• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

don't understand the science

C

cuillie

Well-Known Member
Messages
87
Dislikes
Too numerous to mention
Hi, I have been low carbing for almost 12 weeks and seeing results. My BG readings are down, way down, I've lost almost a stone in weight, feel as if I have a bit more energy and not feeling so down as previously. My husband tells me that he sees a big difference in how I am and my behaviour(I wont go into that one too much), so it is all very positive. In my work I come across people who have diabetes and who have commented on how well I look so I attempt to tell them what I am doing as I am convinced that it is all due to the LCing, but I cant explain the science between LC and HF. I just don't understand it.

I know some of you out there have some scientific knowledge so could you put it in a sort of for dummies version for me. I really do want to spread the word, especially when I next visit the GP.

Grateful

Kate
 
Protein and fat increase your satiety much more than carbohydrates. Your appetite is satisfied more easily, you eat less, and therefore you lose weight.

A low-carb diet lets you listen to your appetite, without it being confused with carbohydrate induced sugar rushes.

Simples.
 
You break the habit of eating to satisfy cravings for sugar and eat to satisfy hunger instead
 
A bit more science

http://www.youmeworks.com/whylowcarb.html

WHEN YOU EAT CARBOHYDRATES (carbs), your body releases insulin into your blood stream. The insulin tells your cells what to do. It tells most cells to absorb the sugar out of the blood and tells your fat cells not to release any fat to burn (because there are carbs already in the blood to burn).

One of insulin's jobs is to take sugar out of the blood — the sooner the better, because sugar in the blood damages the body. The reason diabetics have such bad health problems (blindness, circulation problems, etc.) is because of the damage sugar does when the person can't make enough insulin.

When you eat something with a lot of sugar in it, the body kind of panics and usually overdoes it. Too much insulin is released to mop up the sugar. It takes all the sugar out of your blood. Then your blood sugar is too low, so you crave more sweets.

So insulin saved the day, keeping that sugar from damaging your body, but in the process, it makes your body store fat and prevents you from burning fat.

A low carb diet, like the Atkins or South Beach Diet or Protein Power all vary in how much to limit carbs, but the rough average is thirty carbs a day. At that level, you don't put very much insulin into your system, so your body burns any fat you eat as fuel, and if you need more, your fat cells freely release fat into your blood stream to be burned as fuel.

But when you eat a large amount of carbs — a hundred grams, two hundred grams, or more (most Westerners get about 300 grams a day) — your body releases insulin in huge amounts, which makes it almost impossible to burn fat. And makes it really easy to gain weight. Some people don't gain weight, of course, even though they eat lots of carbs, and we'll get to that in a minute. But first understand this basic process. This is why people lose weight so easily and quickly when they cut carbs: Because carbs increase insulin, which leads to storing fat and preventing fat from being burned.
Click to expand...

In short : Eat carbs, burn carbs, store fat, don't burn fat. Restrict carbs, burn fat.

Geoff
 
Here's some really good tips and explanations on LCHF;
http://www.dietdoctor.com/lchf
 
A bit more.

Carbohydrates are the the food stuffs that make blood sugars rise fastest and highest. If you cut down or out on the worst offenders so sugar but also the starchy carbohydrates (rice, pasta, flour, bread, potatoes, cereals) which are nearly as bad then you won't make your blood sugars rise nearly as much. So in effect reducing your carbohydrates enough can give you the same safe blood sugar levels of an average non diabetic person which is good.

Non diabetics can eat carbohydrates quite safely because the response to eating stuff that raises blood sugar levels is to release insulin which acts like a sponge and mops up the excess sugar that eating carbohydrates can cause. Diabetics have had that mopping up process knackered in one of two main ways. Type 1's simple don't produce insulin which is why they need to inject it. In the majority but not all Type 2's its a bit more complicated as the problem will likely be a combination of two things.

Firstly running high blood sugar levels for a while prior to diagnosis will begin to destroy the very cells (Beta Cells) that produce insulin so over a period of time an undiagnosed T2's capability to produce insulin and therefore mop up excess sugar caused by eating a high carbohydrate diet becomes worse and worse.

Secondly most newly diagnosed T2's are still producing a decent amount of insulin and their problem is one called insulin resistance. In this case the fat from being overweight actually stops insulin from working so again it doesn't get to mop up any excess sugar that eating a high carbohydrates diet is making.

As an brief aside the fat and weight gain increases found in many T2's may well be caused by your body trying to produce more and more insulin to beat its increasing insulin resistance as one of the other things insulin does is help lay down fat. So again you may well get fat without ever particularly over eating which is why laying the blame game on "fat lazy diabetics" is in many cases completely unjustified. Any T1 diabetic will tell you one of the problems they face is the fact that injecting insulin can cause weight gain if they are not careful so someone whose body is over producing insulin to try and beat its insulin resistance is effectively having the same problem.

A lot of insulin resistance is curable, just lose the fat so that the insulin you are making begins to work properly. If you were diagnosed early enough (normally when diagnosed pre-diabetic) you may well find that you can reverse the disease as little permanent damage to your insulin production cells may have happened.

Unfortunately a rough definition of T2 is where a person will have suffered some permanent damage to their insulin production cells so that even though they lose weight and solve a lot of their insulin resistance they won't reverse the condition as they will not be producing enough insulin to cope with an average level of carbohydrates.

The damage is permanent as insulin production cells do not regenerate in the same way your arm doesn't if that gets cut off.
 
There definitely is something almost addictive about carbs ... filling our diet with them at the end of the 20th century was the worse thing we ever did :sick:
 
Back
Top