It's a daily, sometimes hourly companion. It never goes away, and it can be a constant, relentless pest, nagging at you. Your mind, your body. Constant. Could be like the Terminator. It absolutely will not stop until you are dead. And you are Sarah Connah, constantly monitoring your blood sugars (before you eat, after you eat, before bed, when you wake up, before you drive or even before leaving the house for any length of time, etc etc) to ensure you are in the sweet spot. Staying in the sweet spot allows you to avoid the Terminator. Bloody Arnie. Here's a fabulous (and short) video: If you've got time for a read and you're curious, or simply want to learn what's it's like to live with Type 1 diabetes. Written by a forum member called Snapsy they put the nail on the head:
Diabetes.co.uk: explaining what it's really like to live with Type 1
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Many on the Diabetes.co.uk forums said I should ask for my records to see what my numbers and diabetic history shows
When I joined the forums I said I went from a Type 2 to a Type 1. Most said this couldn't be true, as diabetes doesn't work like that. So, I went to the hospital doc (I see a new doc now) and asked her to explain why they said I'd become a Type 1. Turns out that at the beginning my local doc said I had become a T2. I was put on metformin and gliclazide. Within a year these were no longer cutting it and I went onto supplementing the tablets with Humalog injections. It wasn't long after that I went off the tablets and went fully insulin dependent, adding basal Lantus. I was then seeing a hospital specialist doctor. And through regular visits, he had made many notes. About 2 years ago I had a special test done. This tests the c-peptide protein amount and amount of anti-bodies. The results show I had almost 0 c-pep and a huge amount of anti-bodies. My new docs said by looking through the notes the old doc had his suspicions that I was always a T1 and never a T2. This new test finally proved that I was indeed a Type 1 from the very beginning. And thus my questions have been answered and I can confidently say I'm a Type 1 Diabetic. Which sucks, as I'll never be able to reverse it with a ketogenic diet. Though at least this will allow me to control my BS much much better.re to edit. It's funny. I watch Youtube videos of presentations and interviews of the people who talk about low carbs (try finding one on high carb diets - I found one by some bloke with awful teeth, and he was like "just try a really high carb diet and see what happens". Yeah, my blood sugar will go through the roof and I'll be chugging the insulin to cope).
And as usual you find people commenting and saying how bad low carbs, are and that we should "eat less and move more" (love this poor snippet of advice). Well, I gave someone like this my experiences. Here is the post: "You need to open your mind and try looking at all sources of data. Not just ones that support your own biases. You honestly need to try reading some decent books. Like: The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living: An Expert Guide to Making the Life-Saving Benefits of Carbohydrate Restriction Sustainable and Enjoyable by Jeff S. Volek PhD RD, Stephen D. Phinney MD PhD The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss by Dr Jason Fung I did science/research on myself about 15 years ago. I was speaking to someone who lost a lot of body fat and I was curious to know how. He said he did the Atkins diet. Which basically is a no carbohydrate diet. < Back in the early 70s Atkins was one of the leading minds in nutritional science, and he wanted to help people have a better diet than what was being touted by the likes of Keys. Part of the problem is that Keys had mates like Senator George McGovern, who was on Keys' side (lowering fat consumption lowers heart disease). Yet Atkins work (though he wasn't the first to say low carb dieting is healthier) is still going strong today. No one remembers Keys or McGovern but alas their influence is seen today in the hundreds of millions of diabetics and obese people around the World. > Anyway, I thought I'd try the Atkins way of eating. I refused any carb (outside of green veg). No sweets, potato, pasta, rice, bread, flours or grains of any kind. A very strict low carb diet if you will. I lost 2 stone (28lb/12.7kg) of fat in 3 months. And I didn't run or go to the gym or anything different. The ONLY change to my daily routine was cutting the carbs. That's incredible! I wasn't hungry either, and felt great. Don't get me wrong, it was a challenge to start with, but it got pretty normal over time. But the call of sweets and pizza and coke and all the other shite (yet damn tasty) foods drew me back in and I put the weight back on. See what happened? I cut carbs and the fat burnt right off. I started eating carbs again (dough from pizza bases, potatoes, spaghetti and the like) and the fat built back on again. I wasn't eating more, just differently. Last year I did what many say is the correct way to burn fat. I cut the calories. "Eat less, move more" and all that. Got a Fitbit and used the app as a food journal, and reduced my calorie intake by over 800 calories! In 6 months I lost 1 and a half stone, because yes reducing the calories is a way of losing weight. But it's not a very good way of weight-loss. I was constantly hungry. Honestly, my thoughts were always about what I can eat. And of course that failed. I was so hungry and tired all the time. I guess you'll say something "like my experiences don't count". Well, they do to me. What's the point of all these minds finding out how the body works if it isn't for the benefit of people like us. In summary: * Cutting carbs burns body fat (so long as you remain in Ketosis) * Eating excess carbs will make you fat (and in my case made me become a diabetic) I'm not biased to Taubes or any of these people. I only agree with him because I have personal experience in the results." Dawn Phenomenon
Recently on my Keto Diet journey I've started waking with really high blood sugar. And yet I've not had carbs to cause this raise. I've since learned of a thing called the Dawn Phenomenon. This is where when your body is waking up after a nights sleep, your Liver releases glucose to give you that boost of energy to get cracking. As a diabetic I don't have the insulin to deal with the amount of glucose the Liver dishes out. It's like it doesn't care, as it's not its job to regulate glucose amount only supply it. I never noticed this before as I would always have breakfast and take a dose of insulin to counter the carbs. I didn't realise that I was also producing a load of extra glucose which was spiking my blood sugar higher than I'd have expected. Catch 22 But if I'm not consuming carbs, and yet my blood sugar rises, so I have to still counter with Insulin (though not as much as I used to), but insulin is counter fat burning. What to do? How to keep my blood sugar down when I wake. Well, I was on the diabetic.co.uk forum and had some great advice. Eat something which would act as a Liver Blocker. @ickihun says "I originally used nuts or cheese as a liver block when I followed lchf diet. I now use a small amount of carb which can absorb any floating insulin I have at the end of the day." So last night I had 6 hazelnuts around 10:00 and was in bed by 10:30. This morning I woke with blood sugars at 5 mmol/l. Smack bang perfect :) My ketosis was lower than I'd have liked, but it wasn't bad. Perhaps the nuts had a few extra carbs than I'd have liked. Experimentation is needed. So, if anyone is struggling with BS spikes in the morning, give this a try. First thing: I love the NHS. It's a great establishment, and the people working the front lines are legends.
Thing is the information from up high is out of date. And doctors and nurses are not allowed to make changes to this information. Not even if it is bad, and current research shows this old information to be bad, A quote from the the NHS Live Well article "The truth about carbs" "The best way to manage diabetes is by taking prescribed medications and by maintaining a healthy lifestyle that includes plenty of physical activity and a balanced diet that is low in saturated fat, salt and sugar and rich in fruit and vegetables, without completely cutting out any particular food groups." But is this the best way to manage it? To keep your Blood Sugar nice an level you need the meds. But surely this is only a temporary solution (except of Type 1 diabetics of course). So why can't Type 2 Diabetes be managed by diet alone? Starches, sugars and grains up your blood sugar and thus you need the meds. Cut out the carbs, and your blood sugar doesn't spike, making management incredibly easy. Most T2D have reversed their condition, or hugely reduced the amount of meds they need to take, by cutting the carbs from their diets. Why would the NHS say to diabetics that they need to consume carbs? Here's what they say:
Ok, thoughout this you can see that fibre is getting a big shout as to why you should be eating carby foods. Yes, getting your fibre is a good thing. So many people say "you'll cut out your fibre if you cut out your grains and cereal". Er, no. Just think of all the amazing vegetables that are super high in fibre, like avocado, broccoli or cauliflower. You do not need grains and starchy food.
What can we take from the NHS advice. Eat carbs, starches and grains because they give you energy and they contain fibre. Awesome. Fat gives you a more stable energy, keeps you fuller for longer so you don't actually need to eat as much. Vegetables give you fibre and all the other nutrients you could possibly need. Carbs give you... nothing that can be got elsewhere. Not only is the NHS still giving out this out dated and bad advice, but the charity Diabetes UK is doing the same!! They say eat a "Healthy Balanced Diet" and change white bread to brown bread! What the?! Have a sandwich and that's over 100g of carbs right there. Get that dose of insulin ready. Now, I'm not a loon an I sure as hell am going to have an ice-cream on a hot day, but you won't catch me eating bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, sugar or cereals. It's impossible to not have a single carb, but to get about around 300 grams of carbs a day (I'm 45, 6'2") is madness. I personally am aiming for less that 30g carbs a day, to maintain my keto-adaption. But reducing this amount by 2/3 isn't too difficult. Getting into a good low carb diet would be around 50g a day.
Eat well, dudes. I've been watching these presentations about various topics to do with low carbs. Just amazing. Places like the NHS should be listening to this and doing more to include findings like these into everyday practices. YouTube Playlist Dr. Zoë Harcombe - 'Should dietary fat guidelines have been introduced?' Dr. Benjamin Bikman - 'Insulin vs. Ketones - The Battle for Brown Fat' Dave Feldman - 'The Dynamic Influence of a High Fat Diet on Cholesterol Variability' Dr. Ted Naiman - 'Insulin Resistance' Nina Teicholz - 'The Real Food Politics: Institutional Defense of the Status-Quo' Dr. Zoë Harcombe - 'HPCSA vs. Professor Noakes: A bird's eye view' Dr. John Schoonbee - 'LCHF - who benefits financially?' Dr. David Unwin - 'The Glycaemic Index: Helping Patients in Primary care with T2D' Dr. Dawn Lemanne - 'Carbohydrate Restriction in Cancer Therapy' Dr. Mark Cucuzzella - 'Run (and Eat) For Your Life' Throughout my internet travels, whilst looking up info on what happens to carbs when eaten and what Insulin does when blood sugar goes up, I come across an amazing revelation. Eating Saturated Fat is healthy for us! Who knew? Turns out a lot of people knew. Including those in a position of power when it comes to the advice given to people regarding what a nutritious diet actually is. Check out this Food Pyramid. We are told that grains should be the base of our diet. Ignoring the fact that grains, sugars and starches are all converted into glucose in the body. And that this raises blood sugar. And for diabetics needs medication to lower that blood sugar. You'll see the fatty food right there at the top. Fat doesn't clog the arteries, fat doesn't raise cholesterol. That's not how biology works. The thinking back in the day, around the 60s and chiefly by a guy called Ancel Keys and his 7 Countries Study, was that Heart Disease was caused by a high saturated fat diet. This was done by looking at the diets of these countries and coming to the conclusion that consumption of saturated fat in these countries was higher and thus had the greater number of heart disease cases, than countries that didn't have high amounts of saturated fat in their diet. The problem was that it was actually a 22 countries study. Out of the 22 countries it showed that there was no correlation between saturated fat and Heart Disease. He chose the 7 countries that gave the best graph. Money you see. What actually happens is that when consuming excess carbs your arteries can become enlarged. This as well as the carbs can cause inflammation due to the raising of blood sugar and the constant high doses of Insulin. When an artery is damaged Cholesterol comes along and repairs the damage, much like a scab on your skin. Because that scab can't simply come off (don't want that floating into the heart) the artery wall then grows over the scab. This narrows the artery over time which can lead to high blood pressure. I like this quote "Blaming Cholesterol is like blaming the firefighters who come and put out the fire". It's been shown that eating Saturated Fat, and cutting out the carbs, actually lowers LDL cholesterol which is often referred to as "bad cholesterol" and raises HDL cholesterol which is often referred to as “good cholesterol” because it is protective. That and you feel fuller for longer, fat is a cleaner longer burning fuel source. Glucose is converted to fat that is stored as a fuel in the body, and thus cutting the carbs will make our body switch to it's stored fuel source; Fat. I'd add a bunch of reference, but a simple google search on this topic will show you great results. We know carbs are bad. Ok, that's a wide topic right there, but reducing the carbs has clear health benefits.
Having been a Type 2 Diabetic for almost 11 years I noticed a couple of things. My Blood Sugars are constantly hard to control, with them fluctuating from Hypo levels to Hyper levels all within hours. "Try harder, it's not that difficult" I hear you tut. I do, honest. But I believe the problem comes from the advice I've (and all of us) are given. This advice boils down to nutrition, and primarily the advice that we should have over a third of our diet consisting of carbohydrates. Even to this day the NHS are encouraging us to consume carbs. I'll put this lot in my next post. But it makes me angry. When I eat carbs, whether its a pasta dish, roast dinner with taters and yorkies or a chinese with noodles or rice, I would take a measure of fast acting insulin. And, a lot of times guesstimating the amount of carbs in the dish you can very easily take too much or too little insulin. Over time, your resistance to insulin gets stronger and you end up having to take more and more just to stay at normal BS levels. It got to the point that normal for me was into double figures. 10-12 mmol/l was feeling fine. But this is double normal levels and extremely dangerous in the long run. When I would have normal levels, say 5-6 mmol/l I would start feeling the symptoms of a hypo (weak/shakes). Mix this in with doing exercise routines like The Ultimate Yogi, Body Beast, P90X, etc my BS would spike and crash and be all over the place. Damn it was getting tiresome. Then, back in March, around my 45th birthday (Woo!), I came across www.dietdoctor.com and I watched a video interview by Dr Andreas Eenfeldt with Dr Jason Fung, about Type 2 Diabetes and the effects of Carbs. I started watching more presentations and interviews. It blew my mind. They were saying that actual research into what happens with carbs (body converts to Glucose) and specifically what happens when you consume too many (Insulin stores as body fat). And how we've been lied to about fat over the last 4+ decades. Saturated Fat was seen as the enemy. Fat clogs the arteries. Fat gives you Hart Disease. Reduce fat for a healthy life. This isn't how biology works. When you cut carbs your body goes into Ketosis. This is the bodies natural fat burning state. This will result in your body naturally burning body fat for it's own fuel. That and the fat you eat. Current advice is that fat will give you heart disease, high cholesterol and Alzheimer's to name a few. Scary,eh? Well, current scientific research proves this is completely untrue. I The real advice is:
By doing this I've had a much more stable level of Blood Sugar. I take less insulin with my meals. I have more focus and alertness. This is especially great at work because I no longer fall asleep during meetings!! Amazing. I eat when hungry, not the "3 meals a day". And I 'feel' great. I've basically done a Keto/LCHF diet. I simply eat meals I want and ensure I consume as few carbs as possible and I cook with butter, not veg oil. I don't mind if there's fat in the meal, but I don't take the piss. I want my body to burn body fat, not necessarily the fat I eat. Though I do need to eat the fat to keep me sated. As snacking was one of my biggest issues (the joys of a carby lifestyle). I've mentioned a load of things here that warrant more discussion (like why Fat isn't bad, why going into Ketosis isn't a bad thing, why carbs are bad, why we've been lied to for decades by people who should be thinking of our welfare and not their wallets). I'll be talking about these things in future posts. And I'll make the effort to list the sources of where I got my info. <3 |
Andrew CoyleI've been a Type 2 Diabetic for over 11 years, and now Insulin Dependant. I'm finally learning that the advice I've been given around nutrition and med management is wrong. Archives
September 2017
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