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

My personal hypothesis - T2 - Low insulin Diet

Brunneria said:
There is a complex mechanism in play in a normal healthy person that balances blood glucose using insulin and the insulin-antagonistic growth hormones glucagon, adrenaline, cortisol and growth hormone.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2043222
Insulin is not the only hormone in the body which can become dysregulated, as many members on this forum experience.

http://www.hormone.org/diseases-and-conditions/diabetes/non-diabetic-hypoglycemia

There are many ways that this perfect balance can be disrupted including, but not restricted to, diabetic and other meds, other illnesses, health issues, stress, and others.

[Edited to add the link.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. As I have tried to reinforce , this thread is focussed on a diet that will hopefully lower levels of circulating insulin in a person with T2 diabetes, like myself - who takes no medication for the condition. I make completely clear that I'm just an accountant used to playing with numbers and interpreting patterns, as such any views are utterly personal and can be freely ignored .

I am also of course aware that lots of new things happen to a person with T2 diabetes when the pancreas has failed and that becomes worse over time, hence it being harder to control T2 diabetes if its not controlled early enough and hence Dr Taylor's view that the ability to " reverse" diabetes may be connected to the speed with which you can a clear out the pancreas after diagnosis. .

I'm not sure I understand the point you are making with the two references ?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2043222 is reference to what happens with an" insulin dependent diabetic...... Glucagen is deficient " Is that not one whose pancreas has failed ? that does not apply to people with T2 diabetes trying to control it through diet alone. If the diet fails than that may be indicative of an already failed pancreas - until it has failed the LCHF diet should be beneficial to the person overall and once it has failed using it should minimise the amount of insulin injection required - am I missing something? -

I am aware that there is clearly a condition which is reactive hypoglycaemia which as far as I had understood it , was not considered to be T2 as such.

http://www.hormone.org/diseases-and-conditions/diabetes/non-diabetic-hypoglycemia
That second reference states very clearly

"What causes non-diabetic hypoglycemia?
The two kinds of non-diabetic hypoglycemia have different causes. Researchers are still studying the causes of reactive hypoglycemia. They know, however, that it comes from having too much insulin in the blood, leading to low blood glucose levels"

As such if the research is credible, _Given that we know that diet changes the amount of insulin in the blood, then on the surface it would seem eminently sensible to follow a diet that is specifically geared at lowering insulin. which should then reduce the incidence of reactive hypoglycaemia for at least some people. I haven't looked at it because I don't have reactive hypoglycaemia so its not something I can test out .

In diabetes, the chain of events appears to be along the lines of ( very simplistically I know) - food=> high glucose spikes,=> more internal insulin, =>failing pancreas => high fasting glucose >= failed pancreas => insulin dependence

Clearly if someone has fasting hypoglycaemia then that appears to also indicate other problems. It might be interesting to explore if there is a similar sequence for hypoglycaemia - in some shape or form to cover the differences between reactive hypoglycamenia - low glucose spikes and fasting hypoglycaemia low fasting glucose.

No doubt there is research on that somewhere. :)

Edited to fix formatting only.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Dr Snoddy said:
I meant the hypothermia that I would develop while waiting to eat at 4pm!
Click to expand...

ha ha (not sure if that was a joke or a hypo!)

Funnily enough this isn't turning out to be the problem I thought it might be but so far. I've been getting less and less hungry as each day passes, today I nearly forgot to eat at all. After the food, I'm so stuffed that I don't want to go anywhere near food for a long time afterwards ! it now 11.20 and I'm still full from eating at 4.00. My breathalyser is telling me I can't drive. blood ketones 2.2 , and ketonix 9.7 ppm so I'm clearly going full blast fat burning at present. Which is itself remarkable because I got the portion sizes totally wrong today and ate 1400 calories by mistake !
 
CherryAA said:
ha ha (not sure if that was a joke or a hypo!)

Funnily enough this isn't turning out to be the problem I thought it might be but so far. I've been getting less and less hungry as each day passes, today I nearly forgot to eat at all. After the food, I'm so stuffed that I don't want to go anywhere near food for a long time afterwards ! it now 11.20 and I'm still full from eating at 4.00. My breathalyser is telling me I can't drive. blood ketones 2.2 , and ketonix 9.7 ppm so I'm clearly going full blast fat burning at present. Which is itself remarkable because I got the portion sizes totally wrong today and ate 1400 calories by mistake !
Click to expand...
or a typo of a hypo?
 
Well today was another eye opener.
Trying to balance out the correct mix to get to 100% is hard, I've been busy and I wanted a change preferably more dense with less volume.
I own a bunch of LCHF cook books . I have a tendency to read them , ignore them then make up something else which is a reasonable approximation but adjusted for the "author excess." based on my squeamishness - i.e. they cannot possibly really mean quite that much fat.
My flat mate has no such nuances - its in a book- cook it . She had cooked the lasagne recipe from Prof Noakes book The Real Meal Revolution . I couldn't find the book , but I could recall it serving 6. So I helped myself to one sixth, drank my apple cider vinegar and cod liver oil before it, finished with 30g or each of blackberries , yoghurt, cream, and 20 g nuts. When I finally tracked down the recipe I discovered that today's mega meal included 1655 calories which was 69 protein, 40 carbs and 132 fat with a whopping 61g of saturated fat. ( my HDL will go through the roof !)

In practice eating half of that portion of lasagne would have been much more comfortable for me. and still be 70% fats. So I presumably could repeat the process but with a slightly smaller than huge meal in future.

8 hours later and I still feel rather like I ate a horse. My system now appears to be full on ketotic with blood ketones of 2.2 the highest they have ever been despite the ingestion of 40g carb in one hit, my breathalyser is shouting - go directly to jail - but me friends tell me I don't smell ( though I guess they might be being polite! )

My starting blood glucose was 4.5 My post prandial high was 5.0 and I returned to 4.1 shortly thereafter - i.e. basically no reaction at all!!! This is just insane.

I ate more carbs today than earlier in the week and my system has quite simply ignored them and all the proteins. I did zero exercise today .

I am conscious that a few people work on blocking their morning liver dump with a fat bomb of some sort, but until today I really did not appreciate the significance of that for me.

I have happily bought into the theory proposed by people like Dr Ted Naimann , that you don't need to eat the fat to be on an LCHF diet. Lesson for today : it IS important that I actually EAT the high fat part of an LCHF diet if I want to minimise insulin and glucose strikes.

I will be enormously surprised if my weight is actually down tomorrow, I still feel like I may never be hungry again.

Yet another note to self. (this time without expletive ! )

Follow the recipe ! I've posted the free style libre chart for the first six days of this diet

I used 3.9 to 5.9 as the range because 91% of the readings are under 5.9 - A "Normal " population has readings under 6.7 91% of the time.
Night all!
 

Attachments

  • 4 oct 2017 2.png
    4 oct 2017 2.png
    79.9 KB · Views: 378
Last edited:
CherryAA said:
Well today was another eye opener.
Trying to balance out the correct mix to get to 100% is hard, I've been busy and I wanted a change preferably more dense with less volume.
I own a bunch of LCHF cook books . I have a tendency to read them , ignore them then make up something else which is a reasonable approximation but adjusted for the "author excess." based on my squeamishness - i.e. they cannot possibly really mean quite that much fat.
My flat mate has no such nuances - its in a book- cook it . She had cooked the lasagne recipe from Prof Noakes book The Real Meal Revolution . I couldn't find the book , but I could recall it serving 6. So I helped myself to one sixth, drank my apple cider vinegar and cod liver oil before it, finished with 30g or each of blackberries , yoghurt, cream, and 20 g nuts. When I finally tracked down the recipe I discovered that today's mega meal included 1655 calories which was 69 protein, 40 carbs and 132 fat with a whopping 61g of saturated fat. ( my HDL will go through the roof !)

In practice eating half of that portion of lasagne would have been much more comfortable for me. and still be 70% fats. So I presumably could repeat the process but with a slightly smaller than huge meal in future.

8 hours later and I still feel rather like I ate a horse. My system now appears to be full on ketotic with blood ketones of 2.2 the highest they have ever been despite the ingestion of 40g carb in one hit, my breathalyser is shouting - go directly to jail - but me friends tell me I don't smell ( though I guess they might be being polite! )

My starting blood glucose was 4.5 My post prandial high was 5.0 and I returned to 4.1 shortly thereafter - i.e. basically no reaction at all!!! This is just insane.

I ate more carbs today than earlier in the week and my system has quite simply ignored them and all the proteins. I did zero exercise today .

I am conscious that a few people work on blocking their morning liver dump with a fat bomb of some sort, but until today I really did not appreciate the significance of that for me.

I have happily bought into the theory proposed by people like Dr Ted Naimann , that you don't need to eat the fat to be on an LCHF diet. Lesson for today : it IS important that I actually EAT the high fat part of an LCHF diet if I want to minimise insulin and glucose strikes.

I will be enormously surprised if my weight is actually down tomorrow, I still feel like I may never be hungry again.

Yet another note to self. (this time without expletive ! )

Follow the recipe ! I've posted the free style libre chart for the first six days of this diet

I used 3.9 to 5.9 as the range because 91% of the readings are under 5.9 - A "Normal " population has readings under 6.7 91% of the time.
Night all!
Click to expand...
Thanks for keeping us updated with your Journey CherryAA.
Fat is possibly more important when you are on a fasting regime than most believe. Not only does is slow the carb/insulin
reactions it assists in the replacing of the old cells you will be loosing while in a fasted /Keto state.
I will post a link to an interesting interview Valter Longo being interviewed by Dr Rhonda Patrick it is long at over 1 hour but
some Top information is spread within.

In this conversation, Rhonda and Valter discuss...
• The effects of prolonged fasting, which refers to 2-3 day fasting intervals in mice and 4-5 days in humans.
• Dr. Longo’s work on the fasting-mimicking diet, which is 5 day restricted diet that is meant to simulate some of the biological effects of prolonged fasting while still allowing some food.
• How clinical trials have demonstrated efficacy for this diet for type 2 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and cancer patients.
• Fasting as an inducer of differential stress resistance, where it can simultaneously make cancer cells more sensitive to death while also making healthy cells more resistant to these same death stimuli (such as chemotherapy) which might otherwise induce cell death amongst healthy cells as collateral damage.
• Fasting as a biological state which humans historically experienced with extreme regularity and we may ultimately need in order to mitigate various disease states.
• The effects of prolonged fasting on the immune system, namely, how it clears away damaged white blood cells via autophagy and how this causes hematopoietic stem cells to self renew and make more stem cells and also produce new blood cells to fully replenish the white blood cell population.
• How prolonged fasting causes a shift in the immune cell population towards one that is more representative of youth by normalizing the ratio of myeloid cells to lymphoid cells.
• The positive effects of prolonged fasting and the fasting-mimicking diet on markers of systemic inflammation, blood glucose levels and other aging biomarkers.
• The conclusions of Dr. Longo & Dr. Marcus Bock’s research comparing 1 week of the fasting-mimicking diet followed by 6 months of mediterranean diet to six months of a ketogenic diet in people with multiple sclerosis.
• The strange, somewhat paradoxical role of autophagy genes in cancer progression and some of the open questions surrounding the exact role that these genes are playing.
• Dr. Longo’s high level thoughts on metformin as an anti-aging drug.
• How the growth hormone/IGF-1 axis is one of the most important genetic pathways in aging from yeast to worms to mice to humans.


Not trying in any way to promote Volta Longo's fasting mimicking Diet but there are nuggets of great relevant information within this interview.
 
Last edited:
TIANDB said:
Thanks for keeping us updated with your Journey CherryAA.
Fat is possibly more important when you are on a fasting regime than most believe. Not only does is slow the carb/insulin
reactions it assists in the replacing of the old cells you will be loosing while in a fasted /Keto state.
I will post a link to an interesting interview Valter Longo being interviewed by Dr Rhonda Patrick it is long at over 1 hour but
some Top information is spread within.

In this conversation, Rhonda and Valter discuss...
• The effects of prolonged fasting, which refers to 2-3 day fasting intervals in mice and 4-5 days in humans.
• Dr. Longo’s work on the fasting-mimicking diet, which is 5 day restricted diet that is meant to simulate some of the biological effects of prolonged fasting while still allowing some food.
• How clinical trials have demonstrated efficacy for this diet for type 2 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and cancer patients.
• Fasting as an inducer of differential stress resistance, where it can simultaneously make cancer cells more sensitive to death while also making healthy cells more resistant to these same death stimuli (such as chemotherapy) which might otherwise induce cell death amongst healthy cells as collateral damage.
• Fasting as a biological state which humans historically experienced with extreme regularity and we may ultimately need in order to mitigate various disease states.
• The effects of prolonged fasting on the immune system, namely, how it clears away damaged white blood cells via autophagy and how this causes hematopoietic stem cells to self renew and make more stem cells and also produce new blood cells to fully replenish the white blood cell population.
• How prolonged fasting causes a shift in the immune cell population towards one that is more representative of youth by normalizing the ratio of myeloid cells to lymphoid cells.
• The positive effects of prolonged fasting and the fasting-mimicking diet on markers of systemic inflammation, blood glucose levels and other aging biomarkers.
• The conclusions of Dr. Longo & Dr. Marcus Bock’s research comparing 1 week of the fasting-mimicking diet followed by 6 months of mediterranean diet to six months of a ketogenic diet in people with multiple sclerosis.
• The strange, somewhat paradoxical role of autophagy genes in cancer progression and some of the open questions surrounding the exact role that these genes are playing.
• Dr. Longo’s high level thoughts on metformin as an anti-aging drug.
• How the growth hormone/IGF-1 axis is one of the most important genetic pathways in aging from yeast to worms to mice to humans.

Click to expand...


I had read most of this stuff when concluding I should eat one main meal a day . For me personally I didn't take away quite the right message - which think I might finally be " getting " and I'm not wholly sure based on that that I agree with the " fasting mimicking diet " as the right methodology for me personally. I will post thoughts on that on my daily update shortly .
 
Day 7 of the Low Insulin Diet (starting weight 91.6kg, current 86.1kg )

As I reported last night, yesterday I ate more food in one sitting by mistake than is even vaguely reasonable totalling 1655 calories with a massive fat load of 132 g, 60g of which was saturated fat .

My metabolism was going like a steam engine all yesterday evening with ketones of 2.2, I woke up with ketones still at 1.1 - Which is a first for me. I've never been more than 0.5 in the morning before. My blood sugars flat lined at 4.8 and essentially just stayed there.

This morning I weighed 86.1 kg - i.e. I have lost another 0.6 kg.I am now 4.9 kg lower than the same time last week.
That is 5.3% of my starting body weight in one week after stalling for nigh on 6 months

Overnight fasting glucose was 4.3 mmol down from 5.2 mmol at the start of the week a massive 17% reduction .My overnight fasting blood sugar is now down to 4.2mmol

In thinking about this more a couple of things have struck me.

I have one non-diabetic middle aged friend who I advised into low carbing a few months ago. He lost 30kg and is now slim. he lost the weight on a straight trajectory no stalls at all. I put down his success to the fact he was non diabetic and he puts it down to the fact he took up running.

He followed my diet, however there were a couple of differences. He was eating enormous portions of food compared to me. He drowns his coffee in double cream, he often simply eats an enormous dinner- eg a whole rib eye steak + butter and then doesn't get round to eating for a day.

I have a second friend that is non-diabetic who I advised into low carbing a few months ago. He lost 25kg so far, most notably 10kg in two weeks flat. This is a man who doesn't cook so I was trying to teach him. The recipe I chose was a beef lasagne made with aubergines and courgettes in place of pasta with lots of butter and cheese .

Over the same two week period I hit my lowest weight point ever 85kg a loss of about 3kg.( which I've then put back over the summer to each the 91kg starting weight here) We both ate the same food but we did it differently. He doesn't like vegetables, he was also working away from home, so he didn't bother with breakfast , or lunch, but he did have a big portion of the lasagne in the evening. I on the other hand, ate sparrow like portions at three meals a day accompanied by vegetables and salad. he lost 10kg I lost 3kg. I put his success down to the fact he was non diabetic and it was early stages of the diet. I put my success down to swimming every day as the calorie count of the food needed to be "offset" by extra exercise

All of these stories are the same thing

FEASTING AND FASTING -

Dr Jason Fung seems to be absolutely right. The problem with his advice is that I simply didn't GET what was meant by feasting. My brain is so conditioned to thinking I have to be restrictive in calories to lose weight that I simply can't get my mind around it.

Our society is just so conditioned to believing that its all about the calories that I simply cannot conceive what they are talking about and what it means in practise.

So what is the Lasagne recipe?

Serves 6
250g streaky bacon,2 aubergines, 500 g fatty mince,40g butter,1 large onion,5 cloves garlic,50g tomato paste,1 cup red wine,11 gravy cube,400g tin tomatoes,salt and pepper

Sauce- 2 cups of double cream in total 500g,2 egg yolks,1/4 teaspoon nutmeg,salt and pepper,300 g full fat cheddar cheese for the sauce ,a further 100g grated on top , salt and pepper

Total calories for the recipe 6,500 ,per portion 1078 calories,carbs 28 g,fat 82g sat fat 44g, protein 55 g.
It seems that butter really does may make your pants fall off.!
I am going to eat exactly the same today as yesterday - just to see what happens next .
Gosh this is proving interesting !
 
bulkbiker said:
? I understand the over production of insulin idea but in an insulin resistant person how would that work?
Click to expand...

My theory is that we can become more insulin sensitive as we progress from T2D to pre-diabetes or remission range. Yet we may not have restored the proper 1st phase insulin response. A delayed amplified response would result in a reactive hypoglycemic event. And our brain may still have impaired glucose uptake. The sharp drop in glucose level will send it into a panic mode...screaming for glucose to be replendish...OR if you can provide it with KETONES....

21617677_1480400812054365_6397910844440253685_n.jpg


upload_2017-10-4_16-3-9.png

This is why when people goes on a 5-10 days water fast the first 2 days may be difficult as the ketone levels takes time to ramp up...but normal health individuals brains are less glucose impaired and may work stably at normal/lower glucose levels...
So ketones are brain protective at the low glucose levels...
Glucose-Ketones-Fast-mimicking-diet.png
 
A while ago there was a phase when folks were doing fat fasts (name describes it well) and lost shed loads of weight. The search facility would likely turn something up.

If I recall, @zand had a go and did well. Apologies if I mis-remembered that Zand.
 
DCUKMod said:
A while ago there was a phase when folks were doing fat fasts (name describes it well) and lost shed loads of weight. The search facility would likely turn something up.

If I recall, @zand had a go and did well. Apologies if I mis-remembered that Zand.
Click to expand...

Yes it did go well, thanks for the tag @DCUKMod
Here's the thread
http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/my-5-day-dairy-fat-fast.81433/
I tried it again with a 24 hour fast first (as a couple of friends suggested this and I thought it was a good idea), but that didn't go so well. I did it another time and lost less weight than the first and have now stopped doing fat fasts as I am experimenting with going without dairy products for a while.
 
zand said:
Yes it did go well, thanks for the tag @DCUKMod
Here's the thread
http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/my-5-day-dairy-fat-fast.81433/
I tried it again with a 24 hour fast first (as a couple of friends suggested this and I thought it was a good idea), but that didn't go so well. I did it another time and lost less weight than the first and have now stopped doing fat fasts as I am experimenting with going without dairy products for a while.
Click to expand...
Can you keep us updated any changes without dairy? I went for many years without any but recently added an ounce of cheese a day. No I'll effects but of course that's not a lot of dairy. Can't do anything high lactose or milky. Or even very aged. Just semi soft. I would think the double cream and cream and cheese in sauces etc would lack pounds on me.
 
bulkbiker said:
Butter Bob could have told you that!
For those who don't know of the great man...

http://www.buttermakesyourpantsfalloff.com
Click to expand...


yeah I know and I like most other people - watch it and think --- well that' great , then the very next time we get the opportunity to eat we skimp on the butter, because well saturated fats re bad for you " everyone " knows that.

I'm firmly of the opinion that seeds oils are Very bad for me and I simply will never eat one again deliberately - yet I am still not delivered from worrying about saturated fat because it raises LDL.

It raises both LDL and HDl - and some of the fittest people on the planet are hyper responders - high HDL and HDL plus low trigs and overall high total cholesterol .

Tons of research shows the goal is High HDL, a balanced HDL/ LDLratio and low trigs - butter delivers that ... My mind has been so poisoned by it all over the years, that I find it hard to simply accept what might be the truth - saturate fats make you live longer ( just as the PURE study showed !)
 
zand said:
Yes it did go well, thanks for the tag @DCUKMod
Here's the thread
http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/my-5-day-dairy-fat-fast.81433/
I tried it again with a 24 hour fast first (as a couple of friends suggested this and I thought it was a good idea), but that didn't go so well. I did it another time and lost less weight than the first and have now stopped doing fat fasts as I am experimenting with going without dairy products for a while.
Click to expand...

That's very interesting. My own weight loss at the moment seems to be coming with a reasonably high carb content and even on this last remarkable 1600 calorie day it was still only 70% fat but no discernible effect on blood glucose. I doubt that can qualify as a fat fast.

I am going to eat exactly the same thing today to see what happens
I currently still hugely ketotic - at 2.4 mmol My breathalyser is telling me its the equivalent of having drunk 13 units of drink 12 hour ago:).

I personally have never seen anything like this in my own body :)
 
Kristin251 said:
Can you keep us updated any changes without dairy? I went for many years without any but recently added an ounce of cheese a day. No I'll effects but of course that's not a lot of dairy. Can't do anything high lactose or milky. Or even very aged. Just semi soft. I would think the double cream and cream and cheese in sauces etc would lack pounds on me.
Click to expand...

I am going to give it a try with different combos over the next two months. One of the things I would like to explore is the conundrum of seeds and nuts - good for you, yet high in omega 6. Eating too high omega 6 seems to be at the root of our problems in so far a all processed foods will be cooked in stuff high in Omega 6 and it seems to be that which makes the spikes bigger. Soooo is that because it been turned into an oil - e.g. sunflower oil or is it because its a sunflower in the first place? .
 
Day 7 of the Low Insulin Diet (starting weight 91.6kg, current 85.7kg )

Yesterday I repeated the 1600 calories lasagne megameal with exactly the same results except that all the glucose numbers were 0.2 lower and the average was 4.6 mmol, my ketones increased slightly to 2.6 during the day and have now increased to 1.8 mmol in the morning as well.

My overnight average glucose was 4.1 mmol down from 5.3 mmol at the beginning and the liver dump now took me to 5.8 at the maximum point. the mega meal high including 40 carbs and 70 g protein barely registered giving me a high of 4.8 mmol
Before starting this diet I had hit on trying to keep combs and protein at around 100 a being " optimum " for me being 25g carbs and 75g protein preferably.

I have lost another 0.4 kg - that makes a loss of 5.9 kg since I began. Its becoming ever easier to accept I am just going to eat one nourishing fatty meal once per day and clearly at 1600 calories that's a great meal , so both nice food and no hunger pangs- though I'm assuming at some point it will stall at that level of calorific intake.

The one meal a day with carbs under about 45g, seems to be gradually driving down by blood glucose, increasing ketones and keeping fat burning strong despite quite high calories .I expect with that my levels of circulating insulin is going down too.

I'm guessing at some point both will bottom out , or I will start to feel ill. It will be interesting to see if once I reach bottom - whatever that is - and looking at non diabetic freinds I'm guessing that could be as low as maybe 3.6 , is that the point when my system finally stops producing the morning liver dumps? , or does diabetes mean the the disregulation simply causes the overnight average to go down into dangerous territory and the morning liver dump to continue. Fingers crossed it's the former

Today I am going to do the same thing again - seems a pity to stop a good thing deliberately ! especially when the lasagne is lovely !








 
Back
Top