Low Carb Intake Linked to Insulin Resistance
lifespan.io
lifespan.io
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1f9g9Y1wm0
They both lost some weight, although the brother who was on the low-carb diet ended up virtually pre-diabetic.
"Low-carb" dude removed all fruits and vegetables. He didn't do low-carb, he did no-carb - in his own words: "meat cheese eggs".
The whole clip just reeks of b.s. though, neither of these guys would be getting air time if the results weren't click-bait controversy fodder. The b.s. incentives are clear.
[1]"Prediabetes happens when your blood glucose levels are higher than normal, but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes. Prediabetes usually occurs in people who already have some insulin resistance."
So, it doesn't sound right that he would be pre-diabetic when his blood glucose levels would be low. Seems that doctor made the assumption that because his blood insulin was low, his body would just stop producing it at some point, and that's not how it works.
[1]https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22206-insulin...
It's been known for decades (outside of the HN reality distortion field) that excess accumulation of intramyocellular lipids in skeletal muscle is the primary underlying mechanism driving Type 2 Diabetes, so that's pretty much the outcome you'd expect.
There's hundreds of thousands of people currently having success with no-shellfish diets to manage their shellfish allergy; yet these people don't go around using words like "reversed" or "cured" in reference to their allergy, the way keto people do with insulin resistance. And most of those keto people having apparent success would fail an OGTT (a test that actually measures insulin sensitivity, unlike fasting BG/insulin or HbA1c) if they took one.
If I have an unclogged bathtub (normal metabolism) - I can fill the tub quickly with water (a carbed up meal) with water and then it drains out.
The problem is when you combine high fat with low fiber carbs (donuts, meat AND potatoes, cake, peanut butter) - you clog the tub and dump water into the tub.
Low carb diets are associated with higher all cause mortality - and are not sustainable for the planet.
Weightloss improves various metabolic biomarkers, including markers of insulin sensitivity, and so the fact that people who lose weight following a particular intervention (low-carb or whatever else) see such improvements is unsurprising. That's why looking at subjects who are already lean is much more informative: it gives a better sense of the metabolic effects of the dietary intervention itself, not confounded by weightloss.
> Without that it sounds like the study contradicts a huge body of evidence which it doesn’t.
What huge body of evidence? All of the people drastically restricting their carbohydrate consumption so they can cheat on their fasting BG and HbA1C tests? Give those people an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test and measure their insulin response in real time, and the vast majority of them would fail, especially the ones on high (saturated) fat diets: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6602127/
> Our finding of a strong relationship between VO2max and relatively unsaturated IMCL pools in controls and athletes points to a role of exercise in decreasing the amount of saturated fat within the IMCL store. The association of insulin resistance with the accumulation of saturated IMCLs, even within a healthy control population, could suggest an early involvement in its pathogenesis and provide a reason why combined exercise and diet are effective therapeutic options in the early stages of insulin resistance.
High-fat diets are atrocious for insulin sensitivity.
Sorry I’m not going to whip a metaanalysis together for you to refute your flippant HN comment. The evidence is out there, apparently you’re one of these people that turned your conclusions into a religion. That’s fine, please don’t waste other people’s time asking for evidence as if you’re willing to have a good faith discussion.
Use a search engine.
The assumption here is that this is a temporary/reversible condition. At least it was in my case.
For the record, I did a low carb diet for 6 months. I was in ketosis for much of it, with temporary periods of break when it was unavoidable (during travel, lack of food options, social setting). I feel exogenous ketones helped me with the process of getting back in ketosis.
>Wait, I cut carbs out almost completely, why are my numbers getting worse?
Because you're eating more fat, and probably more saturated fat in particular, which means more intramyocellular lipids, and hence, you're becoming more insulin resistant. Cutting the carbohydrate consumption only masks the IR, at best. The simplest explanation is that "phsiological IR" is just plain-old insulin resistance: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6602127/
> OGTT is useless
It's probably the best cheap test for clinically diagnosing insulin resistance: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23327814/
Fasting BG, fasting insulin, and HbA1C only measure blood sugar control, which severe carbohydrate restriction can sometimes obtain, but without actually reversing the underlying pathology of IR. An OGTT, by contrast, measures your insulin response to a bolus of glucose in real time.
Fat also has the lowest thermic effect, a paltry 2-3%. Besides having the most calories per gram (9 vs 4 for protein or carb), it provides by far the cheapest, easiest calories for your body to digest.
>provides by far the cheapest, easiest calories for your body to digest
I mean metabolically cheap and easy. Your body expends the least energy digesting fat (2-3%, or 2-3 calories worth of energy for every 100 fat calories you consume), and the most digesting protein (>20%). Add to that the fact that fat has more than twice the calories per gram that carbohydrate and protein do, and it's little wonder why so many people fail with keto.
The only thing that I feel comfortable doing with a surety is to cut out sugar as much as possible. Also eat a variety of fruits and vegetables.
Wondering if other feel that it's way too difficult and confusing to get serious about eating healthy.
for an article: https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/guide/myplate-food-groups...
an actual image: https://www.myplate.gov/
Eg, I tried vegan and was utterly miserable. But I learned how to make delicious plant based dishes and as a result of my vegan period. I actually eat much less meat/dairy and have higher plant intake now than before my vegan experiment.
Another is how much shit cardio gets from fitness experts. The moment I stopped doing cardio and resistance only I gained weight, my face got a “haunted” look to it and I got depressed. Added back my 40 minutes of cardio and I feel normal and healthy again. 30 min resistance followed by 40 minutes of cardio. 30 because thats the programme I follow. I dont know why 40 min of cardio. Its just what seems optimal for me after a few years of trial and error.
I never eat breakfast. I eat more during the day if I am forced to eat breakfast. I get heartburn if I dont have an evening snack.
There's been quite a bit of misinformation (eg. 90's food pyramid), but reputable professionals have been pretty close. I'm not sure on the history, but I think there we've semi-recently found that carbs can be less healthy than we initially thought, and the story with fat is pretty complicated (vs. all fat being bad).
I'll put this another way. If you had followed recommendations as far back as the 60's you should be perfectly fine. You would be reducing sugar, and eating lean meats, and plenty of fruits and vegetables. You might even be eating less refined carbs (although that could be a newer discovery).
People are simply off base to claim that we don't know what we're talking about and the recommendations change constantly. I'm sure you can find some shifts in recommendations, but you've always supposed to eat plants, and watch fats and sugar... I think even some of the ancients knew this.
<45% threshold for a low carb diet classification seems off-putting as a research methodology here.
Makes me wonder what I’m commenting on with strong opinions despite being less than well informed
It's also surprising how many on HN seem more willing to accept my half-baked self-taught opinions on tech topics than they are my opinions on health. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Tech attracts a lot of smart, eccentric people with anti-authoritarian, anti-mainstream bents. Bizarre ideas strongly held about health and nutrition emerge naturally among this group.
Makes you wonder what else they’re not really experts about, but that can also be a feature. A guy doesn’t know you can’t just put a supercomputer touchscreen in everyone’s pocket but he also doesn’t know carrots don’t cure cancer.
I've never seen more people hold incredibly strong convictions that are based on factually incorrect things in my life.
It’s not like you’re telling someone they’re an idiot for writing a rest api. If you’re making medical claims, maybe establish some credentials?
Also, the article claims higher blood glucose in the LC group and I didn’t see that in my skim of the paper, nor what I was looking for, which is how the levels compare to healthy or optimal range.
I’m not a fanatic; I tried it and don’t like it, possibly for all the reasons mentioned here, but it has a very impartial feeling to it.
Because quite a lot of us are on low(er) carb diets forever, having reduced our intake of pasta and potato to a 'sometimes food' but boosted our fruit and veg overall because of 'eat lots of colours'
We still eat carb. we eat -> less <- carbs than we used to. Is this not low carb? A lot of the heat in this discussion appears to be from keto people, who are 'no carb' not 'low(er) carb'
It's not a temporary diet shift: in my case, its 5+ years of a significantly different diet model. I still eat toast, from time to time, and I still enjoy carbs from time to time but they no longer represent 40-50% of the lunch and dinner plate.
Carbs include sugars == coke and pepsi, if you cut down on fizzy drinks, are you now 'low carb' in this discussion?
Over 60s are advised to increase protein in the diet anyway.
What do you think fruit and vegetables primarily are, if not carbohydrate? Pasta is actually lower in carbohydrate (as a total % of macronutrient composition) than many fruits. For example, apples, which have virtually no protein or fat, unlike pasta.
And let me guess, "pasta" for you meant lots of cheese, oil, and maybe even some butter? In other words, lots of fat.
We upped the veg part of fruit and veg more than we upped the fruit part. Pulses too. Which of course are also carbohydrate rich, but with more protein.
Pasta indeed meant a lot of cheese and oil. It still does, but far less frequently. The mediterranean diet actually is ok with olive oil and cheese, oils ain't oils (the whole 'its just energy in: energy out thing is gross oversimplification. convert pasta or spuds to cold pasta and spuds, you get resistant starch, it becomes more beneficial for lower gut health)
Mainly now I just eat small portions of food my grandmother would complain didn't come with ration stamps or have enough salt in, but recognize, which is what Michael Pollan says counts: Hit your grandmother with it, and if she doesn't die and says its a carrot, its ok to eat.
I wouldn’t discount how much easier it is to eat heaps of grain based foods, even without sauce or extra seasoning. Last I checked, a cup of cooked rice has about the same amount of carbs at 3-4 cups of frozen blueberries. I can eat 3 cups of plain cooked white rice like it’s nothing, but 3 cups of blueberries takes some work — I know because, during some experimentation with my diet, that was my meal: 1.5 lb 95% lean ground beef, 3 cups blueberries, 3 cups broccoli.
He told me just to eat well-rounded healthy meals, not to be a glutton, and walk for an hour a day.
There's too much splitting the hairs these days.
"Follow the crowd" people say: "I heard that hopping on one leg, eating a egg through the nose by sucking it in, and belching loudly in church is the best way to be healthy. This week. Next week it's going to be eating 45 tiny meals a day, somersault 5 times, click your heels three times and say "There's no place like Alpha Centauri.""
Eat some dinner on the weekends.
~6k steps/day.
~25lb drop in 2mos.
Feel *great*.
When I reach the goal weight, flip to just eating dinner and try to figure out the optimal calorie intake.
Now, I had done a bunch of fasting for years before settling on this approach. It was not sudden.
Moral: listen to experts, but know yourself.
I found that portion control, small meals throughout the day, is optimal in keeping my metabolism up and staying healthy.
Larger meals, carbs or not, cause large influxes in insulin eventually leading to insulin resistance, which I can feel because I'll be tired after eating a normal amount of carbs.
Q:So was the fat intake for the low carb group and which band (% protein) had the elevated insulin resistance?
Since we do know that over eating Protein, causes Protein Poisoning, if intake is more than 35% of your diet.
Wonder if this came up during peer review (and if yes, what the justification was for not mentioning)
Importantly, I don't think many people would say that <45% carbs qualifies as "Low Carb". 20% or 26% carbs is a more typical threshold. For example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK537084/ https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2006/0601/p1942.html