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

If I don't eat lots of carbs!

I don't measure ketones at all but lower carbed from teenage years.
My mum was pretty low carb too. Still is. She has some serious memory probs. I do with memory quite often nowadays.

Don't really know if lchf influenced my bad stomach and or cancer.

Could all be that I got all the bad genes??

Brothers never ate lower carb and they have no probs at all!!
 


There are plenty of adequate references in the article I linked you to. There is literally 40 studies there that you can delve deeper into if you wish, but it seems like this: you just do not want to admit that there are some problems associated with this diet because right now you are doing good on it.
I do not want to be rude, but how many of you know that this diet was first designed for epileptic children? How many of your Keto (I do not want to call the gurus, what should I call them?) inform you about this? Why aren't they talking about these kids and some of the outcomes? Do they ever mention them at all? Those are more important questions to ask then questioning me after I gave you 40 studies as your start point.
 
Ah yes. The Paleo Mum list. That's been around quite a while. I think the main thing it highlights is how little research there is into LCHF in terms of RCT type trials and long term studies. I'm not convinced that studies of epileptic children are transferable to 40 year old T2 adults, for example!

I've said this elsewhere, but I suspect the biggest issues stem from processed foods in diet rather than carbs specifically, and if people made their own food from basic ingredients, we'd see a very different set of health outcomes. There will always be some outliers, which require something specific, but I suspect it would work for the majority!
 

You didn't read my last post to the end, did you? Or watch @Indy's excellent video.

My favourite source on low carb and keto (so far) is the Voleck and Phinney book referenced in my signature. It is excellent. Up to date. Incorporating recent research. Chapter after chapter of detailed discussion on the pros and cons of low carb and Keto, with detailed discussion of the pitfalls, solutions and sometimes idiotic research methods that have been used. I am currently reading their equally fascinating book on endurance. Their works are my Go Tos - and the reason why I question any research that doesn't clearly specify the content of the keto diet used, including amounts of protein and nutritional content - especially the minerals.

Interestingly, one of the questions asked at the recent PHCUK conference was by a nurse working with epileptic children. She was fully in favour of using diet for her patients, but was concerned that people recognised that for the diet to be beneficial it needed to be well formulated. Says it all really, doesn't it?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks @AndBreathe I have been taking this tablet for months now as i was having panic attacks and palpitations due to stress dealing with my ill partner.
It definitely does disguise hypo symptoms but I test a lot and I'm never refused test strips from gp so additional testing helps prevent hypos occuring.
In fact I run a little higher to give me that buffer. I still watch my carb consumption so severe highs and lows are minimized.
I feel very confident with my diet currently. A treat is only needed if my carbs have crept up and causing carb craving. I don't buy treats so much easer to manage.
Kids grandmother covers kids treats in full. Ha ha.
I'm a much happier diabetic these days.
I found looking for the holy grail made me very very unhappy.
Finding what works for me and relaxing into additional exercise is my holy grail. It suits me.
I discovered my diet just needed tweaking not a 30g carb overhaul.
 
After reading the replies so far, as has been evident the lack of studies done on the ketogenic diet isn't that much.
The scare tactics used by the medical community to use too many carbs in our diet is really scandalous and is making life hell for a lot of diabetics.
I think the ketogenic diet for the epileptic children cannot be adapted and used as an example because of the many different brain gut influence and the microbiological enzymes and hormonal response to their lives. It is completely different to what diabetics are experiencing.
There is still too much unexplained about how our brain is affected by too much insulin and too much glucose.
I have no idea how much glucose I actually need, but it can't be much! I think my liver helps with this side of my requirements for my brain because what I eat surely can't give me my ego, strength, vigour and the energy to get me through the day!
 
@nosher8355 - This is an extract from multiple posts I've made - it should answer your questions about brain glucose requirement:

"I'm not sure when this started being communicated in Diabetes training courses, but I am sure of the origins of the idea that 140g of carbs is the minimum required to be eaten every day. It stems from research done by Cahill et al in 1968 that suggests that for the brain to run exclusively on glucose, it requires between 110g and 140g of glucose per day. This book details the studies where this value was determined.

Okay - we have the origin of the 140g - but note that this is glucose and what the brain requires if running exclusively on glucose. It doesn't say that we need to eat 140g of carbs.

Further research looking at the brain's use of fuel sources identified that the brain uses lactate when undergoing strenuous exercise (http://www.fasebj.org/content/22/10/3443.full) and on page 277 of this document the following statement is made:

In individuals fully adapted to starvation [or low carbohydrate diets], ketoacid oxidation can account for approximately 80 percent of the brain’s energy requirements (Cahill et al., 1973). Thus, only 22 to 28 g/d of glucose are required to fuel the brain. This is similar to the total glucose oxidation rate integrated over 24 hours determined by isotope-dilution studies in these starving individuals (Carlson et al., 1994; Owen et al., 1998)."

g/d is grams per day.
 
Thanks Tim, that will be my reading requirement later.
Thanks for replying.
By the way how do I get my lactose? I only have a few teaspoons of it in my full fat Greek yogurt but not every day!
 
Interesting stuff!

The main point being that there is no relation whatsoever between the brain's requirement for glucose and the amount of carbohydrates to be eaten.

The body can create enough glucose from protein and fat to keep the BG levels above hypo territory; in the case of extended starvation there are obviously no carbohydrates being eaten but the BG level still stays up; however the body (including the brain) switches over into keto mode and uses other things for fuel.

So from Tim's post above it looks as though the body has to manufacture less than 30g of glucose per day from other stuff; this does not have to be from carbohydrates.

TL;DR - you don't need any carbohydrates at all to survive and for your brain to keep working.

Oh, and lactate is not the same as lactose. Lactate is produced by the muscles during normal metabolism. I think that muscle pain under extreme exercise can be attributed to lactic acid build up - the blood stream not clearing it from the muscles fast enough. There should always be some circulating in the blood stream.

In fact, see http://www.livestrong.com/article/470283-what-is-the-difference-between-lactic-acid-lactate/ which explains it far better than my feeble attempt.
 
Hi all, Tim Noakes had plenty to say about Banting and childrens diet you may find an answer to this subject in his considered replies? It was this subject he was castigated for. atb Derek PS sorry I can't do links on my smart phone.
 
I'm no into all this studying medical research and papers as I don't tend to trust the authors. For me , if the human body depended on carbs then the human race would have died out a long time ago. The eskimos wouldn't have stood a chance as carbs were pretty thin on the ground. No many grass seeds to grind up there!
 
Well none of us know what the effect of a long time low carb diet will do to us. I expect as we are all different that is how it will affect us... differently. Personally I do not do very low carb because to low and I loose weight that I don't need or want to. I don't eat a lot of animal fat or dairy so most of the fat I have comes from oils and avocado but I don't think that is enough to keep my weight up without higher carbs
 
We can never compare how the Inuits eat to how we do they have evolved over thousands of years to eat their diet which is mostly fish and meat very high in fat and often eaten raw and not much else most of us would not able to eat that way our digestive system would not be able to cope with it
 

Maybe, but Arctic explorers from Europe and other parts of the world thrived on the native Inuit diet. The ones that brought their own (canned) food often did not survive.
 
We can compare as since carbohydrates have been introduced into their diet, as it was to ours, their, obesity rate, stroke, heart attacks and diabetes rates have all massively increased. I was also including the Yukip and Aluets not just the Inuits.
 
This section is primarily for those like yourself and myself who have R.H. Personally I wouldn't dream of being off my version of lchf and it is nothing like some special diet for very poorly kids who don't have r.h. Rh is a constant condition for those with it and there seems to be no alternative to stopping refined carbs to stop it. I am sure the high and lows of insulin we had have done us far more damage than our present diets. D.

 
Thanks Derek,

I have no problem with other types having their input as sometimes you can pick up good bits of information.

And I do agree that RH and a Paleolithic eskimo diet and epilepsy is not the ideal comparison to the original question.
How did Eskimos eat salad and protein especially pork and chicken in cold climates?
 
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn More.…