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A REAL Cure for Diabetes

janeecee said:
The problem is, for the rest of us, we don't have access to the MRI scanners at Newcastle University and we're not part of that study, so we don't really know how much fat we have in our liver and pancreas, nor do we have access to the same range of blood tests. How can we as a laypeople know what metabolic processes are going wrong (or right) at any particular point, and how far along the continuum we are, and most importantly, can we reverse whatever is going on? And if so, how can we tell?

I am not a diagnosed T2 so I don't even have access to regular Hba1c tests. What I can do is test myself with a glucometer, and use my bathroom scales and a tape measure. Prof Taylor says it's all down to losing fat from the liver and pancreas, but how do I know if that is happening. I have very little weight to spare as it is. Since trying to control my BG levels, I have unintentionally dropped a few pounds but with no effect on my BG levels. So, perhaps this means of 'reversing' diabetes isn't going too work for me. Or perhaps it will if I get my BMI down to 18.5, who knows, but that's verging on being unhealthily underweight.

By the definitions used in the ND study, my FBG and Hba1c would not count as 'diabetic' and if a participant had the same FBG and Hba1c as I had at the end of the ND study, they would be considered 'reversed'. So how could I, as someone with postprandial hyperglycaemia but normal fasting levels, and a BMI of 20, apply the key principles of the ND to restore my first phase insulin response?

I did write to Newcastle University to explain my full situation, including my inability to exercise which I feel is a contributory factor, and offered myself as a guinea pig to see if their regime could reverse prediabetes/impaired glucose tolerance but I heard nothing back from them. I didn't even get as much as an automated 'out of the office' reply. Not that I was expecting much, they probably are inundated with enquiries. Still…it would have been good to have been told why the ND regime might have worked for me, or why I may be unsuitable. At this weight, and with a longstanding chronic illness, the DIY Newcastle Diet might not be the right thing to do unsupervised, but I did at least make serious enquiries.


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Click to expand...

In fairness to the study and its results, I feel it is important not to lose sight of the caviats stated in the Disucssions section of the 2-years on Reflections paper (I have taken the liberty to number them for clarity) ...

Observations in uncontrolled free-living populations make this study unique and reflect the prospects for what can be achieved beyond the research environment. However, the limitations inherent to this study design must be acknowledged.

1) Firstly, there will have been self-referral bias, with the observations demonstrating proof of principle rather than any estimate of likely reversal rates.

2) The precision of the diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes is uncertain.

3) The inclusion of individuals with maturity-onset diabetes of youth or slow-onset Type 1 diabetes would result in an
underestimation of rates of diabetes reversal using a very low energy diet.

4) The significant degree of heterogeneity in the intervention must also be acknowledged, including the degree of energy restriction (particularly in those who did not use a meal replacement product) and the length of diet period undertaken.

5) Finally, diabetes reversal was mostly based on self-reported, unverified measurements of glycaemic control in the form of capillary blood glucose results, fasting plasma glucose results, HbA1c or oral glucose tolerance tests.

As I said in an earlier blog, I blogged the following question a week ago ..

"Re: Newcastle Diet Experiences
There are, by now, quite a number of people on the site who will have embarked upon the Newcastle Diet plan and/or who have decided to continue with it. It would be interesting to hear what experiences people have had with the diet, what they have done since, whether they would recommend it etc."

It's a pity that no one has, as yet, responded to that particular blog, although it may still be early days for many. It would be useful to hear from people who are perhaps a bit more 'real' to us than the participants in the study.
 
It is not necessary to have an MRI for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Fat in the liver will show up using ultrasound.

Regards

Doug


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As for me, I am not actually eating much food at all. I am juicing everything I eat. This way, the food is used directly and bypasses the digestion, so the acid in your stomach doesn't destroy almost everything you put in.

After 2 days, all going well. I did have a Hypo, but then that would be expected if the sugar intake is less and I am using my original dosage. Cured by juicing 4 apples into about 350ml of pure apple juice.

I used to sit there and complain and feel this and that, and finally after reading loads and talking to people who have done several ideas that actually worked, why not try them?

I recommend people with Type 2 read this and try it

The 30 Day Diabetes Cure
The Proven Step-by-Step Plan to
Control Your Blood Sugar Naturally
and Prevent Diabetes Complications
by Dr. Stefan Ripich, ND, CNP
and Jim HealthyT

If after 30 days nothing changes, then its only 30 days of your life.
If you do this and it works - well you have the rest of your life to live.


Another note I would like to add, is the working theory that the cells are attacking themselves. The new idea in this, is that a bacteria or some kind has infected the cells, which is why they are destroying themselves. This was in the New Scientist a while back.
So I believe that it is possible to help your body take back its infected cells and cure them or reduce the need of insulin.
 
I wouldn't have called Michael Mosely 'slim'. He looked to me just a little bit rotund in that middle-aged man way. He's no Andy Murray, you could say. He had a bit of middle-age spread to lose, which is one part of the picture but didn't he have a diabetic father too?

Actually, I had an abdominal ultrasound last year to investigate some digestive pain but I'm told it was completely normal. I could ask for a copy and hopefully get the pictures too. The problem is, how could I estimate the presence of excess fat as a layperson? There was no mention of me having a fatty liver or fatty anything but I assume the ND study had different criteria as to how much fat is too much. The ND participants may well be well within 'normal' range compared with fatty liver disease or whatever.

I did read the ND categorisation of a T2. So far I do not appear to be Type 1.5 or anything like that, nor do i have a family history. I think I've been hovering around pre-d territory for a few years, reviewing my FBG history. My GPs are telling me 'normal' but as I said, I have impaired glucose tolerance, evident by high post prandial blood glucose. My fasting is 'normal'. As long as my lab FBG remains below 6.1 and my Hba1c is under whatever it should be, that's it as far as the diagnostic tests are concerned. So, no, I am not a T2 diabetic. I have IGT.

So, I'm left to figure it out for myself and I do look into all options and weigh up the pros and cons, why certain strategies work for some people. I don't want an inevitable progression to T2 if I can help it, that's why I'm looking into everything and extracting what might work for me, in my specific situation. I seem to be a bit of an outlier, so what works for some or even most may not be the answer for me.

Re the juicing. I can't see how juicing apples and extracting the sugar content improves BG control if you are effectively ingesting more sugar. I can't fathom how juicing apples can cure diabetes, but if you are cured then by all means share your BG numbers, especially your pre and post prandial figures after the 30 days is up and you return to eating a balanced diet.

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I juiced the apples for the nutrients, not just for the sugars that it comes with.

Today I had -
2 bananas, 2 carrots (eating) 9am
Green vegetables, 1/4 apple and ginger midday
100g of salted peanuts 3pm
Juiced Grapes 5:30pm

No insulin injected today - and its now 7pm

Blood Sugar = 8.3

Just an Experiment, but yes its slightly high but ZERO insulin injected today

Another useful Documentary to watch - Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead - google it!
 
Osidge said:
It is not necessary to have an MRI for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Fat in the liver will show up using ultrasound.
Click to expand...

Yes, but researchers want to improve the precision and quantify the amounts. Taylor says 'show me someone with diabetes and I'll show you a fatty liver'. This much they know, but what they don't know is how much fat has to accumulate in the liver before fat then starts to build up in the pancreas. Graph C in the figure that I posted refers to pancreatic trigs which is the important value for it is this which damages the beta cell mass. There is much research into developing improved imaging techniques. One goal is to image the number of remaining healthy beta cells because the oft cited 50% death by diagnosis is little more then guesswork. It is based on post mortem studies and rats and mice but we don't really know the values for living human beings. If we did have an accurate way of assessing the stage of diabetes, treatment could be adjusted to suit. Ideally, once the processes are fully understood, they should be able to predict the liklihood of contracting diabetes by monitoring the build up of fats in the liver. At the moment its too vague and all that is said is, 'you are at risk'.
 
Brit90

If you have no insulin production of your own (Type 1 diabetes), what will convert the sugars that you are giving yourself a quick hit with - by juicing them? My guess is that you are still producing some insulin of your own. Failing that, you need to report to a diabetes consultant as a walking miracle - the only person on the planet that does not need insulin to process blood sugars

Regards

Doug
 
janeecee said:
I think I've been hovering around pre-d territory for a few years, reviewing my FBG history. My GPs are telling me 'normal' but as I said, I have impaired glucose tolerance, evident by high post prandial blood glucose. My fasting is 'normal'. As long as my lab FBG remains below 6.1 and my Hba1c is under whatever it should be, that's it as far as the diagnostic tests are concerned. So, no, I am not a T2 diabetic. I have IGT.
Click to expand...

You may find this article interesting, The Pros and Cons of Diagnosing Diabetes With A1C:
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/conten ... 4.full.pdf

It gives two tables, 'Reasons to prefer A1C compared with plasma glucose determination for diagnosing diabetes' and 'Reasons not to prefer A1C compared with plasma glucose determination for diagnosing diabetes' both of which highlight some limitations that I was not aware of. FPG and HBA1c are rather blunt instruments

If you are in this so called 'pre diabetic' state, you are obviously wise to want to avoid its progression. Is watching what you eat having any effect on your levels? It would be odd if, as a pre diabetic you cut down your carbs drastically and then still had elevated levels. Does your GP offer any explanation or offer any advice to help you reduce your levels?
 
Brit90 said:
As for me, I am not actually eating much food at all. I am juicing everything I eat. This way, the food is used directly and bypasses the digestion, so the acid in your stomach doesn't destroy almost everything you put in.
Click to expand...

This is a misnomer. Your gastric acids don't destroy all the food that enter it. If they did, the human race would have starved to death a long time before blenders were invented. Gastric acids activate the many digestive enzymes and also cause the proteins to unravel in order that the enzymes can then break down the long chain amino acids.

You may put some meat in a blender if you are weening a baby off milk but you can eat chunks of meat from a very early stage.
 
Osidge said:
Brit90

If you have no insulin production of your own (Type 1 diabetes), what will convert the sugars that you are giving yourself a quick hit with - by juicing them? My guess is that you are still producing some insulin of your own. Failing that, you need to report to a diabetes consultant as a walking miracle - the only person on the planet that does not need insulin to process blood sugars

Regards

Doug
Click to expand...

All I can give you is my blood sugar levels as I take them and describe what I have eaten.
I have been insulin dependant since 2002 - so unless my Doctors have been lying to me I am Type 1. Otherwise all these painful injections wouldn't have been necessary.

As for other comments about exercise etc, of course this is good. Exercise is for muscle related parts, and things that generally move. Most organs don't move. Also a weight loss will reduce fatty tissue inside your organs but you can't really exercise your Kidneys, Liver or Pancreas.

As for abuse of ones body, you can put this down to anything. Too much alcohol, too many sweets, chocolate.
I personally believe your pancreas is more like an engine. Eating low carb/sugary foods keeps your pancreas ticking over at 2-3000 rpm. Once in a while you may eat something sweet that revs it up to the red line, but over eating keeps it in the red line for longer, and just like a car, you can't run it at red line indefinitely it will fail.

When you consider Americans consume more than 70kgs of a sugar a year, I am not sure what the average British persons intake is, but that's a lot in anyones book. I think in the book Sugar Busters, they mention before the popularised sugar (1700's), the pancreas produced as much insulin in 1 year as it does now in 1 day.
 
Yorkman,
by using juices, in theory I can cram more of the goodness into my body. Who wants to eat 1 kilo of red cabbage? I certainly don't but I can juice it down 1 glass, then I have no problems with it.

Just like different types of medication, you take before food, during food and after food because your body can destroy what is in the pill.

So by juicing it, it doesn't sit in the stomach for a long time and gets into the digestive track quicker, where nutrients can be absorbed. No heart burn from over indulging or being lazy to chew your food properly and let your stomach do the work. According to one book, up to 70% of energy can be used to digest food. Remove the strenuous digestive part of food intake, then your body can do other things.

I think I should take photo's of cuts I have, then see if they heal quicker than normal.
 
Yorksman said:
janeecee said:
I think I've been hovering around pre-d territory for a few years, reviewing my FBG history. My GPs are telling me 'normal' but as I said, I have impaired glucose tolerance, evident by high post prandial blood glucose. My fasting is 'normal'. As long as my lab FBG remains below 6.1 and my Hba1c is under whatever it should be, that's it as far as the diagnostic tests are concerned. So, no, I am not a T2 diabetic. I have IGT.
Click to expand...

You may find this article interesting, The Pros and Cons of Diagnosing Diabetes With A1C:
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/conten ... 4.full.pdf

It gives two tables, 'Reasons to prefer A1C compared with plasma glucose determination for diagnosing diabetes' and 'Reasons not to prefer A1C compared with plasma glucose determination for diagnosing diabetes' both of which highlight some limitations that I was not aware of. FPG and HBA1c are rather blunt instruments

If you are in this so called 'pre diabetic' state, you are obviously wise to want to avoid its progression. Is watching what you eat having any effect on your levels? It would be odd if, as a pre diabetic you cut down your carbs drastically and then still had elevated levels. Does your GP offer any explanation or offer any advice to help you reduce your levels?
Click to expand...

Well, the thing is Yorksman, I wasn't consuming large amounts of carbs to begin with. As explained elsewhere—and at the risk of repeating myself—I'm literally housebound due to severe ME/CFS, so I need very few calories to begin with as I don't burn them up. There wasn't the scope to "cut my carbs drastically" to begin with. All I had were modest portions of pasta, porridge, brown rice etc. I believe that my prediabetic condition has resulted largely from physical inactivity, bearing in mind that I am unusually inactive compared with the average "sedentary" person who at least has to walk to the bus stop in the morning, walk round the supermarket, hoover their living room etc. So perhaps it is more to do with loss of muscle due to inactivity in my case.

Cutting carbs has worked to some extent, but bizarrely it doesn't help much for very long. I'll spare you the details, but some sort of shift happens in response and I can't fathom it. My only I was probably only eating 130-150g max before I knew I had this problem. I'm still figuring out my tolerances.

I am aware of the diagnostic limitations of the Hba1c and FBG, but we live in the real world and the NICE guidelines state that these are now the diagnostic tests, and that in my area at least, the OGTT is only used to diagnose pregnant women who fall into the IFG area. It's not right, but that's reality. As for discussing the matter with my GPs, they say my numbers are "normal" even if they go above the NICE guideline for T2s of 8.5 at 2 hours. So try work that one out. I can't. (See also Little Wolf's tale of woe with her GP.)

As for these liver and pancreas scans, most of us have to live in the real world and outside of academic research, so we won't have access to these scans. Prof Taylor may well be right about fatty livers, but we are still left with the challenge of dealing with how to manage our blood glucose levels on a daily basis without the knowledge of how much fat we have on the inside, or what to do for the best. I can't do extreme weight loss dieting as per ND because I'd very rapidly be clinically underweight. As I said, I'm probably an outlier, my contributing factors are probably different to begin with.

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Brit90 said:
Yorkman,
by using juices, in theory I can cram more of the goodness into my body. Who wants to eat 1 kilo of red cabbage? I certainly don't but I can juice it down 1 glass, then I have no problems with it.
Click to expand...

Be careful. People die from things like vitamin A poisoning from drinking too much juiced carrot. They think it's healthy but they overdose on it. You certainly run a risk of damaging your liver by pre-processing your food in this way. Suggest you read up on Hypervitaminosis.

You use the word 'goodness' but you can have too much of a good thing.
 
janeecee said:
As for discussing the matter with my GPs, they say my numbers are "normal" even if they go above the NICE guideline for T2s of 8.5 at 2 hours. So try work that one out. I can't.
Click to expand...

I can't either. It certainly seems like the GP is ignoring a signal. You'd have to ask others who have more experience of dealing with GPs who don't seem to do their job. Part of GP's role is to explain and reassure, not to simply deny. My GP is complacent but he does do his job eventually.

You GP may, and this is only a guess, think that 8.5 is OK given your current lack of activity. But, he should explain his reasoning. And, as you have already worked out for yourself, even if it is OK now, it surely cannot go on like this. Does he give advice on some limited exercise or dietary advice?
 
Hello Brit,

Please take on board everything im about to explain. First of all in the documentary they reversed type 2 (NOT type 1) diabetes. And I have to say this is old news, yes old, everyone in the dietary world knows their is a big fat lie telling you fat makes you fat. Well truth is it isn't, its carbs makes you fat. And you can simply reverse type 2 diabetes on an extremely low carb diet, which is what this video is all about- LOW CARB-. SIMPLIES! Type 1 on a low carb diet only helps you control your blood sugars more easily it doesn't however reverse diabetes because the beta-cells are now long destroyed and your too far into the red to reverse any damage done to them. If your going to try this regime DONT get off insulin simply reduce it.

Kind Regards and I'm very open minded to new ideas Adam
 
AdamAdam

Low Carb, High Fat may very well remove from you the symptoms of diabetes and the need for medication or as much medication. For those with Type 2 diabetes, however, a change of diet to include more carbs would result in the symptom reappearing. Diabetes has not been halted or cured, it is merely being controlled my diet rather than medication. With Type 1 diabetes, you talk as if a diet change would be too late. The truth is that a diet change would never have stopped the onset of Type 1 as it is an autoimmune destruction of the beta cells which diet cannot stop.

Trying to help

Doug
 
No, the GP gives me no advice whatsoever. As for managing ME/CFS I've attended a specialist unit so I know what to do re lifestyle management, but I attended before I knew I had BG problems and funding for re-referral is scarce. I just have to keep on bringing the matter up with the various GPs at my surgery and see which one is going to act, but then I have taken it upon myself to manage my diet etc to keep the BG levels in the 'normal' range, which is pretty much what we all have to do for ourselves anyway.


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re the juicing diet.

I would be every wary of this as your gut needs fibre to stay healthy. Doctors are linking bowel cancer with too little fibre in your diet. I simply can't see that juicing 8 apples or pounds of vegetables for example can be good for you, as your body is designed to chew food. Also there are an awful lot of sugars in all those concentrated juiced fruits, which if you are not producing insulin, will send your bg levels pretty high or so I would think.

I fear someone is pulling our legs here.... :***:
 
Luna21 said:
I would be every wary of this as your gut needs fibre to stay healthy. Doctors are linking bowel cancer with too little fibre in your diet. I simply can't see that juicing 8 apples or pounds of vegetables for example can be good for you, as your body is designed to chew food. Also there are an awful lot of sugars in all those concentrated juiced fruits, which if you are not producing insulin, will send your bg levels pretty high or so I would think.
Click to expand...

You're right about the insoluable fibre. It is important to protect the bowel. Ancient human droppings contain the insoluable fibre found in grain husks and bean skins. They are beta carbohydrates, cellulose based, for which we don't produce the necessary enzymes. However, highly refined flours etc have done away with all this fibre so we get the concentrated white flours which can cause more problems than just diabetes.

The way the stucture of foods is altered by processing can be seen in the manufacture of potato vodka. I can eat some new boiled potatoes but mashed potatoes will spike me. Pureed potatoes will send my BGs up very steeply. Vodka distillers using potatoes don't ferment small cut up bits of potato they create a process called saccharification, where the starchy potatoes are turned more sugary by mashing. They create something called a Stepped Infusion Mash.

Of course, if you're making alcohol, you want those sugars but if you're diabetic, you don't. Slowly, slowly does it is for type 2s, none of this turbo charged processing.
 
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