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Comment by whistlerbrk | Hacker News Reader

Bottom line.. we're killing ourselves with overloading our bodies with carbohydrates. Nearly every bit of nutritional advice handed out by the government since the 70s is a pack of lies made in concert with the subsidized corn and wheat industries.

These industries sell you poison, then the pills that slow down how fast the poison kills you and tell you it's okay to keep eating it. Then the prescribing doctor gets kick backs.

Diabetics take note. How does continuing to eat the thing that got you there to begin with make any sense? Complete and utter lifestyle change.

Eat as many eggs as you want. Ignore EVERYTHING a doctor tells you about cholesterol. Eat a ton of vegetables and as much grass fed meat and butter as you can afford.

(note: 'poison' is a bit of hyperbole)

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Your advice is incredibly dangerous and somewhat counterintuitive. Do not ignore everything a doctor tells you. Do your own research and understand that nutrition science is still in its infancy.

>Ignore EVERYTHING a doctor tells you about cholesterol.

Except for triglycerides. Triglycerides are extremely dangerous and strongly correlated to arteriosclerosis. There's evidence that triglycerides are formed in the liver when it's forced to process fructose.[1] They're also implicated in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.[2]

Don't ignore your doctor telling you about bad numbers, but take his/her advice as to what to do about it with a few grains of salt. Dietary cholesterol intake has little to do with the cholesterol in your blood. [3]

>Diabetics take note.

I agree with your basic premise that reducing carbohydrate intake can help with various metabolic diseases, but people with Diabetes need to be EXTREMELY careful. Often they've been on pills and injected insulin for such a long time that their body has adjusted and simply stopping the treatment could actually kill them. These individuals have an extremely dysfunctional carbohydrate metabolism and the transition to a low-carbohydrate metabolism is often accompanied by fatigue often called Keto Flu. [4] This kind of benign fatigue mimics dangerous hyper and hypoglycemic events that can require medical attention.

Diabetes can be treated by a low-carbohydrate diet, but the transition off medication needs to be supervised by a medical professional familiar with the practice.

1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3513615 2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18460922 3. http://www.scribd.com/doc/101760834/Low-Carb-Research 4. http://elowcarbfoodlist.org/the-keto-flu-symptoms-and-relief...

Re. Diabetes, I think in some cases restricting carbs can be fatal as diabetics can suffer from ketoacidosis, where the blood turns acidic due to an uncontrollable amount of ketones present.

Also, if blood sugar drops too low, hypoglycaemia is a very real and potentially fatal threat.

In this case, a keto diet high in fat may not be ideal - an emphasis on low-GI carbs wound be safer. Perhaps it may be possible to ease into a keto diet slowly but the amount of time and monitoring may be a bit much to bare.

To prevent diabetes, keto all the way but it's a little bit tricky if you're already there and have been for some time.

> Diabetes, I think in some cases restricting carbs can be fatal as diabetics can suffer from ketoacidosis, where the blood turns acidic due to an uncontrollable amount of ketones present.

Ketoacidosis is extremely dangerous for diabetics, but it occurs in cases of extreme high blood sugar, not low blood sugar. These ketones can lead to serious kidney damage, or even kidney failure. Your point about hypoglycemia is dead on though.

As a type I diabetic myself, carbs are actually life saving during a low blood sugar episode (and low blood sugars actually occur more often for type I diabetics with tight control). As an aside, I find it perpetually frustrating how keto-fans like the OP conflate type I and type II diabetes as if there is no difference (because the answer to everything is "keto" \s).

If you're referring to me as the OP, I neither mentioned the keto diet nor am a fan of it per se. I did not distinguish between insulin dependent or not, so I apologize for that.

Oh thanks for clarifying that. It's about lack of insulin, not too low blood sugar, in which case the blood sugar levels will be high, because the body has no insulin to use glucose as fuel. This is what causes the build up dangerous levels of ketones. I understand now.

Sorry, I was certainly exaggerating here. I'm a little upset having dealt with these issues in the past in my family.

You sound like you know what you're talking about so I think we can agree that the way cholesterols are 'generally' discussed is misleading.

Also, transitioning off diabetes medicines is indeed tricky and I'll certainly be reading your linked articles - my father is starting a low carb diet and more or less already self regulates his medication for type ii diabetes.

> Nearly every bit of nutritional advice handed out by the government since the 70s is a pack of lies made in concert with the subsidized corn and wheat industries.

One of the more interesting things to come from the Soylent people, their self-experimentation, and the experimentation of their early adopters is a validation of an awful lot of the conventional wisdom regarding diet. When people stray too far in one direction or another from the RDI for a given factor, they often experience perceptible negative effects.

"Carbohydrates" are not the problem, highly processed industrial food, especially refined sugar, is. Eat some "carbohydrates" (rice, pasta, bread that was not made in a factory), but skip on the sugar.

White flour hits the bloodstream quickly, similarly to sugar. The best carbs are complex and fiber-rich, like sweet potatoes or whole fruit.

believe it or not, a slice of toast has a higher glycemic index level than just plain white sugar

Not necessarily, sweet potatoes are OK for people with diabetes to eat but one of the worst things a person with diabetes can eat, other than raw white sugar, is a banana.

Both sides of my skinny family have diabetes, not everyone but most, it's frustrating to see Internet know-it-alls wave their hands and declare they know why everyone is fat.

My family eats in-season foods, lots of seafood, vegetables from gardens they grow, is very active yet diabetes runs in the family on both sides. They eat such variety way more than I do which makes me worry considering my family history.

An aunt who was rail thin and very active died of pancreatic cancer, most of her siblings died from diabetic related illnesses.

What's worse is once diabetes (and old age) takes hold, it makes it hard to lose weight and people scorn with vitriolic sneering they know why so and so has diabetes. Look at reddit subreddit fatlogic to see a sea of sneering know-it-alls to see how common it is now it's like a new sport.

> What's worse is once diabetes (and old age) takes hold, it makes it hard to lose weight and people scorn with vitriolic sneering they know why so and so has diabetes.

I'm really glad you mentioned this. There's a lot more to weight loss then meets the eye. Your body actively works against you if you're not smart about meeting its needs, and knowing what is real hunger and what is a sugar craving takes a higher level of self-awareness then a lot of people think is necessary. Insulin is a hell of a hormone - your consciousness finds any excuse to raise that blood sugar when it gets too low. Makes you question free will sometimes :)

When the established medical practice is to inject people with MORE insulin when their body has produced so much it has become insensitive to it, there's gotta be something wrong. I don't think we've even scratched the surface when it comes to treating metabolic disorders.

I don't think anyone has ever really, seriously believed that white bread was healthy, have they? Or sweet potatoes, just listen to the name of that. Just go back 70 years and you'll find everyone eating plain potatoes and much less sugary cereals than wheat, simply because they were cheaper. Cereals such as Rye and Oat.

Don't blame the doctors. No one ever recommended sweet potatoes over real potatoes. People made that choice against the recommendations of their grand parents and figured 'they would be alright'.

Your entire post is hyperbole.

Yes it was. Do what works for your body. I wrote that a bit out of frustration dealing with doctors recently. But frankly minus the hyperbole, nutritional advice from doctors ain't great.

Grass fed or not, regular red meat consumption isn't good for us.

There is a good body of evidence that that people from Europe do well on the Mediterranean diet. That diet is mostly plant based but with oily fish and occasional eggs and dairy.

Where's your evidence that grass-fed beef isn't good for us?

If you're saying eating red meat 7 times a week is bad, that's obvious, but I've seen no studies that say that grass-fed beef 1-2 days a week would be bad for you.

Nothing is obvious when it comes to nutrition education.

I had my doc try to prescribe me statins at 27 and I weighed close to 150lbs at 5'11" at the time. This was because my cholesterol was high.

The irony is that we now (finally!) know that cholesterol is actually super important for us, so important that body manufactures it itself and there is no correlation between cholesterol-rich food and the actual cholesterol level in blood. Body uses it to patch veins when cracks or another damage appears there. So take statins, and you might end up with internal bleeding instead...

It seems the main epidemic is long-term inflammation, causing many civilization illnesses. Sugar is one of the most inflammatory foods as well, as most simple carbohydrates.

Wow, this has to be one of the most misleading posts I've ever seen on HN.

Your body uses to cholesterol to "patch" the "cracks" in your blood vessels? Therefore taking statins might lead to "internal bleeding"?

None of this is even remotely true.

Cholesterol levels are only somewhat correlated to diet. You can have a normal weight, eat right and exercise and still have a high enough cholesterol number to increase your risk of heart disease.

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