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

Hi from diet coach

D

Diet_Coach

Newbie
Messages
4
Hi everyone, My Name's Owen, I work as a Diet Coach mainly with the mental health charities at the moment but I am keen to learn more about diabetes as many of the people I work with have the condition, especially type 2.

Look forward to chatting to some of you soon.

Owen
 
Hi and welcome. I do IT volunteer work for a well-known mental health charity and was a little surprised recently at the dated dietary information being provided, but not specifically for diabetes. So, great to see someone coming to seek information. There is so much one can say about diabetes but I'll summarise what I feel are some key points; I'm sure others will add their own views. Let's say that diabetics suffer from glucose intolerance and as the body can't easily deal with the glucose derived mainly from carbs the default approach is to control the amount of carbs eaten. Diabetes is a spectrum of conditions from T1 to T2 plus some other rarer types. As a generalisation T1s have little insulin production from the pancreas so the glucose in the blood from carbs and the liver rises as there is little insulin to enable it to be taken into muscle cells. A T1 will normally take insulin 4 to 5 times day to compensate. A T2 will typically have insulin resistance thru excess stored body fat and hence blood glucose will also build-up. A good diet, typically low-carb, will help control that blood glucose and also help reduce stored body fat. For some, control with diet will be adequate but for others various tablet types will be needed and some will need insulin as the pancreas will have been damaged thru excess blood glucose over a long period. In summary, a low-carb diet will help control blood glucose together with meds as needed. Exercise always helps and controlling weight always helps. All diabetics should have at least an annual check-up with the GP or diabetes nurse. Obviously some mental health service users will need close guidance to manage their condition and I'm sure others mange it very well. When reducing the carbs in the diet, proteins and fats should be increased to maintain nutrient input and veg and non-tropical fruits are always good for fibre and so on.
 
Hi Daibell,

Thanks for your reply - there's some stuff in there about diabetes I didn't know. Glad to see that the low carb idea is flourishing here. I am interested by the idea that 'metabolic syndrome' - i.e obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease are in many cases connected to the growth in mood problems and depression in our society. Many people with clinical depression are experiencing good results from switching to a real food diet free of processed foods, and this is naturally lower in carbs, as well as being higher in nutrients from the veg, fruit and meat/fish. Something like a paleo diet is what I recommend people to try. We know that the modern diet high in refined foods overloads the body with carbs and it is likely the cause of a lot of depression due to the unstable blood sugar. We also know that lots of refined carbs alter the types of bacteria in our gut which can greatly affect our mood and energy levels. Gut health is a crucial area and there needs to be more research.

I am an outlier in terms of the work I'm doing, but there was a great book published as far back as 2000 by MIND, written by Amanda Geary, called 'Food and Mood' which explored a lot of these ideas.
 
Diet_Coach said:
Hi Daibell,

Thanks for your reply - there's some stuff in there about diabetes I didn't know. Glad to see that the low carb idea is flourishing here. I am interested by the idea that 'metabolic syndrome' - i.e obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease are in many cases connected to the growth in mood problems and depression in our society. Many people with clinical depression are experiencing good results from switching to a real food diet free of processed foods, and this is naturally lower in carbs, as well as being higher in nutrients from the veg, fruit and meat/fish. Something like a paleo diet is what I recommend people to try. We know that the modern diet high in refined foods overloads the body with carbs and it is likely the cause of a lot of depression due to the unstable blood sugar. We also know that lots of refined carbs alter the types of bacteria in our gut which can greatly affect our mood and energy levels. Gut health is a crucial area and there needs to be more research.

I am an outlier in terms of the work I'm doing, but there was a great book published as far back as 2000 by MIND, written by Amanda Geary, called 'Food and Mood' which explored a lot of these ideas.
Click to expand...
Hi. I'm sure you will find a lot of support for your diet thinking on this forum. Mind is the charity I do work for and the diet stuff I came across locally talked about having carbs, low-fat and low-salt and Eat-well plate stuff. Sad that this dated info is still being promoted but it will take a long time to die. Disappointing in a charity which I know does so much good work. I talked to one of the T2 service users a couple of weeks back who couldn't believe the amount of weight she had lost having become a waitress and hence doing a lot of walking. She has been able to come off her T2 medication and was full of joy.
 
As a T2 with good control it is my nightmare to be admitted to any NHS institution for longer than a day
 
Hi and welcome to the forum. Its great to see you taking a particular interest in trying to gain an insight into what will be beneficial for your clients with diabetes.
 
Diet_Coach said:
Hi everyone, My Name's Owen, I work as a Diet Coach mainly with the mental health charities at the moment but I am keen to learn more about diabetes as many of the people I work with have the condition, especially type 2.
Click to expand...
Hi Owen (@Diet_Coach ) and welcome to the forum. I have been diagnosed as having recurrent periods of depression (cyclothymia). As well as medication (dosupelin first, then fluoxetine) I used to find it helped to exercise. Since retiring I didn't exercise, and instead ate more, especially sweet/sugary things when I went through my last episode of depression. Comfort eating I think. Anyway it probably contributed to my diagnosis as Type 2.
 
Daibell said:
Hi. I'm sure you will find a lot of support for your diet thinking on this forum. Mind is the charity I do work for and the diet stuff I came across locally talked about having carbs, low-fat and low-salt and Eat-well plate stuff. Sad that this dated info is still being promoted but it will take a long time to die. Disappointing in a charity which I know does so much good work. I talked to one of the T2 service users a couple of weeks back who couldn't believe the amount of weight she had lost having become a waitress and hence doing a lot of walking. She has been able to come off her T2 medication and was full of joy.
Click to expand...

Hi Daibell, I definitely think improvements need to be made on the type of diet info being given out - the Eatwell plate being an example as you rightly say. In the realm of nutrition for mental health, my approach to fats is to say moderate amounts of saturated fat are ok and will be very beneficial to rebuild neural connections - and for people to be more careful about the amount of vegetable oils consumed. Regarding carbs, I am not necessarily against carbs per se - provided most of them are from whole food sources, an ideal example being fruit or roots such as sweet potato or carrot. I realise that in the diabetes field there is the Low Carb High Fat diet which is being used as a therapeutic intervention specifically to reverse T2D and obesity, and it is definitely a powerful tool, glad it is being more widely discovered now. Going further, I have also seen examples of people who employed LCHF to get the results they needed but then made even further improvements by re-introducing whole food carbs into their diet, at a later stage. Generally I like to make it clear to people the huge difference between refined carbs such as flour and sugar, versus whole food carbs where you are getting a far more controlled dose of carbohydrate along with a lot of fibre and other nutrients as well.
 
Prem51 said:
Hi Owen (@Diet_Coach ) and welcome to the forum. I have been diagnosed as having recurrent periods of depression (cyclothymia). As well as medication (dosupelin first, then fluoxetine) I used to find it helped to exercise. Since retiring I didn't exercise, and instead ate more, especially sweet/sugary things when I went through my last episode of depression. Comfort eating I think. Anyway it probably contributed to my diagnosis as Type 2.
Click to expand...

Hi Prem thanks for your comment. I do think that there is a huge overlap between the growth in depression and also the growth in metabolic conditions such as Type 2 diabetes. The human body is simply not designed for processing refined foods made from flour and sugar. And the problem now is that they are cheaply available to us in growing quantities, often combined with cheaply made vegetable oils. The brain responds to the taste of these foods by releasing dopamine, hence they are used in comfort eating. Coming off them is not easy for everyone but the only successful way I know of is to increase the amount of good food a person is eating - the most nutritious and beneficial foods are fresh vegetables, meat and fish, with a few portions of fruit for snacking. Becoming a keen cook of fresh quality food is one of the most effective things anyone can do.
 
Hi Diet Coach, as a T1 carbs are carbs (potatoes, rice, oats, wheat are all the same) ands they generally all turn into glucose quickly. Which is fine for non-diabetics as the pancreas and liver respond fast too but not so good if you inject and it takes up to an hour for the insulin to kick in. Completely agree with your dopamine assessment and the addictive nature of carbs, having come off of carbs I am finding that the fat/protein substitution means you are not left hungry soon after eating,
 
I have never been hungry since I started eating low carb high fat food
 
Hi Owen, I'm one of the rarer types of diabetes unfortunately type3c diabetics fall somewhere in the middle of carb and protein diets, generally we are low fat as lots of us have to take replacement digestive enzymes due to having no pancreatic function or have had a total pancreatomy. 50% of 3c are generally under weight and struggle to put weight on, others are overweight (me included) who struggle to lose weight, we also tend to be vitamin deficient.
Lots of us have bouts of depression mainly due to not being able to be "normal" in that eating tends to be a chore and for some drinking alcohol socially is now totally out of the question.
 
Back
Top