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Resistant starch Have any of you tried it ?

Southport GP

Well-Known Member
Verified HCP
Messages
194
Location
Merseyside
Type of diabetes
HCP
Treatment type
I do not have diabetes
I notice resistant starch is mentioned as helping blood sugar controll in Marks Daily Apple web site.

It sounds counter intuitive for diabetics to have carbs but he explains that resistant carbs are resistant to digestion in the upper gut and so by persisting to the lower gut manage to feed the billions of bacteria there which somehow improves diabetic controll.
I wonder if any of you have tried the potato starch he mentions and what the results have been ??
 
Potato anything will tend to make my blood sugar rocket.

The only way it won't do that is if I eat it minimally - eg. no more than two or three potato crisps every five minutes or so.

Are you able to explain to me what 'resistant starch' is supposed to be?

Sorry, you've already done that.

But could you explain the paradox I alluded to above? - it's a paradox if potato anything is supposed to help me.

I certainly know that rye bread helps me to safely keep a stable and near-normal level of blood sugar. (Spelt bread does too, but it's a bit pricey.)

I eat around 220g of rye bread per day. And my last three HbA1c readings were 27mmol/mol.

I can tolerate low blood sugar readings now - and so be able to take due action - which previously would have made me crash to the floor.
 
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I'm a T1, and yes I have for many years been aware of resistant starch formed by retrograding when some starches are cooked and then cooled ie : potatoes, legumes. pasta . These things cooled in salads. particularly with some vinegar in a dressing are 'kinder' than the equivalents newly cooked.
There are quite a few discussions on it if you put retrograded or resistant starch in the search engine.
Wiki has a good definition of the different types of RS here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistant_starch
and Montignac explains simply how retrograding ( forming T3 resistant starch works to lower GI).
http://www.montignac.com/en/the-factors-that-modify-glycemic-indexes/
I suppose it is subtly different to the use of resistant starch as a supplement rather than as a property of a meal. There is a huge amount about the various studies and N=1 experiments on the Free the Animal blog
http://freetheanimal.com/tag/resistant-starch I notice he has a separate tag for resistant starch now which is good since you might avoid some of the less pleasant aspects of this blogger.
If you google
Mashed Potatoes
I am trying my luck at retrograding mashed potatoes. I will know how it well I did at lunch time today. (take the result that doesn't direct to this forum!, it's from another forum) There is a thread from some years ago about various home experiments done by people with diabetes. There are a couple more threads on that forum.
 
is that not just the same as a high fibre or low GI diet?
 
I've never tried things with potato starch and didn't know it was supposed to be resistant. If it is, I will try it. Thüringer Potato Dumplings are made of it and they are yummy. I have to say though, I have my doubts about how resistant it is.




There are many different types of carbohydrates. Humans only digest the alpha carbs, the beta carbs, which are cellulose based don't get digested at all. Typically we'd get this from the husks in whole grains and we used to call it roughage. You need to be a cow to digest it.

Alpha carbs too come in many forms and beans, peas and lentils contain a lot of oligosaccharides. These too do not get digested by enzymes but are broken down by bacteria. This is why they typically give you wind. They are carby but we lack the enzymes to break them down into the simpler saccharides. I eat a lot of pulses and they have no effect on my blood sugar levels.

Some carbs can be chemically altered to become resistant. Typically you get these in sugar substitutes. Some other carby foods such as potatoes however, have their starch changed by cooking and cooling. It's a process called retrogradation. The native natural starch is dissolved in water during cooking and if left for a long enough time in a cool temperature afterwards, the dissolved starches form crystaline structures with hydrogen bridges. Retrograded starch is less digestible than the starch in the original potato.

But, I don't know what recipes create this process.

Wiki has a page on resistant starches which appears to bear out what you write.

I've got to give those potato dumplings a go now
 
I'll have a look at the atricles, when I get the time, but from your description above, it just sounds like a variation on high fibre diet.

I already eat quite a lot of beans and pulse and oats, plus lots of veg with it's undigestible celluloses. Apart from ecerxise, the only refined carb I generally eat is in Rye bread, mainly sourdough, so quite low GI again, and I can easily end up with a +2hr reading lower than pre-meal.
 
What is the product that Asda sells?
 
From bits and pieces I've been reading, if you have issues with painful joints, the potato starch can make it worse so plantain flour might be a better option. Potatoes/nightshades can cause inflammation in susceptible people. I still think Mark Sisson's advice to try and get it from food sources is probably a better option, though people seem to love the idea of "magical" solutions and potato starch seems be being pushed as a panacea for everything by some.
 
I think the challenge is to fin something in food that doesn't raise BG, for metabolic healthy a liberal lchf might do. If a couple tsp or tbsp works and lower BG without causing any side effects, why not try it.
 
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