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Fasting For Type 2's

Congratulation on your success with your FBG and weight loss!
Do you have a link to the Capetown lecture, or is it part of the LCHF Convention that has to be paid for? I'd like to read more about the topic of liver and pancreas, as it seems that I am the opposite of you: my post-prandial BG is well controlled by LCHF, under 7 and less than a 2 point rise, whilst my FBG is still consistently higher than normal.
 

He gave 2 lectures as part of the LCHF Convention, but they are updated versions of the Youtube lectures Type 2 Aetiology & Reversabillity and Insulin Toxicity. His free Youtube lectures are here: https://www.youtube.com/user/drjasonfung/videos
 
Forgot to say, my postprandial levels seem to have actually worsened somewhat since starting this regime. Your levels seem similar to mine prior to starting the fasting. The same meals that would normally not be problematic are sending me higher and taking longer to return to baseline. I'm hoping that too will normalise if I keep persisting.
 
I am a huge fan of Dr Jason Fung. He talks so much sense with regard to type 2 diabetes being a cause of too much insulin as opposed to too little. I also like the fact that he advocates some fruit and beans etc in the diet.

Fasting is not for me (too many memories of low blood sugar in the past, plus I like my grub!) but I have been trying the fasting method where you only eat between certain hours. I have breakfast at 10am and my last meal is 5.45pm so I fast for 16 hours. I don't do it every day as sometimes it doesn't fit my schedule but eating during this time frame cuts 2 snacks out for me so that's a positive in itself and I notice weight loss immediately.

I really love listening to this guy .... he drives home the fact that focussing solely on blood sugar is only treating the symptom of type 2. Whereas the focus should be on the root cause of the problem, insulin resistance which is where it all starts.

He also talks about foods that produce the most insulin being meat, white fish ... ones you wouldn't expect. There is a thread on here about this that resurfaced recently.

So much to all this than just high blood sugars, eh?
 
Indy51 said:
He gave 2 lectures as part of the LCHF Convention, but they are updated versions of the Youtube lectures Type 2 Aetiology & Reversabillity and Insulin Toxicity. His free Youtube lectures are here: https://www.youtube.com/user/drjasonfung/videos
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Many thanks for this, I will watch them as soon as possible. His website is so rich in content that I'm finding it hard to orient myself!
 
Brief update - I've been following the 16 hour day intermittent fasting regime for 122 days now, with very few days where I don't stick to the compressed eating window. Still averaging 2 meals and occasionally add a snack if still hungry. My BG seems to have stabilised now - fasting anywhere from 5.1 to 5.9 and getting better post prandial return to fasting levels. I'm now frequently seeing readings in the 4's prior to meals. The weight loss seems to have stalled - I would have preferred to have lost a couple more kilos to give myself a bit more leeway, but not complaining as I'm not regaining. I suspect I'll have to stay on this regime to keep things under control, though hopefully I can allow myself a bit more flexibility. All in all, very pleased with the results and looking forward to my next A1c test.
 
@Indy51, great numbers! I haven't yet had the chance to read the Fung article on women and fasting, but I've recently looked into the Bulletproof diet and there are some recommendations for women that I'm thinking of trying. The one I've already adopted is intermittent fat fasting, with breakfast replaced by a butter&coconut oil coffee (at the moment I'm not doing it every day) rather than completely cut out. Another recommendation, and I'm not sure how it would work with diabetes, is to perform occasional carb refeeds, as apparently strict LC can have a negative effect on the functioning of the adrenal glands which, amongst other things, slows down/blocks fat loss. I'm still trying to research more about it before I decide whether to try it, and I hope that Dr Fung will help. Thanks for posting!
 
My personal take on this - there is a "myth" in Paleo circles (including Dave Asprey's brand) that goes back to the Paleo for Women blogpost on fasting that Dr Fung links to and pretty much refutes. Kiefer of 'Carb Nite' fame says that when you're talking about diabetics, you're talking about a whole different ballgame to normal metabolism, but it's an issue glossed over by most Paleos as they tend to be writing to a non-diabetic audience.

I think the main thing for women to be concerned about is stress - if you're already stressed, adding fasting to the equation is probably not a very smart move. Stress is what causes problems for both adrenal and sex hormones. Despite being a fan of a lot of Paleo writers, I always have to keep in mind that diabetes trumps everything else.

I've been following a LCHF/Primal WOE for over 3 years. I doubt I've ever had a "carb re-feed" in those 3 years - I doubt if even when I've had cake or other rare treats that I've exceeded 100g carbs on any day during that time. Despite that, I just seem to get healthier, so I'm not giving too much credence to Paleo - especially the Crossfit/exercise fanatic end of the spectrum and their 'safe starches' obsession. TBH, I'm more interested in what my own body (and my glucometer) is telling me than what some "guru" has to say.
 
OK, 100 grams of carbs is way too much, and I cannot consider it at all. Glad to hear you've not found consistent low carbing to be a problem!
 
I'm a Fung Fan as well. I started off with IF using 5:2 (the Fast Diet). I then found a mention about Dr Fung by Michael Mosley so over a period of three days I read all his archive posts on his blog before finding out about his on-line lectures. Anyway, I now use a combination of everything; I work 12 hour nights - four on, four off so I have a weird 8 day week. It works out best for me to fast twice a week - one is a 24 hour fast (6pm to 6pm) and the other is from 8pm until 6pm the following day - so 14 hours. The rest of the time I eat a low carb/medium fat diet. I also skip breakfast on all non-work days and I've cut out one of my meals at work. I think the thing Dr Fung has taught me is not to be afraid of feeling hungry. It does, as he says, come in waves and a cup of black decaff, herbal tea or bottle of mineral water eases it.

I started eating this way about two months ago after years of attempting to lose weigh with a 'healthy' low fat diet. I think I am getting there with beating the insulin resistance. I still take 2 x metformin and 1 x sitagliptin but have managed to stop injecting insulin completely during this last week having, at my highest, been injecting 90 units of long acting and around 40-50 untils of fast acting each day. I have managed to keep my fasting bg to 5.4 or under for the last two weeks. I do get an occasional spike, usually when I'm at work - for instance I had one last week at 8.1 when I pigged out on a large bowl of cherries. On the whole fasting has helped me get rid of quite a few niggling health issues which the doctor had been treating individually, I now realise that they must all have been related to the diabetes and so I'm feeling so much better. I didn't start off thinking about weight - I was more concerned to get rid of the insulin resistance - so the 1st 9lbs I've lost is an added bonus.
 
Another one joined up to the intermittent fasting now. (Well, more the 5:2 diet)

Putting a little weight back on around the middle, too many 'sociable' G & T's, and obviously the wine.

Initially going for two days very low calorie, then still going to count the calories on the other days though, until I'm where I want to be again.
 
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I started a thread in the medications Metformin section which has the link. Dr Fung says that the best diabetes drugs are Metformin, Januvia (Sitagliptin) and Acarbose, in one vid. What he fails to mention and if you scroll down on the link I give, is that Metformin SR is 30% less AUC in the fasted state which I take to mean lasts 30% shorter that it does in fed, here it seems to work at 77%.

So if anyone is on Metformin SR and fasting, numbers may not come down like you expect.
 

Hi Indy - yeah - I've been thinking about this too since reading about it online - how, and if, fasting has a different affect on women of reproductive age than it does on men, and I've written a few things in the forum about it.

And I have chuckled more than a few times at those I call 'the jock paleo eaters' on youtube (who can be women as well, as you know), with the carb re-feeds and so on. I know what you mean. And yes - I know as a diabetic I could never join in on those convos, even if I wanted to. (Not even when a young body building woman back in the day would I have wanted to I think! I pretty much kept to myself in the gym back in those days. Soooooo much body worship and ego stroking! It often comes across more as a religion than a Way Of Eating and lifestyle that I see Paleo as.)

I hear what you are saying, and understand absolutely folk like us wanting to get it right about the effects of fasting on us. And absolutely - being diabetic puts us in a whole different ballgame, and the insulin/blood glucose/liver and pancreas health thing takes precedence. Absolutely.

But, I really do think that fasting may have a different effect on women of reproductive age, from the evidence particularly, and anecdotally, even in this forum. We know that reproductive ability is affected profoundly by semi-starvation levels. A big part of insulin's role is to regulate 'all this stuff', along with other key hormones. It does seem that the rhythm of fasting affects women differently. Or, of course, we can say that men are affected by fasting differently to women, due to the fact women carry and bear and feed our young from our bodies. There does seem to be an added level of 'starvation resistance' for women of childbearing age, which makes it that much harder to deplete glycogen stores and so on. My memory isn't good enough to come out with the links and research and so on, but I will get it together and post it anon. But it looked pretty convincing to me.

Anecdotally, it has also looked like it to me here on the forum, that men, when fasting have had much quicker greater effect on their weight and on their BG by VLCD and fasting, at the beginning at least. Which is what the rat/mouse studies seemed to indicate. (But yes - we aren't mice! For sure.) Enough for me to wonder to myself quietly, before reading the mice/rat research and the paleo women writers and get an "Ah!" response. (it made sense to me, that women, especially younger women, have a greater losing fat resistance for reproductive purposes.) It COULD be that the competitive thing was stronger and the 'BG number race' thing was just stronger for some of the men. I don't know! Just posing ideas.

Saying that - Dr Fuhrman and Dr Jong refute that women have different fasting effects (or, we can say - men have different fasting effects than women). I was very interested reading that too. But I need to re-read to comment more closely.

I am no longer of reproductive age, so it is all academic for me, but still interesting indeed, and especially for women diabetics who might also be wanting to reproduce, or trying to control their blood glucose and get pregnant at the same time. (I had insulin resistance when in that situation, I just didn't know it, so I have a lot of sympathy for women in that situation - it cannot be easy!) I have engaged with women in the forum on the subject.

But it is certainly interesting for us if women DO have a greater fat-loss resistance, another physical hurdle, another layer of protection from semi/starvation (as mothers of humanity), that we need to take into account when trying to regulate our health with fasting and ways of eating, as we do in here.
 
I haven't paid all that close attention except what I've read in passing, @AloeSvea - I too am not of reproductive age and being a selfish cow, only really pay attention to stuff that affects me directly unless it comes up as I amble around the web
 
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