Tea and Biscuits

ardvark said:

Now that has completly messed me up.
Sorry if I'm going on but this is what I have on my plate.
Last Tuesday I had a heart attack and the consultant told me :-
1) the attack caused my blood sugar to go up to an extent that I am type 2 diabetic. That I will need to keep my blood sugar down to between 5 and 7. He gave me a machine and told me to test 4 times a day.
2)The attack was caused by the narrowing of some arteries and some blood clots. He advised I need to cut down on fat especialy the saturated fat.
So the problem I have is I need to keep both the "fat" and "sugar"camps happy to enable for me to keep sucking wind.
Hopefully this will explain why I am asking these silly and daft questions.

Click to expand...

I’d be intrigued to know by which mechanism your consultant thinks you will be able to cut back on fat - thus increasing carbohydrate - whilst also lowering blood glucose.

ardvark said:

Hopefully this will explain why I am asking these silly and daft questions.

Click to expand...

Your questions are neither daft nor silly. I hope that idea won't keep you from posting even more questions, because I'm sure your head is full of them.
Q1, yes, it is a very good idea for anybody to keep their blood sugars down to those levels. I've done that by cutting right down on carbs, and so have many others in here.
Q2 I'm no heart specialist and have no medical training at all, but the jury is out on that one. The heart surgeon, whose video I linked to above, is convinced that most heart attacks are caused by inflammation which again is caused by sugar/carbs. The more you research the better, but I really can't blame you for being utterly confused. It's your life, and what could be more important?

It's not lowering your fat consumption in itself that will raise your blood sugar, but what you eat instead of it. We need a certain amount of food intake, and if you reduce fat you'll have to increase something else. If that's carbs, your blood sugar will go up

Since getting back to low carb eating my cholesterol reduced despite all the information to the contrary - I'd been eating high carb to lower cholesterol, but that didn't work, though the reduction was claimed as a delayed reaction by the nurse.
I'm afraid that although the 'fats lead to heart attacks' mantra is repeated often, the low fat advice has not done much to reduce the problems it is meant to cure, at least, I can't find anything which shows that.
For me, being in the decidedly elderly female camp I was slightly concerned as a higher cholesterol level is associated with longer life span.
It must be really confusing, and worrying too.
I think that one of the reasons Dr Atkins, of low carb fame was so vilified was because he was originally a cardiologist and he did not follow the party line, and he even published his findings in a best selling series of books.

ardvark said:

So a I can still eat the bad fat food

Click to expand...

Better to eat the good fat food..?

You don't have to keep both camps happy aardvark. Just yourself. The key is Eat To Your Meter. Use your meter to see how many carbs you can handle, then make up the balance of your intake with fat and protein. There are many arguments about fat, cholesterol, weight etc. But there is no argument that raised blood sugars are very bad for you and carbs do that raising

Gosh, what a difficult question, do you eat to lower your glucose or do you eat to 'improve' your heart which some would say is the same thing!? All I can say is what I would do and my absolute top priority would be keeping the glucose from rising and the A1c within range, we all KNOW that that is beneficial to us across the board whereas the jury is still out on how 'bad' high fat is. I would eat very moderately fat wise, ie, not by filling myself to bursting with sausages for example, but by continuing to eat cheese but not to excess. to eat eggs, avocado, fish, nuts, olive oil, and more veg too even though it may have a few carbs more, etc. I would probably eat more higher fat stuff than a heart Dr might recommend (question of having to if you go low carb) but I would try and improve my heart health in other ways, exercise for example and who knows, that might even up the balance a bit. The main thing for me to consider would be that pretty much ONLY diet (or insulin!!) can keep your glucose levels healthy but for your heart there are other things you can do to assist your chances. x

ardvark said:

Now that was VERY interesting. Thankyou for that.
I'm just learning about carbs.
Things that were mentioned I'd like to ask some questions about if I may?
Bacon, Sausage,Cheese, Chocolate.
To me these would be bad for me as far as the "fat" camp is concerned.
Being high in fat would'nt be good for the arteries would it?
Wholemeal bread and wheetabix obsorbs bad fat from what I understand.
Therefore what would be better, no wheetabix and bread to keep blood sugar rising or yes to bread and wheetabix to eat bad fat?

Click to expand...

You know, I have bacon at least once a day. Often, twice a day. My cholesterol used to be high, and I was put on statins to get it down. The side effects were horrible, but... On the LCHF diet (and yeah, that's high fat indeed), my cholesterol went down. I could come off the medication! Right now my cholesterol ratio's are excellent, it hasn't been high as long as I've kept the low carb/high fat diet up, and I've lost 25 kilo's. Fats aren't the baddies we've been led to believe they are for decades... It was when my dietician told me to cut back on fats and to up the carbs that my weight exploded and my cholesterol went through the roof, together with my bloodsugars.

Really, low carb, it kills 2 birds with one stone, or more even, as it tackles practically all aspects of Metabolic Syndrome. (High cholesterol, high bloodpressure, diabetes T2, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease...). Bread and weetabix absorbing bad fats? Never heard that one before. I do know they're high in carbs. For me, a regular lunch of two rolls would spike me to 18. I don't know what weetabix would've done as it didn't become available in Dutch supermarkets until after my diagnosis, but... They're carby. All carbs turn to glucose. I keep coming back to the same things, sorry if I'm a broken record. And hey, the chocolate, it's extra dark, (85% and up) so no sugar added. Barely any carbs, yay.

You know, we had a marine come in here who was a nutritionist... He thought I was trying to pull his leg, practically p*****d himself laughing when I came up with bacon. Double checked time and again whether we on this forum were trying to pull a sick joke with his health. The other week he let us know he'd ditched quite a few pounds and his bloodsugar control is excellent. on advice that went against absolutely everything he's been taught, and every bit of advice he'd ever doled out himself. It takes a bit of a leap of faith.

But from good control, good things will follow.

Oh, and bad fats...? Why not just eat good fats? Natural fats, from animals or plants? Bacon, tuna? Eggs, butter, avocado's, olives... Won't do you harm.

Hope this helps. I didn't see this message earlier so you probably had loads of reactions already, but... Bottom line: Keep your bloodsugars in check if you can, all else will fall in line. Someone once likened it to tiny little bits of glass sandpapering your insides. Including heart, kidneys, eyes, veins... Having carried more T2's to the grave than I care to admit, that really hit home.

Hope this helps. But really... Pick up Dr. Jason Fung's The Diabetes Code. He explains it all better than any of us could, and he's a doctor with a waitinglist years long, he's that good. Maybe you'll take his word for it.

ardvark said:

How do I keep both camps happy? Is it just me or does everyone have the same problem?

Click to expand...

Don't get torn between two camps. Do the research, and check with your meter whether something applies to you. And don't just google, because any idiot can put anything online and call it the gospel truth. I can recommend Dr. Jason Fung's books, and I rather got a lot out of The End Of Diabetes, (The Eat To Live Plan) by Joel Fuhrman, but when it comes down to it... Fung's better. Less restrictive. (Joel is a "if you don't do it my way you'll die" type of doc, which kinda rubs me the wrong way. Fung's more flexible, knows every patient is different and requires a different approach.). And he's a less dry read.

Just read stuff, especially from people who explain WHY you should try something, rather than just telling you to do it. Then try stuff out, test, see what works.

But again... Don't get torn in half. You can't serve two masters, because if you do both at the same time you'll get malnourished. And your heart won't thank you for that, as that impacts muscles. And your heart is one. Pick one, after careful research, and go with it.