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Pittsburg, Kansas | thinkstoomuch - 6/9/2022 19:24 John Burns - 6/9/2022 16:07 Me being a type II diabetic a ketogenic diet is what I use successfully to control my blood sugar levels. If you don't put it in your mouth, it can't show up as glucose in the blood. Type II diabetics would do well to learn that fact (with type I being a whole different animal, yet still able to take much less quantity in their mandatory insulin shots on a low carb diet ). So really asking is can it truly be reversed or undiagnosable or just 'kept in check'?
That is a question that I myself would like a definitive answer and it is argued even among "experts" in the low carb community. Cured or just in remission? Good question. In my case I am certain I am just in remission. Because if I eat a higher carb load, and very occasionally I will, on purpose just to see my pancreas reaction of insulin controlling my blood sugar level. To date it has failed. In other words my blood sugar will still spike abnormally high, indicating to me one of two things (or maybe both in combination). Either my pancreas can not put out enough insulin to control the blood glucose spike OR I am still insulin resistant to a pretty good degree. It very well could be some of both. Where I have been diabetic so long (35 or so years?) it is likely my beta cells in my pancreas have been damaged to a degree they simply will not put out the amount of insulin they once did. A person who has recently been diagnosed diabetic has a LOT better chance at actually curing the disease before it progresses that far. Can beta cells be replaced/repaired? There is some evidence that they can. But different cells in the body require different lengths of time for replacement. For example red blood cells get replaced often, on average every 90 days. Other cells, like brain cells, may take years. Pancreas beta cells are not normally quickly replaced as they are damaged because under a normal diet they should not be damaged very often. So my pancreas may eventually heal or it may not. I don't have a lot of knowledge in this area, but that is my understanding to date. It is far better to not screw it up in the first place rather than try to fix it after it is screwed up.
Having said all that, the two things that are damaging to a person considering diabetes are 1. high blood sugar levels and 2. high insulin levels. The medical community has almost entirely been focused on number one and generally regards number 2 as something to not worry about. Just control number 1. That is a terrible disservice to diabetics because excess insulin is also not good for health (not to mention makes it almost impossible to lose weight - insulin is a fat storage hormone among many other functions). Prescribing insulin to a type II diabetic is kind of like giving a drink to an alcoholic to cure his alcoholism. It will help control the blood sugar level but actually make his insulin resistance worse and cause him to gain weight. When they say diabetes is a "chronic progressive disease" it is because the medical community treats it wrong. Treated correctly, it doesn't have to be progressive and actually can regress and go into remission as I and MANY others have learned by doing it. There is no reason a type II diabetic can not control their blood sugar levels and insulin levels so that there is no progressive damage to organs as normally happens when the disease is treated with conventional insulin and drug therapy. All they have to do is not eat food that causes insulin levels to rise and blood sugar levels to rise. Control those two things and there will be no damage to organs from those two excessive things in the blood.
There are other nuances that are too in depth to cover in a simple reply. Liver gluconeogenesis is one. My liver still produces too much glucose during the night so my morning fasting blood sugar levels are still higher than I like. I'm hoping over time that will correct - we will see. For example tonight my after meal blood sugar reading (after having a few carbs, probably 15 or so grams) it was 139, considered excellent control for a diabetic. I had a small low carb desert and checked it again a little while later. 126. Excellent. Yet tomorrow morning I will be at 125-130. That is my liver producing the glucose, not what I ate because I will not have eaten anything all night. That is considered right on the edge of diabetic. A metabolically healthy person with no insulin resistance should have a fasting morning blood sugar test level under 100. Many on a ketogenic diet will test below 80 and some as low as 40 with NO low blood sugar symptoms (because ketones are supplying the energy they need).
My last A1C was 5.8 and the one a year before was 5.7, right on the edge and considered pre-diabetic. 5.6 or lower is considered non-diabetic though there is no magic to those particular levels. They were just made up by the medical community at some point so they could label the disease. A 5.0 or less (indicating an average lower blood sugar level) would be much healthier.
If I walked into a new doctors office and they did a fasting blood draw they would tell me I am pre-diabetic. With a fasting blood sugar level of 125 and an HBA1C level of 5.8 that is what they would call it. They would prescribe me a couple of diabetic medicines, blood pressure medicine and probably recommend a statin. Been there done that.
I have started taking a low dose of Metformin in the last month. I have debated on and off whether the benefits offset the side effects and risk. I have a good friend that watched my wife and I's success of the last three years and two years ago him and his wife started on the same path after finding out they had some significant health issues. They threw me a surprise birthday party last April and at that party thanked me for "saving their lives" by the example we set for them. They transformed their lives as much if not more than my wife and I have health wise. Now they are even more into it than we are. He had told me that one of his doctors told him to take metformin to jump start the liver reducing its glucose production to help with the higher than wanted morning fasting blood sugar levels. His was like mine, about 125-130. After a month of metformin his now is running 80-100 mornings and he was able to stop the metformin then. Even a low dose was enough to trick the liver into remission. For some reason after being diabetic for quite a while, even on a low carb diet where the food is not raising the blood sugar level, the liver some how thinks it needs to boost the blood sugar level in the dawn effect time period. So I am hoping the metformin will give my liver what it needs to back off on glucose production. A person does not need to eat a single carbohydrate to have enough blood glucose for good health. The liver is perfectly capable of producing all the glucose the body needs from fat if it is good saturated animal fat. If we eat excess protein and not enough fat protein can be converted to glucose also but it is an inefficient process and healthy fat is the preferred feed stock. But I digress and am getting off topic...........
Enough of a ramble. | |
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Fat: A Documentary 2
