WE ARE WHAT WE EAT

[Wendyf]

The "Fixing Dad" team have got an article in the Mail on Sunday. They are doing a brilliant job getting the message across that t2 diabetes can be put into remission ( I don't believe it is permanently reversed...if you start eating badly again the blood sugars will start to rise).
Here

[Stanley]

Wendy, what is your opinion of a good nut, oat and fruit based muesli as a filler?

[Wendyf]

The higher the nut & seed content the better.

[Wendyf]

I have learnt a lot from watching YouTube videos made by Ivor Cummins, aka The Fat Emporer, an Irish engineer who started to study nutrition when he developed possible heart problems. His videos are usually interviews with other campaigners for low carb diets....so not a lot of balance in the viewpoints! This one is quite entertaining. [BBvideo 425,350]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VEwxhSzCu6w[/BBvideo]
Parts 2 & 3 are there too.

[Wendyf]

If you get confused by the terms "good" and "bad" cholesterol this article from X-pert Health explains cholesterol in an easy to understand way.
Link

[Stanley]

Wendy, keep going! You are performing a valuable public service and one that is music to my ears!

[Wendyf]

It's probably not surprising that many of the leading lights in this field are engineers, problem solvers who have gone back to examine the evidence! There is a chap in the USA, called Dr Richard Bernstein who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes back in the 1940's when he was 12. He became an engineer, but after turning his health around using a low carb diet he retrained as a doctor so he could help others. He is still fit and well in his 80's, still working and making YouTube videos for his Diabetes University.

[Wendyf]

If you are interested in the science and have nearly 2 hours to spare then this Ivor Cummins seminar on The Cholesterol Conundrum is very informative. [BBvideo 425,350]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fuj6nxCDBZ0[/BBvideo]

[Stanley]

I've never had any problems with cholesterol or blood pressure thank God...... But I do listen to what you tell me!

[plaques]

If you go directly to the Youtube site rather than through the link above you can see a number of other interviews he has done which appear very interesting. Well done Wendy. The only trouble is than it takes a bit of time to watch them and you don't get much work done.

[Stanley]

And we are such busy people.....
I have a question Wendy. You mentioned feeding the horses 'un-molassed sugar beet pulp'. How can that be?
You were right about apples and comfort eating raising my blood sugar slightly. I shall be working on it I promise......

[Wendyf]

Well, I'm not absolutely certain but the sugar beet pulp is what is left when all the sugar has been extracted and for certain feedstuffs, like those fed to sheep and cattle, it has molasses added back in. The stuff I use is basically pure fibre with some added vitamins and minerals.

[Tizer]

Wendy, is all the current low-carb diet advice targeted at diabetics or at the whole population? Is it intended to offer a diet that helps diabetics keep their blood sugar steady or is it supposed to prevent non-diabetics getting the disease?

[Wendyf]

I would say that it is targeted at diabetics and people who are overweight, but in general most people are eating more carbohydrates than our metabolism can cope with, guided by NHS advice and the "Eatwell Plate". Obviously there is a huge variation, but the suggestion is that only a small percentage of the population is genetically adapted to be able to eat as much as they want.
From what I have read, cutting back on carbohydrate and eating more "good" fats improves most inflammatory conditions. We can say from experience that your blood pressure and cholesterol improves almost immediately.

This article on the X-Pert Health website explains the evidence for their support of a LCHF diet. LINK

[Tizer]

Why I ask is that I often get the impression now that the people putting out the low-carb message are targeting it at everyone and yet only about 6% of the UK population has T2 diabetes and even in the US it's only 9%.

[Wendyf]

The 6% of the population diagnosed with diabetes could be considered the tip of an iceberg. Most people who have excess belly fat are likely to be insulin resistant or pre diabetic to some degree and will probably develop full blown diabetes eventually so a change in diet could prevent it developing. If you are perfectly healthy, slim and unstressed then you can carry on eating whatever you fancy!
There is strong evidence that it could prevent heart disease too.

[plaques]

Try this for a waist to height ratio. Link. I'm saying nothing. Its nowt to do with me!

[Stanley]

I noted the evidence on R4 yesterday about the increase in the number of children who are being admitted to hospital for tooth extraction under full anaesthetic. It's put down to the increase in sugar consumption coupled with the fact that we no longer have routine inspections by the school nurse.
P. let's put it this way, what's good for people like Col and me is good for all the population and as Wendy says, the reported 6% is the tip of the iceberg. 50 years ago my old doc, Arthur Morrison reckoned that 25% of the population were at risk and he tested everyone's urine as a matter of course. He was in front of the curve. Look how fit Wendy is! It's suiting her.....

[Tizer]

P. let's put it this way, what's good for people like Col and me is good for all the population and as Wendy says, the reported 6% is the tip of the iceberg. 50 years ago my old doc, Arthur Morrison reckoned that 25% of the population were at risk and he tested everyone's urine as a matter of course. He was in front of the curve. Look how fit Wendy is! It's suiting her.....

The 6% figure already includes an estimate of undiagnosed cases. Diabetes.uk says: "Since 1996, the number of people diagnosed with diabetes in the UK has risen from 1.4 million to 3.5 million. Taking into account the number of people likely to be living with undiagnosed diabetes, the number of people living with diabetes in the UK is over 4 million. Diabetes prevalence in the UK is estimated to rise to 5 million by 2025." Incidence is increasing but even with that estimate of undiagnosed cases it's still only a small fraction of the population at present. I'm not trying to damp down concern about diabetes, but I think it's important to look at the facts - the majority of the population doesn't have diabetes but the newspapers often act as if it does.

[Wendyf]

That is an estimate of the people with undiagnosed full blown diabetes Tizer, not those with pre-diabetes. There is an estimate that one in three adults in the UK are pre-diabetic, reported Here on the NHS website. This means that blood glucose levels are already raised but haven't quite reached the level at which diabetes is diagnosed.

[Wendyf]

A short interview with Ivor Cummins, aka The Fat Emporer, explaining how an engineer got involved with lchf.
Link

[Wendyf]

This video is about the link between insulin resistance and coronary heart disease.
[BBvideo 425,350]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UZoQiDaWnuE[/BBvideo]

[Stanley]

I'm taking note of all this and putting it into practice. Looks as though Maz was right all the time about leafy greens..... (snarls and grinds teeth.....)

[Tizer]

That is an estimate of the people with undiagnosed full blown diabetes Tizer, not those with pre-diabetes. There is an estimate that one in three adults in the UK are pre-diabetic, reported Here on the NHS website. This means that blood glucose levels are already raised but haven't quite reached the level at which diabetes is diagnosed.

Interesting stuff, Wendy! Thanks for the link. It strikes me that pre-diabetes would be better dealt with if the medics gave it a different name - calling it pre-diabetes could make people think they are `before diabetes' and therefore still don't need to take any action. It's currently confusing because not all people who have pre-diabetes go on to get diabetes.
I've looked at the full text and illustrations of the two research papers quoted by the NHS linked page, one based on the US population and the other on the UK. Strangely they don't show the distribution through the range of blood concentration for the pre-diabetes marker. If I'd been a referee for these papers I would have asked them to provide a graph showing the % of the sample population plotted against the % marker in the blood. The UK paper (done in conjunction with an American group) has adopted the US definition of pre-diabetes ("We defined prediabetes among individuals without previously diagnosed diabetes using HbA1c cut-offs as specified by the American Diabetes Association, 5.7–6.4%"). We don't know whether, for example, 90% of the people defined as pre-diabetic in the study were at the 5.7% level or 90% at the 6.4% level, or were they evenly distributed. This is important. It reminds me of the trouble when cholesterol first started to be measured as an indicator of potential heart disease. The danger level was set so low that it took in far too large a part of the general population and that's how we eventually got into statins and the ideas about giving them to everyone. But don't let me deter you from your advice to people who have diabetes or pre-diabetes, I'm just cautious about when such advice starts being targeted at the whole population. That's how we got into the `fat is deadly' nonsense.

[Moh]

There are some good low carb recipes from Tom Kerrige in today's Mail's TV book