- Messages
- 818
- Type of diabetes
- Gestational
- Treatment type
- Insulin
What are your thoughts about the phenomenon of apparently healthy subjects having reduced tolerance to carbohydrates (which can give false high readings on a glucose tolerance test) if they have been following a low carb high fat diet for an extended period of time? Here is one older study that I just read talking about this: http://www.jbc.org/content/83/3/747.full.pdf . (There are probably newer better studies on this, if you have read one, would you post a link please?)
When compared with the American subjects, the Eskimos they tested, who had always eaten a low carb diet (but higher protein and fat than the American's tested), didn't have a reduced ability to process the extra carbs on the glucose tolerance test.
The explanation was that because the Eskimos' diet contained more protein and fat (280g protein, 135g fat, 54g carbohydrates, of which more than half was obtained from the glycogen of the meat) than the Americans, who were only eating 120g of protein, that the Eskimos derived sufficient carbohydrate-forming substance from the protein to keep the insulin producing mechanism sufficiently stimulated to handle large quantities of carbohydrates. And they ask if it reasonable to assume that a high carbohydrate diet will raise carbohydrate tolerance.
Could it not be that the Americans who were tested had already been consuming much larger quantities of carbohydrates in their usual diets for years and years before the test and simply already had a high level of insulin resistance which was somehow effecting their ability to deal with the reintroduction of a larger amount of carbohydrates after a year of eating only meat?
So, if over a lifetime, one eats only a small amount of carbohydrates (from a healthy source), insulin resistance and all of its future health complications are simply unlikely to develop, whereas once you already have insulin resistance, carbohydrates will simply not be well tolerated again. Meaning, if you already have Type 2 diabetes, you should not really expect to ever go back to eating large amounts of carbohydrates ever again for the rest of your life because you can't undo the accumulative damage of having consumed large amounts of carbohydrates earlier in your life?
What are your thoughts?
My personal interest in this is because I will be due to take another glucose tolerance test about 6 weeks after giving birth (I have gestational diabetes), and I'm wondering if I stay pretty low carb for the 6 weeks leading up to the test, will I get a terrible result that might overemphasise my body's glucose intolerance, and should I, in the lead up to the test, attempt to reintroduce a higher quantity of carbs to get a more accurate result on the glucose tolerance test?
Could the difference in test results mean I could be more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes in the postpartum period and medicated sooner, (and possibly unnecessarily if I planned to eat low carb), or is it just a matter of mentioning to the doctor that I am eating low carb and ask if they know about how that might affect the result of the glucose tolerance test? Do most doctors take this into consideration nowadays I wonder?
When compared with the American subjects, the Eskimos they tested, who had always eaten a low carb diet (but higher protein and fat than the American's tested), didn't have a reduced ability to process the extra carbs on the glucose tolerance test.
The explanation was that because the Eskimos' diet contained more protein and fat (280g protein, 135g fat, 54g carbohydrates, of which more than half was obtained from the glycogen of the meat) than the Americans, who were only eating 120g of protein, that the Eskimos derived sufficient carbohydrate-forming substance from the protein to keep the insulin producing mechanism sufficiently stimulated to handle large quantities of carbohydrates. And they ask if it reasonable to assume that a high carbohydrate diet will raise carbohydrate tolerance.
Could it not be that the Americans who were tested had already been consuming much larger quantities of carbohydrates in their usual diets for years and years before the test and simply already had a high level of insulin resistance which was somehow effecting their ability to deal with the reintroduction of a larger amount of carbohydrates after a year of eating only meat?
So, if over a lifetime, one eats only a small amount of carbohydrates (from a healthy source), insulin resistance and all of its future health complications are simply unlikely to develop, whereas once you already have insulin resistance, carbohydrates will simply not be well tolerated again. Meaning, if you already have Type 2 diabetes, you should not really expect to ever go back to eating large amounts of carbohydrates ever again for the rest of your life because you can't undo the accumulative damage of having consumed large amounts of carbohydrates earlier in your life?
What are your thoughts?
My personal interest in this is because I will be due to take another glucose tolerance test about 6 weeks after giving birth (I have gestational diabetes), and I'm wondering if I stay pretty low carb for the 6 weeks leading up to the test, will I get a terrible result that might overemphasise my body's glucose intolerance, and should I, in the lead up to the test, attempt to reintroduce a higher quantity of carbs to get a more accurate result on the glucose tolerance test?
Could the difference in test results mean I could be more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes in the postpartum period and medicated sooner, (and possibly unnecessarily if I planned to eat low carb), or is it just a matter of mentioning to the doctor that I am eating low carb and ask if they know about how that might affect the result of the glucose tolerance test? Do most doctors take this into consideration nowadays I wonder?
