Can you provide any evidence that diabetes precedes dietary changes? My understanding is that there’s a pretty clear well-understood progression from obesity to pre-diabetes (which is measurable in terms of resting blood glucose, but usually not symptomatic) to diabetes. Insulin resistance is also reversible to some extent via dietary changes. So I am having difficulty understanding how it could be that diabetes would proceed dietary changes in this scenario.
  - toast0 7y ago
    If a person were insulin resistant (type 2 diabetes), but did not consume a lot of carbohydrates, how would you know they were insulin resistant? Their blood sugar (fasting or otherwise) would most likely look fine, and you wouldn't subject them to a glucose tolerance test, because it's unpleasant to drink the glucose solution, and you have to sit in the lab for two hours before the second blood sugar test --- you wouldn't do that for an apparently healthy person. If they changed their diet, and began to show symptoms of diabetes, and led to a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes, would you say the change in diet caused the disease? If glucose tolerance tests were regularly administered to (apparently) healthy people, we could have some data or anecdotes about people having good insulin response, then changing their diet and no longer having good insulin response as 'eating too much candy gives you diabetes' suggests. I 100% agree that there's a correlation between obesity, increased carbohydrate content in diets, and increased diagnosis of insulin resistance. I'm just not convinced that there's a correlation between those things and insulin resistance. I suspect that without the increased carbohydrates, many people would have asymptomatic insulin resistance and go undiagnosed -- after all, dietary changes are a preferred treatment once insulin resistance is diagnosed.
    - skohan 7y ago
      Do you have any evidence behind what you are saying, or is this pure speculative reasoning? > Their blood sugar (fasting or otherwise) would most likely look fine, and you wouldn't subject them to a glucose tolerance test, because it's unpleasant to drink the glucose solution, and you have to sit in the lab for two hours before the second blood sugar test --- you wouldn't do that for an apparently healthy person. Why do you think this test is never performed on apparently healthy individuals? Do you think they never established a baseline for these tests using a large number of healthy individuals?

by skohan 7y ago

calibas 7y ago

In my opinion at least, the science is clear. The human body isn't built for large amounts of heavily processed foods, and consuming them in excess causes a whole spectrum of health issues. This is all made worse because health science is heavily influenced by the same industries that profit enormously off of processed foods.

gowld 7y ago
"Heavily processed" is not a scientific term. People don't eat boxes (but perhaps they should, because the actual danger in processed foods is removing fiber.) Fruit juice is terrible but not heavily processed. Sugar is not heavily processed. Baking cakes and deep frying everything at home is not heavily processed.

toast0 7y ago

If you have type 2 diabetes, and your diet is not high in carbs/refined sugar, you may never experience significant symptoms and never seek diagnosis or treatment. If you then add refined sugar to your diet in a big way, you would likely start seeing symptoms, and might seek diagnosis and claim eating lots of candy caused diabetes, but it could have already been there.

skohan 7y ago
Can you provide any evidence that diabetes precedes dietary changes? My understanding is that there’s a pretty clear well-understood progression from obesity to pre-diabetes (which is measurable in terms of resting blood glucose, but usually not symptomatic) to diabetes. Insulin resistance is also reversible to some extent via dietary changes. So I am having difficulty understanding how it could be that diabetes would proceed dietary changes in this scenario.
- toast0 7y ago
  If a person were insulin resistant (type 2 diabetes), but did not consume a lot of carbohydrates, how would you know they were insulin resistant? Their blood sugar (fasting or otherwise) would most likely look fine, and you wouldn't subject them to a glucose tolerance test, because it's unpleasant to drink the glucose solution, and you have to sit in the lab for two hours before the second blood sugar test --- you wouldn't do that for an apparently healthy person. If they changed their diet, and began to show symptoms of diabetes, and led to a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes, would you say the change in diet caused the disease? If glucose tolerance tests were regularly administered to (apparently) healthy people, we could have some data or anecdotes about people having good insulin response, then changing their diet and no longer having good insulin response as 'eating too much candy gives you diabetes' suggests. I 100% agree that there's a correlation between obesity, increased carbohydrate content in diets, and increased diagnosis of insulin resistance. I'm just not convinced that there's a correlation between those things and insulin resistance. I suspect that without the increased carbohydrates, many people would have asymptomatic insulin resistance and go undiagnosed -- after all, dietary changes are a preferred treatment once insulin resistance is diagnosed.
  - skohan 7y ago
    Do you have any evidence behind what you are saying, or is this pure speculative reasoning? > Their blood sugar (fasting or otherwise) would most likely look fine, and you wouldn't subject them to a glucose tolerance test, because it's unpleasant to drink the glucose solution, and you have to sit in the lab for two hours before the second blood sugar test --- you wouldn't do that for an apparently healthy person. Why do you think this test is never performed on apparently healthy individuals? Do you think they never established a baseline for these tests using a large number of healthy individuals?