Carbs and Type 2 diabetes: how low should you go?

[Northerner]

If you have Type 2 diabetes or are at risk of it, should you be eating a low-carbohydrate diet?

This hot topic flared again last week when an international group of researchers published an article in the journal Nutrition. In the article, Dr Richard Feinman, an American professor of biochemistry, and 25 colleagues present evidence that they say points to a carbohydrate-restricted diet as the default diet for people with Type 2 diabetes. But they claim that at present, health professionals and organisations are biased against low-carb diets, and often discourage patients from following them.

So are they right? Would everyone with Type 2 diabetes benefit from switching to a low-carbohydrate diet? And is the health establishment conspiring to keep the truth about low-carb diets from us?

http://www.diabeteschoices.org.uk/2...es-and-type-2-diabetes-how-low-should-you-go/

It does prompt the question of why so few studies have been done on this when there seems to be so much anecdotal evidence around on forums and elsewhere that it works. Is it because most research of this kind is funded by Big Pharma who don't really want to reduce their market opportunities by endorsing something that might reduce or eliminate the need for lucrative medications? Just sayin' 🙄

 

[Mark T]

Perhaps they just need to come up with some new drugs that fit in with the low-carb model?

Even on low carb, your glucose response is still faulty.

One of the issues I see is that even if I'm on low moderate carb, occasionally I might want to have something a little naughty. But there isn't any Type 2 drug that means I can take a tablet if I want to have a little bit more insulin in my system such that I can have the occasional cookie with a coffee but not push myself high. Most the Type 2 drugs are very blunt weapons.

 

[Lurch]

is the health establishment conspiring to keep the truth about low-carb diets from us?

Don't get me started! 😡 The nutrition world went mad after the lipid hypothesis 'con' claimed to have proved we all needed a low-fat diet to avoid clogging the tubes. Low fat means high carb and so took off the standard food pyramid and, oops, a diabetes epidemic...

"They" can't/won't yet admit they were wrong (too much money in statins etc). I'd recommend Volek and Phinney's "Art and Science of Low carb Living" if you like to know the science.

"The NICE guidelines state that everyone who has Type 2 diabetes should have dietary advice as part of their diabetes management plan."

I was told to cut down on sugar but eat the normal high carb diet. I ignored the advice and came down from 30 BMI to 24 BMI with so far un-medded 'normalised' BS levels. Nine months low carbing and not dead ye...

 

[AlisonM]

Every time I mention my low carb diet the nurse at the surgery rolls her eyes. But she can't dispute the numbers which are much lower since I got this regime going in conjunction with my insulin etc. On those occasions when I've slipped off the wagon my numbers have soared. Fortunately, the DSN at the clinic is at least willing to listen even though they still seem to believe 1.5 = 2.

 

[HOBIE]

I have a good mate who - was T2, cut out all alcoholic drink, walks the legs off his dog, eats better. I KNOW what I would do if I could. He isn't T2 now & off the books with his Dr 🙂

 

[AndBreathe]

I'm T2 and eat a reduced carb diet. I have done almost since diagnosis, when my research concurred with my feeling that the low fat diet, and reduced sugars, recommended by. My. Doctor wasn't the way forward. My stats are as follows:

T2 since October 2013. No medication.

HbA1c:
October 13: 73 or 8.8% (How did that happen?)
February 14: 37 or 5.5%
May 14: 34 or 5.3%

I have also lost weight, without really trying, and am now at the low end of the BMI range for my gender and height.

I am always astonished by how low profile carb reduction, and by association lower carb diets are on this forum. On another forum where I am active there is an immensely active low-carb area, and many, many low carbers. By low carbers, that can range from under 30g to 100g a day. I'm in the higher mid range of that.

Anyone whose body is struggling to manage their glucose levels is likely to benefit from moderating their c ar a rub intake, in my view, it's just a case of where the individual's tolerances sit. That means both their appetite to modify their diet to a greater or lesser degree, and of course their body's reaction to those steps. By my actions, My blood scores are transformed, and my cholesterol has also moderated into a very good range from a "we'll look at those again in a few months" range.

Personally, now that I have wrangled my bloods into range and lost any excess poundage, I find I can tolerate increased carbs, without any impact on my finger prick testing scores.

How low should we go? That's the length of string question...........

 

[AlisonM]

There are a good many of us here who follow a low carb regime of one sort or another but other forums where particular methodologies are advocated can be rather heavy handed over it. In our forum, we come at things from a different standpoint in that we are about 'support' for the individual not about proselytising. We may suggest something that we find works, but we don't want anyone to feel that they have to go our way or else.

 

[AndBreathe]

There are a good many of us here who follow a low carb regime of one sort or another but other forums where particular methodologies are advocated can be rather heavy handed over it. In our forum, we come at things from a different standpoint in that we are about 'support' for the individual not about proselytising. We may suggest something that we find works, but we don't want anyone to feel that they have to go our way or else.

Alison - Don't get me wrong, I have seen the Low Carb High Fat evangelizing going on elsewhere, and I feel uncomfortable about it, even when carb reduction is my own "chosen way". Personally, I didn't get on with the high fat aspect, so I've had to modify my own way of eating to suit my body and circumstances.

This forum is extremely supportive, but sometimes I think too supportive, in that I sometimes read posts where I think a firmer message might be in the best interest of the member, but that wouldn't suit this forum, so I sit on my hands. We are all adults, but sometimes we bury our heads in the sand and need help to extract it. As we both know, a diabetes diagnosis can be quite seismic, but how "we" deal with it, and the support networks we build up, particularly in the early days, undoubtedly impacts on our longer term outlook, success, and wellbeing.

But, going back, I think it is a great shame that some of the sub-fora are not better supported, because if today I was as new as I was in October last year, coming here, I wouldn't think low carb (or lower carb) was a supported ethos at Diabetes Support. I don't have the time to count today, but how many posts were made in this forum in the last month? How many new recipes are uploaded on a regular basis? Please treat those queries as rhetorical.

On an upside, I did find the Food Experiments thread extremely interesting reading when I was considering expanding my eating a bit. Not necessarily that I was considering some of those food options, but reading how folks scored and how it impacted on them.

I'm not going to post links to anywhere else I read, as that would be inappropriate, but if you are interested, please feel free to drop me a message.

 

[cherrypie]

I love this forum as it is, no pushy posters telling others what they should be doing but support and friendship when people need it.
The welcome that new posters get is second to none and there are plenty of suggested reading matter to help as well as explanations of the role of carbs.
No locked threads because people want to argue about trivia, people are respected here regardless of how they manage their diabetes and I have yet to see an ego tripper.
What more could you want?

 

[DeusXM]

Is it because most research of this kind is funded by Big Pharma who don't really want to reduce their market opportunities by endorsing something that might reduce or eliminate the need for lucrative medications?

I suspect it's more to do with larger vested interests.

Government health bodies the world over have been peddling the idea that fat is bad for decades. To reverse that is essentially to admit that the past 40 years of diet advice was wrong - and look at the state and size of people today and then do a quick calculation about the cash that might be involved if even a fraction of overweight people tried to legally blame the Government for their BMI.

It's also because it's counter-intuitive. The idea that 'fat makes you fat' is very, very simple. So simple that most people don't want to let go of it. And doesn't bread 'look' healthier than a big strand of fat on a steak? So you're also dealing with an inbuilt cultural prejudice against fat. I have these conversations all the time, both here and in real life. For instance, I advocate pork rinds as a great snack and the disbelief that this is BETTER for my heart is palpable. Yet my triglyceride levels (the marker for heart disease) are below the NORMAL range for people WITHOUT diabetes - the exact opposite of what you'd expect for someone with diabetes eating what is essentially fried fat.

The weird thing is, this is entirely cultural. I'm quite a PG Wodehouse fan and while you can't take a 1920s comic novel as being a medical text, the amount of times a 'larger' person is referred to as obviously eating a lot of bread while most other characters seem to live on steak, eggs and bacon is rather striking. It's almost as if 100 years ago we sort of knew that bread and potatoes made people fat, whereas we've now been brought up to think the opposite. It's hard to break social conditioning!

 

[jacmarczacc]

I recently (3 months ago) gave up eating Potatoes except for once a week mostly for roast dinners on a sunday and my blood sugars did drop quite a bit, not a big pasta or rice eater. I don't much care for noodles or bread either..

 

[bill hopkinson]

I think a low carb, low fat diet is good for some diabetics, depends on medication and whether hypo is a risk.
A danger is going high protein when you lower the carbs, byproducts can be nasty.
Keep eating the salad...

 

[DeusXM]

A danger is going high protein when you lower the carbs, byproducts can be nasty.

Yes, but a low protein diet is something entirely separate from a low carb diet. Generally, a low carb diet should also be a high fat diet. Because you are swapping the proportion of your energy to come from fat rather than carbs, you metabolise the fat so it doesn't get stored or cause problems.