“Low Carb” Lifestyle for a better approach to Weight-Loss & Health.

It seems obvious now that if your GP tells you that you can no longer process the sugars in your blood (diagnosing pre-diabetes) you can fix it by eating less sugar generating foods (Carbs).

So why isn’t everyone getting slimmer and healthier.

The dietary advice we get from many agencies is still contradictory and wrong. We’re told to eat less fat, salt and sugar and then told to eat starchy (sugar generating foods) and vegetable oils – All bad advice for humans

Clearly this ain’t working but something better is now starting to happen.

A small but growing number of people have decided that if they can’t handle Carbohydrates (Diabetes) they should limit them to less than they burn in a day. That way they will bring blood sugar down towards normal and stop storing the excess sugar in their expanding waistlines. They are becoming slimmer and healthier.

Seven years ago after publishing a research review I decided to get myself checked. A Diabetic Clinician told me that I needed insulin and was was on a one-way journey of decline. They said all I could hope was to slow it down. With my research knowledge I declined the advice on offer and requested a further review in 3 months time.  Eating lots of Carbs was now going to be harmful! I lowered my carbohydrate intake to 100g per day (a modest but easy target). , I knew I could burn all that carbohydrate in a day,  At the review my astonished Clinician said I was on well on my way toward good control without medical intervention. At that clinician failed to investigate what I had done!

Two years later  I softened my stance and accepted Metformin thinking it was OK and would  help me control my blood sugars. I settled into a stable period of good sugar control, improved waist line and my weight.

Two years ago, I was inspired by a gadget which I could wear that recorded my sugar level all day and graphed it on my laptop. This allowed me to find out more about how my lifestyle was affecting my sugar. Diet, Activity and stress all play their part. But in 2017 I was told I was no longer diabetic.

2017 May Review copy (2017_05_12 09_45_27 UTC)

In remission as a prediabetic I stopped needing Metformin, but I was too late stopping. My dentist noticed a problem on my tongue and after further investigation suggested I should get checked out for a vitamin B12 deficiency. A cascade of problems was now in play.

I am now well and moving back to diabetes remission with full health thanks to an amazing and timely intervention by the Yorkshire Heart Centre, They too accepted my reasons for not taking statins (a separate blog) and I am now only taking a cardio-aspirin once a day, walking up to 14 miles a day in the dales and feeling really good

I have to say that the dietary advice is at best patchy but the Low Carb Lifestyle is now acknowledged and aapproved by the NHS (UK) for reversing mature-onset diabetes. In fact a lot of troubles that are thought of as “Old Age” are improved by Low Carb Lifestyle, Mindfulness and Exercise.

Link

A local community support network for making better lifestyle choices. Based in Leeds wit has a nationwide membership and following and now has wordpress web pages and blogs. Members are sharing their stories about health and fitness improvements. HCPs and people interested in lifestyle changes and functional health are welcome. Some members are reversing glycation damage and going into remission on Type 2 Diabetes. Some just lose weight. Others are interested in using “fat-burn” to fuel endurance sports by avoiding the frequent hypoglycaemic fuel stops and damage caused by sugar generating foods.

Low Carb Leeds

Sugar-Damage & Heart Disease

Heart disease is
often associated with undiagnosed diabetes. The secret of managing
this is to request an HbA1c blood test that measures your
sugar-damage. The results in UK are given as a number (mmols/mol)
which counts damaged blood molecules per 1000. That number should
always be less than your age – ideally under 49 for healthy folks
and under 59 for type 2 diabetics controlling it with lifestyle and
metformin. Sugar damage accumulates slowly so as we get older we can
relax the figure a little to avoid low blood sugar from medication.


If you feel hungry
2hrs after a sugary snack (biscuits) you are spiking you blood sugar
and after 2hrs your natural insulin has mopped up the blood sugar
turning it into visceral (belly) fat. The low sugar level / raised
insulin produces a hunger. Another sugar snack cycle begins. Break it
with a low sugar high fat snack and start to lose weight around the
middle (Nuts – check label to avoid added sugar/honey)!


Make your own food
and get to know its composition. Keep a food diary and weigh all
foods you eat to work out how much carbohydrate (sugar generating
food) you eat every day. There is a lot of helpful information on the
package. The per 100g column give you the percentage carbohydrates
and sugar. Don’t count the sugar twice as it is included in the
carbohydrate figure. (of which…)


Everyone is
different so start with 100g carbs per day and find out what you can
process using quarterly HbA1c blood tests from your GP. My personal
target is 80g per day. All foods contain a small amount of
carbohydrate but just worry about the explicit carbs like rice,
pasta, flour, starchy foods (like potato) and sugars.


You’ll need to get the balance of your 2,000
daily calories from fats. You will rarely feel hungry this way as no
excess insulin is produced because you have fewer smaller blood sugar
spikes to deal with. High cocoa-fat chocolate (low sugar) is a guilt
free treat! Try a double cream ganache chocolate for desserts.

Fructose is 7 times
more reactive (dangerous) than glucose so avoid all high fructose corn syrup
(HFCS) as over time they are very damaging to our proteins.


Check the weight of
dry starchy foods (pasta etc.) typically 60% Carbs and an egg sized
portion of potato is 10g carb. You’ll soon get become expert at
assessing portions.

http://bit.ly/1lNab2C has more information

Link

There has been recent speculation about the benefits of blood letting in Type 2 diabetes. However in 2008 L. Mascitelli, F. Pezzetta, M. R. Goldstein wrote

…dietary factors, which inhibit iron absorption (i.e. low-fat dairy consumption and habitual coffee intake), have been shown to be associated with a substantially lower risk of type 2 diabetes

They went on to conclude that a few basic lifestyle interventions might make more sense……

…we suggest that, in patients with or at high risk for type 2 diabetes, improving insulin sensitivity with physical exercise, metformin therapy and low-carbohydrate diet might break the vicious circle of insulin resistance, increased intestinal iron absorption and further worsening of insulin resistance.

Iron and type 2 diabetes – Lifestyle Fixes?