Can a keto diet turn pre-and type-2 diabetes around?

[Amity Island]

An article published today on Ketogenic Diets.

I've seen members discussing this many times.

Can a keto diet turn pre-and type-2 diabetes around? - Healthy Food Guide

Healthy Food Guide looks at the upsides and downsides of the ketogenic diet for managing type-2 diabetes Q I have heard that the keto diet is great for reversing my type-2 pre-diabetes. But you guys don’t seem to recommend it. What’s the story? A The keto diet has been around a long time, since...

www.healthyfood.com

 

[Ditto]

An interesting read. 🙂

 

[DaveB]

Hi. Reducing the carbs in your diet can help many with T2. That's not exactly a Keto diet but the key is carb reduction.

 

[Drummer]

Reducing carbs reduces blood glucose for those who can't cope with carbs - it isn't rocket science.
If it doesn't then it is something more interesting than the simple sort of type two I had.
Using a meter made it very simple indeed.

 

[Maca44]

How many g's of carbs a day takes you into Keto, I have drastically reduced my carbs per day based on my past diet but still have 80-100g's per day. This has worked well for me so far along with daily moderate exercise.

 

[Drummer]

It depends on the individual.
Most people are in ketosis for some part of the day, but to be almost continuously burning fat - well Dr Atkins considered that an athletic type could maintain ketosis on 90gm of carbs a day, with lower levels required for less active individuals.

 

[Inka]

Reducing carbs reduces blood glucose for those who can't cope with carbs - it isn't rocket science.
If it doesn't then it is something more interesting than the simple sort of type two I had.
Using a meter made it very simple indeed.

But doesn’t that just mask the problem? I understood that Type 2 was mainly due to insulin resistance. Surely trying to correct that insulin resistance would be the ‘cure’?

 

[Eddy Edson]

But doesn’t that just mask the problem? I understood that Type 2 was mainly due to insulin resistance. Surely trying to correct that insulin resistance would be the ‘cure’?

T2D starts off as IR. The classical manifestation is: fat around the liver => decrease in the liver's insulin sensitivity => disruption to the gluconeogenesis regulatory mechanism => the liver keeps churning out glucose made from amino acids, lipids etc (note: *not* from carbs), particularly overnight and when fasting. That's the big reason for having a fasting BG as part of the standard T2D blood test panel: a high fasting BG indicates that gluconeogenesis isn't under control. Metformin's main effect comes from improving the liver's insulin sensitivity => better gluconeogensis regulation => lower fasting BG, lower "baseline" BG.

All that is just standard medicine, but it never gets explained properly at diagnosis, as far as I can see. Note that carbs have very little to do with it, whereas losing visceral fat from the liver is key. Again, this has been well understood for ever, and it's the reason why weight reduction is a key piece of T2D advice.

As T2D progresses, the pancreas starts clapping out & insulin production decreases. Full-blown T2D isn't just insulin resistance; it's also poor insulin response. Roy Taylor's big thing was to show that visceral fat is to blame for this, also, and that clearing fat from the pancreas can restore beta cell function and insulin production in T2D. So losing weight => restored gluconeogenesis regulation + restored insulin response => T2D reversed, in many cases.

 

[Drummer]

How would that be done?

 

[Inka]

Thank you @Eddy Edson 🙂 That’s what I understood, but you’ve given a lot more detail and explanation.

 

[Deleted member 21371]

But doesn’t that just mask the problem? I understood that Type 2 was mainly due to insulin resistance. Surely trying to correct that insulin resistance would be the ‘cure’?

That was the question I asked, I never got a real answer.
But as Eddy said, the low calorie diet I did successfully reversed my diabetes, exactly by the method he has described.
It also changed my eating habits, which I really had to do.

I needed to decrease the amount I ate, and while just counting the carbs, and not limiting what you eat may work in some circumstances, and mask the problem, my other issue was that no one could ever tell me was what happened if you still overate?
My real problem was boredom eating. so fat, bacon, eggs, sausages, bags of pork scratchings, if there was no limit, what happened?
The only answer was just fat meant you didn't feel hungry, so the inference was they limited calories that way.

Back to reducing calories.
I didn't kid myself I hadn't eaten my way there, so I realised I had to change my habits, not my food, for many reasons, and I did.

 

[AndBreathe]

I really, really wish we could move away from all these sexy labels for diets, approaches, styles of doing whatever. There is no silver bullet to treating T2 diabetes. If someone can materially improve their health utilising a diet based on blue Smarties (do they do blue Smarties?), then so be it.

T2 tends to have a few common features across those who live with it, but even those aren't black and white in all cases.

 

[Deleted member 21371]

I really, really wish we could move away from all these sexy labels for diets, approaches, styles of doing whatever. There is no silver bullet to treating T2 diabetes. If someone can materially improve their health utilising a diet based on blue Smarties (do they do blue Smarties?), then so be it.

T2 tends to have a few common features across those who live with it, but even those aren't black and white in all cases.

I find the internet is like the rest of the world.
If you don't like someone else's topic, I just move on, without stopping to chat to them or tell them I don't think they should be talking about that.

And, can you tell those that did find the silver bullet, that's it's not real?
You can treat your diabetes as you choose, but there is certainly a medically proven treatment which does seem to reverse diabetes in some which cannot be overlooked.
That is a very good starting point for finding the mechanism of diabetes, rather than simply looking for common features.

Take covid-19.
Many people have very different symptoms. There are a wide range, without much commonality.
The focus was always on creating a vaccine to treat the cause, not on treating the symptoms to prevent death.
Diabetes should have the same focus.

 

[Drummer]

I suppose that I find low carb so easy to do and such a simple and straightforward method that I happily go on doing it.
I know that if I were to start to eat more carbs to take advantage - if that is the correct description, of my ability to deal with then these days, that in a few days I would have increased my weight and have started back on the way to a higher Hba1c again.

 

[AndBreathe]

I find the internet is like the rest of the world.
If you don't like someone else's topic, I just move on, without stopping to chat to them or tell them I don't think they should be talking about that.

And, can you tell those that did find the silver bullet, that's it's not real?
You can treat your diabetes as you choose, but there is certainly a medically proven treatment which does seem to reverse diabetes in some which cannot be overlooked.
That is a very good starting point for finding the mechanism of diabetes, rather than simply looking for common features.

Take covid-19.
Many people have very different symptoms. There are a wide range, without much commonality.
The focus was always on creating a vaccine to treat the cause, not on treating the symptoms to prevent death.
Diabetes should have the same focus.

I should have said universal silver bullet. There are thousands, and counting, who have found their personal silver bullet, to one extent or another.

 

[Deleted member 21371]

I suppose that I find low carb so easy to do and such a simple and straightforward method that I happily go on doing it.
I know that if I were to start to eat more carbs to take advantage - if that is the correct description, of my ability to deal with then these days, that in a few days I would have increased my weight and have started back on the way to a higher Hba1c again.

The thought is that may be the crux of the matter.
Weight, regardless of how you lose it or keep it off.
That was Prof. Taylors conclusion as well.

 

[Inka]

Take covid-19.
Many people have very different symptoms. There are a wide range, without much commonality.
The focus was always on creating a vaccine to treat the cause, not on treating the symptoms to prevent death.
Diabetes should have the same focus.

That was part of the reason for my question. I’ve read people talking about Type 2 as a “carb intolerance” but that’s a symptom not a cause. That’s partly what prompted my question about insulin resistance. If someone has insulin resistance, then I’d think it would make sense to try to reverse that.

 

[Deleted member 21371]

Take covid-19.
Many people have very different symptoms. There are a wide range, without much commonality.
The focus was always on creating a vaccine to treat the cause, not on treating the symptoms to prevent death.
Diabetes should have the same focus.

That was part of the reason for my question. I’ve read people talking about Type 2 as a “carb intolerance” but that’s a symptom not a cause. That’s partly what prompted my question about insulin resistance. If someone has insulin resistance, then I’d think it would make sense to try to reverse that.

It is a very good question.
Possibly "the" question.

I suspect I may be more "scientific" in my approach.
Or something else, but the words below apply to me and me only in my view of just myself.

Many articles agree that many diabetics are overweight at diagnosis. There are exceptions, but I doubted I was one of them
Many articles tie eating to much of anything into putting on weight. I certainly did that.
So, I accepted I was in charge of what went into my mouth, I could certainly change that, if nothing else.
So, I didn't change any words, I wasn't carb intolerant, I wasn't the product of big pharma, I wasn't suckered into it by the NHS eatwell diet, no one has lied to me.

I was a morbidly obese diabetic. I could use different words, but I don't think that would have pushed my in the same way.
After that a very low calorie diet was quite easy to do, (I caused it, I can fix it I guess was my mindset) and again it was the only science that explained the actual cause of type 2, and offered a solution based on those findings.
Other diets are available, but so far there hasn't been any research into how they work, and indeed, many of them actually seem to disagree it's the weight loss, but it's the diet itself that lowers the BG as an end in itself. Again, I want a lot more than lower BG.
BG value was a symptom, not a cause of my diabetes, so really not my great driver.
Cure the diabetes, and it'll fall into line.

 

[DaveB]

T2D starts off as IR. The classical manifestation is: fat around the liver => decrease in the liver's insulin sensitivity => disruption to the gluconeogenesis regulatory mechanism => the liver keeps churning out glucose made from amino acids, lipids etc (note: *not* from carbs), particularly overnight and when fasting. That's the big reason for having a fasting BG as part of the standard T2D blood test panel: a high fasting BG indicates that gluconeogenesis isn't under control. Metformin's main effect comes from improving the liver's insulin sensitivity => better gluconeogensis regulation => lower fasting BG, lower "baseline" BG.

All that is just standard medicine, but it never gets explained properly at diagnosis, as far as I can see. Note that carbs have very little to do with it, whereas losing visceral fat from the liver is key. Again, this has been well understood for ever, and it's the reason why weight reduction is a key piece of T2D advice.

As T2D progresses, the pancreas starts clapping out & insulin production decreases. Full-blown T2D isn't just insulin resistance; it's also poor insulin response. Roy Taylor's big thing was to show that visceral fat is to blame for this, also, and that clearing fat from the pancreas can restore beta cell function and insulin production in T2D. So losing weight => restored gluconeogenesis regulation + restored insulin response => T2D reversed, in many cases.

Hi. I'm afraid I have to disagree that 'carbs have little to do with it'. They have everything to do with it. Too many carbs will have caused the body fat in the first place as carbs are the main cause of weight gain and not fats. Reducing carbs down to a level where there is some ketosis will force the body to start removing that fat. Reducing calories will help but it's sub-optimal compared with direct carb reduction as you may still be having too many carbs to go into ketosis unless you get the Calorie reduction food mix right. To me, it's much easier to just go for Carb reduction. As you may gather I don't agree with some of Prof Taylor's work....

 

[Deleted member 21371]

Hi. I'm afraid I have to disagree that 'carbs have little to do with it'. They have everything to do with it. Too many carbs will have caused the body fat in the first place as carbs are the main cause of weight gain and not fats. Reducing carbs down to a level where there is some ketosis will force the body to start removing that fat. Reducing calories will help but it's sub-optimal compared with direct carb reduction as you may still be having too many carbs to go into ketosis unless you get the Calorie reduction food mix right. To me, it's much easier to just go for Carb reduction. As you may gather I don't agree with some of Prof Taylor's work....

I was told many times that only carbs make you fat, eating fat won't put on weight?
So if I eat 4000 calories a day in fats, I'll still not put on any weight, and if I don't eat carbs with 4000 calories of fat, I'll still lose weight overall?