T2 or NAFLD? ...or, a funny thing happened on the way to the surgery

Chris24Main

Moderator
Staff Member
Moderator
Messages
833
Type of diabetes
I reversed my Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
Dr Garrett Smith - another interesting perspective...

Very short version is that vitamin A is chemically similar to ethanol in the way it is removed from the body - therefore it's a toxin. Also, running around like headless chickens as we do to remove toxins from our diet (guilty....) leaves us deficient in electrolytes and minerals (guilty....) and we think that we are replacing with "natural" salts, like pink Himalayan salt which is actually full of toxins (guilty...) when we are probably not getting enough potassium (guilty...) - in fact this really rung true for me, and I feel like I'm getting a low-level headache too often to ignore, so I need to be open to the idea that I've taken a wrong path somewhere ...

The high-dose salt drink that I take daily may be the source of this - my cramping has definitely improved, but I just can't argue against the likelyhood that my sodium/ potassium ratio is out of whack now...

Thanks for the recommendation.
I try to stay up to date with lots of sources - including some that I really don't agree with, but this one was new for me, and a bit of an eye-opener.
 

Chris24Main

Moderator
Staff Member
Moderator
Messages
833
Type of diabetes
I reversed my Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
Potassium and Magnesium supplements duly ordered. One pill (with added VitC- nice to have an option that doesn't come with sugar) and one in a cream...
 

MrsA2

Expert
Messages
6,557
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
Potassium and Magnesium supplements duly ordered. One pill (with added VitC- nice to have an option that doesn't come with sugar) and one in a cream...
I was taking magnesium citrate fro cramps initially. Then realised it was 5 years ago and I've been on it all the time. Stopped it now to see if cramps return (haven't so far) but constipation has increased. As usual too many variables to be sure .

Garrett Smith says we often take too many supplements for too long.
Glad you found him interesting, he's new to me too
 

Outlier

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,001
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
Oops for the Himalayan salt! I have been blithely using this thinking it was healthy. What would be a healthier substitute?
 

Chris24Main

Moderator
Staff Member
Moderator
Messages
833
Type of diabetes
I reversed my Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
Yeah - that was an interesting one, and I still don't know how I feel about it, though I can't deny the feeling of "yeah, why did I just assume that a pinkish colour would be good..."

There was a recommendation for a very highly distilled salt. Can't remember the brand.
As it happens, the coastal area of Scotland that I originate from was heavily involved in the production of Sea Salt - no more now though..,

I'm conflicted - on the one hand, yes, non-pure means that there will be stuff, and how do you know it isn't really dye, or that it's ever seen the subcontinent, let alone Himalayas...

On the other, actually, very pure stuff just doesn't exist in nature, and tends to "suck in" impurities, because nature abhors a vacuum. For example, very highly distilled, de-ionised water is highly toxic, as it will strip the salts from your skin (this is irrelevant to most, because such water is only used in industrial processing, like making semiconductors). But, my instinct would have been to say that very pure sodium chloride is not the same as salt which has had a chance to "balance out" with as much impurity as you would find in the body.

Even writing that though, I'm confused about what that would lead you to do... so the short version is, I don't know.

Table salt has iodine in it, so that's good, but I heard someone say last night that it contains ferrocyanide, which sounds awful... except that potassium ferrocyanide is just potash, which has been used in salt production for centuries.
 

Outlier

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,001
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
I'll investigate Malvern salt, which a nutrition-geek (see: I'm not the only one) friend of mine always uses, though logic indicates salt from the sea isn't going to be any healthier, given what else lives and dies in there. Maybe I just give this one a shrug and go with - er - the flow.
 

Chris24Main

Moderator
Staff Member
Moderator
Messages
833
Type of diabetes
I reversed my Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
Malden Salt crystals are certainly very pretty, and I can see why a restaurant for example would want to put them out, they are actually quite beautiful, but the crystallisation itself is .... I think... (Really a bit of a stretch here) more linked to the specific impurities found in solution before drying - it has zero to do with the suitability for good health - though it will have a particular taste.

For context:
1736868938228.png


And that isn't nothing - when I'm making a (what I laughingly refer to as a) tonic ... the mix of salt, impurities, and raw apple cider vinegar and fizzy tap water, all combines to an experience akin to inhaling a large packet of salt 'n vinegar Walkers crisps - in a totally not-entirely-unpleasant way..

I swap out the Himalayan salt, and it's really very sharp and sterile - more like medicine (which has it's own mental associations) but with quite an unpleasant aftertaste that I have to wash down - so there has to be some part of this that's about making it at least pleasant to go through..

I suppose I try to keep filtering through these four pillars - if I'm thinking about a thing related to food, it should be supporting my -
1. Nutrition
2. Energy levels (metabolism)
3. General wellbeing
4. Social connections

If it isn't doing at least one of these things, I should at least be honest that it probably isn't something I want to keep doing.
Nicely flavoured salt hits 1 and 3 - so there's that...
I have to admit that downing a glass of diluted salty vinegar does nothing for 4 though...
 

MrsA2

Expert
Messages
6,557
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
Oops for the Himalayan salt! I have been blithely using this thinking it was healthy. What would be a healthier substitute?
I use Maldon sea salt. As local and clean as possible. Dont use much so surely it can't be that harmful.
I have bigger low hanging fruit to get out of the way first...
 

MrsA2

Expert
Messages
6,557
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
The Pink Himalayan salt has been a victim of popularity and charlatans. Soem ordinary salt is dyed to look like. The actual reserves of the real stuff are tiny, like "manuka" honey. More is for sale then the bees can produce!
 

Bcgirl

Well-Known Member
Messages
393
Type of diabetes
Type 3c
Treatment type
Diet only
This nerdy geologist just had to find out how these crystals grow….this is a very interesting video on salt crystallization and how the Maldon salt gets its unique Hopper crystals. In the end though, it’s still NaCl, just crispier
 
  • Informative
Reactions: Melgar

Outlier

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,001
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
Apologies for typo when I meant Maldon! And thanks for input. I agree that there are bigger things to be concerned about. The analogy with Manuka honey is most apt. Incidentally perfectly ordinary honey has fabulous healing properties as long as it's from a beekeeper you can trust not to have adulterated it with sugar or anything else. My mother used it for healing, and her mother too. I have sorted some spectacular wounds just using honey. And I had to hand-rear a litter of puppies years ago whose nutrition included honey and wax straight from the hive, gifted me by someone who only had a couple of hives. They all survived and grew into splendid hounds. Way off subject but thought it might be of interest.
 
  • Like
Reactions: AloeSvea

Chris24Main

Moderator
Staff Member
Moderator
Messages
833
Type of diabetes
I reversed my Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
That is interesting !! - I can take (proper) honey off my evil list. Even when I was eating honey three times a day, I was aware that most store honey was laden with fructose syrup - I guess I was just kidding myself that the stuff I was eating was fine.

Also the crystallization - which I think is pretty similar to when we talk about it "being too cold to snow" - it's all about the crystals having enough time to form..

But this is a bizarre turn we've taken...
I'm sitting in Ben Bikman's latest metabolic classroom, (virtually, of course) - he's talking about the pros and cons of the GLP-1 agonist class of meds and their effect on metabolism - I'm sure I'll have something to say about it....
 

Chris24Main

Moderator
Staff Member
Moderator
Messages
833
Type of diabetes
I reversed my Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
Just a quick one on something totally different.

Feedback on the Magnesium cream.
Now, I bought some Potassium supplements at the same time, and started taking them both, and Potassium is definitely linked to "proper muscle function" - but together has been quite noticeable in terms of ongoing muscle cramping at night.

I had thought that this was a predominantly male thing, but from memory, more women have said that they have issues with muscle cramping at night - in the legs - I realise that cramping for women often means menstrual issues.

So - for me, lack of exercise, alcohol and coming through my forties (some time ago now) meant increasingly - cramping in my toes, then feet (still toes really) and then calves. The worst episode, I shot out of bed with my leg on fire, and right foot rigidly pointed out - and even the weight of my body wasn't enough to straighten it out. That was scary, and my thought was - what if this keeps getting worse, how do I cope when I'm 75?

Anyway - I'm in much better shape now, and rarely even need to wear socks to bed, but it's still there if I've had a particularly sedentary day (this being one of the big pluses of just doing a walk during the evening).

Cutting to the chase, the first time I put on this cream (on top of foot, sole, ankles and calf) - I felt a definite tingling.. totally different to the sensation of "about to cramp" - but not like the sensation of pins and needles either. Difficult to describe, but definitely something. And then slightly warm..

and so far nothing even resembling cramp at all.
Too early to say for sure, and may just be the potassium, but together, the potassium and magnesium seem to be really positive (also no headache, which is also a good sign).
 

Chris24Main

Moderator
Staff Member
Moderator
Messages
833
Type of diabetes
I reversed my Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
Another aside - still working through Ben Bikmans latest class, but finding too many distractions.

Bullet Proof Coffee. I'm also reading (really listening to) Dave Asprey's book on fasting. Pretty fascinating story - he's much more of a bio-hacker, so there is much information and only so much overlap, but my philosophy is to try to absorb as much as I can and then filter out the things that come up over and over, and try to test them out if I can.

Anyway - he founded the company named "bullet-proof" - but the concept of the coffee can be created easily enough by yourself. It's really just an amount of unsalted butter and MCT oil - so in my case butter and coconut oil and some clotted cream, because why not. As much as he has a brand, and is definitely selling against that, he's fairly clear that you don't need to "buy" so much as "buy in" - and I kind of like his enthusiasm.

Anyway - one of the things he goes on about is that there really isn't any virtue in making a fast difficult. There are plenty of benefits (I've raved about fasting and totally believe it's one of the most effective levers we can pull against insulin resistance, but at the same time acknowledging that it isn't for everyone, and that getting into the kind of 36 hour fasting that I was using to combat NAFLD is not trivial) but there are also a lot of barriers - the most obvious one being the initial barrier of hunger before you get used to it. There is no point pretending that this doesn't happen.

But - your body kicks in to digestion when there is food to digest - and that means protein and carbs - if you just have some fat, that doesn't trigger the end of fasting... so, that's really where bullet-proof coffee comes in.

It makes for a totally satisfying way to have something in the morning without breaking your fast - I thought it just sounded too good to be true - if you want that autophagy, you have to suffer for it... but no, at least in my testing, a coffee in the morning leaves you so full, that it's just simple to leave lunch till 2pm or so.. and then all you need is a small dinner, and if you do that by 7 or so, you just repeat, and suddenly you've fasted for 19 hours, without even trying or ever really noticing. BUT - you get into that magical space where most of your glycogen stores are depleted, and you are in full fat burning, Ketone production and autophagy.

The other thing he really stresses, is that there is no such thing as a perfect routine - all routines are no good, in fact, because we are evolved to do any given routine with the least amount of energy expended. So, the better thing to do is to be as random as possible.

This means, particularly with bullet-proof coffee in your arsenal, you can mix it up easily, never needing to "not do a thing because you're fasting" - and never settling into a pattern.. but also never needing to be hungry at all.
 
  • Like
Reactions: minervaT2

Bcgirl

Well-Known Member
Messages
393
Type of diabetes
Type 3c
Treatment type
Diet only
Chris24Main….i continue to love reading your insights! Carry on!

Have my buttery yummy coffee every morning, and yes….it does suppress appetite without disturbing the pancreas. BUT…adding collagen (which I almost always do) does add some nutrition in the form of proteins and therefore will break a fast. Maybe I should add my collagen at some other point during the day to see the benefits of fasting….need some autophagy on this old lady skin!

Magnesium. It’s something I’ve taken for years, a very beneficial supplement! I am currently overwhelmed with the types of magnesium. Right now I take two different varieties. magnesium citrate (just because it’s cheap and available everywhere) is the one that would help with constipation and kidney stones, but it is actually not all that well absorbed. Magnesium bisglycinate (same as magnesium glycinate) is a good one to relax muscles and help with sleep. I take one at night. It’s well absorbed. It’s on sale now at Costco and I should stock up….


Potassium , I have my levels tested every year and I’m good. I get very small amounts in my electrolytes and the rest from diet.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Melgar

Chris24Main

Moderator
Staff Member
Moderator
Messages
833
Type of diabetes
I reversed my Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
Of course, Collagen Peptides - Peptides are to proteins what starches are to sugars... so adding Collagen to my bullet-proof coffee should trigger some amount of digestion... though maybe since peptides are kind of "partially broken-down proteins" they don't trigger digestion much.

I think I'm going to carry on with it though, the collagen powder clumps together, and I'm sure that taking it with the blending of the coffee is the most palatable way of doing it, and so far, Ketones are fine (10 this morning - which is about double the "stable, measurable" level which would be around 1mmol/L in the blood, though of course these are different ketone bodies).

The magnesium cream continues to really make a difference in my sleep quality though...
 
  • Like
Reactions: Melgar

Chris24Main

Moderator
Staff Member
Moderator
Messages
833
Type of diabetes
I reversed my Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
I wanted to take a minute to travel between fear and forgiveness...

Some background, because I do really think this is all pertinent.
My mother was an angry woman. I was 12 when she took me and my brother aside and told us that they were getting a divorce. It completed about eighteen years later, and by that time I had compartmentalised both my parents - dealing with them as if they were totally disconnected people, and I had to advise my father that he should simply pay everything that was being asked, because my mother really just wanted the fight.

I then spent some more years trying to persuade her to forgive him, then after he died, realising that the focus of her anger just shifted to other family members. I had a vague sense of her anger coming from fear of looking inward, but I had no tools to figure it out. Later, for the crime of having my own child and therefore having someone in my life more important than her, I found that I had become the target.

Much later on, it often became almost a code, a safe phrase, if I was having an argument with my wife, and she said "that's not you talking, that's your mother" - I learned to take a step back and really question whether I was being fair.

My mother would make accusations that were difficult to deal with - she once directly accused me of causing her cancer - but it wasn't about anything anyone had done, it was a way of making sense of how she felt.

I came to believe that she was suffering from borderline personality disorder, but all of that is a sideline - she was angry all the time at someone, you just tried to make sure it wasn't you.. that was all I knew, growing up, but I always felt as I grew into an adult that this was a weight she would carry around until it got too big for her.

When I became a parent myself, I had to choose the emotional safety of my wife and child, and they never met. My mother died when my daughter was about 10.

To some extent, I felt that my role as older brother was to keep my younger brother out of the firing line. The saddest thing was that he was the only person who went to her funeral - she had driven everyone else away, and this in a relatively small community in Scotland, there were hundreds of people who knew her. Not one person. She had specified in her will that I wasn't welcome.

Anyway - all of that is still just an aside. I've made my peace with it years ago. The important thing as far as we are all concerned, is that she had T2DM listed as a secondary cause of death on her death certificate. In first place was Malignant Cushings disease.

Malignant Cushings disease is basically what happens to you if you are angry all the time, and the weight gets too much for you to carry. Your stress hormones are turned on fully.. all the time... it's essentially like mainlining sugar.

A chunk of my adult life has been focused on not going the same way - I used to recognise the same kind of learned responses (thus the, "it's your mother talking" comment) - and learning to be kind - to myself and to others, and to not react to criticism by trying to destroy someone.

I recently told my daughter - "you know, your mother is such a good person, she gave me the strength to start to forgive myself for being me"

Dealing with that - day by day turning around the grip of anxiety and self-dislike (loathing sometimes) takes effort and it's a thing you can slip up on, or easily find you have gone backwards on.. but every now and again, you can look back and see that you have come a long way.

I see this whole eating game the same way..
 

Melgar

Moderator
Staff Member
Moderator
Messages
1,334
Type of diabetes
Other
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
It is my understanding @Chris24Main that BPD can, but not always, walks alongside unhealthy levels of narcissism, if not full blown NPD. Years ago now I had the very unfortunate and a personally devastating relationship with a sociopath/malignant narcissist. These people rip the very soul out of you, along with every ounce of self esteem you possess. I could go on on about what they can do to you. I cannot imagine what your life must have been like as a child growing up with your mother, the person who you turn to for love and protection. I was at least an adult with a strong sense of self having had a happy childhood.
I agree with your thoughts on anger. Their raging anger that they project on to others. I found what you said about Cushings disease very interesting, chronic inflammation from a body so out of balance, no doubt causing many chronic diseases including T2.
ed grammar
 
  • Like
  • Friendly
Reactions: Antje77 and zand