Do roots and legumes lower fasting BG?

[Totto]

I went on strict LCHF at diagnosis in February and had FBG at low to mid 4. After a few months it rose to mid 5 and stayed there.

I have started to add legumes like beans and lentils and also some roots back into my diet and suddenly I find fasting readings of 4.3-4.8 again. In general, the morning after I have had something for dinner that causes a lot of wind my FBG is below 5. I suppose this has to do with resistant starch and/or soluble fibre that feed gut microbes.

 

[CollieBoy]

 

[phoenix]

Quite a lot of trials showing that including legumes in the diet may help with glycemic control.
Here's a meta analysis.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19526214
It's something I keep mentioning that the trials that lead to the adoption of a higher carb diet tended to be high in pulses.
I love this interview of a man that was put on the 'pulse diet, when diagnosed in 1968. This must have been at the time of these early trials. He ate them as a staple for most of his diabetic life .
They can't have done him too much harm He remained on tablets and diet until the time of the interview when he would have been 85 He was still quite active (though there was a move to put him onto insulin but his GP vetoed it on grounds of it being not sensible at his age)

They put me on these pulse… a pulse diet - beans - all sorts of beans: red kidney beans, butter beans, mung beans; all those kinds of things, and I really enjoyed them. And they said "well, that's good", he said "because", he says "you're the only one that's ever said they liked them", he says "no-one else liked them". I said "well, I do". And that's what I was on for... ooh, right to the time my wife died.

http://www.diabetes-stories.com/transcript.asp?UID=27#(12)

 

[jack412]

I think I will stick to LCHF, a 0.5% drop in A1c wouldn't be enough for me

the SMD reductions in GP for
pulses in low-GI and high-fibre diets correspond to an
absolute reduction in HbA1c of ~0.48%, a reduction that
exceeds the clinically meaningful threshold (≥0.3%) proposed
by the US Food and Drug Administration [66] and lies
at the lower limit of efficacy expected for oral agents

 

[phoenix]

Yes Jack I'm sure you do but i'm sure that you also realise that a clinically significant reduction in the average participant over a wide number of studies is important
. For comparison , in this met analysis of low carb interventions the HbA1c reduction was (-0.21%)http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22905670

In this more recent one from 2013
The low-carbohydrate, low-GI, Mediterranean, and high-protein diets all led to a greater improvement in glycemic control [glycated hemoglobin reductions of −0.12% (P = 0.04), −0.14% (P = 0.008), −0.47% (P < 0.00001), and −0.28% (P < 0.00001), respectively] http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/97/3/505.short
No doubt you can find one with a greater reduction or argue as to what is and isn't low carb.
But it's not about trumpeting one regime over another. As I said you will only find small improvements in this type of analysis. The post merely demonstrates that legumes in a diet can lead to improved glycemic control and that anecdotally it worked very well for one individual who lived with T2 for at least 36 years.

 

[jack412]

my a1c was 8.5 minus 1.5% for metformin and if I went hclf another 0.5% = 2%..but my a1c has dropped 3.3% that's over a 50% bigger drop
anecdotally, people with BG of 20 go on lchf and have it around 6 after 3 months

you link doesn't reflect LCHF..no one is doing a, as stated, LCHP diet here.. you really need to put up a lchf if you want to make a point..

 

[Totto]

I think it's bloody brilliant to be able to have a carrot and a handful of butter beans now and then and benefit from them bg wise. You see, I like both beans and carrots a lot.

I was intrigued when my fasting level went up this spring on 20 grams of carbs per day.

 

[noblehead]

I think it's bloody brilliant to be able to have a carrot and a handful of butter beans now and then and benefit from them bg wise. You see, I like both beans and carrots a lot.

I was intrigued when my fasting level went up this spring on 20 grams of carbs per day.

It goes to prove that we shouldn't take what's said on the forum and we should be willing to try new foods and ideas out ourselves, I'm sure that @Southport GP recommends legumes in his dietary recommendation to his type 2 patients.

 

[Totto]

It goes to prove that we shouldn't take what's said on the forum and we should be willing to try new foods and ideas out ourselves, I'm sure that @Southport GP recommends legumes in his dietary recommendation to his type 2 patients.

I'm sorry to have to tell you neither butter beans nor carrots are new to me.

And who said we shouldn't try new foods? The whole point with low carbing is to try foods, isn't it?

Anyway, what about resistant starch and soluble fibres? Anyone tried potato starch for example?

 

[phoenix]

Totto: Absolutely agree that resistant starch is an important mechanism not certain how much there is in carrots though. There are quite a few threads on it. There was someone trying potato starch but I don't think that they reported back.

http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/kidney-beans.55224/#post-509545
I put a video about resistant starch and the biome in this one
http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/kidney-beans.55224/#post-509545
There are lots more threads though, just do a search. (it's long past my bed time!)

Off topic
Jack, my point was about small differences in meta analysis, often a larger difference in one study will be counter balanced by a smaller one Compare Iqbal and Westman on basically the same less than 35g carb diet; High protein, not particularly both were unrestricted in fat ? High protein was a separate category in one of the meta analyses as were other types of diets. but that isn't the point of this thread ..

 

[robertconroy]

Ok lets look at beans - someone mentioned butter beans, I looked them up on my glycemic load phone app and it says Glycemic load 150. Do you have any idea how bad this is for a diabetic? Pure table sugar is GL of 68. High glycemic load is anything over 19. These beans are 7 times worse than just bad! GET A BOOK OR APP ON THE GLYCEMIC LOADS OF FOODS! One I can recommend is called The Easy GL Diet Handbook by Fedon Alexander Lindberg or just download a phone app on GL of different foods.

 

[phoenix]

@robertconroy
I think you might need a different app.
The author you mention does have the correct GL of 6 for lima beans in his Mediterranean GI book (it's viewable on Amazon)
Glycaemic load is calculated by multiplying the glycaemic index by the amount of carbohydrate and dividing by 100. http://www.glycemicindex.com/faqsList.php#1
Since butter beans have about 13g-15g of dietary carb per hundred gram(depending on source of data ) you would require more than 3 kg of butter beans to achieve a glycemic load of 150.
Chart from Univ of Sydney GI data base