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Can I mimic diabetes?

VinnyJames

VinnyJames

Well-Known Member
Messages
624
Location
Liverpool
Type of diabetes
Treatment type
Diet only
For debate only:

If I take a man with normal blood sugars off the street and pump him full of carbs and sugar for 3 months and then do a HBa1C test that results in a reading of say 7.4% would the NHS register him as diabetic?
Secondly, could I 'cure' him of diabetes?


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Interesting question. My guess would be a non-diabetic could deal with the carbs and so HbA1C would be normal but who knows ! Depends how many carbs I guess.


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I would think that if he was a thoroughly healthy candidate then he could handle the sugar and still have a low blood sugar count. If he can't handle the sugar then maybe he truly is diabetic and the scam falls on its face.

It is interesting to note that in the fat vs sugar film where one twin ate a high sugar diet and the other one a high fat diet it was the one on a high fat diet that returned results similar to a pre-diabetic. The twin on high carbs just had a pancreas in overdrive.

None of us know what would have happened if they had continued. It is my guess that the sugar twin would have wrecked his pancreas eventually.

Is this question really one of those, "my friend has diabetes, not me, oh no".

edit: If you get cured can you let us all know please.
 
I agree that someone with a normal glucose metabolism wouldn't end up with an HbA1c after gorging on sugar for a month. I don't believe that it is I sugar or carbs or indeed fats by themselves that cause diabetes.
Indeed , just as there are Inuit on very low carb diets there are societies on 70% + carb diets that don't develop diabetes.

However, I think that you could raise a persons fasting glucose and also induce them to fail a glucose tolerance test with a very high fat diet. This is exactly what happened to Stefansson and his companion when they spent a year on an all meat diet.
At the end they 'failed' a glucose tolerance test. . After eating normally they were 'cured' and their glucose tolerance returned to normal. (interestingly Inuits on a traditional diet don't fail it which might say something about genes or the amount of protein that could be converted to glucose in their diet)
This very old paper (1929) describes what happened. It also describes an experiment suggesting that a very high intake of glucose over several days can in fact increase glucose tolerance.
http://www.jbc.org/content/83/3/747.full.pdf html
If you read some of the 'low carb' blogs some call this physiological insulin resistance but you can google that for yourself ( it's wandering into dangerous debating waters!)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Is this question really one of those, "my friend has diabetes, not me, oh no".

edit: If you get cured can you let us all know please.


Busted!!
Yeah I was diagnosed on one HBa1C reading of 7.4%
Since then I've been low carbing and cycling and gym,
Yesterday I was 4,5% on the meter. My readings are consistently low and nothing seems to spike me. Rice, chips, pasta are all fine 2 hours later.

My goal is to be taken off the diabetic register.


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Well, if you test a normal person within the 2 hour window, they will have a higher reading by a point or two. I wonder if by eating high sugar continuously, you'll manage to effectively keep your body within the 2 hour window, so push your Hba1c up by a point or 2 overall?
 
VinnyJames said:
Is this question really one of those, "my friend has diabetes, not me, oh no".

edit: If you get cured can you let us all know please.


Busted!!
Yeah I was diagnosed on one HBa1C reading of 7.4%
Since then I've been low carbing and cycling and gym,
Yesterday I was 4,5% on the meter. My readings are consistently low and nothing seems to spike me. Rice, chips, pasta are all fine 2 hours later.

My goal is to be taken off the diabetic register.


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Click to expand...
That's probably not gonna happen.


However, one question - did you have perfectly normal blood sugar before you "induced" diabetes by deliberately pumping yourself full of sugar? If not, then what was the point of that tangent? Exercise and losing weight improve insulin sensitivity, so well done for controlling your diabetes with diet and exercise alone.
Your assertion that a sugar binge gave you diabetes remains completely unfounded.
 
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