It is astonishing to me how out of touch so much of the current dietary advice is available to people in the media and other platforms. However it is important to avoid becoming too dogmatic and there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to diet. Some of the recent research has shown us that there can be very considerable variations in post-eating blood sugar response to identical meals in different people. This appears to be determined by genetics, gut microbiome and other factors. I also believe that a good guiding principle is to eat the best diet that you can enjoy not the best that you can endure!
Organic food is NOT as expensive as you may think, plus water comes free from your taps, not just from bottles with pretty labels on. For example a bag of Organic carrots bought in most supermarkets such as Tesco, can be purchased for as little as £1, I believe that price is in the reach of everybody. One of the main reasons people don not buy Organic food is because they have been brain washed to think the price is far beyond their reach. Open your eyes and you will discover that the true price is much lower than you first thought. There is good evidence that the following dietary approaches are likely to be beneficial in the majority of people with diabetes or pre-diabetes and they are definitely a good starting point, these are: 1. Lowering your carbohydrate intake. 2. Fasting. 3. Avoid artificial sweeteners.
Lowering Carbohydrate Intake
Before discussing low carbohydrate dieting it is worth reminding we that:
- There are “essential amino acids” – without them in your diet you will eventually die, as your body cannot make them.
- Similarly there are “essential fatty acids” – the building blocks of fats.
- Your body requires glucose to function BUT YOU DO NOT NEED CARBOHYDRATE TO MAKE GLUCOSE – your body can easily manufacture glucose from fat or protein that you ingest.
This means there are NO essential carbohydrates required for life. There is a commonly held belief that you need carbohydrates as your brain needs glucose to function but this is wrong on two counts. Firstly, just because your brain will preferentially burn glucose for fuel when it is available does not mean that it cannot metabolise other substrates when there is limited glucose – ketones in fact are a better source of energy for the brain especially with regards to dementia risk. It is worth pointing out that when we have alcohol on board the body preferentially metabolises alcohol for energy but we don’t claim that alcohol is essential for energy production! Secondly, the body is quite capable of producing enough glucose de novo (i.e. gluconeogenesis) to supply the needs of the brain, especially if you are metabolically well adapted to burning fat not sugar. So what is the rationale for lowering carbohydrate intake to reduce insulin resistance? It’s really quite simple. Logic tells us that the macro nutrient balance of a meal will determine the amount of insulin released:
- Carbohydrate stimulates insulin release.
- Fat has no significant impact on insulin release.
- Protein stimulates insulin (although less than carbohydrate) but also stimulates glucagon release, which counteracts this.
Click here to read part 2 of this blog post.
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Image taken from [puamelia]