Insulin resistance is not caused by a high carb diet... Some opinions

[tim2000s]

https://www.facebook.com/drgarth/posts/836029126417997?hc_location=ufi

https://www.facebook.com/drgarth/posts/942670975753811

These are both posts from Dr Garth Davis, a proponent of the vegetarian or vegan whole food diet as a way to reduce insulin existence. Thought they might prove interesting as an alternative to the LC approach that many on here take.

The first has a long list of papers that I haven't had a chance to read, but @phoenix may have.

 

[tim2000s]

In addition, there's this guide to the 80:10:10 diet.

http://download.audible.com/product_related_docs/BK_ACX0_013482.pdf

 

[alaska]

I think he tries to over-simplify the issue when he says carbs don't cause insulin resistance meat does. If it were that simple, some cultures, such as the Inuit should have had ridiculous type 2 diabetes rates. As it happens, those communities only started to experience a problem with insulin resistance after the introduction of processed foods into their diet.

Studies like the Adventist study show that vegan diets tend to be effective at preventing insulin resistance. I dare say this is because vegan diets tend to be relatively low calorie and high in fruit and veg and low in processed foods. Low carb diets tend to share these characteristics and that's probably why low carb diets also tend to be good at preventing insulin resistance.

Note that the mouse study used as one of the references is a pretty shaky study. It claims ketogenic diet in mice is linked with hepatic insulin resistance, a finding which other researchers have questioned how they arrived at that finding.

Study: http://ajpendo.physiology.org/conte...51f03dd7e01d4bc32fc74f7a&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha
Response: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/94/3/956.full

The trouble with the other 'high fat diet' studies he also uses are that they are conducted in mice and are talking about high fat, high calorie diets which is different to the kind of LCHF followed by many of us on the forum which are relatively low calorie and with a good vegetable intake.

It would be better if Dr Davis stopped having so much of an axe to grind and focused on the benefits which can be derived from both a well followed vegan diet, as well as other well followed diets such as LCHF.

 

[robertconroy]

The most serious nutritional deficiencies are: EPA/DHA omega-3, vitamin D, B12, calcium, magnesium, iron, and iodine. What causes insulin resistance is high glycemic carbohydrates, not meat. Meat lowers blood sugar and insulin, decreasing insulin resistance. It causes an insulin spike, but if no carbs, lowers blood sugar. My doctor had me eat animal protein every 2 hours for 2 months, my HbA1C went down 2%. No drug can do that.

 

[dawnmc]

Sounds a bit like Ancel Keys research (now debunked) where he only took the countries he needed to prove his point. Lets forget about the anomalies, they don't matter because he has a point to make lol.

 

[Safi]

The most serious nutritional deficiencies are: EPA/DHA omega-3, vitamin D, B12, calcium, magnesium, iron, and iodine.







What causes insulin resistance is high glycemic carbohydrates, not meat. Meat lowers blood sugar and insulin, decreasing insulin resistance. It causes an insulin spike, but if no carbs, lowers blood sugar. My doctor had me eat animal protein every 2 hours for 2 months, my HbA1C went down 2%. No drug can do that.

With all due respect @robertconroy I have been vegetarian for close to 30 years & am not deficient in any of those things.

 

[tim2000s]

Here is a further thing to have a read of relating to diabetes and higher carb diets.

http://www.diabetesdaily.com/blog/2015/04/the-effects-of-a-plant-based-diet-on-diabetes/

What struck me reading this is that many of the statements you can swap out carbs and fats and see almost the same things being said. What I also find interesting are his comments relating to cholesterol and blaming animal fats forbthem, which we know is not strictly what is going on ( although it is still not clear on the impact of animal products in encouraging the liver to produce cholesterol).

Again though, the key factor is avoiding processed and refined foods. What is most fascinating for me is that clearly both lchf and vegan lfhc work. There has to be something that is similar between the two that drives this. I suspect both have aspects of starvation and that effect on cells at the heart of what is going on. I also suspect there is an optimal diet linking both that will have an interesting effect. I'd like to try and work out what that is!

 

[phoenix]

I agree with you Tim that you find all the same arguments from the vegan community as to why their diet is best for diabetes as you do from the HCLF community on here. (
On both sides you see a demonization of one nutrient or another and people become very entrenched . (just look at the replies on DD, I sigh every time I see Ancel Keys mentioned , the internet echo chamber has a lot to answer for)
People tend to read things that reaffirm their own views .
Just look at these two accounts of a recent study
The first notes that the diet wasn't really low carb so just think what a real low carb diet would do.
http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2014/09/the-low-carb-vs-low-fat-study/
The second says that at 30% it was far from a low fat diet and not very different to a SAD one. A diet of 8-12% fat is the one that has the benefits.
http://nutritionstudies.org/low-carb-hot-air/


The one systematic review that BSC doesn't mention is here http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/97/3/505.full
(basically, the evidence not brilliant, full of confounders and several diets have similar effects; there was not enough evidence from vegan diet) The problem I see with any randomised controlled trial is that people don't stick to the diets that they are allocated so long term trials end up with people eating much the same thing (and often not that different to where they started)

Elsewhere there have been two other papers recently that try to assess what healthy diets have in common.
Theres an account of the Katz one here .He concludes that the best diets are ' minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants'(it's now gone behind a paywall which is a pity, the Hu one on diabetes diets is also not free access )

Both of them seem to tend towards moderation, more plant than animal, not too much of anything and very few refined foods.

Katz is actually trying to set up some sort of coalition of people from all corners of the dietary spectrum to look for that consensus about evidenced based, healthy diet patterns to avoid (treat?) disease including T2. I'm not clear where he hopes to go with it though
He has got on board a very large group of 'luminaries' people and people with media influence, including some very well known academic researchers , people who promote diets from paleo to GI to vegan and some people more controversial (Deeprak Chopra and Mehemet Oz for example)
I don't think that I recognise anyone from the LCHF wing though . It may be that they have been asked and refused but it may also be that the methods of asking are a bit, lets say odd, or maybe I'm old fashioned but I think that such requests aren't best put on blogs or Twitter ( eg put a page search for Glimmer on this page from Peter Attia's blog http://eatingacademy.com/cholesterol-2/random-finding-plus-pi )

 

[Indy51]

After a life-long fascination with anthropology, human evolution, biology, etc., I've never been interested in vegan or vegetarian diets - the diets seem so illogical and counter intuitive to the way humans evolved that I never bothered investigating them too much.

Listening to interviews here and there with people like McDougall, they come across as such arrogant/intolerant zealots that I'm put off even more. I've always been put off by religious fanatics of any ilk and so many of them come across like that - one completely OTT case being that Youtube freak Durian Rider. A lot of the arguments about sustainability seem to be pretty spurious as well - check out the stats on the number of small animals killed by harvesting.

The idea of raw vegan is even scarier for someone like me with aging teeth

 

[robertconroy]

Insulin Resistance

Insulin resistance occurs when the body becomes less sensitive to insulin
Insulin resistance occurs when insulin levels are sufficiently high over a prolonged period of time causing the body’s own sensitivity to the hormone to be reduced.

Once the body starts to get resistant to insulin, it can be a difficult process to reverse because the knock on effect of insulin resistance.

Higher circulating levels of insulin in the blood stream and weight gain help to further advance insulin resistance.

 

[Safi]

I am not nutrient deficient.

 

[catherinecherub]

This thread is not about denigrating members who follow a vegan/vegetarian diet so please be mindful of this. Some posts have been edited and if people want to cause a them and us situation or make negative statements about people following a certain diet then they need to read the forum rules.

 

[tim2000s]

The original point of this topic was to make people think. As @phoenix and I have both pointed out, the arguments for both lchf and lfhc seem to have a lot of common points. The most striking being the removal of processed and refined ingredients in both cases. What I hoped was that people would make the cognitive jump that eating either or is probably unnecessary and sticking to whole, clean foods is very probably as good a way of eating if you don't want to be more extreme.

 

[Avocado Sevenfold]

Illogical? Glad I missed the unedited version of this thread if the remains are anything to go by.

 

[RuthW]

Insulin Resistance

Insulin resistance occurs when the body becomes less sensitive to insulin
Insulin resistance occurs when insulin levels are sufficiently high over a prolonged period of time causing the body’s own sensitivity to the hormone to be reduced.

Once the body starts to get resistant to insulin, it can be a difficult process to reverse because the knock on effect of insulin resistance.

Higher circulating levels of insulin in the blood stream and weight gain help to further advance insulin resistance.

I've never had the problem of persistent insulin resistance myself. As far as I know there is a very quick and simple solution for it: regular exercise. Even with an hb1Ac way out of control for many, many years, I still didn't develop insulin resistance. I guess it's because I have always cycled or wlaked everywhere and my main hobbies are sports.

 

[Miss_Dior]

Sounds a bit like Ancel Keys research (now debunked) where he only took the countries he needed to prove his point. Lets forget about the anomalies, they don't matter because he has a point to make lol.

That is not true about Keys. This "debunking" has been debunked many times. Keys was a good scientist and only matched data that were comparable.

For the record, I am not a vegan, a vegetarian, or an adherent of any particular diet regimen, except the one you can live with for the rest of your life, with a health-promoting metabolism. For some people that's low carb, for some, not.

About insulin resistance, all I've gotta say is that there are knowns, unknowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. So let's all be a little humble and bow down before the amazing complexity of the human body. With that in mind, here's a few thoughts:

There have been many populations that are healthy and non-obese whose staple diet has been starch. So carbs per se don't cause insulin resistance. (I think it's important to note that these people are invariably very active.)

"I think he tries to over-simplify the issue when he says carbs don't cause insulin resistance meat does. If it were that simple, some cultures, such as the Inuit should have had ridiculous type 2 diabetes rates."

I agree that he is oversimplifying massively but just for the record: the Inuit were adapted to their extreme environment (1300 calories a day expended just breathing!), and the chemical composition of the marine mammals they ate was different from land mammals. Marine mammal meat has lots of glycogen. And they ate as many plants/veg/fruit as they could, gorging themselves on this during thaws.

Back to IR, there is some evidence that high fat is implicated. I could do a "proof-by-Pubmed" but then everyone would say I am confirming a bias. And maybe that would be true. But anyway, here's a couple of studies:

Recent data suggest that IMCL are specifically harmful when combined with reduced mitochondrial function, both conditions that characterize type 2 diabetes.

(That IMCL stuff particularly interests me, because I think that is where it all starts, before the liver & pancreas get blocked up.)

OK, it's just mice, but still.

I'm not here to mess up anyone's great experience doing LCHF. If you're losing weight & getting good results with that, go for it. But facts are facts (until new ones come along) and my take is that the disaster of the modern diet is massive intake of "carbage" plus high fat, plus zero movement. = METABOLIC DISASTER.

 

[Roytaylorjasonfunglover]

That is not true about Keys. This "debunking" has been debunked many times. Keys was a good scientist and only matched data that were comparable.

For the record, I am not a vegan, a vegetarian, or an adherent of any particular diet regimen, except the one you can live with for the rest of your life, with a health-promoting metabolism. For some people that's low carb, for some, not.

About insulin resistance, all I've gotta say is that there are knowns, unknowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. So let's all be a little humble and bow down before the amazing complexity of the human body. With that in mind, here's a few thoughts:

There have been many populations that are healthy and non-obese whose staple diet has been starch. So carbs per se don't cause insulin resistance. (I think it's important to note that these people are invariably very active.)

"I think he tries to over-simplify the issue when he says carbs don't cause insulin resistance meat does. If it were that simple, some cultures, such as the Inuit should have had ridiculous type 2 diabetes rates."

I agree that he is oversimplifying massively but just for the record: the Inuit were adapted to their extreme environment (1300 calories a day expended just breathing!), and the chemical composition of the marine mammals they ate was different from land mammals. Marine mammal meat has lots of glycogen. And they ate as many plants/veg/fruit as they could, gorging themselves on this during thaws.

Back to IR, there is some evidence that high fat is implicated. I could do a "proof-by-Pubmed" but then everyone would say I am confirming a bias. And maybe that would be true. But anyway, here's a couple of studies:

Recent data suggest that IMCL are specifically harmful when combined with reduced mitochondrial function, both conditions that characterize type 2 diabetes.

(That IMCL stuff particularly interests me, because I think that is where it all starts, before the liver & pancreas get blocked up.)

OK, it's just mice, but still.

I'm not here to mess up anyone's great experience doing LCHF. If you're losing weight & getting good results with that, go for it. But facts are facts (until new ones come along) and my take is that the disaster of the modern diet is massive intake of "carbage" plus high fat, plus zero movement. = METABOLIC DISASTER.

Cool that you are a vegetarian, I try too convince people that you can lose weight and better your diabetes on a vegetarian diet as well as lowcarb. Lowcarb is kind of my first love, since I lost so much weight on it, my father as well, but now I can also easily control my weight on a vegetarian diet.

I think people should be able to get rid of their diabetes even if they are vegetarians lol, not just us meatlovers.

 

[JTL]

I could never imagine being a vegetarian or vegan.
My daughter went veggie when she was still at school nearly twenty years ago now but it was more a peer pressure fad thing to do with cute defenceless animals than for health reasons so it didn't last very long.
I did a little research on it for her and to my surprise discovered that if we all went veggie Wales where I live would be decimated and become a barren land with derelict farms dotted about all over the place and the land either abandoned or turned to desert!
Many other rural communities would suffer the same fate.

 

[Roytaylorjasonfunglover]

I could never imagine being a vegetarian or vegan.
My daughter went veggie when she was still at school nearly twenty years ago now but it was more a peer pressure fad thing to do with cute defenceless animals than for health reasons so it didn't last very long.
I did a little research on it for her and to my surprise discovered that if we all went veggie Wales where I live would be decimated and become a barren land with derelict farms dotted about all over the place and the land either abandoned or turned to desert!
Many other rural communities would suffer the same fate.

Because people would not eat the products from the animals on farms, and therefore depriving people of their livelyhood, making them move away?

I am not totally vegan or vegetarian myself. I love meat, and I do not think it is unhealthy at all, neither saturated fat or cholesterol is dangerous in my opinion.

I just try to limit my meat consumtion because of enviromental reasons, so I eat a lot of chinese style and indian style dishes, small parts of meat, and loads of veggies and carbs besides., and some sauce made with dairy products like yoghurt and cream. I also have vegan days, or vegetarian days.

I also do not think we should be cruel to animals, but I have no qualms about eating them, unlike your daughter during the vegetarian phase, but I also firmly belive that people have really strong opions about animal welfare and such things, should be given a chance of improving their diabetes, not be terriorised into a atkins regime, even though I enjoyed my period on that diet style.

 

[tim2000s]

all I've gotta say is that there are knowns, unknowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.

Ah, Mr Rumsfeld, good to meet you!

my take is that the disaster of the modern diet is massive intake of "carbage" plus high fat, plus zero movement. = METABOLIC DISASTER

I think that's the fundamental take away from all of these things. Where a diet promotes eating natural, whole foods in moderation, and exercise is encouraged, the symptoms or conditions recede significantly (where this is possible).