Why do more and more adults get type 1 diabetes?
More and more Swedes get type 1 diabetes, which used to be called juvenile-onset diabetes.
It was previously thought that the increase only applied to children, but now it’s clear that the disease is also increasing greatly in people between 14 and 34 years:
Nobody knows for sure what causes the disease. For some reason, the immune system attacks the insulin-producing cells and kills them.
The increase in type 1 diabetes follows the rise of obesity – three times more people are obese today, than in the 80’s.
Obese people have greatly elevated levels of insulin in their blood, on average four times more (!) than lean people.
The same Western food that stimulate an overproduction of insulin, making susceptible people obese, may affect other people in other ways. Perhaps a hyper-stimulation of insulin-production constitutes a risk for an attack of the insulin-producing cells.
Perhaps the Western high-carb diet is not only behind obesity and type 2 diabetes in ever more people, but also behind an increased risk of type 1 diabetes?
More
One Year on an LCHF Diet with Type 1 Diabetes
This study is often cited--never have seen it refuted yet). THE INSULIN AND THE ZINC CONTENT OF NORMAL AND DIABETIC PANCREAS
D. A. Scott and A. M. Fisher
file:///Users/maryb7/Documents/Winning%20Over%20Diabetes/vitamins/THE%20INSULIN%20AND%20THE%20ZINC%20CONTENT%20OF%20NORMAL%20AND%20DIABETIC%20PANCREAS.webarchive
If the parent have a diet based on carb, this could trigger DNA changed for their future children.
Later in their life, with high carb diet the children end up with type I diabetes.
There appear to be triggers, but in the absence of a modern lifestyle, I suspect the "triggers" will, in the majority of potential sufferers, have no effect.
"Diet, Gut, and Type 1 Diabetes: Role of Wheat-Derived Peptides?"
http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/58/8/1723.full
"The development of autoimmune type 1 diabetes involves complex interactions among several genes and environmental agents. Human patients with type 1 diabetes show an unusually high frequency of wheat gluten-sensitive enteropathy; T-cell response to wheat proteins is increased in some patients, and high concentrations of wheat antibodies in blood have been reported. In both major models of spontaneous type 1 diabetes, the BioBreeding (BB) rat and non-obese diabetic mouse, at least half of the cases are diet-related. In studies of BB rats fed defined semipurified diets, wheat gluten was the most potent diabetes-inducing protein source."
"A type 1 diabetes-related protein from wheat (Triticum aestivum). cDNA clone of a wheat storage globulin, Glb1, linked to islet damage."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&...
"These researchers demonstrated that mice fed a gluten-free diet had a dramatically reduced incidence of Type 1 diabetes. These mice were non-obese diabetic mice, or mice that grow to develop Type 1 diabetes. The gluten-free diet worked to protect the mice against Type 1 diabetes. When the researchers added gluten back into the diets of mice it reversed the protective effect the gluten free diet had provided."
"Microbiome changed by gluten increases incidences of type 1 diabetes"
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131113182423.htm#.UoYQbw...
Celiac disease, which is definitively caused by wheat and related grains, is also increasing in incidence.
I hope that the current artificial categorisation into Type 1 and Type 2 will be improved and changed as there is such a huge overlap in them and the main difference being the acceleration tempo at which the pancreas loses its ability to produce sufficient insulin for the body's needs.
Many experts think that the pollution in the air, foods (toxic man-made stuff) and water trigger inflammation which affects our insulin metabolic homeostasis.
HFLC is a great alternative
Early diagnosis can help
On the near future is the gut microbiome
Rodents and soon people can benifit from fecal transplants or just the bacteria in a pill.
The trend charts for T1D/LADA and T2D, not just high, but rising, and perhaps not just rising, but accelerating, should be causing consensus medicine to consider radical theories as to what the causes are. Guess not. Probably inconsistent with the business model.
Causes are out there, active, and gaining on us ("us" probably excluding those doing grain-free VLCHF).
Something is changing to cause this change, and it's not the humans.
Could it be the food?
The following have all changed radically in the last half century, or didn't even exist back then:
- the gluten-bearing grains, esp. wheat
- pervasive sugars, esp. fructose, esp. free fructose
- high glycemic diet generally
- low fat mania, including low saturated fat mania
- PUFA industrial seed oils pretending to be food
- novel herbicide uptake in the crops
- pesticide uptake in the crops
- crops that ARE pesticides (e.g. Bt GMOs)
- possible GMO and non-GMO mutagenic hazards generally
There are other lurking suspects in the footnotes, but I'll bet the main problems are near the top of the list above.
Given that T2D can be entirely avoided with a low-carb diet, and T1D can be largely controlled with a keto diet (and minimum meds), the obvious thing to do is change aisles at the market: dial down the carbs, then closely monitor the trends. Don't expect to hear this advice from Big Pharma, consensus medicine or your National Diabetes Promotion and Maintenance Association.
One person that was not mentioned was Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride and her GAPS diet. She has worked with young Type 1's who have been recently diagnosed (within a year I believe). The main purpose of the GAPS diet is to heal the gut. Once it is healed the proteins or whatever that have been leaking into the Type 1's blood are gone. Several of her young Type 1's have reversed their diabetes by following her diet. See:
http://diabeticdharma.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_0NvcJZwa8
I wonder if any LCHF'ers have their gut microbiome checked since your beneficial bacteria may starve from too little starch or fibre. After 2 years on a low carb diet I did a stool test which showed a pH of 7.5 which is too high and a deficit in Lactobacteria, Bacteroides, Bifidobacteria. Thankfully no pathogen overgrowth so far. I also developed some joint pain in my fingers during that time. Not sure if that's related.
My takeaway so far is that acellular sugar and starch are bad. They lead to overgrowth of undesirable bacteria too early in the GI tract. The selective carbohydrate elimination approach seems to have a lot of clinical success.
My other takeaway is that you do not want too much of one type of bacteria food in a day. This leads to proliferation of a certain set of bacteria, which can lead to a "collapse" in the bacterial ecosphere--a bubble economy, so to speak. This creates opportunity for undesirable bacteria. Better to have a diverse ecosystem of good bacteria, to fend off better undesirable bacteria from proliferating.
Total meat eaters do just fine. Of course they eat snout to tail and so have lots of proteins such as collagen that constitute "animal fibre" for bacteria. I was heartened to read that casein that makes it to the large intestine is broken down by bacteria and is a high source of butyrate as a byproduct of the bacterial activity. (I enjoy artisan cheese.) so the old perspective of the nutritional dogmatists about plant fibre is based on confirmation bias and not a frank bottom up assessment of what causes problems and what heals them.
There is a lot of science and thinking to be done here.
While it is relatively easy to understand the series of mechanisms leading to type 2 diabetes, understanding the sequence of events leading to development of type 1 diabetes is much more complicated.
In a nutshell, the immune system attacks the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas and destroys them. The question of course is why. The cow’s milk hypothesis is interesting in that regards. Most high-producing North American cows come from a single genitor and share a protein in the milk they produce. It so happens that this protein is nearly identical to a protein on the beta cells of the human pancreas. The hypothesis goes as follows: if by bad luck, a child would get attacked by a virus (enteroviruses have been considered), the immune system would get boosted and overwork. In the gut, encountering a “foreign” milk protein, it would attack it and then go on in the body to find this very protein. It would encounter the beta cells of the pancreas, confuse the body’s normal beta cell protein for an enemy and destroy it. Nothing proven of course, but an interesting hypothesis. My recollection from my personal practice is that every diabetic child in my practice was a heavy milk drinker. Coincidence? I do not know.
The indication that type 1 diabetes is now appearing in adolescents and young adults raises many questions. And opens the door to many hypothesis. For example: wheat is now goatgrass and has much more genes expressing gluten. Does this stimulate the immune system? Maybe. Are there other factors? The modern diet now also promotes “heart-healthy omega-6” which promote severe inflammation. Does this play a role? I do not know. The average very high carb diet stimulates the pancreas constantly. Does this working overtime put the beta cells at risk of becoming more sensitive to an immune system attack, triggered by the very abnormal diet most people eat? Maybe. And the massive change in gut flora brought by both the abnormal diet and a high antibiotic intake may also play a role in the disruption of the immune system functioning. I definitely agree with Murray, this is something to look into.
What is clear is that people eating real food, people who have a high fat, moderate protein, high vegetable intake (see the Wahls diet) have fewer auto-immune conditions and may reverse conditions that are known in mainstream medicine as impossible to cure. Dr Wahls seems to think cereal may play a immunogenic role. I know for a fact that even rice (no gluten) is significantly immunogenic in dogs and cats and though the cat is a true carnivore, the dog is an opportunistic carnivore, much closer to an omnivore.
So until science proves one – or many of the theories trying to explain the increased incidence of type 1 diabetes in adults, I’ll stick to real food.
Some references: Hans K Åkerblom1,* and Mikael Knip2 Putative environmental factors in Type 1 diabetes. Diabetes/Metabolism Reviews. Volume 14, Issue 1, pages 31–68, March 1998
Anette-G. Ziegler, MD; Sandra Schmid, PhD; Doris Huber; Michael Hummel, MD; Ezio Bonifacio, PhD Early Infant Feeding and Risk of Developing Type 1 Diabetes–Associated Autoantibodies FREE JAMA. 2003;290(13):1721-1728. doi:10.1001/jama.290.13.1721.
Hertzel C Gerstein, Cow's Milk Exposure and Type I Diabetes Mellitus: A critical overview of the clinical literature. Diabetes Care January 1994 vol. 17 no. 1 13-19
Lisa, I'm jealous. As a young Type 1, I found that my mother was the most important member of my diabetes team. She made sure that I knew what to do and helped me do it. Unfortunately, the doctor told her to feed me a diet with 40 to 50% carbs, 20% protein and 30 to 40% fat. If she would have know about a LCHF diet, I'm sure I would have been on it. Anyway, good luck.
By the way, the GAPS diet uses a lot of bone broth to help heal the gut. I'd recommend that for you and your son. I've been having bone broth with 4 or 5 meals per week. Usually, I throw my meat and veggies into the broth and warm them up. Many good benefits from it. Any way, good luck.