Low-Carb And No-Meds For More Than 20 Years?

Bluetit1802 · Oct 23, 2017

I have a book, Cookery and Household Management, printed in 1936.

Cookery and Household Management
Printed 1936

Diabetes

Those suffering from this ailment require carefully to avoid all foods containing sugar and starch. The following Must be avoided:

Milk, sugar, flour, cornflour, oatmeal, rice, sago, macaroni, the various pulse foods, fruits containing a high percentage of sugar, potatoes, beets, carrots, peas, parsnips, broad beans, spanish onions.

The following are allowed:

meat, soups, fish, poultry, game and meat of all kinds. Also eggs, butter, cream, cheese, certain vegetables. Light dry wines. Weak unsweetened spirits. Tea, coffee and cocoa which may be sweetened with saccharine. There may be plentiful use of butter, cream, fat and oils if the digestion will allow.

Grateful · Oct 23, 2017

Resurgam said:
I was never tested for diabetes even though when I was instructed to follow a high carb diet I felt dreadful - high carb and low calorie caused me to collapse, and during my first pregnancy I got away with eating low carb foods all through, so the urine tests would not have shown any sugar - after diagnosis I did the urine testing for the diabetes education sessions and just once got the smallest colour change. Not the smallest as denoted on the tin, just a slight alteration in the colour.
I have been eating low carb since the 1970s, when I had symptoms of reactive hypoglycemia mid afternoon - told I was having panic attacks.
I suspect that I have been diabetic for a long time - but the low carb eating, which also controlled my weight, disguised all symptoms. Now I am back eating the same diet I am - once again - absolutely fine, and I will not take orders from any HCP about what is right for me. The Metformin and statins were awful, life was not worth living.
If you go to the Atkins Diet page on Wiki it is described as a fad diet - insert information about diabetes being suppressed by it and put in a link to this forum and it is removed in minutes.

And we have a winner, I think. Your case is complex, but then nothing is simple with diabetes. You have been eating low-carb for at least 40 years. You spent some of the time on meds (not sure how long) but aren't taking any now. (Do correct me if I got the wrong end of the stick.)

Fantastic, well done!

Total number in the "Type 2, low-carb, (almost) no-meds for more than twenty years" survey so far: 1.

Jay-Marc · Oct 23, 2017

The other diet used pre insulin was the so-called starvation diet, restricting intake to around 600 calories for a few weeks and then raising it to around 900. Sound familiar?

The drawback seen to the diet approach (apart from it not helping T1 at all apart for a short time maybe) was that most people couldn't stick them out - especially starvation. Insulin seemed an improved path after its discovery and diet relegated to a back seat.

Grateful · Oct 23, 2017

Jay-Marc said:
Insulin seemed an improved path after its discovery and diet relegated to a back seat.

I am old enough that I was brought up with the ideology that humankind was in a constant march of Progress. Among other things, illness would be solved by Heroic Surgeons and Wonder Drugs. So, I "get it" that insulin was a huge breakthrough and I think I understand how diet ended up taking a back seat.

Why mess around with complex lifestyle changes if you could prescribe insulin instead? Later on, when the non-insulin treatments came along starting with Metformin in the 1950s, the same attitude seems to have carried over. Fantastic! Some patients can do without insulin, as long as we give them a pill!

It's hard to fault the logic. Until and unless massive, scientifically verified evidence shows that the "diet" treatment for T2 diabetes works just as well as the drugs, the current "mainstream" treatment methods are likely to stay in place.

Resurgam · Oct 23, 2017

Grateful said:
And we have a winner, I think. Your case is complex, but then nothing is simple with diabetes. You have been eating low-carb for at least 40 years. You spent some of the time on meds (not sure how long) but aren't taking any now. (Do correct me if I got the wrong end of the stick.)

Fantastic, well done!

Total number in the "Type 2, low-carb, (almost) no-meds for more than twenty years" survey so far: 1.

I was on Metformin and a statin for about 5 dreadful weeks before I gave up on them. I have not taken any medication for diabetes during 2017 and my numbers were normal range at 6 months from diagnosis. Prediabetes at 80 days.
I should also throw in the fact that I have to take Thyroxine as my thyroid quit over a decade ago, and that I was diagnosed when the wrong test was done on my blood sample - I still do not know my present status for thyroid supplement.

Grateful · Oct 23, 2017

Bluetit1802 said:
Those suffering from this ailment require carefully to avoid all foods containing sugar and starch....

Very interesting, thanks. Yet more evidence that they already had the low-carb method worked out in considerable detail. Totally off topic, but as a former professional editor, I also appreciate that the person who wrote the quoted sentence knew how to avoid a split infinitive.

johnme · Oct 29, 2017

Grateful said:
One of the frequent criticisms made by the medical community of the low-carb, low-med (or zero-med) treatment for Type 2 diabetes is that there aren't enough controlled medical studies (as far as I can't tell, there aren't any such studies) proving that it works in the long term.

Personally, as someone who adheres to the scientific method, this bothers me quite a lot. Indeed, it bothers me even though places like this forum provide overwhelming anecdotal evidence that the low-carb treatment works. Plus, it bothers me even though I have now become an anecdote myself: the low-carb method worked, in my case.

From Wikipedia: Anecdotal evidence is evidence from anecdotes, i.e., evidence collected in a casual or informal manner and relying heavily or entirely on personal testimony. When compared to other types of evidence, anecdotal evidence is generally regarded as limited in value due to a number of potential weaknesses, but may be considered within the scope of scientific method as some anecdotal evidence can be both empirical and verifiable, e.g. in the use of case studies in medicine. Other anecdotal evidence, however, does not qualify as scientific evidence, because its nature prevents it from being investigated by the scientific method. Full definition here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence.

The "gold standard" in medical science is the long-term, double-blind controlled study. We don't seem to have any of those, as far as low-carb/no-meds treatment for T2 is concerned. (I hope I am wrong about this. If there are such studies, where can we find them?)

So here is my question: Is there any forum member reading this who has been on the low-carb programme for at least 20 years, and is still showing healthy BG levels without taking meds? Plus a corollary question: If so, have you seen any signs that the low-carb diet, while successfully controlling diabetes, had any drawbacks whatsoever for your health?

This is a thoughtful approach. The trouble is, relative simple carb restriction and its anecdotal successes ask so little of the subject there's no reason not to do it while you build up your evidence. 'Don't drink beer. Don't eat bread and cakes. Eat cheese or some other low carb option if you're 'snack' hungry. Stick to chocolate over 85% cocoa solids' isn't really very demanding, and just doing that would have an enormous effect on most of us.

Grateful · Oct 29, 2017

johnme said:
This is a thoughtful approach. The trouble is, relative simple carb restriction and its anecdotal successes ask so little of the subject there's no reason not to do it while you build up your evidence. 'Don't drink beer. Don't eat bread and cakes. Eat cheese or some other low carb option if you're 'snack' hungry. Stick to chocolate over 85% cocoa solids' isn't really very demanding, and just doing that would have an enormous effect on most of us.

I agree that it seems easy. In practice, I found it much harder than it seems. Carbohydrates lurk in all sorts of unexpected places.

A moderately low-carb diet is relatively "easy" to achieve I suppose.

However some people may need a very-low-carb method to achieve reliable control. Or they might be like me: I am not very good at doing things in moderation. I ended up eliminating huge swathes of foods from my diet altogether, including weird details like figuring out which vegetables are truly low-carb and which aren't, which nuts are low carb and which aren't, blah, blah. As well as "counting the grams."

Same with exercise: the conventional recommendation to help T2 control is something like 150 minutes per week, but I have ended up with about 500 minutes. In part, this is because I am not sure I will be able to keep it up in old age, so I am "banking" some good health now to have better reserves in the future. (Reading about hospital food served to T2 diabetics is another scary thing, if you want yet another reason to get scared. It is Halloween after all!)

If fora like this one still exist in 20 years, I am looking forward to posting in the "Success Stories" section on my 80th birthday, to report that I have been controlling T2 with diet-only for 20 years, with no signs of diabetes complications! Along with many of my fellow low-carbers here!

johnme · Oct 29, 2017

No, I'm not saying it's easy. It takes time and thought and a change in thinking. A quick walk around any motorway services might convince one it's nearly impossible to low carb if you drive a lot, for example. What I'm saying is, yours is a good approach, but there's nothing to stop people being anecdotally successful while you build up evidence. By the way I agree with you about investigating which veg/nuts are low carb. I go with brazils for preference, or some nut 'butters'. And if someone has to go really low carb, almost no carb to get results, well good for them. It's not impossible. They don't have to be hungry.

Grateful · Oct 29, 2017

johnme said:
No, I'm not saying it's easy. It takes time and thought and a change in thinking. A quick walk around any motorway services might convince one it's nearly impossible to low carb if you drive a lot, for example. What I'm saying is, yours is a good approach, but there's nothing to stop people being anecdotally successful while you build up evidence. By the way I agree with you about investigating which veg/nuts are low carb. I go with brazils for preference, or some nut 'butters'. And if someone has to go really low carb, almost no carb to get results, well good for them. It's not impossible. They don't have to be hungry.

I agree. One small point: watch out with the Brazil nuts. I used to guzzle them until I Googled "brazil nuts selenium poisoning." I now eat no more than four or five Brazil nuts per day .

Low-Carb And No-Meds For More Than 20 Years?

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Low-Carb And No-Meds For More Than 20 Years?

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