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Vitamin C and type 2

Mr_Pot said:
Ratatouille or its regional variations is a good way to consume low carb veg/fruit. Peppers, aubergine, courgette, tomatoes, mushrooms in lots of olive oil. What could be better unless you are a carnivore?
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I wouldn't say no to any of that!
 
I have rather high ferritin levels, and Vit C when eaten at the same time as foods yielding ferritin (in my case meat), will increase the amount of iron absorbed => higher ferritin.

So while i do supplement with Vit C, i do so in smallish amounts, using natural source Vit C, and take the tablets at different times from meat meals.

People wanting to increase iron intake (as @Oldvatr describes above) can benefit from eating/supplementing vit C with high iron meals, because the C enhances iron uptake.

One other thing - Vit C is destroyed by oxidation, heat, and leaching out into (hot) water.
Bearing that in mind, freshly, recently chopped red peppers, eaten raw will yield far more vitamin C than peppers which have been chopped and simmered into ratatouille. Sad to say.
 
@Brunneria, I have two lab result levels about which I'm concerned: ferritin and homocysteine. I've read that donating blood will address the ferritin. Need to do that. I keep forgetting. Later this week I'll learn if resuming taking a B-Complex for the last month has begun to bring the homocysteine level down. Am waiting for the lab result now.
 
carty said:
What effect does vit c have on meters?
Carol
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Carol, I'm not sure how long it took before it began happening, which added to my confusion, but I'd test and get an error code, and have to test again 1 to 2 times before getting a reading. After that, I stopped taking 1,000 mg twice a day but continued taking 120 mg vitamin C made from whole foods twice a day and had no further problems.

So far, taking 500 mg vitamin C twice a day has not caused any problems with my glucose meter. Will report here if that changes.
 
Listlad said:
I had gall stone issues after embarking on the Atkins diet. Had my gall bladder removed as a consequence. And one of the chief reasons fueling a degree of hesitancy on my part.
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Or did the Atkins diet highlight the problem that already existed?

Switching from low fat diets which cause sludge to accumulate and turn to stones theough lack of use of the gallbladder (no fats eaten =no bile demanded) to a higher fat diet where the gallbladder is put to work and the already existing stones are squeezed isn’t unusual. It’s why high fat diets are avoided when stones ALREADY exist. It doesn’t actually cause them. It actually helps avoid them by flushing out the bile regularly.
 
Winnie53 said:
Thanks Oldvatr. That second study was both interesting and encouraging.
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Just thinking sideways, like I do, I note that the intravenous trials are a way of increasing NO2 in the blood. An easy way to do this is to use the med prescribed to angina sufferers, called GNT Glyceryl trinitrate (GTN) which is a sublingual spray that dilates the blood vessels a couple of puffs and it works quickly. It works by increasing the NO2 levels too
 
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If they did pre-exist and I have no reason to disbelieve your thinking, then I had no idea they were already there, of course. In fact the first time I knew of them was when the surgeon presented them to me in a little jar. The whole diagnose was fraught with misdiagnosis to a point that it was difficult for me to believe anything I was told even up to the point of surgery. At the point of surgery it was not straight forward as they couldn’t find the bloomin thing with keyhole surgery and had to open me right up to locate it. .

(I took the gallstones into work and showed colleagues what all the trouble was about and one or two jumped out of their skin.)

The stones never showed up in any tests including ultrasound.

I seem to recall there are two types of stones. Mine were cholesterol in type. More softer / pliable and more likely to block the bile outlets, so said the surgeon. As they were formed from cholesterol the implication was that too much was being produced by me, around that time. Rapid weight loss is given as a reason for this happening.

Footnote : It wasn’t an Atkins diet. My error. It was the Hay Diet. A bit different.

https://www.diet.com/g/hay-diet
 
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By the way, I believe it was Vitamin C Day, just a few days ago. April 4th.
 
Ah, thanks Listlad. It was Vitamin C Day. Here's the link... https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/vitamin-c-day/

I looked at the information on the Hay Diet that you linked to. It was really interesting that the Dr. Hay reported having heart and kidney issues in addition to obesity - (which screams diabetes to me) - and that he cured himself of those conditions with his diet in the early 1900's.

Chronic Kidney Disease, one of the complications of diabetes that I do not have thankfully, is an area of interest to me. For those who have diabetes, the low carb or low carb ketogenic diet is one of the better choices for preventing the hyperinsulinemia, hyperglycemia, and hypertension that leads to CKD, yet for stage 3, 4, and 5 CKD, it gets a lot more complicated. In general, CKD is not reversible but its progression can be stopped or slowed, and by using very specific dietary strategies, kidney function can be improved to a point. I hope to write more about this in the future, but need more information and the time to make sense of it.

I continue to experiment with different fasting and dietary strategies. Will add thinking about the varying levels of acidity in foods and how or how not to combine them. Since going from three meals to two meals a day, I've tried adding a snack of raw vegetables and raw nuts between lunch and dinner with good results. And continue to eat a fat rich lunch and dinner.
 

This was the essence of his diet that I followed at the time:

“Hay maintained that the solution was to eat proteins at one meal and carbohydrates at another. He classified fruits with acids. Hay labeled vegetables in the neutral category that could be consumed with either group. “

It seemed to work well. Though I was also on the rowing machine for an hour a day for two weeks in a month. At that time, as far as I know, my blood glucose levels were good.
 
The majority of stones are cholesterol ones. The other type is pigment, made from bilirubin. Many people have stones for years or even for life with no problems. Just having stones non symptomatically is not a reason for removing the organ usually. I’m assuming that although you say you knew nothing of them prior to seeing them you had in fact been having problems to have had the surgery scheduled. It took 4 yrs of misdiagnosis, an awful lot of very severe pain, as well as some more mild events and an insistence from me to check it out, before mine were found. They refused to even let me see mine let alone take them home!

Rapid weight loss is indeed blamed as a cause. (Certainly wasn’t in my case as hadn’t lost any in a very long time before the problems started) How is that weight loss typically achieved though? Low fat eating as guided by the medical profession. It’s easy for the assumption to be made that what aggravates the problem (fat) is also the cause and in this case it doesn’t appear so. I’m sure it’s not quite that simple and it takes years to form a decent number or size stone but I certainly don’t think lchf way of eating is to blame. And your hay diet wasn’t in fact either lc or hf from your summary.
 
I achieved the weight loss at that time with the Hay Diet and the rowing machine. It worked very well. Though I don’t know which had the biggest impact of course.

Oh yes, I had been having problems alright. But a lot of expertise was involved but nobody knew what it was. Diagnosis was only correctly made at an 11th hour when I was hospitalised with pancreatitis. Prior to that I had all sorts of tests done, by the NHS and privately.

@HSSSS You obviously have a wealth of knowledge on these matters. Any idea why the stones will have been cholesterolly derived in the first instance? Too much cholesterol in the diet?
 
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