Upcoming LCHF Research Study: "It could be game changing".

FAKE NEWS RIDES AGAIN. Here's what it said when I clicked on the link......

"This summer, 25 overweight and obese adults participating in a tightly controlled feeding study will take up full-time residence for 3 months at a wooded lakefront center in Ashland, Massachusetts. However, BEFORE CHECKING IN at Framingham State University’s Warren Conference Center and Inn, they will have to lose 15% of their body weight on a calorie-restricted diet with home-delivered meals. Those who pass this hurdle will be invited to the inn, where they’ll be randomly assigned to 1 of 3 equal-calorie diets: a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet that’s either high or low in added sugar or a very low-carbohydrate, high-fat ketogenic diet that causes the body to switch from burning carbohydrates to burning fat."
First of all this is JAMA, not the NEJM. Second off to get into this card game you had to lose 15% of your body weight by eating a diet of calorie restricted meals that are delivered to you. If you didn't and stayed in the group you did notget to go on in the study. If you did you got to go to Camp and will be assigned to one 3 "equal calorie" diets. Doesn't say anything about eating fat foods until you're full. "Equal Calories" it says. Which makes sense. You're not gonna lose weight eating chicken wings and fatty stuff until you puke compared to eating high carbs in lower amounts.

Biggles2 said:

I would say that controlling for equal calories is important if you want to disprove the hypothesis that obesity/T2DM are energy balance disorders (calories in/calories out).

Click to expand...

Do you think there will ever be a simple categorisation of 'the' cause of T2, or that we'll ever be able to rule out a cause?

I'm thinking that lung cancer, for example, could be the result of many things. A smoke problem, a radiation problem, a genetic problem, or bad luck in some as-yet unknown way. There's no point in trying to make it fit one cause.

I'd expect T2 similarly to be the result of more than one thing. I'd be stunned if for some people the first-order cause wasn't energy balance. By first-order I mean that for some individuals, if that one thing alone was tackled, they may avoid T2 altogether.

Running out of petrol in a car is a fuel tank size problem, an engine efficiency problem, a speed problem, a wind resistance problem etc. I don't know why I said that, it's a silly analogy and I'm sure you get my point anyway!

AdamJames said:

Do you think there will ever be a simple categorisation of 'the' cause of T2, or that we'll ever be able to rule out a cause?

I'm thinking that lung cancer, for example, could be the result of many things. A smoke problem, a radiation problem, a genetic problem, or bad luck in some as-yet unknown way. There's no point in trying to make it fit one cause.

I'd expect T2 similarly to be the result of more than one thing. I'd be stunned if for some people the first-order cause wasn't energy balance. By first-order I mean that for some individuals, if that one thing alone was tackled, they may avoid T2 altogether.

Running out of petrol in a car is a fuel tank size problem, an engine efficiency problem, a speed problem, a wind resistance problem etc. I don't know why I said that, it's a silly analogy and I'm sure you get my point anyway!

Click to expand...

I don’t think there will ever be “the cause” for type 2. I say that because I have PCOS. And with that most women have insulin resistance. There are other causes of type 2 in women.
For men there would be other causes again.

I know diet is often talked about as a cause but I think in addition to that we need to start investigating environmental pollutants that affect our bodies.
This is a complex disease and as it is often said here that everyone is different in how they treat their diabetes so are the causes.

I’m really curious about the condition of loosing 15% body weight using calorie restriction, BEFORE being allowed in the study. Wouldn’t this lower their metabolic rate?. Is this condition just to verify their commitment to losing weight? Is it to weed out those who have to cut carbs to lose weight, so they are only dealing with those who can lose weight with calorie restriction?It will be interesting to see the researchers rationale once published.

I’m thrilled that there is someone willing to fund this study. Can’t wait to see the results. Yes, I think LCHF will knock high carb out of the ball park, but then I too am biased.

So the study will have 25 members, assigned to 3 different diets ie 8,8,9 on each diet? Seems like way too small a sample to be significant to me....

Thanks for posting here about the study. Very glad that philanthropists are assisting this important work. I note that the president's doctor is advising a low fat diet following his medical so am glad that we are moving from anecdotal stories about the ketogenic diet and more into garnering evidence to discover more truth.
The reason that folks are being asked to lose weight prior to the study is that its purpose is to understand the best way to maintain weight loss; we all know its possible to lose mass in the short term but that most people cannot keep that weight off.
Most feeding studies also rely on ensuring compliance though feeding diaries which are notoriously inaccurate so I am glad that these people will be in a more controlled environment.
I also note that there is to be an eat what you like of whatever diet you are assigned to measure impact on appetite hormones etc. thus it may turn out that you can eat chicken wings (though not in bbq sauce) ' until you puke' and still lose weight. That may be because if allowed to eat fat most people probably won't eat chicken wings til they puke unless the wings are slathered in msg and sticky sweet sauces!
This is a treatment intervention type study so they are not looking at the root cause of why people get metabolic syndrome which as others hve pointed out is not clear other than it associates with sugar /fructose consumption.

EllieM said:

So the study will have 25 members, assigned to 3 different diets ie 8,8,9 on each diet? Seems like way too small a sample to be significant to me....

Click to expand...

Very small sample size. And a tightly controlled diet for everyone no matter what group they draw. It said somewhere in there depending on the results a much larger study would be needed to verify any results of this. These people don't have diabetes either.

I think you will find its more a proof of concept rather than a definitive study. Can significant weight loss be maintained or improved with a low carb diet compared to other diet types. Similarly to how the Newcastle Diet was first tried out. If it doesn't work for the small group then there is little point trying on thousands of guinea pigs. @TheBigNewt as a medical man I would have thought you would have approved.

I believe ‏virtahealth ‏is about to publish a paper showing very impressive results from "very low carb" combined with a high level of support from a health coach. (They are getting "paid by results" from some large USA employers based on the savings made on drugs for Type2 along with good A1C results. VC funding is coming from the person who started PayPall.)

If they can scale up and repeat their results, then soon or later a lot of the large USA health insurance providers will consider them to be the "cheap" option......

bulkbiker said:

I think you will find its more a proof of concept rather than a definitive study. Can significant weight loss be maintained or improved with a low carb diet compared to other diet types. Similarly to how the Newcastle Diet was first tried out. If it doesn't work for the small group then there is little point trying on thousands of guinea pigs. @TheBigNewt as a medical man I would have thought you would have approved.

Click to expand...

The problem with small, very tightly controlled studies like this (all meals mailed to them at first, then they have to lose 15% of body weight before admitted to diet trial, then all meals are at a lodge, prepared, identical calories, etc) is that it's not possible to reproduce those controlled conditions in large populations of the general public. People who know they're in a study, for instance statin vs diet, behave somewhat differently than the average person. They know they're being studied so they sober up!

Kailee56 said:

I’m really curious about the condition of loosing 15% body weight using calorie restriction, BEFORE being allowed in the study. Wouldn’t this lower their metabolic rate?. Is this condition just to verify their commitment to losing weight? Is it to weed out those who have to cut carbs to lose weight, so they are only dealing with those who can lose weight with calorie restriction?It will be interesting to see the researchers rationale once published.

Click to expand...

Well given that losing 15% of body weight is the stated aim of the Newcastle diet in order to clear pancreatic fat, I find it hard to see them as unrelated

TheBigNewt said:

The problem with small, very tightly controlled studies like this

Click to expand...

That way I so love the results that Dr. David Unwin have published, as it is a normal GP setting, and he has no choice over who he sees, likewise, most people don't choose their GP.