Mastering diabetes

[Deleted member 388305]

Your HS-CRP of 2 indicates moderate risk, as the desired is below 1, mine has been 0.3 for approaching 4 years (this should put to bed, meat is inflammatory):

I mis-typed. My HS-CRP was 0.2, not 2.0. I won't be adding any more to this conversation. My intent was just to share my results because examples were asked for, not to enter into a long discussion as to the validity of it or an explanation of how or if it worked, etc. Assumptions made about how I ate or what I did in my 40 years of combating diabetes are irrelevant. I'm not trying to talk anyone into this. I'm only telling you what happened to me. When I get another round of labs in three months, I may post those here.

 

[Mbaker]

My objective was not to cheese you off. One side of this scenario is attempting to force me to eat like you, which for me destroys my health. I am showing my way works just as well and should not be misrepresented. This deals with the food side. When someone posts on thr climate and meat, I will be able to show other evidence, that once seen cannot be unseen.

My other objective was to provide balance. The MD protocol is a commercial product, getting free advertising. There are many health questions around this method, that for example achieves A1c's with high spikes and lows to get the numbers. Challenging this method compared to the law of low numbers is valid.

 

[Deleted member 388305]

My objective was not to cheese you off.

No offense taken. I don't have a dog in this hunt. I appreciate the information you shared. I just don't see any point in joining the discussion any further - all I really had to add was my results and they have been offered.

 

[Deleted member 532959]

No offense taken. I don't have a dog in this hunt. I appreciate the information you shared. I just don't see any point in joining the discussion any further - all I really had to add was my results and they have been offered.

I hope you continue to share ongoing results

 

[Deleted member 532959]

My other objective was to provide balance. The MD protocol is a commercial product, getting free advertising.

That's true. But in just the same way as the oft-recommended dietdoctor offers a commercial product, the folks over at MD (Just as with DD) offer enough free resources (Many free articles, tons of free video content, free online summits, workshops etc.) that the plan can be followed without spending a penny. Their paid products other than their book, while instructional, are more about group and individual coaching for people who are happy to pay for that level of support.

 

[Mbaker]

That's true. But in just the same way as the oft-recommended dietdoctor offers a commercial product, the folks over at MD (Just as with DD) offer enough free resources (Many free articles, tons of free video content, free online summits, workshops etc.) that the plan can be followed without spending a penny. Their paid products other than their book, while instructional, are more about group and individual coaching for people who are happy to pay for that level of support.

Diet Doctor are not fast and loose with the truth and are respectful to plant advocates to the point of having dietary recommendations. In my assessment of what I found, I will either cite my example, which is middle of the range for a typically adherent low carber or reference other evidence. I will prove they don't tell the truth. I went through the MD website taking some time on the science (fiction) section, for example:

"We’ve learned that in general, low-fat, plant-based diets with whole foods are good for your overall health and longevity, especially if you’re living with diabetes.

"And we’ve learned that there are some substantial risks to meat consumption and eating high fat diets, especially when you consider extremes like processed meats, or a high-fat diet like the keto diet or carnivore diet (as tempting as they can be)."

Clearly it is easy to contradict both points with either science or common sense. For common sense I can remember my aunties living into their 80's, my grandma 90's, mum currently 79 (traditional Jamaican diet, with SAD influences), I remember my friends (both white and black) having access to grand parents (this would have been the days of meat and 2 veg, and when school kids were being given a free bottle of milk). With regards to science no epidemiological study even meets the hazard threshold of "2", so it is fraudulent to use words such as "substantial". For those who don't know the hazard ratio needs to be 2 or greater to then move on to a "real" trial such as an RCT. As "1" means no effect, all so called reliable tests are at circa 1.3 (miniscule, tortured data absolute risks), when smoking causes cancer has a comparative is anything between 10x to 20x plus in comparative types of methodology.

If you can prove someone is being (willfully) liberal with the truth, you then have to question any other hypothesis; here's just some extracts from one of their sections:

The Secret Benefits of A High Carb Diet

Carbs have been getting a bad rap, and high carb diets are getting it even worse! Here’s why a high-carb diet can be amazing, especially for people with diabetes!

www.masteringdiabetes.org

"One of the most popular diet fads right now is the low-carb diet."

Truth:

"And while the low-carb diet has been shown to help people lose weight in the short term, when these diets are followed long-term (i.e., for over a year), studies show that they're not very effective at helping with lasting weight loss or preventing chronic diseases like diabetes."

Truth:
The 96 kg was 9 years before being diagnosed. Seven and three quarter years later 9.5 kg still off (whilst increasing muscle mass):

"However, the reason why these diets are so effective for this purpose is that they're usually very calorie-restrictive and often don't provide enough calories to sustain an individual over the long term"

Truth:
I have 5 years of date and time stamped pictures. It is false to say I am calorie restricted in anyone's eyes; I eat around 200 grams of animal protein a day with no powders. Some pictures are in earlier posts in this stream and littered over this site for years.

"Keto and the like are even worse for people with diabetes! This is another place where short-term results are deceptive, because by reducing your intake of carbs/sugar, you do notice a clear decrease in your blood sugar levels!"

Truth:
Keto has been proven clinical to reverse Type 2 (Virta Health, Eric Westman, Jason Fung, Dr Troy, Diet Doctor, Diabetes.co.uk, Dr Unwin.....), my self:

"However, the cost is that you're drastically increasing your insulin resistance, which means that any return to eating foods high in carbohydrates will skyrocket your sugar levels, lead to weight gain, and can leave you in a worse place than you were before you tried low carb diets!"

My Hom-IR: 0.97 (Fasting insulin 5.1, FBG: 4.3)

My recent 50 gram porridge (30 grams of carbs) test:

Best way to make porridge

Hi all, hope you are all doing well As the colder weather is about to come in, its time to go back to my favourite breakfast, porridge. Reading about on internet I am getting conflicting information about soaking the oats overnight. The main consensus is to soak overnight. My question from...

www.diabetes.co.uk

This was without prepping my body, I was able to get a maximum of 7.0 mmol/L with no exercise (a further test with a walk 6.3). Whilst these numbers are not acceptable to me. This is proof that a well formulated meat-based diet does not increase IR.

"Eating too much protein in the long term can also put stress on your kidneys if you're not careful!"

Truth:

The 2014 measured came about after my "get healthy" diet change to more fruits, oats and the like. I eat a high animal protein focused diet. Using metformin initially dropped my GFR below 60, latest 68:

The studies on kidney health and high protein are conclusive, when kidneys are healthy both low and high carb diets have no effect. Studies I have seen. References are Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, Dr Donald Layman, Dr Stuart Philips, Dr Ted Naiman, Dr Jason Fung. The 2 middle Dr's are independently recognised as authorities in this area and all reference studies etc, Dr Fung is a kideny specialist.

Dr David Unwin has a trial protein and the kidneys:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1422437079900901399

In very short order I have been able to put a coach and horses through claims on MD, with no "yeah but" comebacks. If something is not true it of the opposite. As it is provable scientifically and observationally that MD misrepresent, this site should seriously consider banning or putting a fact check underneath every post - I am serious about this point and am openly asking the mods to rule on this. It is my position that the MD method has too many risks at this stage to recommend and should not be promoted when the "experts" are not telling the truth in their statements, as evidenced in this sites own App published data and anecdotes.

Am I able to promote my wifes method of Diabetes Remission and Control, she is a qualifed health care professional, who has worked with well known premiership football teams, has go

I have been able to uncover just in this stream that reported HDL is outside of what is deemed normal and LDL reported again witnessed in "standard" available data, is in the realm of more overall mortality. Is it ethical to promote a diet that results in lowering past normal the biomarker which has a higher association with heart health than LDL, based on what a Dr says. And when tested against actual hard end points (death) has a higher association with death in non-biased datasets.

We don't even know what the other metrics produced are for the MD protocol are for example in the attached Virta data. If the comeback is "LDL" goes high in 33% of meat eaters on low carb, then I would refer to Virta data which shows (again on standard metrics) that overal risk goes down (mine from 4% to circa 2%) and the ApoB. Attached is the Virta "proven" data. This deals with many of the topics covered with facts. The criticism that this trial was not randomised, does not change the values of the data, a 4.3 mmol/L fbg is still 4.3.

 

[Deleted member 532959]

In very short order I have been able to put a coach and horses through claims on MD

Which is unfortunate, as I believe there's definitely a (much more nuanced) conversation to be had.

Anyway...Thanks for your thorough reply. However, I have to stick to my plans of spending November (and possibly December) mostly offline. I will take a copy of this reply, and slowly craft a considered response. I may or may not post it while away.

Let's see if we can't clear away the straw and horse poo and put at least some of your horses back in their stables



Hasta entonces...

 

[bulkbiker]

I'll just drop this one here

Dietary Glycemic Index and Load and the Risk of Type 2 Diabetes: Assessment of Causal Relations - PubMed

While dietary factors are important modifiable risk factors for type 2 diabetes (T2D), the causal role of carbohydrate quality in nutrition remains controversial. Dietary glycemic index (GI) and glycemic load (GL) have been examined in relation to the risk of T2D in multiple prospective cohort...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

" The high confidence in causal associations for incident T2D is sufficient to consider inclusion of GI and GL in food and nutrient-based recommendations."

This list of the authors' conflicts of interests is a lot longer than the abstract..

Edit to add link to twitter thread where I saw it first..

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1587361486266998784

 

[Lotties]

Irrespective of their claims, it is known (and I Cannot find the reference now, sorry) that carbs-based healthy diets are ok for those without hyperinsulenimia. As fasting insulin levels are not mentioned by them AND not known by most of the population, any good insights they can offer are overwhelmed by the harm and false hope their advice and dogma brings.

 

[Butterfly331]

I had my first labs three months after starting this plan and all of my lab results had improved, but experiencing it is very different than on low-carb. On low-carb, you can stick your finger any time and know the effect of the diet. Since you are not trying to control carb intake (to avoid a need for insulin), but are trying to increase you sensitivity to insulin, it is harder to measure (because it takes time to remove fat from your pancreas, liver, muscles, etc). However, not having the dietary fat interfering with your meal processing shows up pretty quickly. I was on Metformin when I started this. Within 5 days, I had to get off of it. My insulin sensitivity had improved enough that my blood sugar would go too low after a high carb meal and, since Metformin terns off your body's ability to manufacture sugar, there was not mechanism in place to prevent those lows. I initially had large spikes after a high carb meal, but recovered pretty quickly and the amplitude of the spikes came down more rapidly than, say, my fasting blood sugar and was the first sign that something good was happening. Cholesterol and weight quickly came down. You are eating a diet very high in nutritional content and very low in calories, so basically, no matter how much of the allowed foods you eat, you are not going to over eat. And, as I say, ALL labs were improved after 3 months and the ones I posted above at 6 months are improved again (A1c from 6.0 to 5.6 - LDL from 96 to 78).

Because you need a span of time to see what is going on, I started using a CGM so I could check my glucose hourly (not goin to stick my fingers that often). Over time, that didn't seem to work so well - it would be reading a value that I knew could not be possible and I would check and it could be 30 points off either way. So after a couple of months I quit using it. I find that at the moment, I really have no idea what my A1c is going to be based on my finger sticks. I would have thought my most recent one would have been in the neighborhood of 6.0 or 6.1 (US scale) based on my finger sticks, so I was very pleasantly surprised to get the 5.6. I assume that there is a lot better control going on in general than I can find out from the number of finger sticks I am willing to do.

This was so useful to read, thank you so much!
I have Pre-Diabetes (A1C at 6.1) and have just started again the Mastering Diabetes diet; I'm a bit scared cause spikes are pretty high (230 at 1 hr) but it's exactly as you say, they come down pretty quickly and even If at 1HR I feel very dizzy and unwell, I also feel paradoxically less tired and more energetic while walking after meals. Reading your experience was priceless, you make some excellent points: it will take some time before my metabolism switches to carbs and sugars again from keto, and also for my body to get rid of the extra stored fats (even if I'm very skinny). I want to stick to it this time. Something is telling me that this is the only way, I felt so miserable on Keto and had big spikes anyway... Thanks again!

 

[Butterfly331]

I agree there are different diabetes types, but I think the word "work" should be defined. The approach gets the A1c by as the contributor stated slamming down the glucose to low levels. This is achieved with higher amounts of insulin under the curve to counter act the massive spike. So is it better for the body to get a 42 with minimal spikes or significant variances, I do not have the references to hand but 7.8 is the the "normal" upper spike level (I dont go over 6 as I am closer to Bernsteins method|), in another thread on the MD series someone had a variance of 4 mmol/L, considered this alright as their A1c was low due to covering with insulin.

Next on the "work" point, is what are the other metrics for this WOE, HDL, Trigs, HS-CRP, etc. If they are somewhere near the Virta Healths (i.e. similar to other protocols and mine on this site), then perhaps this method has some efficacy, especially if maintained for circa 5 years. For me it is not all about A1c. I believe post prandial rises are important, health metrics and vitality.

I'm just 3 days in, on the MD diet, so I can't really talk as an expert. Yes it's true the spikes and insuline response are there, but it's also true that the brain fog has gone and I feel much more energetic already. This is not a a perception, the difference with 4 days ago is HUGE.

 

[Butterfly331]

Watched this a few days ago and thought it worthy of being in my signature.

There are so many positives about this video. Not only is is he independent of all the dietary tribalism so common in the online nutrition space, allowing him to assess his many experiments without prejudice or motivated reasoning. But having come to this armed only with the book and I assume maybe watching a few videos, rather than signing up for the (expensive) coaching and support plans, he shows the results are accessible to anyone who knows how to follow a handful of recipes.

While it is of course great to see the growing number of T2D using the MD program to get their health back, its the results with T1D that are perhaps the most illuminating. Due to how T1D need to dose insulin for the carbs they wish to consume, there are many datapoints being logged, by many people, over various periods of time. This window into the ongoing interaction between carbs and insulin, under ever-increasing (in the case of the MD program) carbohydrate load is invaluable and I believe the implications far outreach those with T1D.

Thank you so much for sharing. This for me is an incredible validation of my very first days on the MD diet, cause I know the guy of the video from many previous videos I watched and you are absolutely right on this, he's always been unbiased, objective and very realistic.
He's honest on everything he says, and if he's having such good results on the same Diet, this is so motivating for me; I have no doubts he's sincere.
Also, your remarks on him being a T1D is absolutely spot on, the success rate of this diet can be measured and shared. Both authors of the Mastering Diabetes book are Type 1, btw.
I'm feeling so much hope tonight, thank you again for sharing. I'm also following the Diet without buying the full package, I just read the e-book which I got from Amazon (10 Euros).

 

[Mbaker]

I'm just 3 days in, on the MD diet, so I can't really talk as an expert. Yes it's true the spikes and insuline response are there, but it's also true that the brain fog has gone and I feel much more energetic already. This is not a a perception, the difference with 4 days ago is HUGE.

Happy for your up tick. The MD method promotes the previous vegan diet - WFPB (Whole Food Plant Based). Personally I don't like this, but respect it for being real food. From what I recall the meals are relatively small, I once referred to them as a starters (but I do eat a significant amount).

WFPB is a major positive change compared to the standard diet, so it does not surprise me that you feel better. I wish you all the best, but hope you continue to test. If the evidence to yourself shows either deficiencies or poorer health outcomes, I would hope you would place health above protocol.

 

[Butterfly331]

Happy for your up tick. The MD method promotes the previous vegan diet - WFPB (Whole Food Plant Based). Personally I don't like this, but respect it for being real food. From what I recall the meals are relatively small, I once referred to them as a starters (but I do eat a significant amount).

WFPB is a major positive change compared to the standard diet, so it does not surprise me that you feel better. I wish you all the best, but hope you continue to test. If the evidence to yourself shows either deficiencies or poorer health outcomes, I would hope you would place health above protocol.

Hi @Mbaker , thank you so much for your reply!
Yes, you are right, I'm absolutely focusing on keeping things balanced, also I can't go fully vegan nor vegetarian right now cause I'm also severely intolerant to Histamines so I can't eat legumes, I have just drastically reduced fats for the moment, even healthy fats such as organic almond butter and coconut cream and I'm keeping seeing huge progress... I was vegetarian before Covid, have been for 8 years, and I was feeling very good to be honest. Then Covid made me hyperglicemic and intolerant to many things and here I am...
Btw, the portions of MD diet are actually huge, even too much for my stomach, because for getting 300gr carbs or more from veggies and fruit you need to eat a LOT of them

 

[Gupt1857]

Has anyone tried this version to bring blood sugars down and your a1c?

It is a high carb low fat diet

When I first started to testing my blood I was reading between 15 mmol to 19 mmol and have been on this diet for just over 1 month now and my readings are now between 5 and 8 mmol daily morning and after food.

It is a whole food plant based diet accompanied with daily exercise.

I was just wondering if anyone else has tried this method and what there results are like and if they have any good tips ?

I have been on a whole food plants only diet for more than 13 years . Mainly to prevent and reverse heart disease.
It has worked well for that purpose but lately I have been diagnosed with t2 : my a1c has been higher than the prediabetes range at times: 6.8 and 6.6.
I have lost a lot of weight by being strict again and watching portions . And now I have a Libre 3 cgm for a week.
I hope to learn more and keep my a1c in check .
I saw the photos of the recipes posted and they look great . I also do no added fat so it is challenging to follow recipes