'New' Breakthrough....

[ickihun]

The research being reported in the news is a follow up to research done at Newcastle University in 2012 by Professor Roy Taylor and funded by Diabetes UK. I originally read that Professor Taylor wanted to prove that the success of Bariatric Surgery was down to severely restricting calories. I see that it's now to prove the build up of fat in both the pancreas and the liver. It examined 11 people with diabetes who slashed their food intake to 600 calories per day for 8 weeks.Three months later, 7 of the 11 people studied were free of diabetes. This is where there seems to some confusion as the diet totaled 800 cals, 600 cals from Optifast meal replacement sachets and a further 200 calories from non starchy vegetables.

I actually used Ultranflamx and Ultrameal 360 food supplements as meal replacement for breakfast and then two meals of non starchy vegetables, I also take supplements like Vit C, Vit D, Vit B12, Magnesium . . . . . The total calories was 800 or less and that might be the only real similarity with Newcastle. There's a very interesting document available at

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0ahUKEwiP6KmI3_TXAhULB8AKHVStDhYQFggyMAE&url=http://www.nhslothian.scot.nhs.uk/Services/A-Z/DiabetesService/PatientsCarers/Documents/SJH%20NEWCASTLE%20DIET%20BOOKLET2012.pdf&usg=AOvVaw21Mn9O3MHOWbTCaO8E-KP_

Or Google Newcastle diet History. The two supplements I used are expensive (14 servings - £40) although I seemed to get more than 14 servings from the container I have, I may have used smaller quantities, but even Optifast is about £3 a serving, I guess shopping around would find something less expensive.

Personally, I'm seriously contemplating just vegetables next time and perhaps juicing for one or two meals. I might use the Nutribullit in preference to a juicer to keep all the bits in, might make me feel like I'm eating something.

My weight stall had lasted several years, several years of lowering my calorie intake by 500, 1000, 1500 and finally 2,000 to be Newcastle like 800 calories (my RMR is 2400 and BMR is 2,800). I've used several online metabolic rate calculators, they all come out about the same, the one that was ridiculously high I ignored and I always come back to the Harris Benedict calculation.

The very low calorie approach helped me lose several kgs (so did 3 weeks in NZ and I know which was easier) and more importantly straightened out my BG that seemed to bare no connection to the low carb food I was eating before the VLCD.

Is protein shakes not less carbs but same calories? Far cheaper too. Bodybuilders use them to add to their meal bulk so in training it feeds the muscles but without meal and lifting weights it is just energy, to be walked off.
In 1985 I used firmaloss by weider which was 200cals per shake. I drank 3 per day and consumer full caffeine coffee too. Often no other food. I lost 7st in months and felt well. I excelled in my school exams but faced anorexia so forced myself to eat. It took 2yrs before I felt unwell again. Weight gain and carb cravings. No maintenance plan. I was 15yrs old and at 17yrs old I didn't have the knowledge around me to stop the undiagnosed diabetes returning.

 

[DavidGrahamJones]

Is protein shakes not less carbs but same calories? Far cheaper too.

The way my body seems happy to produce glucose whatever I give it, I have to watch the protein shakes.

 

[AdamJames]

There have been 3 posts on this thread along the lines of "What about us thin Type 2s", nobody ever mentions us / this diet isn't suitable for us etc.

The media certainly haven't been great at communicating the various bits of info from these Newcastle studies, and I'd recommend going direct to http://www.ncl.ac.uk/magres/research/diabetes/reversal/#publicinformation and having a good long read, and downloading and reading through all the pdfs, and also searching for Roy Taylor presentations on YouTube.

He absolutely does talk about people of all sizes, and his idea of a "Personal Fat Threshold" which may explain why people of all sizes (or "levels of outwardly visible fat" or whatever you want to call it!) get Type 2 diabetes.

Furthermore somewhere in that info is an actual link to an article by a journalist who tried the diet himself - he started out thin, got thinner, and it worked for him very quickly indeed, he thinks he "got there" in 11 days according to his write-up.

The information is all there, it's just important to cut out the middle-man of the media if you want to be sure you get hold if it all in an undistorted way!

 

[ickihun]

I believe something different @AdamJames .
I believe we all have some degree of fatty liver.
The liver dumps more when overcome with converted glucose that the body doesnt use.
Thin people can get fatty liver too. And cirrhosis not from alcohol.
Bad diet.

Obese and thin people can eat a poor diet.

Id like to meet a type2 who doesnt have or never had fatty liver!

That is why metformin is the best diabetic med in my opinion and works with the liver.

 

[AdamJames]

I believe something different @AdamJames .
I believe we all have some degree of fatty liver.
The liver dumps more when overcome with converted glucose that the body doesnt use.
Thin people can get fatty liver too. And cirrhosis not from alcohol.
Bad diet.

Obese and thin people can eat a poor diet.

Id like to meet a type2 who doesnt have or never had fatty liver!

That is why metformin is the best diabetic med in my opinion and works with the liver.

Just to be clear, I don't believe *anything*, I just look at data and that gives me ideas about what to try next.

If you mean you believe something different to Roy Taylor, then possibly, though he does mention liver fat just as much as pancreatic fat, and he believes that removing fat from both organs is important. Also, and again I'm engaging in the slightly dodgy business of conveying what I think someone else believes and therefore stand to misrepresent him, I'm pretty sure that Roy Taylor believes that thin people get fatty pancreas as well as fatty liver from every presentation I've ever listened to by him.

Re your thoughts that all/most type 2s have / have had a fatty liver, I guess that would be a hard one to get data on, but there was certainly a questionmark over my blood results a few months ago re liver function, at a time when I got a very high HbA1c.

 

[first14808]

Re your thoughts that all/most type 2s have / have had a fatty liver, I guess that would be a hard one to get data on, but there was certainly a questionmark over my blood results a few months ago re liver function, at a time when I got a very high HbA1c.

I think part of the trial involved MRI scans before and after to take a look at visceral fat. AFAIK, that's an expensive procedure to use in screening, and hospitals with MRI scanners often have high demand for them. But it may be possible to use or develop other body scanners/monitors. I bought a set of Tanita scales that are meant to show fat in different areas, and pro versions are meant to be able to do that better. Or it may be possible to develop better models about where people are likely to store fat and guesstimate risk from a physical exam, ie if you've got skinny arms/legs & can't pinch an inch, but machine says 20%+ fat, there's only a few places it could be hiding.

 

[AdamJames]

Or it may be possible to develop better models about where people are likely to store fat and guesstimate risk from a physical exam, ie if you've got skinny arms/legs & can't pinch an inch, but machine says 20%+ fat, there's only a few places it could be hiding.

I think the link between the more easily observable fat (either externally or using affordable tools to estimate what's going on inside) and pancreas fat may be a big line of enquiry over the coming years, based on what's going on in Newcastle and Glasgow.

What's exciting as that it's more than just a guess from Roy Taylor now; at one point it was an educated guess, and the only real supporting evidence was a correlation: pancreatic fat did seem to go down in line with insulin response improving. But the estimate of the amount of fat loss in the pancreas required to make all the difference was about 1 gram, and a lot of people in the scientific community still doubted that this fat loss was the *cause* of better metabolic function.

It seems that there is now more supporting evidence from observations of beta cells however - fat in the beta cells stops them operating like beta cells, and removing that fat results in them starting to operate as beta cells again. If I understand the write-up of that research, I think they are now questioning prior scientific studies that show beta cells have "died" - asking: are you sure? If you thought they were dead because you didn't find insulin in them, that might have been because they just weren't producing insulin. One comment in the research overview was calling for better methods of detecting beta cell death, I think.

For me, the most practical question I have is: Is there a way you can target fat-loss in the pancreas? The general scientific consensus seems to be that you can't target fat loss - you just lose weight and the body uses up fat wherever it wants. But I suspect things are never that simple. For example, we know that fructose is particularly good at causing a liver to get fatty. So clearly not all sugars have the same result in the body. It's not unreasonable therefore to think that one diet may be better than another to maximise your chances of getting rid of liver and pancreas fat.