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Lightbulb moment for diet

M

Maris Piper

Member
My husband and I have just been reading Prof Roy Taylor’s latest book “Your simple guide to reversing type 2 diabetes” and realised what is causing my diabetes. It’s my liver. At 75 and otherwise fit and heathy (apart from an hba1c reading of 67) I am not the weight I was when I left school ( in my day we got weighed and measured throughout secondary school) My fasting blood sugar reading is around 9 each day and in the daytime my readings go up and down and end almost at the same level they started. There are no spikes after any particular food. It’s my liver pumping out sugar because it’s full of fat. I have wanted to shift some weight for a while but on the low carb diet for two years this has not happened. I need to restrict my intake of calories. So I am going to try the 800 calories a day. I can still have my porridge for breakfast and I’ll eat the same as I was on the low carb diet but without the fat. My GP has put me on 200mg Metformin twice a day which I’m assuming will help my pancreas but I shall have to look after my liver. Thank you Professor Taylor!
 

Hi there, well anything is worth a try but do you actually KNOW you have a 'fatty liver'? It's very possible of course and many find that losing weight can help. I think some of the blood test results can indicate the state of your liver but I can't remember which ones! As you know porridge is fairly high carb and you say you will then low carb the rest of the day 'without fat'. I'm wondering whether you will end up VERY hungry with this hybrid approach. Please let us know how you get on, how much weight do you have to lose? x
 
Yes I know everyone says porridge is high carb, but it’s slow release so I’m never hungry afterwards( I only have a small bowlful) and I can happily last till 1.30 and go on a bike ride as well. I have no diabetic symptoms (apart from the hba1c) and my BMI is within normal range but I’m not the weight I was at 18. Dr Michael Mosely has reversed his diabetic status by doing the 800 calorie diet. The low carb diet has done nothing for my blood sugar count or reduced my weight. If I lose a stone it’ll take me to just over what I was when I went to PE college. x
 
Prof Taylor’s theories are helpful to some but by no means are the answer for all or even most. Type 2 seems to be a collection of various versions of diabetes and not all have the same triggers and causes as each other. Please be aware this is a short term measure that involves re feeding to a suitable diet after the intervention. Long term it will decrease your metabolism and cause a whole new set of weight issues.

How will you know if success is down to diet rather than medication increase?

When you say you’ve been low carb for two years without it working - just how low were you?

Have you considered that there is maybe a chance you are no longer producing insulin (type 1 or LADA) for which you would need a cpeptide or insulin test and ideally antibodies too. So if this too fails then I think that is a reasonable next step.

Let us know how you get on.
 
I'm confused. I thought that the blood sugar spikes caused the fatty liver which was why diabetics are more at risk of getting it. Looking after your liver definitely makes sense. Good luck with the diet.
 
Maris Piper said:
I’ll eat the same as I was on the low carb diet but without the fat.
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Whilst its a common idea that eating fat makes you fat it isn't true.
It's the carbs that get stored as fat when the body can no longer handle them.
If you have fatty liver then cutting carbs and especially removing anything with fructose (mainly fruit) will help.
I'd say your "low carb" diet has still included too many carbs for your body hence the lack of weight loss and high blood sugar levels.
Porridge is one of the worst for extended high blood sugar readings for most of us.
Eggs and bacon for breakfast would be both more filling and less impactful on your blood sugars or maybe even no breakfast at all ... thus extending your overnight fast.
Whilst the 800 diet may be successful it rarely leads to sustainable weight loss over time (crash diets rarely do). Cutting the carbs more would likely be a far better long term strategy for weight loss and lower bloods.
 
Hi @Maris Piper

The 800calorie diet worked for me. Returned my BG levels to normal and no longer required medication. It is an intervention though and it was a really hard 8 weeks. Good luck and hope you get the results that I did. Let us know how you go
 
Prof Taylor's work has broken the paradigm that diabetes just get works because he has shown how resolving the liver and pancreatic fat issue reduces insulin resistance particularly in the newly diagnosed. Diabetics who have also got insulin resistance at the muscle level might not succeed with the 800 kcal for 8 weeks diet alone.
The principle is to lose the visceral fat accumulated over 15 years (the long silent scream of the liver) and this can be done in other ways i.e. low carb or intermittent fasting or both depending on what you are trying to do.
I also like his concept of the personal fat threshold to explain why the TOFIs (thin outside fat inside) just can't expand their fat cells to take in the excess energy and therefore begin to store it in problematic places.
So as far as tee shirt slogans go I am liking ' Feed the gut, look after your liver' as a good maxim for all to prevent and reverse metabolic disease.
 
Thank you so much, some great information. Much of it is not new to me but so refreshing to see it from a GP rather than 'alternative' medicine. Now I have another reason (not just the red squirrels) to want to move to beautiful Formby. I'd just been watching Brian Mowll saying much the same and it is very much my own experience. I am a little concerned about the loss of salt and lower blood pressure as many with Sjogren's etc have Dysautonomia and/or POTS to manage concurrently. I will have to monitor carefully as I reduce carbs further and it will be interesting to see if my thyroid function drops as some, not all, suggest it will if low carb. My Tee2 arrived a short while ago so looking forward to seeing what my banana is doing to me. Great forum and so glad I found you all.
 
At diagnosis my belly was rock hard and if I tried to get something from below knee height my ribs would be pushed out and I would go dizzy. My liver function was OK but it felt as though I had swallowed a bowling ball.
By eating low carb I lost the bay window frontage and 50lb. My waistline reduced by 12 inches.
I was eating full fat foodstuff, and my cholesterol went down.
 
Thanks for the reassurance about blood pressure normalising. Please could I ask a probably stupid question - I did my first test 2 hours post low carb meal last night, result 5.8. Fasting test this morning 5.4 (14 hours after eating). My usual fruit, nut and egg breakfast, including half a banana, 1 hr test 5.3, 2 hour test 5.1. Is it normal to drop? I don't know whether to carry on without more food and test at 3 hours or eat a nut and a bit of fruit after 2 -2 1/2 as I usually would. Thanks.
 

@Yafle your profile says you don’t have diabetes. Those readings look perfectly normal. What’s the purpose of your testing?
 
I had a CT scan for something else and the consultant said I have a fatty liver. However with low carb diet I have lost 1 stone 3 lbs recently and my blood levels are dropping. I am also high protein, good fats. When you have an Hba1c your GP can add on kidney and liver function, thyroid and cholesterol because mine did last time round
 

Thanks for replying, yes, I think for the majority of us, all those kidney/liver function tests are automatically included.
 

Hi there, a difference between 5.3 and 5.1 is NOT a drop, there is a fair amount of variation between finger prick tests. What that shows for you is the food you ate posed no problem for you, your body did its job. Are you concerned?
 
Goonergal said:
@Yafle your profile says you don’t have diabetes. Those readings look perfectly normal. What’s the purpose of your testing?
Click to expand...

Hi, that's a rather long one to answer. I have multiple autoimmune, many odd issues over a long period of time, now increasing neuropathy (small fibre), neuroinflammation. Thyroid hasn't worked well in years. Datis Kharrazian's books on thyroid and brain both have chapters on blood sugar and the necessity of ensuring good control. Some Small Fibre specialists say that 2/3rds of those diagnosed have some level of blood sugar dysregulation. My HbA1c was tending towards problematic in 2017 but in 2018 I went gluten and then grain free and it dropped quite well, as I found when I got hold of all my old test results. I have had symptoms of both hypoglycemia and insulin resistance for years without knowing and was gluten addicted. I have made vast changes due to increasing ill health, with some benefit, but it is complicated. Liver has been struggling for years but no-one interested. If I go too long without eating I get shaky, dizzy etc but I also have dysautonomia. I had lost about a third of body weight as couldn't digest anything and have now put more back on than I expected and I suspect that I am overdoing the fruit. I am covering bases. Thanks for your reply.
 
KK123 said:
Hi there, a difference between 5.3 and 5.1 is NOT a drop, there is a fair amount of variation between finger prick tests. What that shows for you is the food you ate posed no problem for you, your body did its job. Are you concerned?
Click to expand...

Thanks, I did wonder if the monitor could vary by that much, so not really concerned, just trying to learn.
 
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