Low-Carb Diets Help Control Diabetes (And Other Heresies)
Dean
Those of us who have personal experience with very low-carb diets, and who've been part of support groups for those using the diets, have long known that the Atkins diet works remarkably well for helping many diabetics achieve blood sugar control. Indeed, many diabetics who stick to the diet can give up all their medications, or at least go from a fistfull of pills a day to perhaps one or two. Even insulin-dependent diabetics can often reduce their daily injections to only a few small ones a day when they're on this diet.
I was at one point in contact with literally hundreds of diabetics (and more than one working physician) reporting such results. The most amusing thing being that medical authorities continued to fulminate at us that such results were impossible, were voodoo medicine, could not possibly work and would almost certainly mess these patients up badly.
Now researchers in New Zealand have given scientific confirmation that the very-low-carb "Atkins" diet substantially improves diabetes.
This on top of many studies released the last few years showing that Atkins-style diets work well for weight loss for many people--and do not cause the liver damage, kidney damage, hypercholesterolemia, or other harm that medical authorities long claimed.
This is no surprise to those of us who've spent time exploring and studying such diets. Indeed, it's just confirmation that the conventional wisdom from medical authorities is often wildly at odds with reality. The years I spent in the 1990s being abused by medical authorities for saying "low carb diets work, and aren't dangerous, and help diabetics!" have served as a model for me about the dangers of simply accepting conventional medical wisdom. Yes, doctors are often right about many things--but they're often wrong.
They're human, as it turns out.
Speaking of questioning standard medical advice, Cinomed has a review of a film which questions standard medical advice on a completely different issue.
Pro-Atkins. Anti-HIV hypothesis...
Ever consider becoming a doctor? We need some skeptics like you in the profession.
When I was on Atkins my cholesterol got better and my energy levels were better. Problem: I lack the discipline, and the cravings are a bitch.
(Mind you, hunger's an even bigger bitch on other diets, so it's Hobson's choice.)
I studied low-carb diets for years, and talked to all sorts of scientists and physicians about it. The pattern was always the same: those with direct experience with it were cautious but believed it was efficacious for many people, while those who didn't routinely trashed it in the most angry and hysterical of ways.
It appears to be a recurrent pattern whenever there's solid scientific reason to question a reigning medical paradigm. Look at how many med students are STILL being taught that all that's cut away in a circumcision is "a flap of skin," when we've known--with rigorous scientific proof--that that's a bunch of bullshit for a long time now.
To be honest with you, this surprises the heck out of me. I've gone through two transitions to no sugar - lower carb diets, and what always strikes me is how hard it is at the beginning, but once into it for a month or two, the cravings for carbs nearly evaporate.
Your body actually reprograms its desires, to some extent, and much of this is based on breaking the cycle of sugar/insulin/seratonin/etc. spikes followed by precipitous valleys. There is so much overwhelming evidence, beyond just diabetes, of how a diet low in sugar is good for so many aspects of health. It's really remarkable.
Makes sense.
I was confusing the fact that ketogenic diets are used to treat seizures with this information presented here.
So nevermind...but the diabetic thing still makes sense.
2. "Carbs" is newspeak in a way. To call highly processed products like refined sugar and flour, HFCS, etc "food" is a stretch. Sure they supply the body fuel (glucose), but the body isn't an engine or a bomb calorimeter, it's a complex biochemical marvel that requires and array of essential nutrients for optimim performance. Those who are proponents of lo-carb diets aren't really against eating foods that contain carbohydrates, they simply recognize that there is no real "food" value to a donut. Do you want to eat to give your body fuel or do you want to nourish it? By defining non-foods like sugar as a "carb" it legitimizes it as a food group.
3. The greatest mistake modern medicine ever made was the diet/choesterol/saturated fat myth. Saturated fat consumption and high cholesterol levels are not responsible for heart disease and the longest running study of the matter in Framingham demonstrated that quite clearly.
Or maybe it wasn't a mistake? In spite of all the evidence to the contrary it is oft quoted as a source for cholesterol phobic heart disease prevention strategies that drive millions of people to the lab for lipid panels and millions more to the drug store for their statins. We are brainwashed into thinking we are improving our health with this strategy on the basis of carefully designed clinical trials that show absolutely no change in overall mortality. None.
My own hypothesis on why Americans are getting fatter and fatter is that despite our high caloric intake, we are starving for essential micronutrients. We are eating fuel not food.
I need sleep.
...another we deprive ourselves of. :(
G'night.
I do best when I limit myself to relatively lean meat/fish/fowl and generous portions of low-starch veggies. Trouble is, every once in a while I yield to the temptation of beer and pizza, and then I feel like crap for a few days. In the moment, it seems like a good bargain, but in my more lucid moments, I see the flaw in my reasoning.
Happy are those who seek virtue spontaneously. The rest of us have to struggle.
Bill
Those who are proponents of lo-carb diets aren't really against eating foods that contain carbohydrates, they simply recognize that there is no real "food" value to a donut. Do you want to eat to give your body fuel or do you want to nourish it? By defining non-foods like sugar as a "carb" it legitimizes it as a food group.
I couldn't agree with you more.
Of course, that was less than 10 years ago, but not much less.
But my first thought was:
"Doctors don't recommend low-carb diets for diabetics?!
Then what the heck DO they recommend?"
A search on the internet reveals that they recommend diabetics eat what everybody else is supposed to eat. I don't think that really counts.
Very low-carb diets like Atkins are quite "natural," as much so as most dietary regimens and quite a bit more natural than, say, vegetarianism or that silly "food pyramid" the USDA puts out.
(Like I say, I almost wrote a book on this.)