“I ignored the American Diabetes Association and the dietitians”

March 18 2015 by in Diabetes, Diabetes stories, Success stories

After

Howard decided to ignore the advice on a high-carb diet to treat his type 2 diabetes. Here’s what happened when he did the opposite instead:

The email

In Nov 2013, my blood sugar went out of wack with an HbA1C of 16%. A friend steered me to your site. I ignored the American Diabetes Association and the dietitians with their high carb, low fat, reduced calorie intake diets. I went on a no sugar minimal carb intake (no grains, potatoes, rice, pasta, etc.). In nine months my HbA1C was down to 5.6% with the side effects of lost 55 pounds (25 kg), triglycerides dropped from 197 to 67 (2.2–0.76 mmol/l), HDL rose from 34 to 76 (0.88–1.96 mmol/l) without meds. My doctor is not a full believer so has put me on one 500 mg Metformin a day. No before, only the after.

Congratulations Howard!

LCHF for Beginners

How to Lose Weight

Diabetes – How to Normalize Your Blood Sugar

“Why was I still fat?”

“Hello LCHF – goodbye type 2 diabetes”

How to cure type 2 diabetes

“I finally kept my promise to my mom”

PS

Do you have a success story you want to share on this blog? Send it (photos appreciated) to andreas@dietdoctor.com. Let me know if it’s OK to publish your photo and name or if you’d rather remain anonymous.

31 comments

Top comments

erdoke
March 18 2015 9
There are always clueless dudes popping up...

Read more →
Steve
March 18 2015 7
In reply to "Dude", see:

Dietary carbohydrate restriction as the first approach in diabetes management: critical review and evidence base. Nutrition. 2015 Jan;31(1):1-13. doi: 10.1016/j.nut.2014.06.011. Epub 2014 Jul 16.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25287761

Read more →

All comments

1
BobM
March 18 2015 4
I would get a different doctor. You're perfectly fine (great job by the way -- I wish my weight would come off like that).
2
Dude
March 18 2015 1
Literally no physician anywhere would make those dietary recommendations, nor let you walk out of the office without first warning you about the potential hazards of going on that initial diet. Furthermore, eating well is only one step in controlling T2DM. I'm sorry you've felt the need to lie to people but please stop, as misinformation can actually kill someone.

http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/Diabetes/PreventionTreatment...

Replies: #3, #8, #9, #24
3
Reply to comment #2 by Dude
FrankG
March 18 2015 3
Hey Dude... why don't you actually read the post above before spouting off your hype!

Start by showing where you see that these dietary reccomendations were made by a "physician"

Next show where anyone "felt the need to lie".

---

To Howard I'll say "Good For You!" ...and it certainly seems you made the best choices for your own long-term health :-)
4
Steve
March 18 2015 7
In reply to "Dude", see:

Dietary carbohydrate restriction as the first approach in diabetes management: critical review and evidence base. Nutrition. 2015 Jan;31(1):1-13. doi: 10.1016/j.nut.2014.06.011. Epub 2014 Jul 16.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25287761
5
erdoke
March 18 2015 9
There are always clueless dudes popping up...
6
Anthony
March 18 2015
Great work Howard, very impressive results !
7
Paul the rat
March 19 2015 5
Well done Howard!!. Thank you for sharing your story - you are inspiration for many !!

Dude, maybe 10 years ago I would be polite and debate with you, but today with experience of those few years, I won't be as nice as FrankG, I just say f… of.. Dude !!!
8
Reply to comment #2 by Dude
Jim
March 19 2015 2
Dude... Actually, conventional T2D treatment is a "lie". Dr. Jason Fung literally called it so. And well... he's a physician, isn't he?

Why treat T2D - if you can *heal* it?

@Howard: Well done! Though I'm not sure if low carb and metformin (which decreases gluconeogenesis) go together well. Is there a consensus?
9
Reply to comment #2 by Dude
Rimas V. Janusonis, MD, FAAFP
March 19 2015 1
@Howard, good job (though I think I would look for a different physician, especially if he is unwilling to learn from your example - your physician is not at ALL up to date on his diabetes therapy).

"Literally no physician anywhere would make those dietary recommendations."

@Dude, you are a flipping idiot.

As a practicing physician, and especially in light of the latest research, LCHF should be the FIRST choice of therapy (and certainly not the AHA "Diabetic Diet") -- even the Joslin Center for Diabetes has admitted that the high carbohydrate diet advocated in the past was a mistake. There are no "potential hazards" of LCHF diet, except cure for most metabolic issues.
Dude, may I also suggest you go find different bridge to hide under? (#TROLL)

@Jim: LCHF & metformin are completely compatible; both increase insulin sensitivity, and with metformin decreasing gluconeogenesis, this actually should potentiate the beneficial effects of the LCHF diet.

Reply: #10
10
Reply to comment #9 by Rimas V. Janusonis, MD, FAAFP
Jim
March 19 2015
@Rimas: Good to know, thx. ;-)
11
Marie
March 19 2015 1
I would find a new doctor because there is NO need for you to be on Metformin which has the side effects of depleting nutrients such as B-12. You are no longer a diabetic as long as you remain on the low carb, no sugar diet. Dude is NOT accurate, and most who know anything about medicine also know that doctors receive Little to NO nutritional education. What they receive is an education by the pharmaceutical industry on what drugs to prescribe. They have NO clue as to what anyone should be eating to reverse diabetes. What a dummy! I got off my Metformin and now use Berberine instead. Dr. Jason Fung, if you search for his videos on Youtube, has immensely valuable information. The difference is that he is a doctor in the UK and they aren't so "swayed" by the drug companies. I am currently reading Dr. Fung's series on the Historical Perspective on Obesity. He is my HERO! He has broken free of the "convention" establishment of medicine that wants to keep us sick and coming back for more treatments and meds so we never get well, but they get richer. I have NO trust in doctors after what they have put me though!

Reply: #31
12
Chris the Barbarian
March 19 2015
To be fair, a ketogenic LCHF diet doesn't really cure T2D. Once you have T2D (= pancreas doesn't produce enough insulin), you have it for life.

But if you stay on the LCHF diet, all the symptoms will disappear! Remission is the next best thing to a cure.

Replies: #13, #14, #20
13
Reply to comment #12 by Chris the Barbarian
erdoke
March 19 2015 1
Chris,
I'm not sure there is enough evidence about beta cell burn-out irreversibility. I have not seen a single long term RCT addressing this with diet and lifestyle changes. On the other hand hypotheses and case reports exist that favor the idea of adiposity of the pancreas causing beta cells to stop secreting insulin. When the fat is removed from the pancreas, beta cell function might gradually return in most cases.

Reply: #15
14
Reply to comment #12 by Chris the Barbarian
Zepp
March 19 2015
Thats more about semantics.. as long as one have steatosis in pancreas it cant react, measure and produce properly insulin levels.. for those persons.

But in the other hand.. if one reduce internal organ steatosis and dont eat more carbs that ones metabolism can handle.. then one is cured!

Its like when nut allergics manage there allergy by reducing nuts.. then they is cured.. often is that level s zero nuts.. but they are allergics but cured frome all bad things.. if they only reduce nut to the limit to levels that ther body can handle.

Another senario for diabetics that rely on Insulin injections is the progresive decline of there healt!

If they could quite that medications, they dont need to be blind, or amputees.

"The Two Big Lies of Type 2 Diabetes"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcLoaVNQ3rc

"LCHF to manage Diabetes"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epsSVosmtUc
15
Reply to comment #13 by erdoke
Zepp
March 19 2015 1
If one let the steatosis go to long one can get Cirrosis.. not only in the liver but altso in other internal organs as the pancreas!

Then one got double diabetes, thats not cureble.. one have to take insulin injections.

But for those.. if they persist eat LCHF and still have a part of healty pancreas, they can still be and live a healty life, but the need to reduce carbs more then others!

Diabetics type two didnt have a fully functional pancreas in the first place.. its often a heredity thing.

One can se this in siblings to diabetic parents.
16
Chris the Barbarian
March 19 2015
Erdoke, I may just speak for myself, but I was a borderline T2D, and going LCHF didn't cure me, but it manages my Blood sugar reasonably, without any medication. (I am always between 60 and 80 mg/dl, even after a meal).
If I would eat a whole package of cookies, and wash it down with chocolate milk, my blood sugar would surely skyrocket and stay that way for far too long.

But to be honest, I have no intention of testing this hypothesis ;). So I may just be talking out of my a** :).

Reply: #17
17
Reply to comment #16 by Chris the Barbarian
Rimas V. Janusonis, MD, FAAFP
March 19 2015
Yes, cnce you have a tendency towards insulin resistance, one likely will always have a tendency towards it, so LCHF diet (to one extent or another) is the ideal.

That being said, as per Dr. Fung, it IS possible to reset insulin sensitivity (namely by intermittent fasting, even as easily as alternate day fasting).

Just another arrow in the quiver...
18
BobM
March 19 2015
The problem is that fat was considered "enemy #1" for so long, that the studies they could have been doing were not done. So, they could have put T2 diabetics on a LCHF diet and also determined what happens (to insulin, insulin resistance, etc.) when they did that. They have done some of these:

http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=718265

But not nearly as many as necessary and not for as long as necessary. When high fat diets are compared to mass murder, it's hard to get a high fat diet approved for study.

My opinion is that drugs are never good (they always have side effects), and if you're ostensibly healthy, there's no reason to take a drug. Metformin has side effects.

http://metforminfacts.com/

If you don't need to take it, you shouldn't. If your HBA1C is as low as yours is, there's no need to take drugs. There is a need to be diligent and stay on low carb, but that's independent of taking drugs.
19
Jim
March 19 2015 1
An actually "burnt out" pancreas seems to be uncommon, to say the least. It's really steatosis/inflammation, blocking insulin action (not creation!) right at the source (i.e. *inside* the pancreas). Beta-cells directly inhibit neigboring alpha-cells - but not so in T2D. This leads to overshooting glucagon release - and thus rampant gluconeogenesis.

http://www.thefatemperor.com/blog/2015/1/17/wow-what-a-lecture-on-dia...

The onset of real, absolute insulin deficiency (as in T1D), instead of relative insulin deficiency (as in T2D/insulin resistance), should be easily noticeable: Weight loss instead of weight gain!

How often does this change happen? Hard to tell, if one is taking insulin injections...
20
Reply to comment #12 by Chris the Barbarian
Murray
March 19 2015 1
@CtB, I used to think the same until I reviewed the evidence presented by Dr. Fung. Zepp I think sets it out well. I only add that LCHF or keto-LCHF may not be sufficient to reverse the fatty pancreas and, as per Dr. Fung, one might need to engage in all-out fasting to reverse fatty pancreas and restore the functionality of the pancreas. So there is a qualitative difference between minimizing carbohydrate challenge through LCHF (not requiring much response from the pancreas) and restoring one's carbohydrate tolerance.

Such a restoration, of course, does not mean one can return to the carb levels and intensities that caused the problem in the first place.

"If I would eat a whole package of cookies, and wash it down with chocolate milk, my blood sugar would surely skyrocket and stay that way for far too long."

Plainly those levels exceeded carb tolerance even when the pancreas was healthy.

Reply: #25
21
Brian Wells
March 20 2015
That's great Howard!

My story was nearly identical.
22
Zepp
March 20 2015
Let us spell it out then.. the cause is hyperinsulinemia and one need to get rid of that befor one have any hope of restoring the other conditions, like insulin resistance, fatty liver, fatty pancreas, obesety, high blood sugar levels and so on.

" Banting Lecture 2011
Hyperinsulinemia: Cause or Consequence?

"In this conceptual model, insulin resistance is caused
by hyperinsulinemia and is an appropriate adaptation to the increased need to store fat in adipose tissue without causing hypoglycemia. Thus, insulin resistance is an adaptive response that successfully maintains normal circulating levels of fat and glucose as long as the b-cell is able to maintain sufﬁciently elevated insulin levels (57). Perhaps the time has come to expand our research focus to carefully investigate the environmental changes that have accompanied the epidemic of obesity and diabetes"

http://diabetes.diab...61/1/4.full.pdf

And the condition was there frome the begining.. its a combination of heredity, lifestyle and diet.

"Slow Glucose Removal Rate and Hyperinsulinemia Precede the Development of Type II Diabetes in the Offspring of Diabetic Parents"

http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=704330

There are other conditions too, but they are rare!
23
Galina L.
March 20 2015 2
A registered dietitian from US Franziska Spritzler, RD, CDE , who supports a Low Carbohydrate diet approach to health, just published her first book http://www.amazon.com/Carb-Dietitians-Guide-Health-Beauty/dp/09863429....
Here is her blog http://www.lowcarbdietitian.com/blog.
24
Reply to comment #2 by Dude
Christoph
March 21 2015 1
If you get the right money you will call any truth a "lie"...

Howard, well done! Wish you a nice time 'til your 120th birthday! ;)
25
Reply to comment #20 by Murray
Dr Jason Fung
March 23 2015 2
I completely agree. I see this all the time. LCHF addresses that important question of 'What to Eat' but completely neglects the important question of 'When to Eat'. High insulin is the primary problem. If insulin resistance is keeping insulin high, this will not be addressed by LCHF. This is a time-dependent problem - the longer you have it, the harder it will be to get rid of.

Resistance requires high levels and persistence of those levels. So T2D and high insulin resistance often requires a prolonged period of low insulin levels to 'break' the resistance. This is analogous to a period of low antibiotic usage to break antibiotic resistance. Or a prolonged period of low alcohol to break alcohol tolerance.

So - how to create a prolonged period of low insulin? Very low carb helps, but remember that protein also raises insulin. So does fat, but to a lesser extent. So the most efficient, most effective and surprisingly rather easy answer is, yes, fasting - one of the oldest healing traditions in human history.
26
Alien
March 25 2015
My understanding is that protein has little effect on insulin, that gluconeogenesis is not such a huge factor. I follow LCHF but the HF is the fat from my own body that I burn. I follow low carb 23g and moderate fat about 60g but have about 95g for protein. In ketosis. Works.

Reply: #27
27
Reply to comment #26 by Alien
Zepp
March 26 2015
Well, thats cald starving.. or if you do it intemitent its cald intermitent fasting!

1000 Kcal is not that much to live on.

Count the fat you lose to.

Its about 3500 a pound.

20 Kcal/Kilo is kind a limit.
28
Jim
March 28 2015
@Zepp, the theoretical maximum seems to be more like 69kcal per kg nonessential body fat per day. Which is sort of 1% of the nonessential fat per day.

Ketosis is probably the best way to approach this maximum. So if Alien has 10kg of excess body fat around, he could get around 700 fat calories out of the body's own reserve. This would make a total of around 2000kcal per day. Not exactly "starvation". ;-)

@Alien: 95g of protein per day is certainly not too much. That's close to your body's needs, under ketosis and some training. You would notice, if you *did* eat too much protein: It would kick you straight out of ketosis.
29
Zepp
March 29 2015
Yes theoreticaly!

But starving is outstanding to achive weight loss in a short period.. and ketosis too.

But it seems that our bodyes do have a regulation for this to, so one dont disapear!

In the long turn it lower ones metabolic rate, ones TEE and at last one get chronic dieters syndrome!
30
Lee
June 25 2015
Okay so now I’ve heard it all! take a look at these quacks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cl2IX94GCI telling people that eating white sugar and rice will cure type 2 diabetes! how many people are these guys gonna kill if people listen to this garbage, I’ve been LCHF with fasting for only 2 weeks and feel absolutely amazing and I’m weening myself off Insulin.
31
Reply to comment #11 by Marie
BH
July 14 2016
Slight correction to Marie. Dr. Jason Fung is Canadian, from Toronto, Ontario. Prof. Roy Taylor is the guy from the UK. Both are doing similar work, just in slightly different approaches in the way they implement their diets.

“I ignored the American Diabetes Association and the dietitians”

The email

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