I've spent the whole day watching Jason Fung on youtube. He has reassured me that I'm not fat and diabetic because I'm a slob or lack self control. Until recently I've been on medication for all sorts of things, and I've just swallowed whatever medical advice has been dished up to me without too much thought or critique. I trust the people I pay to look after my pipes and expect to get expert advice in exactly the same way as I trust the plumber to fix my loo - I don't need to go to plumber school so that I can be sure that what he tells me and what he proposes will fix the problem actually will do the job. I've found out I've been putting up with a lot of awful side effects, some of which I've been prescribed other drugs for, for dubious benefit. Like maybe 1% less likely to have a major cardiovascular event while putting up with muscle cramps and possibly being tipped over into diabetes because of the large dose of statins I'd been prescribed. You can't even trust what's in the journals. A lot of it is written by the drug companies who then pay some stooge academic to sign off on it. Loads of research which finds negatively for drugs or firmly held ideology gets suppressed and either delayed or not published. Apart from the drug reps, you'd hope that the journals are where the doctors are getting their information from, but perhaps it's not really science. If it is, why are we treated like we're crazy for going low carb, or being warned how dangerous it is from the very people who should be supporting us in making positive changes which will improve our health? (I've been told that low carb is dangerous and at the very least, should be closely supervised by a nutritionist if I must go down that route). Who am I supposed to believe? The more I find out, the more I read, the more distressing it is. If I'm putting myself through this strict regime of avoiding as many carbohydrates as possible for a 1% increase in my lifespan (I'm not saying I am.. I just have been warned I'm likely to have a heart attack tomorrow because I've stopped taking the statin) then I'd rather enjoy a pie and chips whenever I want it. I'm feeling super disillusioned and it all seems like it's too hard right now. Yes I love bacon and eggs, but not for 3 meals a day (and yes I know there's lots of stuff that is low carb, it's just not the stuff I want most of the time). AND no, I don't have any evidence for what I've written, it's not scientific fact. I'm just a person with diabetes on a forum trying to figure out which way is up, and reflecting on what I've been reading and watching.
I will say that after 2 months of sticking to low carb rather religiously but not orthorexically, my weight has gone down by 4kg, my resting pulse by 10 bpm, and my bp from 180/90 to 100/60 on average. My BGs are consistently 4 -6 except for the first one in the morning, which continues to be 7 or close to it. So anecdotally, in my n=1 experience, it seems to be doing the trick, although a couple of days off metformin during birthday week (where I didn't have any cake!) did show an average increase of 2 mmol/l at each reading. A packet of low carb licorice I just had to have also put me up to 8 at the 2 hr mark.
Gone a bit off topic.. but that being said, it seems to me there's been a lot of random stuff come up so - not sorry
I think I've OD'd on Fung. So frustrating not knowing who and what to believe. Experience can be completely wrong, and it could be that controlling the sugar is just dealing with a symptom, rather than the cause, in which case, while I feel I'm taking control, it's not going to be worth the effort in the long term. I'd rather die a couple of years earlier and not have to spend so much time worrying about what I put in my mouth, but I definitely don't want my legs to fall off first or go blind.
Now I'm off to learn about fasting, and having a grumble about how the hell I will find the self control to manage fasting when I have never even been able to keep 5 kg off successfully, and that includes having had weight loss surgery.