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Mastering Diabetes by Cyrus Khambatta and Robby Barbaro

HSSS said:
I’m confused by your comment directed at me. I realise it’s scientific and needs to be repeatable etc. That’s why I was asking the question i was - in response to a comment that appeared to suggest it didn’t matter.
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Don't be confused clarity will come one day.

I was in my own roundabout way supporting your coment

"Surely to make a result repeatable and useful in a wider community you need to understand the reasoning,"

That is a scientific approach in the main is it not.
 
Beating-My-Betes said:
It's literally impossible to eat a zero-fat, plant-based diet as all plants contain carbs, fat and protein
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This is a claim often made (not just by low fat / vegan campaigners). I don't think it is true. All plants contain carbs, alas, but only some (eg beans) contain protein and very few contain fat (eg avocados).
 
Beating-My-Betes said:
Like I alluded to in another reply, there are many reasons you won't see many people succeeding on a high-carb diet...on this forum. But I can assure you, they exist
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@Beating-My-Betes Yes, I agree that passionate high carb / vegans are not likely to be found here, but searching eg Youtube I have found many advocates for a plant based diet to control diabetes, but very few hard facts. It seems to me that great improvements in results are claimed but almost no numbers cited. The one time I did find results quoted, after some digging, the numerical difference in bg tests between vegan and not was derisory. As I said, I would love to find a more vegan / vegetarian way to control my diabetes. Please could you give us some links to / quotes of actual figures?
 
This may help
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/vegan-diabetes#how-it-works

And a subjective precis of some of the winners and losers
https://blog.insidetracker.com/vegans-vs-non-vegans-who-is-healthier
This includes some dodgy and biassed statements regarding use of meat products.
 
Jaylee said:
Hi,

Been looking at the T1 stuff linked in the attached PDF in your post.
They all appear to be testimonials affiliated with the Mastering diabetes course?

Do you have anything a little more "independent,?" Please..
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Curious as to why being affiliated with the Mastering Diabetes program is an issue.

Generally I don't make a habit of following diabetics stories, other than those that are on this and other forums. That goes even less for T1D. I do, however, loosely follow Drew Harrisberg:

https://www.instagram.com/drews.daily.dose/?hl=en

I can't claim he's totally independent of the MD program now, as any vegan who tends toward the low-fat, high-carb style will inevitable be following a program similar to that exposed by all the plant-based doctors/gurus. He also seems to have been friends with Robby before making any change to plant-based. i can't confirm or deny whether Robby or Cyrus actually initially coached him, either. So if that's a point-of-contention, then just skip the following interview. While it does contain certain points that will no doubt trigger you or others on this forum, there is still an interesting story that underpins it all:

https://plantproof.com/why-i-quit-keto-with-drew-harrisberg
 
Here is the official Barnard Study Report
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677007/
It was a small scale cohort of the general public. 99 started, 71 completed the full term split approx 50:50 by random selection.

The study was reviewed by the authors, and there seems to be no independant peer review of the findings. The study methodology and control was devised by Barnard himself. There does seem to be an independant statician used to analyse the data.

The conventional diet is confirmed as being Standard Americn Diet in place at the time of the study.
 
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NicoleC1971 said:
I love your moniker btw!
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Thanks

NicoleC1971 said:
I also like Denise Minger especially her book Death by Food Pyramid. She is a former vegetarian and doesn't eat much meat now but seems to have been careful to remain a little contrarian which I like!
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Actually, Denise used to be a raw-vegan. We used to be on the same raw-vegan forums, over a decade ago. She is one of a handful of people who pass my litmus test for trustworthiness. It's not necessarily that I agree with all her stances, it's that she will at least attempt to pursue the truth, even when it ends up contradicting her previously-held positions. Even better, she then cops to it and publicly retracts or corrects herself

She is bereft of the hubris, dogmatic-thinking, reductionism, motivated-reasoning and confirmation-bias that plagues the current nutrition-sphere (That includes from the majority of vegan doctors and gurus). To me this is both the gold-standard and the bare minimum we should be willing to accept.


I wish I could share your optimism about evolving understanding. I see nothing but devolution. And while I will never suggest that refined foods are the key to health, I've seen nothing so far that convinces me of the detrimental effects of the inclusion of a certain amount of process (even ultra-processed foods.

Of course, this is for each individual to decide. i'm certainly not making any recommendations.

NicoleC1971 said:
Or as Rob Lustig puts it Feed your gut and protect your liver.. His book Metabolical is great too.
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Hmmm...That litmus-test I mentioned earlier...Lustig gets nowhere near

I do, however, give him credit for making the exception for whole fruit, to be viewed as distinct from the rest of his crusade against sugar.


The whole Paleo backstory started out as a badly-researched idea, and depending on the day or the orator, has only declined since then. At this point, it is mere fantasy, but without the fun of the cosplay. Well, except for this guy



You are right that we did eat carbs to varying extents. We know this due to the extra amylase (as distinct from out distant ape cousins) that humans developed. in fact, so ubiquitous was starch-eating (We currently have evidence of cooked starches going back 175,000 years), that the animals that evolved alongside us also developed this increase in amylase:

https://www.futurity.org/starch-amylase-mammal-saliva-2062422-2/

And yes, you are absolutely right that there has never been any vegans within our entire history/evolution. Just as with those who pursue long-term keto or so-called carnivore diets, veganism is a human construct, made only possible by our modern world (even then, that depends on various factors).
My own veganism is not predicated on any false notions of evolution, nor even on any 100% surety of healthfulness. Up until this point, my own experience and that of others (To include long-term, older-generation and from-birth vegans) leaves me quietly confident, though I try to keep an open mind


There are absolutely going to be people who aren't able to tolerate certain foods, and those who have really deadly allergies to others. Ruling out extreme sensitivities, it seems like the body is capable of becoming accustomed to all manner of foods. It's unlikely we'd have survived our evolution without such abilities.

And I happen to get all my bread, pasta and rice from a supermarket. So there's that

NicoleC1971 said:
For me I have not ethical desire to avoid decent meat and as I age I want a good variety of proteins too and seem to be weight stable on low carb.
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Not going there

NicoleC1971 said:
Finally we are talking about diabetics here and older people in the main which makes me feel that for practical purposes a low carb diet works well though I can see how a low fat, high fibre diet could do so too.
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I don't think any one diet works for everybody. Even if it has the potential to do so, the menu has to be something the participant has to be at least slightly interested in following.

NicoleC1971 said:
As for type 1 the Cyrus story involves a diagnosis of type 1 whose honeymoon period is extended by keeping big muscles and eating very high fibre foods. I am ware he eats fruits too.
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Honeymoon period? Are you suggesting that at some point it's just going to stop working for him? if so, how long would you predict...and why?

As for eating fruit, here's one of Robby's WIEIAD vids. He's been eating like this for about 15 years, I believe. Of course, I can see why very few people will want to do what he is doing (and to be clear this is not what the MD program recommends), but I'm sharing for a different perspective:

 
Tannith said:
Please do so sooner rather than later. I'd love to know whether your explanation coincides with mine!
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I suspect we're not really talking about the same thing. Either way, not in any hurry
 
All that and half a pint of custard I would love mind you It would probably put me in the hospital and what a shame all that food on that plate and not a picogram of B12.
 

Essentially, I'm saying that just because a diet provides positive results doesn't mean the theory and/or dogma explaining why it succeeds is correct.

An example from the plant-based side of the equation, perhaps.

Within the WFPB and vegan movements, it's widely understood that carbs do not cause weight gain. Rather than the understanding that no macronutrients in and of themselves i.e independent of overconsumption of energy, are responsible for weight gain, they instead lay all the blame at the door of fat. The link is made all the more 'real' when they heavily reduce fat and simultaneously lose weight. At that point, it 'seems' clear that reducing dietary fat leads to weight-loss, therefore dietary fat must be responsible for weight-gain.

This is of course nonsense. And no less so than in the opposite scenario where a huge proportion of low-carbers blame excess weight on carbs, because once they reduced carbs they happened to lose weight.

On both sides of the equation, there are no end of flawed, junk and pseudo-scientific explanation as to why either side is correct in demonising their macronutrient of choice. And even though most of this isn't worth the paper it was written on, that doesn't mean that those that follow the prescribed diets won't see the expected results. What I am saying to you is that the results are achieved due to various other factors, other than the dogma and theory would have us believe.

There are other things to say about all this, for those who are interested. But it's a whole conversation in itself, and well outside the purview of this thread. So unless the moderators give a pass on this as being to some extent 'on' topic, best to leave it there. 'PM' me, perhps, if you want to discuss further.
 
Not sure I’d call an average circulating blood glucose concentration of ~9 mmol/L ‘mastering’ diabetes. Getting it more like. Certainly a life of grains and plants didn’t do me any good. That’s why I’m here. But each to their own and whatever works for the individual.
 
JohnEGreen said:
All that and half a pint of custard I would love mind you It would probably put me in the hospital and what a shame all that food on that plate and not a picogram of B12.
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Oh and bye the way that graph you uploaded as has been pointed out is comparing vegan to conventional american standard diet ie comparing high carb high fat and high carb low fat. not low carb high fat.
 
Alexandra100 said:
This is a claim often made (not just by low fat / vegan campaigners). I don't think it is true. All plants contain carbs, alas, but only some (eg beans) contain protein and very few contain fat (eg avocados).
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ok
 
JohnEGreen said:
All that and half a pint of custard I would love mind you It would probably put me in the hospital and what a shame all that food on that plate and not a picogram of B12.
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B12 is borne of bacteria, not of meat. The more sanitised our wold has become, the less we are naturally exposed to it, hence why most animals are supplemented with it and why the recommendation is not just for vegans to supplement.

Not sure whether Robby supplements, but I certainly do.
 
Jim Lahey said:
Not sure I’d call an average circulating blood glucose concentration of ~9 mmol/L ‘mastering’ diabetes.
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Neither would I. Fortunately, as a free-living study it's not representative of the actual results that people are able to get, in a similar way to how Virta bottoming-out at 6.2%, after a year (The 2 & 3 year bounce-back is also nor encouraging) are not representative of the results people are getting with low-carb on this very forum.

Currently, there are an increasing number of people who are achieving drug-free numbers equivalent to those that David Unwin refers to as 'in remission', while eating a diet containing anywhere between 200 and 700 grams of carbs.

Free-living studies are notoriously difficult to 'police' i.e to ensure people are doing what they are supposed to do. That's just one of the reasons I don't constantly cite the poor (comparatively-speaking) results of Virta, as though it's any worthwhile proof of just how effective a low-carb/keto diet can be for T2D. Were anyone to suggest to me on the strength of teh Virta results that low-carb was unable to bring patients into a non-diabetic range within a year, I'd point them to this forum among others, and suggest that those who were appropriately personally motivated to do so, and who had the level of ongoing community support of this forum, can trounce those numbers, and normally within half the time.

Well, the same thing is happening for those that are succeeding on the MD program. Not only do they have a whole community support structure underneath them, but the fact that they are paying to be part of that community gives them access to personalised coaching, and also provides them that extra motivation of not wanting to have wasted their money.

And just so we're clear: Barnard's program IS the MD program. Same theory; same dietary recommendations.

I have on many occasions now linked to many such progress accounts (I've done so, earlier in this thread). Yet some seem insistent that the gold-standard by which the high-carb, low-fat diet be judged is an 11-year-old free-living study. Moreover, they do so in the face of all these excellent testimonials, in what I can only see as an attempt to disinform.

Is the position that anecdotal evidence is superseded by scientific study? I'm sure Bartholomew Kay would have something to say about that, considering he places anecdotes at the top of the 'Hierarchy of evidence' Moreover, that being the case, would it be fair to dismiss the testimony of everyone on this forum, in light of Virta's findings that a low-carb intervention will bottom-out at 6.2%, over a year, and then proceed to worsen every year after?
 

You will find many examples of figures and in-progress accounts in the attached file
 

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