Reversing Diabetes

[Mark Leavy]

Mark, I know you've spoken favorably about eggs in the past, but egg yolks contain 16% Linoleic Acid--probably too much to eat egg yolks every day. Do you limit your egg consumption to a few days a week or something? Or figure that a low-carb, periodic-fasting diet makes up for the LA?

Hey PS.

Yes, I am still a huge fan of the nutritional value of eggs and I eat 5 to 6 egg yolks every day - depending on whether the country I am in sells them by the 10's or by the dozen.

I just drank down these 5 yolks a few minutes ago.

[img width=800]http://i68.tinypic.com/30vf1c3.png[/img]

As an aside, the eggs in 3rd world countries are soo... delicious.  Like drinking sweet sweet cream.  Even the best eggs from the trendy stores in the states taste somewhat bland.  The worst eggs are the Omega-3 fortified eggs where the chickens have been fed flaxseed.  Those eggs taste like rancid fish.

To address your question on the Linoleic Acid in eggs... yes all animal fats have some PUFAs.  Egg yolks have about 0.7 grams per yolk.
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/dai ... ucts/113/2

For 6 yolks, that is 4.2 grams or 38 calories.  About 1.5% of my total daily energy.  Pretty respectable.  Of course, pork and chicken and avocados and olive oil also have some PUFAS - but none of it compares to spreading margarine on your toast or frying your eggs in canola oil.

Today was a good day.  4 hours of walking in the tropical sun with no sunscreen.  First food of the day around 5pm.
Fresh ceviche, red wine, soda water, an avocado and some cheese.  Topped off with eggs when I got back to the condo and a snifter of rum right now makes the evening.  I'll eat again sometime late afternoon / evening tomorrow.

[Mark Leavy]

Mark, that was a great description of your day; sounds like fun. 

Hey, regarding the flavor of eggs: what do you think of the taste of eggs from the average backyard chicken?  Those are my favorite.  I suppose they're "free range," but generally fed real food, and free to scrounge around in the yard eating bugs, etc.  Those eggs are my favorites.

I think they are the same as everyday third world eggs.  I.e. delicious.

[Xan]

Mark, that was a great description of your day; sounds like fun. 

Hey, regarding the flavor of eggs: what do you think of the taste of eggs from the average backyard chicken?  Those are my favorite.  I suppose they're "free range," but generally fed real food, and free to scrounge around in the yard eating bugs, etc.  Those eggs are my favorites.

I think they are the same as everyday third world eggs.  I.e. delicious.

My understanding is that "cage free", "free range" labels on eggs don't mean very much.  But "pasture raised" is the real thing.  Have you tried eggs labeled "pasture raised"?  These folks produce and distribute them:
http://vitalfarms.com/
and they've recently branched into butter as well.  I think their eggs are sold under different names in different regions.  Here they're called "Texas Chicken Ranch" and have a big cartoon thing on the carton.  Inside there's a small newsletter (I think it rotates quarterly) about how the "girls" are doing.

[Reub]

I just found this very good article on reversing prediabetes (which effects about 80 million Americans).

"Here Is How You Can Reverse Prediabetes:

1. Stop eating fruit!
What’s so bad about fruits? Fruits can raise blood sugar! Although fruits have many health benefits including fiber, antioxidants and nutrients, fruits also have fructose, natural sugar. Some fruits are worse culprits than others. For example, fruits high in sugar with more carbohydrates per serving are; bananas, apples and pears. Fruits that are low in sugar include blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries.

Every kind of fruit can elevate your blood sugar.

Occasionally, however, you can eat a few berries, which are low in sugar, as a treat. Another way you may enjoy limited fruit is by eating some healthy fat with it. The fat slows down your metabolism and your blood sugar does not rise as fast. Two sources of healthy fat that are excellent are avocados and coconut oil.

2. Eat a diet low in carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are converted into glucose a simple sugar in digestion. Eating too many carbohydrates raises blood sugar and increases the demand of insulin from the pancreas. Another tip is if you eat carbohydrates with protein or a healthy fat it helps slow down the increase in blood sugar levels.
Stay away from alcohol, another carbohydrate which can increase blood sugar.

3. A Gluten free or Paleo diet is beneficial for helping reverse prediabetes. One way to limit carbohydrates is to adopt the Paleo diet. Also, if you eat gluten free it may be easy to reduce carbohydrates, but don’t forget about the processed gluten free food which contains carbohydrates! Another benefit of the gluten free diet is that you can reduce inflammation in the intestines which may cause blood sugar to spike.

4. Eat every 2 hours. Eating small meals or healthy snacks every two hours helps keep your blood sugar steady.

5. Put coconut oil in your diet. Use coconut oil for cooking and in your recipes. Eating this healthy fat with any carbohydrates will help slow down your metabolism. You can also have a couple of teaspoons throughout the day to help keep your blood sugar steady. Coconut oil is great because it gives you energy without insulin spikes."

There's more to the article. The only thing that I'm not certain of is the point of eating small meals every 2 hours to stabilize blood sugar levels. I've heard other doctors say this before but it goes contrary to the concept of intermittent fasting. I'm not sure which theory is correct.

[curlew]

Here Is How You Can Reverse Prediabetes:

How can you tell when you've reversed it?

[Reub]

I would guess when your blood glucose numbers,  especially fasting,  return to more normal levels.

[jafs]

The A1c test is the test, along with higher fasting levels, that's used to determine pre-diabetes.

So, if/when you get your A1c down to more correct levels, that's a good thing.

In my opinion, if your fasting levels are ok, your A1c level is ok, and your glucose levels a couple of hours after a meal are ok, then you're processing sugar correctly.

The range for pre-diabetic used to be an A1c test of 6-7 - for some reason they moved the levels down a bit, but my doctor thinks 6 and under is fine.

[Mark Leavy]

Here's a hypothetical - just for fun.  There are plenty of holes in it - so don't get too worked up.

Let's say LargeTex finds out from his doctor that he is converging on Type II diabetes.  LargeTex is 5'8" and weighs 200lbs.  TexMedico tells LargeTex that the sure cure to Diabetes II is to lose 50 lbs - by whatever means.

LargeTex is a good baptist and eschews meth and lines of cocaine - and instead decides to use diet and exercise to reach MediumTex.

He's a focussed guy and limits himself to one meal a day.  A nice piece of salmon.  A greek salad and a glass of red wine.  Pretty brutal, but LargeTex never fails when he sets himself to a goal.  He was shooting for 2 lbs a week, but over 6 months he averages just a bit less than that. Still, 6 months later, LargeTex is now MediumTex.

Type II diabetes is long gone.  MediumTex is at his ideal college wrestling weight, 150 lbs.

After 6 months of salmon, greek salad and red wine, MediumTex decides that he wants to keep eating this way for the rest of his life - but he also wants to maintain his current ideal weight (No TinyTex for him), so he adds a full stick of butter for dessert at the end of his evening meal.

Served in a cool crystal dish with a silver spoon and a slight sprinkling of coarse salt.  This exactly compensates for the 4 ounces of human lard he has been metabolizing daily over the previous 6 months.

No change.
Did he suddenly move from "Heart Healthy" to "Cardiac Risk"?

[Cortopassi]

Pug, I suggest you read some of Malcolm Kendrick, and stop worrying about butter, eggs, and natural oils clogging up your arteries.

https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/feed/

[jafs]

The jury's still out on coconut oil, from my reading.

I'll stick with EVOO for now.

And, I don't know why people are still confused about eggs.  It seems to me that it's been a long time ago that the distinction between "dietary" cholesterol and "serum" cholesterol was discovered/publicized.

Originally, because eggs contained a fairly high amount of cholesterol, people were concerned about that.  But, relatively soon afterwards, it was discovered that dietary cholesterol didn't translate into serum cholesterol, and that it was actually dietary saturated fats that turned into serum cholesterol.

[MachineGhost]

Did he suddenly move from "Heart Healthy" to "Cardiac Risk"?

Hmm, not suddenly, but his diet is very narrow and lacking in many protective nutritional factors against not just cardiac diease but many others.  He needs to eat a wider variety and quantity of vegetables/fruit and supplement, to say the least.  Remember, food is software.  And the software influences hardware's epigenetic expressions.  No one food can optimally activate all possible pathways.

[MachineGhost]

The jury's still out on coconut oil, from my reading.

My reading of it is its all about the MCT and other antimicrobial fatty acids and very little to do with the saturated fat which is primarily (18%) myristic acid which strongly raises cholesterol and (8%) palmitic acid which also does so, but I don't remember if that is the HDL fraction or LDL fraction.  Probably the former more than the latter.

[MachineGhost]

I don't think anyone knows the answer to that question.  I'm not sure it's even possible to properly study that question without tracking a group of people for decades ... people willing to eat that stick of butter every day rather than making the more logical choice of sourcing those calories by finishing off that bottle of red wine and then eating some brisket. 

I like the story line, by the way.  I can picture MediumTex following just such a regime, with the exercise largely conducted via carpet cleaning.

That may be true, but science does know what initiates the cardiac disease cascade.  It's oxidized LDL and decreased nitric oxide (inverse relationship).  So if you deal with that problem, you've got very little to worry about in terms of cardiac disease whether or not you're ingesting an entire stick of butter for desert (I made a funny!!!) every night!

Seriously, people should spend more time worrying about cancer than cardiac disease.  The latter is so simple to deal with; the former is much more complex.  Yes, I know, this doesn't apply to Boobus Americanus eating the S.A.D..  But there's no hope for those people short of miracle drugs (like the PCSK9 inhibitors).  Arguing with a nutritionally deficit hedonistic gluttonist is an exercise in futility.

[Benko]

It is a well established fact that saturated fats increase LDL and monounsaturates and polyunsaturates decrease LDL.

So replacing saturated fats by polyunsaturated fats should be good, right?

April 13, 2016

New Look at Old Data Finds Diets Rich in Omega-6s of No Mortality Benefit

By Kelly Young Edited by David G. Fairchild, MD, MPH, and Lorenzo Di Francesco, MD, FACP, FHM Swapping out saturated fats with omega-6 fatty acid doesn't seem to improve clinical outcomes and may even be tied to worse survival among seniors, according to a reanalysis of 45-year-old data. The new findings appear in The BMJ. [British Medical Journal]

[MachineGhost]

It is a well established fact that saturated fats increase LDL and monounsaturates and polyunsaturates decrease LDL.

So replacing saturated fats by polyunsaturated fats should be good, right?

SmartBlance jiggered up a margarine formula with the simultaneous ability to raise HDL and lower LDL.  It's based on the "Hegsted Equation" which is a regression of various fats and their cholesterol raising/lowering abilities.  The whole cholesterol debate is what happens when you're too close to the trees, you can't see the forest.  People literally WANT the solution to be simple to assauge their guilt/fear, i.e. take statins, eat SmartBalance, etc. whether or not it is security theatre.

I really doubt all these latter day "revelations" are going to change the paradigm.  There's just way too much money in Big Pharma lifestyle drugs: for the C-level, for the shareholders, for the sales reps, for the network TV stations, for the physicians and for lazy patients that have no clue about most anything in life.  PCSK9 inhibitors are gonna be a blockbuster akin to the second coming of Jesus.

Anyway to get back on topic, one excellent way to reverse diabetes is getting off the toxic statins before you wind up with Type I at worst.

[jafs]

I believe that type 1 diabetes is the kind you're born with, and can't develop later on, while type 2 is the kind you may develop later in life.

It seems like people do get very caught up in small vision stuff, and lose sight of the big picture.  Eat a balanced, healthy diet, exercise regularly, don't smoke, and drink in moderation - that should cover a lot of health concerns.

That's one of the things I find disappointing about the modern "health food" industry.  Instead of looking at the big picture and how things work together, they've come up with a lot of natural stuff to use the way we use drugs.  And, there's always a new "miracle cure" for things.

[Benko]

So if PCSK9 inhibitors are wonderful, we should all invest in Amgen who makes repatha?

Repatha is an antibody that targets a specific protein, called PCSK9. PCSK9 reduces the number of receptors on the liver that remove LDL cholesterol from the blood. By blocking PCSK9’s ability to work, more receptors are available to get rid of LDL cholesterol from the blood and, as a result, lower LDL cholesterol levels.

You really think this will be miraculous without unexpected side effects?  Just asking, I know nothing about this.


"I really doubt all these latter day "revelations" are going to change the paradigm.  There's just way too much money in Big Pharma lifestyle drugs"
Is it possible that you are overly enthusiastic about influence of "big pharma"?

[MachineGhost]

So if PCSK9 inhibitors are wonderful, we should all invest in Amgen who makes repatha?

Read my bottom signature.

You really think this will be miraculous without unexpected side effects?  Just asking, I know nothing about this.

I never said that.  LDL has critically important roles in the body that have nothing to do with cholesterol transport.

Is it possible that you are overly enthusiastic about influence of "big pharma"?

Not when I look at history.  They were the Monsanto of their day.

[t-bear52]

At the risk of getting flamed, to reverse Type II Diabetes: plant based, whole food, low fat (and no salt no oil for good measure) diet is the way to reverse.
No Processed foods.

[Reub]

At the risk of getting flamed, to reverse Type II Diabetes: plant based, whole food, low fat (and no salt no oil for good measure) diet is the way to reverse.
No Processed foods.

tbear, do you have studies to support your position? Are you saying a high carb diet will reverse diabetes? I've read in many places that fats and protein are very beneficial but you seem to be minimizing their importance. What is your opinion based on? Thanks!

[Benko]

At the risk of getting flamed, to reverse Type II Diabetes: plant based, whole food, low fat (and no salt no oil for good measure) diet is the way to reverse.
No Processed foods.

tbear, do you have studies to support your position? Are you saying a high carb diet will reverse diabetes? I've read in many places that fats and protein are very beneficial but you seem to be minimizing their importance. What is your opinion based on? Thanks!

Reub,

There is no contradiction, and he is not talking about a "high carb diet", certainly not as you are thinking.

I am not saying that all the sources you know are wrong, and I do believe this guy has his biases (he's a vegan), but there is some interesting info e.g. to answer your question:

http://nutritionfacts.org/video/diabete ... -the-food/

Even when study subjects are forced to eat so much that they didn’t lose any weight, a plant-based diet can still reverse type 2 diabetes in a matter of weeks.

[jafs]

I'm curious - is it just vegans that you think are biased?  Everybody has their diet of choice, I would think, and that would color their view.

[Pointedstick]

What makes sense to me is to look at the parts of the world where diabetes is very low: http://www.allcountries.org/ranks/diabe ... ranks.html

Then we need to look at the diets and lifestyles of those countries and see if we can divine any patterns.

Let's look at the bottom 5 countries in terms of diabetes rates:
- Mongolia
- Rwanda
- Iceland
- Burundi
- Uganda

What immediately stands out is that 4 out of the 5 are relatively or very poor countries. Let's start with the African countries. What do poor Africans eat? Mostly whole foods. Local whole grains, beans, fruits, and vegetables, dairy from unpasteurized milk, meat only occasionally, as a treat or part of a feast (too expensive), and often in the form of "bushmeat" (i.e. fresh from wild animals eating their natural diet). Lots of potatoes, bananas, and beans. Often wild fish.

Now onto Mongolia. The Mongolians eat a lot of dairy from unpasteurized milk (from all sorts of animals, not just cows) and wild meat. Few fruits or vegetables. Note that they eat the whole animal, not just the muscle tissue, and these animals are grazing on their natural food sources. But it's a very fatty diet! However, like the Africans, there's no processed food or refined carbs.

What also probably stands out is that total caloric intake in these places is a lot less than we're used to in the USA. These are poor people. And Africans and Mongolians probably do a lot more physical labor than we do, too. They're more likely to be using their bodies for much of the day and walking to where they need to go. The food is a fuel for exerting work. They don't just sit at a computer in a comfy chair all day (guilty).

Iceland is the only rich country on the list. But the Icelandic diet has a lot in common with the poor diets: meat and dairy from animals eating their natural diets, unprocessed seafood, some whole grains, vegetables, and beans--but not a lot. Quite similar to the Mongolian diet!

A common pattern is that the animal-based foods come from animals that are healthy and eating their natural diets. Another one is few to no processed foods or refined carbs. Not a lot of foods with added sugar, either (a refined carb, after all). Interestingly, fruits and vegetables appear mostly optional, even for the relatively sedentary Icelanders (compared to Rwandans, at least). What seems to really matter is that any animal products you eat come from animals that are happy and healthy. Consumption of a lot of plants seems to be optional. None of these people are vegetarians, and certainly not vegans. That doesn't mean that a vegetarian or vegan diet can't be healthy, but it doesn't seem to be a requirement. Probably the reason it seems that way in the USA is because virtually all of our meat and dairy is fairly unhealthy because comes from animals that are themselves unhealthy from eating crap and living stressfully and unhappily.

[Benko]

I'm curious - is it just vegans that you think are biased?  Everybody has their diet of choice, I would think, and that would color their view.

Obviously not, but I've been hearing vegans claim that one can get their omega 3 needs from flax/chia but there are studies going back decades showing that flax is no substitute for preformed EPA/DHA.  To clarify if you're 20 years old and a vegan then flax may be sufficient, but as you get older the conversion of flax to EPA works less well and also omega 6 fats interferes with conversion of flax to EPA. So for many/most people flax aint' the answer.

[jafs]

Yeah, that's a concern.

I don't know of a better alternative for vegetarians than flaxseed oil - do you?

It's a good reason to use olive oil and other oils that aren't particularly high in omega-6, for sure, if you're a vegetarian who takes flaxseed oil.

I'm in my 50's, and generally have very good lab results at annual physicals - and I've been a vegetarian for 30 years, taking flaxseed oil for a while now.