Carbohydrates as an addiction

[Guzzler]

Just to add that Jen goes through the five criteria for covering substance addiction with the audience. What is your score?

 

[Winnie53]

@ianf0ster beat me to posting this! I also listened to the video in the first post of this thread - (Diet Doctor Podcast #19). Then I started listening Low Carb USA's playlist of presentations by Dr. Cywes titled "Diabetes Understood". It begins with "Diabetes Understood: Introduction - Dr. Robert Cywes", then continues with Chapters 1 through Chapter 11. There may be more that haven't been posted yet.

Here's the Low Carb USA playlist of Dr. Cywes' presentations...

Diabetes Understood: Dr. Robert Cywes

It's going to take me a week or two to work through them all. As of this morning, I've listened to the Introduction and Chapters 1 & 2, and am continuing. Am listening to them before I get up in the morning and during my daily walks.

Before people get too entrenched in debating whether or not carbs are addictive, I encourage everyone to hear him out. He has worked with 20,000 obese patients at this point. That's a lot of clinical experience. Doesn't make him right, but I think he has a message worth listening too. I fully intend to share this playlist with my e-list.

Oh, and in response to the salt and fat question, pediatric endocrinologist and researcher Robert Lustig, M.D. also states salt and fat are not addictive.

 

[lovinglife]

Dr Cywes, says there are 5 criteria that a harmful addictive drug has to meet in order to be categorised as such.
He says that Alcohol and Nicotine meet all those criteria along with Heroin; but then so do Carbs !

Perhaps if @zand watches the video he will understand why asking an addict how/ if they got remission by taking the drug they are addicted to gets the response that it does!

Bit rude - @zand is in fact a lady (a very nice one at that) not a gent, who is very knowledgeable and experienced in LCHF, in fact she was one of the very first low carbers on this forum who shouted loud and proud against the tide about the LCHF way of life.

what she is also very good at is looking at things from others perspective and those that struggle with LCHF regime for whatever reason. Her recent threads I felt served to remind us that for some LCHF is not always appropriate/easy or the best way for someone who may have many more problems to deal with along with diabetes, I include myself in that as sometimes my sticking to my LCHF way of life is managed on a minute to minute basis whilst I fight my other demons.

 

[Goonergal]

A 45 minute non techy video covering the topic by the lovely Charlotte and Jen.

There are 2 other great threads related to this, and this thread:


https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/food-addiction-and-diabetes.156651/


https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/obesity-and-carbohydrate-addiction.153070/page-2

 

[zand]

Dr Cywes, says there are 5 criteria that a harmful addictive drug has to meet in order to be categorised as such.
He says that Alcohol and Nicotine meet all those criteria along with Heroin; but then so do Carbs !

Perhaps if @zand watches the video he will understand why asking an addict how/ if they got remission by taking the drug they are addicted to gets the response that it does!

I may not be perfect but at least I can listen and respect the views of others. I also realise I do not know everything about T2 despite having had mine under control by following a low carb diet for 8 years. The analogy with a drug addict not being able to have the drug they were addicted to ever again doesn't quite fit with carbs. I have carbs every day and so do most of us here.. When I have my 30g or 50g a day I don't feel the need to eat more. I am not sure a drug addict would be able to have 'just one'

I know I am wasting my time answering your post. You clearly don't have the ability to listen or understand what I am saying. You think you know everything and that's a shame. Me, I am in ketosis right now as I need to lose more weight and that's the only way I can lose weight now. Calories are irrelevant but carbs are very relevant. I won't be watching the video thank you. I dont need to do so.

Whilst I myself am an ardent LCHFer I have taken tips from those who use other diets too. That's the difference between you and I. I am willing to learn new things every day.

You know nothing about me and my life and what brought me here, yet you still lecture me on what is right for me and others. I hinted at things in my final post on my now closed thread. Trust me, carb addiction is the least of my worries. If only life were that simple.

 

[zand]

Not sure what you meant there, did i miss a post ?

No. You didn't miss anything .

 

[KK123]

Carbs are addictive. Processed carbs are nutrient deficient and carbs suppress the hormone which tell us that we are full.
They give us a 'sugar rush' or in other words a 'high' and unlike real food of which it is almost impossible to carelessly over-eat, they both make us fat and make us crave more!

When I recently did the Dave Feldman protocol (just the 2nd part) I discovered how hard it is to over-eat on a High Fat diet ! - You start to feel queasy.
But it happens without noticing on a Carb based diet.

That makes perfect sense, it takes 10 seconds to consume a slice of Victoria sponge so numerous carbs down the hatch without touching the sides, whereas imagine chomping your way through 3 steaks.

 

[Tophat1900]

That makes perfect sense, it takes 10 seconds to consume a slice of Victoria sponge so numerous carbs down the hatch without touching the sides, whereas imagine chomping your way through 3 steaks.

Chomping through 3 steaks..... ooooh, I'm just watering at the mouth thinking about it

 

[ianf0ster]

Not sure what you meant there, did i miss a post ?

@jjraak,
Zand was complaining that his thread asking for people to say how they had T2 remission from a High Carb Low Fat diet didn't get the responses he wanted. Instead it got responses from several (including me) who said High Carb Low Fat was exactly the Doctor approved diet which caused them to become T2 in the first place!

 

[ianf0ster]

One such observational study took whole grain - oat groats, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat, etc which is MUCH higher percent of carbohydrates than pastries, cookies, etc and guess which foods the study participants binged on? NEVER the whole grains. If that was all that was available, no binging occurred.

I disagree, I'm confident that they binged on the highest GI carbs for the simple reason that they are the ones delivering the 'instant fix'.

Do you dispute that the normal satiation mechanism works for Protein and for Fats, but fails for Carbs?
Unless you do (against the scientific evidence) then how can you say that bingeing on Protein or Fats is as likely as bingeing on Carbs!

 

[Guzzler]

Chomping through 3 steaks..... ooooh, I'm just watering at the mouth thinking about it

Gerrin the queue!

 

[Brunneria]

I don’t find alcohol addictive. Never have.
Never found drugs addictive. So far. Though at one time I could have easily developed a pain killer ‘habit’.

I don’t find ‘carbs’ addictive. You could surround me with mounds of rice, bananas, green vegetables, sweet fruit, cheese wotsits and fruit juices, and I wouldn’t twitch.

I do, however, experience physical cravings after certain types of high carb foods. Milk chocolate (but not dark), wheat and some grains, and recently potato.

Am I ‘addicted’? Nope. I don’t think so. I don’t feel helpless against the tide of carbs. I can eat all of them in the certain knowledge that there will be consequences (cravings from milk choc and psoriasis, cravings and joint pain from wheat and potato). Also raised blood glucose, of course. So if I eat them, I accept the consequences and deal with them. Then I choose whether to compound those consequences by doing it again. I rarely eat any of them.

When I was in the full grip of RH i had bg swings, emotional swings, carb cravings, sugar highs and all the trappings of what I thought was ‘addiction’. Felt depressed, dreadful and helpless. Turns out all I needed to do was cut the trigger foods out over 3 days or so (to minimise carb flu-type shock to the system). That simply and steadily reduced all those symptoms. The depression lifted with stable bgs and Vit D supplements.

I really don’t equate that experience with drug or alcohol addiction. No DTs, shakes, sweats, clammy tremors or similar.

So yes, I can see how carbs may be addictive for some people (just as some people get addicted to a whole range of chemicals and emotions and sensations - like ‘runners high’) but I definitely disagree with the suggestion that carbs have some kind of blanket addictive lure that we are helplessly brainwashed into. No. We are conscious thinking beings capable of making conscious decisions on what we put in our mouths.

 

[zand]

@jjraak,
Zand was complaining that his thread asking for people to say how they had T2 remission from a High Carb Low Fat diet didn't get the responses he wanted. Instead it got responses from several (including me) who said High Carb Low Fat was exactly the Doctor approved diet which caused them to become T2 in the first place!

I was asking for people not to reply if they hadn't found that HCLF worked to reverse their diabetes. I wanted the thread to be a safe place for those who weren't in the majority in this huge forum. There were a few responses in the beginning from low carbers who then gracefully and good naturedly left the thread when asked. I was happy to have the thread die with no responses. I did not want it derailed by 2 low carbers who seem incapable of reading and understanding what had been asked.

I did wonder why someone would follow a diet a doctor gave them for 15 years even though it was doing them no good. I guess you must be an unhappy woman @ianf0ster if you can't leave threads alone when they don't apply to you. You obviously haven't read all the responses on this thread properly either

 

[MeiChanski]

Food is known to be addictive for some people. I’ve noticed they are chomping away on high fat, high sugar & high carb foods in a short space of time. Not a vegetable or fruit in sight. Unfortunately they wouldn’t stop, whereas you and I would stop when we feel full. I guess theres that mental health side of things that are involved with binge eating and emotions. I don’t find carbs addictive, I do however crave something sweet and crispy during my time of the month. But once I’ve touched it, I wouldn’t touch it for another month. Another thing, anyone addicted to cheese?

 

[zand]

Another thing, anyone addicted to cheese?

Oh yesssss!

 

[woollygal]

I can safely say my body is addicted to carbs.

I don’t think I am but my body is.

If I have too many my body craves them.
My dr even says my body is very sensitive to sugars. If I eat some then I struggle not to want more and more and more.

When I’m out I cannot say no to them. Or sugar.

So yes I would say you can be well and truly addicted to them

 

[mojo37]

Chomping through 3 steaks..... ooooh, I'm just watering at the mouth thinking about it

Trouble is I'd want a slice of the cake afterwards I always want something sweet after savoury ( not that I do indulge all the time).

 

[Walking Girl]

I disagree, I'm confident that they binged on the highest GI carbs for the simple reason that they are the ones delivering the 'instant fix'.

Do you dispute that the normal satiation mechanism works for Protein and for Fats, but fails for Carbs?
Unless you do (against the scientific evidence) then how can you say that bingeing on Protein or Fats is as likely as bingeing on Carbs!

I can get plenty full on a meal of vegetables, beans and/or grains, even if I keep it a very low fat meal, if that’s what you mean. I have no ides what scientific evidence says otherwise but don’t really care as it doesn’t apply to me.

 

[Mr_Pot]

High carbs and fat, a combination not really found in nature is, if not addictive, certainly irresistible to some people, I am thinking of cream cakes, chips, sausage rolls etc etc. Low fat and low carb diets would both cut out this type of high calorie food.

 

[Daphne917]

Food is known to be addictive for some people. I’ve noticed they are chomping away on high fat, high sugar & high carb foods in a short space of time. Not a vegetable or fruit in sight. Unfortunately they wouldn’t stop, whereas you and I would stop when we feel full. I guess theres that mental health side of things that are involved with binge eating and emotions. I don’t find carbs addictive, I do however crave something sweet and crispy during my time of the month. But once I’ve touched it, I wouldn’t touch it for another month. Another thing, anyone addicted to cheese?

Love cheese but is it an addiction or just the fact that it is a very versatile food? Let’s be honest you can eat it as it is, cook it, include it in any number of recipes and makes a lovely cheese and onion or pickle sandwich. Before I get ‘flamed’ for the last statement I use Tesco high protein bread at 10g carbs per slice and, after testing, my BS is 5.0 after two hours.