Came here to ensure that was discussed. It's really kind of a shame that there's as much confusion about the types of diabetes as there is. I've taken to referring to them, in an EXCEEDINGLY reductive manner, as "autoimmune diabetes" and "cheeseburger diabetes."
My brother has autoimmune diabetes (aka Type 1). We give to and volunteer with the JDRF as a result, because its mission is laser focussed on type 1 related research. I do not give to or support the ADA, because their efforts are really diffuse and seem to focus more on the cheeseburger type.
You could also just say that one type of diabetes is about people who love cheeseburgers by nature, and the other one about people whose genes are broken in a different way (also by nature). Now, if you want to discuss which one is more important: maybe the one which occurs more commonly and is easier to cure?
Just to dispel a common misconception, the cause of type 1 diabetes remains unknown. There is no conclusive proof that the condition is genetic.
AFAIK there are certain correlations with the condition and the presence of certain gene combinations, and hypotheses abound that it is indeed a genetic condition, but they are still just hypotheses - research is ongoing.
Yeah. If it doesn't explicitly state a type, 99% of the time it's about Type 2. As a Type 1 Diabetic, it's really frustrating that these unrelated diseases have the same name. I've been asked more than once if I ate a lot of candy as a kid.
Oh, completely ignoring the fact that most people who get Type-2 diabetes are genetically predisposed to it and it can also be caused by things like repeated bouts of pancreatitis and EPI.
But no, let's shame everyone who is fat for being overindulgent.
Maybe having diabetes wouldn't be stigmatized so much if so many Type-1s didn't participate in it as well.
The beautiful thing about figuring out a treatment is that it'll help you if you're Type-2 diabetic and should ease your suffering from the disease regardless of your fitness level.
I didn't say they didn't. The OP said "most" people who get type 2 aren't fat. I merely asked for any evidence.
Edit: OP didn't actually say that.
But:
>Just look at family and ethnic correlation.
"People of different racial and ethnic groups are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. African Americans, Mexican Americans, American Indians, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans have a higher risk for these deadly diseases. This is partly because these populations are more likely to be overweight, have high blood pressure and have type 2 diabetes. - See more at: http://www.diabetes.org/are-you-at-risk/lower-your-risk/nonm...
I'd say "family" is much the same, since eating habits are learned at home.
I realize not everyone with Type-2 can help it. I also realize there are many overweight people who can.
>Being overweight is tied to many diseases, and costs me a lot of money in health care costs. I have a say in this.
If you have a say in this you might want to look at effective ways to push your message.
We know from lots of research that merely yelling "GO FOR A JOG FATTY" does nothing to help fat people lose weight, and probably makes things harder for them.
>We know from lots of research that merely yelling "GO FOR A JOG FATTY" does nothing to help fat people lose weight
Sources? That'd be some weird research.
Regardless, it isn't my job to "fix" overweight people. They are welcome to their indulgences. I just do want to pay for the ill effects of bad habits. I have a feeling if they were on the hook for related costs, we'd have a different looking society.
Why not go to the source then and stop taxpayer subsidy of sugary, addicting foods?
It's like we live in a world where all of the inner aisles of the grocery store are stuffed with $3 liters of Vodka and the outer aisles $20 20oz bottles of water and then blame and ridicule people for boozing...
> Oh, completely ignoring the fact that most people who get Type-2 diabetes are genetically predisposed to it and it can also be caused by things like repeated bouts of pancreatitis and EPI.
Considering MonadQueen said "* 60%* of type-2 diabetics" and "Obese Type-2s" (emphasis mine) I wonder where you got the idea that she as "completely ignoring" anything.
> But no, let's shame everyone who is fat for being overindulgent.
When and why did telling fat people that being fat hurts their health become "shaming"? Why does telling someone that always jump to a presumption of moral judgment?
Accounts for about 10 extra pounds on a normal-sized human. Didn't stop me from losing 35 pounds in four months when I was 100 pounds overweight.
> PCOS
Same as above, assuming PCOS is a cause and not an effect. There seems to be some debate on that in the Ob-Gyn community.
> Cushing's syndrome
Cushing's is fairly rare, and is usually curable.
> complications of depression
Yes, depression is a big psychological cause of overeating. Been there. Disentangling the depression from the food is part of the therapy, though. Particularly since it becomes a self-reinforcing cycle where depression begets comfort eating which begets more depression.
> The accusation was that these cases are self-inflicted. It's WAY more complicated than that.
Always self-inflicted? No. More complicated? Yes.
However, except in rare circumstances every underlying condition is treatable or curable. There are synthetic hormones for hypothyroidism. There are cortisol blockers, surgeries, and other treatments for Cushing's. PCOS is incurable but treatable, ironically considering the subject by weight loss. Depression is treatable, though it can be a struggle.
Obesity may not be self-inflicted in all cases, but it is almost always resolvable. I'm resolving it, despite having two of the things you listed. You can't just throw your hands up and complain about "conditions" as an excuse to not do anything about the problem. Hell, everything you listed has potentially serious problems if untreated even if it doesn't cause weight gain.
I hear this repeated often, but I don't think type 2 diabetes is due to being fat alone, nor can you get rid of diabetes by losing weight. There are morbidly obese people who do not develop type 2 during their lifetime, and then there are severely underweight people (like my dad, who is literally skin and bones, and I mean concentration camp prisoner of war underweight where you see every rib from the back) who still somehow developed type 2 diabetes. So, there has to be a strong generic component to type 2 diabetes.
Also, no one gets cured of diabetes type 2, you just control your blood glucose levels better and in effect alleviate the symptoms of diabetes, but you still have diabetes. If you think you don't, do a glucose tolerance test (i.e. drink a sweet drink and measure your blood glucose 1 hr later) and you will find that your glucose tolerance is still compromised no matter how well you managed to control your glucose levels by avoiding eating high glycemic food for life.
> there are severely underweight people (like my dad, who is literally skin and bones, and I mean concentration camp prisoner of war underweight where you see every rib from the back) who still somehow developed type 2 diabetes. So, there has to be a strong generic component to type 2 diabetes.
That may not have been T2DM. One of the things research has revealed over the past 30 or so years is that there are far more manifestations of diabetes than the old two-mode model though. Incidentally, that is one reason the types were renamed "Type 1" and "Type 2", to acknowledge that there are likely more types. There is a particular subtype known as Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults (LADA), which some researchers have named "Type 1.5" because it shows signs of both T1DM and T2DM. It initially presents as T2DM, though, so people are often misdiagnosed at first. This manifestation has only been known for about 20 years, though, so it isn't surprising.
> Also, no one gets cured of diabetes type 2, you just control your blood glucose levels better and in effect alleviate the symptoms of diabetes, but you still have diabetes. If you think you don't, do a glucose tolerance test (i.e. drink a sweet drink and measure your blood glucose 1 hr later) and you will find that your glucose tolerance is still compromised no matter how well you managed to control your glucose levels by avoiding eating high glycemic food for life.
This is flat-out contradicted by Dr. Taylor's research. He is demonstrating that patients on a hypocaloric diet, either from bariatric surgery or just a medically-supervised diet, can (and in many cases do) regain normal glucose control after about 10% loss of body weight. I personally went from borderline diabetic to normal glucose control (I can pass an OGTT) after a four-month, 35lb weight loss. I changed nothing about my diet except amount of consumption.
A team from Newcastle University, UK, has shown that Type 2 diabetes is caused by fat accumulating in the pancreas -- and that losing less than one gram of that fat through weight loss reverses the diabetes. "So if you ask how much weight you need to lose to make your diabetes go away, the answer is one gram! But that gram needs to be fat from the pancreas. At present the only way we have to achieve this is by calorie restriction by any means -- whether by diet or an operation."
It's actually a fairly complicated and can be quite difficult for people to break out of, even people who desperately want to change. When people follow the standard guidelines (which are beginning, slowly, to change) to avoid fat and reduce calories, they end up feeling hungry all the time, and have to white knuckle their way through. This is not a state that people can maintain long-term.
Starvation studies from the University of Minnesota have been described this way: "During the semi-starvation phase the changes were dramatic. Beyond the gaunt appearance of the men, there were significant decreases in their strength and stamina, body temperature, heart rate and sex drive. The psychological effects were significant as well. Hunger made the men obsessed with food. They would dream and fantasize about food, read and talk about food and savor the two meals a day they were given. They reported fatigue, irritability, depression and apathy. Interestingly, the men also reported decreases in mental ability, although mental testing of the men did not support this belief."
In addition, there is evidence that the body begins to reduce energy output in response to reduced energy input, thus making the advice every overweight person hears from nearly every source to "eat less and move more" a load of nonsense. That can work short-term, but the combination of reduced energy output and constant hunger make that recipe very ineffective long-term.
There is even more to complicate the story (e.g. it is common for overweight people to feel hungry even with massive amounts of energy stored in fat due to some of the effects of what's now being called variously, metabolic syndrome, syndrome X and diabesity).
In short, when people become overweight, which is a progressive condition of insulin resistance that grows slowly over time, or in other words and emergent hormonal dysfunction because of diet, they cannot "eat less and move more." To that extent it is not self-inflicted especially since millions of Americans are doing exactly that as told by their doctors and it is having no effect.
The only way to really change body composition long-term, is to change diet in a way that is at odds with what doctors learned twenty years ago in the two days they studied nutrition in medical school, which, as it turns out, is wrong.
> Starvation studies from the University of Minnesota have been described this way: "During the semi-starvation phase the changes were dramatic. Beyond the gaunt appearance of the men, there were significant decreases in their strength and stamina, body temperature, heart rate and sex drive. The psychological effects were significant as well. Hunger made the men obsessed with food. They would dream and fantasize about food, read and talk about food and savor the two meals a day they were given. They reported fatigue, irritability, depression and apathy. Interestingly, the men also reported decreases in mental ability, although mental testing of the men did not support this belief."
Those people were actually starving. Their fat stores had dropped to 4% or less, which is very dangerous when not on a strictly controlled and supervised diet. People with normal or above normal stores of body fat can be hungry and malnourished, but will not be starving (in the medical sense of the word, which is what the Minnesota experiment was testing).
> In addition, there is evidence that the body begins to reduce energy output in response to reduced energy input, thus making the advice every overweight person hears from nearly every source to "eat less and move more" a load of nonsense. That can work short-term, but the combination of reduced energy output and constant hunger make that recipe very ineffective long-term.
I would like to see this in reputable studies, because everything I have read on the subject rejects the hypothesis that there is a physiological change in energy usage as a result of lowered intake. In fact, it a) doesn't make any sense since fat is supposed to be a store of energy for lean times and b) if the body could function at its current level on less energy, it would.
> I would like to see this in reputable studies, because everything I have read on the subject rejects the hypothesis that there is a physiological change in energy usage as a result of lowered intake. In fact, it a) doesn't make any sense since fat is supposed to be a store of energy for lean times and b) if the body could function at its current level on less energy, it would.
This is still talking about near starvation mode. People who stop menstruating and who grow lanugo are doing stuff that reduces their need for energy.
(I'm not sure it's accurate even for this extreme state though. Re-feeding is risky, but I don't know if "starvation mode" is part of the cause of that risk.)
On the starvation study it's merely one example that highlights how calorie restriction affects people. Yes, it's an extreme version, but it is different only in degree from any other calorie restriction, and when people try to reduce by X calories, it's probably a linear effect; more restriction, more of these effects. Oddly though, fasting tends not to have these effects, it's only in sustained calorie restriction, so fasting in various forms is one of the tools people can use to lose weight.
As for the lowered energy output Jason Fung wrote (pg. 53 of the Obesity Code, "One major problem is that the basal metabolic rate does not stay stable. Decreased caloric intake can decrease basal metabolic rate by up to 40 percent. We shall see that increased caloric intake can increase it by 50%."
> On the starvation study it's merely one example that highlights how calorie restriction affects people. Yes, it's an extreme version, but it is different only in degree from any other calorie restriction, and when people try to reduce by X calories, it's probably a linear effect; more restriction, more of these effects. Oddly though, fasting tends not to have these effects, it's only in sustained calorie restriction, so fasting in various forms is one of the tools people can use to lose weight.
No dude, you are ignoring the fact that these people did not have ample fat stores. It is completely unreasonable to expect that obese people would behave the same while restricting calories than people who are already borderline starving (4% BF). These aren't effects of caloric intake restriction, they are effects of caloric restriction in general, which is a state obese people are not, have not been in for years and will not be in for years.
> One major problem is that the basal metabolic rate does not stay stable. Decreased caloric intake can decrease basal metabolic rate by up to 40 percent
This is basically unrelated to your statements about insulin though, so don't conflate the two. This statement does not support the idea that obese people cannot harvest energy from their fat stores, it supports the idea that you get less energy output from less energy input which is almost tautologically true.
> "No dude, you are ignoring the fact that these people did not have ample fat stores."
I don't think I am ignoring it. You seem to be asserting that their issues with calorie restriction were lack of body fat. There is no evidence for that I am aware of. A simple rejoinder based on anyone's experience, do fat people get hungry? If they do, why? They have all that energy available. But I don't need to rely on arguments like that, since in the vast corpus of research on this at this point, it's pretty well established that calorie restriction by itself (even with exercise) does not work long-term. The failure rate is astronomical and it is in part due to what plain old calorie restriction as we've been told to do it does to metabolic energy and also due to the psychology of hunger. Also, and this is very important, a full fast does not have these effects according to the evidence. People can totally abstain from food for very long periods of time (depending on body fat), with very little hunger. It is smaller scale calorie reductions, without breaks (like the breaks intermittent fasting provides) and without much dietary fat since fat is highly satiating, that cause these reactions to calorie restriction.
> "This is basically unrelated to your statements about insulin though, so don't conflate the two."
Again, I'm not. I was responding to the request for a source on the idea of energy output reduction in response to lower calories. I'm not claiming there is a link between energy output reduction and insulin.
Fat people can get energy from fat stores, just not in the way we are typically told. If it was impossible to get energy from fat no one would ever lose weight, which is trivially and obviously not true.
> You seem to be asserting that their issues with calorie restriction were lack of body fat.
No I'm asserting that what happens to people's bodies at 4% body fat when in severe caloric restriction is very different than what happens to people's bodies at 40% body fat with severe caloric restriction, and so we can't apply the metabolic damage/starvation models to fat people. Fat people just need to eat less, and the issue basically comes down to compliance. How do we get people to stay on a healthy diet long term?
> do fat people get hungry? If they do, why?
Because, as even you have shown, hunger is not a reflection of your bodies actual caloric needs, it's hugely a reflection of blood sugar levels, among other htings. Given enough time (in the order of magnitude of minutes to hours) in an obese but otherwise healthy person fats will be broken down and blood glucose will increase and hunger will decrease. It's getting through that period that is a mental compliance issue, but not otherwise physiologically challenging.
> The failure rate is astronomical
Again, this is a compliance issue. People absolutely lose weight on caloric restriction, and starvation issues like low metabolism do not become an issue until you are very low body fat. You simply do not see obese people going into so-called "starvation mode." In fact there are a few cases, though admittedly not many, of obese people that abstain entirely from eating for months at a time without long term "metabolic damage."
> People can totally abstain from food for very long periods of time (depending on body fat), with very little hunger.
I think we basically agree, then, that it's mostly a compliance issue and not an issue of caloric restriction working or not, and also that hunger is not a reflection of the body's actual metabolic state (especially in obese people).
> Fat people can get energy from fat stores, just not in the way we are typically told.
Fat people get energy from fat stores in the same way skinny people do. Very skinny people on severe caloric restriction are not a good model for the general population.
> "Fat people just need to eat less, and the issue basically comes down to compliance.:
On oversimplification, but the crux of the issue. The astronomical failure rate is because of compliance. The prescription you seem to be suggest is "comply more! comply better!" but the biology of this is exactly why it fails so often. The type of food you eat is what sets you up for sustainable long-term success or its opposite. What you wave away with a wash of the hand--compliance--is the reason people fail and more willpower is not the issue and not a solution. It's a dysfunction of the hormones brought on by high insulin resistance brought on by excessive sugar and flour, which becomes a hunger trap, unless you add fat to your diet, which is exactly what people are told not to do. So, I do think hunger tends to differ when you suffer from fatty liver disease and insulin resistance. People can endure calorie restriction and lose weight for a while doing low-fat but they do not stay on it. Saying that people should just comply more is like telling someone with sleep apnea to sleep better. They need a different intervention.
edit--A failure rate of 80-90% is not an anomaly, it's a colossal failure. It's not something to be overcome, it's an indication of wrongness. By asking for more compliance you are asking people to fight their biology and they will lose this fight. Instead the intervention should be to employ their biology as their ally, and lose weight more easily and without much hunger and that's possible. It's just not helpful to tell people to eat less. We've been telling them that for forty years.
(Side note. The 4% bodyfat in the UofM study you mention is an assumption of yours, and not the starting weight of the people in the study. I think you're unfairly dismissing the study and presenting it as if it's a binary condition between starving/not starving, and that may be a thing, but it's not certain that it is. I'm merely cautiously using it as evidence that calorie restriction is difficult (actually more than difficult) to maintain, which anyway we all know from experience. It would be good to explore other studies on the topic). Intermittent fasting, for example, is vastly easier than consistent calorie restriction, and you're consuming the same number of calories as calorie restriction (if you design it right). That's not a matter of willpower, that's a different intervention).
Unfortunately I don't have time to continue the conversation, but take the time to explore some of the links I posted (there are tons more)--they go into way, way more detail and make the argument better than I have.
I don't really disagree with a lot of what you are saying. Note that you've backed down from low calorie diets cause metabolic damage to low calorie diets are mentally difficult to sustain which I agree with.
You've offered introducing fats as a way to stave off hunger (aka increasing satiety) but introducing fats are far from the only way to increase satiety. Introducing fiber, for instance, is another way.
You also seem to be in favor of a ketogenic diet. Let me say that I totally believe that a keto diet is a great way to eat healthily and boost compliance for some people. Others have a really hard time tolerating large amounts of fat, and so we still need to find alternative solutions for them.
I agree that simply telling people to have more willpower is not the solution, but I think it's important to recognize that the diet is not causing physiological damage to the vast majority of people (it's not the insulin spike in and of itself that causes damage, it's what happens after that, ie: more food intake). So maybe we can attack this from the pure will power front and leave the diet alone (or maybe not, but let's be deliberate about what we are doing).
Regardless, the UofM study is heavily discredited and I still maintain that it is not relevant to what you are arguing either way: the study is designed to study extreme starvation and famine. Brink of death type stuff. Obese people who feel hungry are not that. We know this because if you don't feed them they don't die.
FWIW I actually have read/watched all the links you've posted (I had before this conversation as they are all relatively well known), and I still hold by all my points.
> When people follow the standard guidelines (which are beginning, slowly, to change) to avoid fat and reduce calories they end up feeling hungry all the time, and have to white knuckle their way through. This is not a state that people can maintain long-term.
I don't think there is anyone recommending reducing fats and calories as the only thing. Both of those are positive things to do to your diet, but if taken while ignoring the rest of the actual "standard guidelines" (which include eating more fiber and fruits and veggies), then yes, you are basically simply reducing calories (which is good) and increasing glycemic index (which is bad, for some).
> In short, when people become overweight, which is a progressive condition of insulin resistance that grows slowly over time, or in other words and emergent hormonal dysfunction because of diet, they cannot "eat less and move more."
I don't believe this is true but would be interested in seeing a study.
> To that extent it is not self-inflicted especially since millions of Americans are doing exactly that as told by their doctors and it is having no effect...The only way to really change body composition long-term, is to change diet in a way that is at odds with what doctors learned twenty years ago in the two days they studied nutrition in medical school, which, as it turns out, is wrong.
People have success with every kind of diet program, and it's a bit of a strawman to argue that the medical profession is advocating a diet that is only low in fat, but still high in sugar (which is what produces the results you're talking about). In fact, millions of Americans are following only a small portion of their doctors' advice (ie: lowering fats) which has the effect of lowering satiety, increasing overall glycemic index of their consumption (while ignoring the advice that they should eat more fiber and less sugar). There is no doctor out there recommending that as long as you eliminate bacon you can drink all the gatorade you want.
It's not a straw-man. Look at the adoption of the low fat/high carb diet by medical professionals in america. Now compare that to the prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
No offense but you literally just ignored everything I wrote and restated the original argument, which I see all the time, which is "medical professionals don't understand diet and don't recommend the right thing," which is, frankly, bullshit.
Let me repeat: There are zero (0) medical professionals advocating for a high sugar diet. The "high carb" part of the recommended diet is meant to come from vegetables and whole grains (which contain a fair amount of fiber).
There isn't any evidence I'm aware of showing people eating a calorically balanced, low fat, high carb, low sugar, moderate fiber, micronutritionally balanced diet and having diabetes. I understand that's more complex that saying "low fat/high carb" but again, there aren't doctors out there recommending cutting out fats and subsisting on sugar. So yes, it's a complete and total straw man, but when you only consider large macronutrient groups and ignore the rest of nutrition it's easy to see why that seems ignorable.
> "there aren't doctors out there recommending cutting out fats and subsisting on sugar"
That's true as far as it goes, but the internal fight inside the medical research community was whether it was fat or sugar that was the culprit in a host of physical problems. Fat won in a slam dunk, even though it turns out to be wrong. Doctors are largely not researchers, and they are taught what was the conventional wisdom. There is no suggestion of malice, just bad (or at least overturned, but it was actually bad in this case) research that has been promulgated in the medical community. A lot of doctors think fat is bad and pay less attention to sugar.
> That's true as far as it goes, but the internal fight inside the medical research community was whether it was fat or sugar that was the culprit in a host of physical problems. Fat won in a slam dunk, even though it turns out to be wrong.
The idea that you can isolate it down to fat vs. carbs is "not even wrong." It doesn't ask the right questions, and ignores many other confounding factors. I don't really want to keep restating this point.
There are healthy high fat diets. There are healthy low fat diets.
If you want to talk about bullshit, how about ignoring evidence and resorting to ad-hominum attacks?
I was not ignoring your argument but rather pointing out that there is data showing a correlation between doctors advocating low fat/high carb and obesity in America.
Now, what is a straw-man is to put forth a theoretical/never seen in reality diet and claim that no one has ever gotten fat eating it. Sorry, but an extrapolation from a population of zero to 350 million is a bit much for me.
I think the one point we do agree on is that this is a complex issue. So, you can blame fat people for not listening to their doctors, doctors for not checking the research or food companies for bastardizing what doctors actually recommended to sell low fat/high sugar food and label it "healthy." But it's quite obvious that the advice doctors have been giving for the past few decades has not had the intended effect.
Sorry but I made zero ad-hominem attacks in my post.
> data showing a correlation between doctors advocating low fat/high carb and obesity in America
No there isn't because no doctor advocates that without the other nuances I provided in my post. I still feel like you are ignoring my posts, because my last post was literally entirely devoted to addressing this nuance. The simple fact is that there is not a large group of people eating according to the medical communities recommendations who are obese. The rise of obesity in America is people largely ignoring medical recommendations. Yes, low fat was in fad for a while, but there is plenty of evidence that a low fat diet can be healthy, and that a high fat diet can be healthy, so, as I've repeatedly said, it depends.
> I think the one point we do agree on is that this is a complex issue.
100%
> But it's quite obvious that the advice doctors have been giving for the past few decades has not had the intended effect.
When you radically simplify their advice, sure. When you actually follow what is recommended, no not really.
We banned your many accounts from HN because of what I can only call obsessive obesity trolling. That's an abuse of this site and one you've done a lot of damage with.
If you want to be unbanned you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com and promise not to do this any more.
actually this worked for me, I had high blood sugar and high blood pressure and I solved both with low carbs diet and eating healthy. It's like the article say, eating healthy will help no matter what but yeah it's hard to stop eating junk.
I'd warn people not to pay too much attention to the advice that the american diabetes association provides. The targets it recommends are well known to cause damage to the body (you should be avoiding anything above a BG of 140 at any time) and it's dietary recommendations are contrary to the advice I've ever received from anyone that has had good results maintaining diabetes. Just to pick up on the two points you mention, I would never consume fruit unless accompanied by exercise and a low-carb diet is recommended by any consultant or nutrionist that I've ever spoken to.
You are giving us anecdotal advice and advice of an unknown authority that can be questioned.
American diabetes association provides its advice given the vast amount of evidence that high-carb diets work for lowering or eliminating the symptoms of diabetes.
Pretty easy to sift through all that beautiful evidence. The fear of sugar is unfounded. But I guess people would rather live in fear than just eat healthy.
of course, there's evidence that low-carb also works, ketogenic too, and paleo even, and all fad diets alike. that's because they are in many ways healthier than what the diabetes patients had before but that doesn't mean they are objectively superior to diets with all various foods without no restriction.
these diets, unfortunately, very often cause orthorexic tendencies, where people become obsessed with the substances they are consuming, they demonize foods (hamburgers, french fries, sugar, etc.), they think there's something natural, organic, healthy or unhealthy, despite the "fact" all foods are healthy, and only diets can be unhealthy.
Michael Mosley's documentary, ”Eat, Fast and Live Longer” (about the health benefits of calorie restriction) is also interesting in the context of this article:
the plank (an exercise to help lose excess fat round the stomach)
This is incorrect. The plank is an excellent exercise for building core strength (much better than situps), but it does not help lose excess fat around the stomach more or less so than any other exercise does.
Also the weirdly specific forearm muscles to soak up excess energy before it gets turned into fat. I'm no doctor, but even I know that the thigh muscles are much, much bigger than the forearms in nearly everyone.
the plank (an exercise to help lose excess fat round the stomach)
Cringe. Hard to take the writer seriously after this statement. The rest of the article seemed fine so I googled around to see if there was some stunning new research showing the plank (or any specific movement) spot-reducing fat. Nope.
I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes about a year and a half ago, at the time I had an HBA1C of 8.2 (6.0 is the top end of normal). The first thing I did when I got home was google "cure for diabetes", the newcastle diet is what came up. After 6 months of the usual medication (metformin etc.) I decided to give it a go. You can see my log, which includes medication, supplements, exercise, total calories per day and BG readings 5 times a day[1]. You can see that it took me just 12 days to come off the medication and that in the following 2 months I was able to maintain excellent BG control.
A year later I'm still off the medication, my last HBA1C was 5.7 which is considered normal. Maintaining that does require daily exercise (and I do mean _every_ day) and good diet management but I've found it a fairly easy regime to follow (half an hour of 80% intensity is enough most days).
My quality of life is now excellent (it was terrible on the medication) and I'm able to eat a little more freely. The only big differences regarding diet are that I now only drink a couple of times a month and I don't go near anything with wheat flour in it.
EDIT: google docs doesn't seem to allow me to share the docs publicly (I can only share with specific email addresses or within my domain) so I've made them available as csv and excel files.
"Behind the mania is a widely used, inexpensive generic pill for Type 2 diabetes called metformin. Scientists are planning a clinical trial to see if the drug can delay or prevent some of the most devastating diseases of advanced age, from heart ailments to cognitive decline to cancer. To test the pill, gerontologists at 14 aging centers around the U.S. will follow 3,000 seniors for six years. Half the seniors involved would get the drug, while the others would receive a placebo."
There's no doubt about it that metformin does lower your BG. Depending on the person though the side-effects can be pretty nasty. Personally I had a lot of stomach problems (which I've never had before or since) and I found that I was unable to exercise because I would have a hypo after just 10 minutes. I also had trouble staying awake, I'd often be slumped in my chair and would need to take a 20min siesta after lunch. I'm a fit 36 year old who's used to exercising a lot and having good energy levels so I found this situation difficult to get used to.
Given that Type 2 diabetes is generally believed to be caused by diet, it makes sense that diet could fix it as well.
My personal hypothesis is that some people have intestinal bacteria that are really, really good at breaking down sugar very quickly. So when you eat high GI foods, your gut turns them into glucose very quickly releases them into your blood, and your body has to deal accordingly. IMO that would help explain why people who are very obese get type 2 with some regularity, but how otherwise healthy adults who are simply moderately overweight can also develop it.
A corollary to this hypothesis is that the ability of your (personal) intestinal bacteria to break down different types of foods at different rates means that there is no such thing as a "universal diet". Some people will be healthiest eating large amounts of red meat, some will be healthiest on a high-carb diet, while others may need something more fiber-rich (assuming appropriate calorie control, of course). This appears to be borne out anecdotally, with diet plans having different efficacy on different people.
Intestinal flora is something the medical community is just now beginning to research and understand. There's something unique that happens in our intestines, and while there's obviously a genetic component to it, the genes your intestinal flora carry may be just as important. We don't understand the system or the feedback loops (maybe eating too much sugar causes these bacteria to over-populate the intestines in some people and crowd out other bacteria?) The point is, there's a whole lot we don't know about how our bodies process the nutrients we take in. There are a lot of studies underway, but holistic medicine is pretty obviously a real thing -- we just don't understand the science behind it yet.
> There are a lot of studies underway, but holistic medicine is pretty obviously a real thing -- we just don't understand the science behind it yet.
"[W]e just don't understand the science behind it yet" because there is none. Holistic medicine is quackery that has failed scientific tests if efficacy time and time again.
I don't mean that the current "practice" of holistic medicine is quackery -- but that the principles behind it (what you eat can cause/treat certain diseases), when proven with proper scientific methodology, aren't entirely crazy.
> My personal hypothesis is that some people have intestinal bacteria that are really, really good at breaking down sugar very quickly. So when you eat high GI foods, your gut turns them into glucose very quickly releases them into your blood
Are there such bacteria? I only know about intestinal bacteria breaking down indigestable carbohydrate (also called soluble "fiber") into short-chain fatty acids. Other carbs except fructose (handled by liver) should be broken down into glucose via digestive enzymes prior to colon throughout the digestive tract starting in your mouth.
> IMO that would help explain why people who are very obese get type 2 with some regularity, but how otherwise healthy adults who are simply moderately overweight can also develop it.
Well many obese also never develop T2DM either. The non-fat people who become T2 might have been on a high-carb-low-fat regimen rather than a high-carb-high-fat regimen.
> A corollary to this hypothesis is that the ability of your (personal) intestinal bacteria to break down different types of foods at different rates means that there is no such thing as a "universal diet". Some people will be healthiest eating large amounts of red meat, some will be healthiest on a high-carb diet, while others may need something more fiber-rich (assuming appropriate calorie control, of course).
This seems to assume an unduly large role for intestinal bacteria in digestion. Stomach acid and digestive enzymes do the bulk of the work prior, and colon bacteria get leftovers that our bodies don't handle "natively" AFAIK. Exception is some cause or other flushing stuff down the tract prematurely prior to absorption, perhaps something dangerous that stomach acid didn't neutralize, enzyme problems, overstuffing or what not..
> Intestinal flora is something the medical community is just now beginning to research and understand. There's something unique that happens in our intestines
I agree but people shouldn't forget bacteria only get the leftovers and if bacteria are found to be the cause of weight or health issues, maybe one should first evaluate whether enzymes are broken or too much (improperly preprocessed) cellulose is being consumed?
> Exception is some cause or other flushing stuff down the tract prematurely prior to absorption, perhaps something dangerous that stomach acid didn't neutralize, enzyme problems, overstuffing or what not..
I've read some advice about not drinking water with meals for this reason. The idea is that it will dilute your stomach acid making it more basic and less effective.
But the word "dominates" should really be emphasized there because there is growing evidence that gut microbiota can help with breaking down lactose even when you lack the ability to produce lactase.
It isn't that nuanced; lactose intolerance is uncomfortable because there are microorganisms breaking down the lactose and releasing gas (and what not). Those studies are looking at whether bacteria that do not produce as much gas can colonize our digestive systems.
If the lactose passed through intact, it wouldn't be a problem. If enzymes weren't responsible for breaking down sucrose and there were bacteria doing it, HFCS would probably be even more popular.
> Intestinal flora is something the medical community is just now beginning to research and understand.
What's interesting is that intestinal flora can take time to adjust in response to dietary changes (wish I could find some good figures on precisely how long, but the whole field of research on the subject is so new). This means that those on a seemingly unhealthy diet can initially do far worse switching over to 'unfamiliar' healthy food as their gut flora are presented with something they have little 'experience' digesting.
In my own experience, cutting out grains and milk from my diet resulted in a good few months of problems before things settled down again which seemed very counter intuitive until I read up on the significant role gut bacteria play in digestion.
I know when I started eating paleo, I had really painful gas (to me and everyone else) for a few months. Then, after a while, I could eat all the broccoli I could stand and it was fine.
Thanks for sharing your specific numbers. My A1cs as a Type 1 Diabetic are usually in the low-to-mid 6s. My latest just a few months ago was 6.4. My doctor's happy with that, and described it as the levels typical of a pre-Diabetic. That seems pretty good to me, considering the constant attention I have to pay to it and the ease with which it can go badly.
Excuse my ignorance, but this does not seem any way unconventional.
It seems to me that you are treating your condition without medication, not reversing it. Exercise and regulating your blood sugar using diet is what doctors suggest but not many people follow it. You still have permanently increased insulin resistance and you must stay on your exercise and diet to prevent it getting worse.
Note they're using the term "reversed" not "cured".
> So, nearly four years down the line, is my diet still successful? Yes – but it takes close monitoring and willpower. We all know that diets are notoriously hard to stick to – unless the incentive is powerful enough. In my case, it is.
> …and the 1,750-calorie diet he follows now
As the theory goes some people are genetically predisposed to accumulating fat within the pancreas which causes insulin resistance. The (hypothesised) reason that the diet works is that it causes the body to use up fat from within the pancreas to the point where it begins to function again. Unfortunately the tendency remains, without continued management the pancreas will accumulate the fat again and the diabetic symptoms will return. This is borne out by the fact that a year later many of the original participants were experiencing diabetic symptoms once again.
Speaking from personal experience, with the same diet and level of exercise I see vastly different numbers. I've been through the process twice, the second time because I injured my back and wasn't able to exercise for two months. When I restarted my previous regime I found that my numbers stabilised at a far higher range than I'd achieved previously. I went through the same diet process again (for 2 weeks) after which I returned to the same regime. My numbers are now stabilised at the lower level that I'd achieved before.
> You still have permanently increased insulin resistance and you must stay on your exercise and diet to prevent it getting worse.
Dr. Taylor's research, along with other research currently being done, is demonstrating that insulin resistance is not permanent as was once believed. The problem is, as ollysb noted below, getting people to make the lifestyle changes necessary and stick to them. Most people are not willing and able to make the changes required to keep the disease from progressing, let alone increase their insulin sensitivity again.
I'm a bit surprised the article didn't come with a "don't try this diet without first consulting a medical professional" warning, since starving yourself for a month is a pretty drastic lifestyle change.
Is there a difference? Type II diabetes is largely a lifestyle disease. It develops because of the way we eat and (don't) exercise. If you have chronic wrist problems from typing all day, I'd say that eliminating the typing is a legitimate cure. If you have diabetes because you eat too much and exercise too little, I'd say eating less and exercising more is a legitimate cure as well.
Type 2 Diabetes can 100% be "cured" by a low fat vegan diet. Sorry you don't need a pill, you need to wake up and face the fact that you are poising yourself with your high fat diet.
FAT causes diabetes (and high blood pressure and heart disease) NOT Sugar. Dietary fat clogs up your bloodstream preventing insulin from effectively doing it's job.
The current science does not support this position. The current science basically says there is an interplay between fats and carbs, and that fat tends to clog your arteries when consumed in the presence of a caloric surplus, usually brought on via carbs. Low fat diets seem to work provided they are high in fiber, and high fat diets seem to work provided they are low in carbs. High fat, high carb seems to be where we see the biggest issues.
So while you actually might be right, that in many cases a low fat vegan diet helps T2 diabetes, it's only one of many strategies to arrive at a suitable diet.
I am not saying it is the only way... but it is the best way to prevent/cure T2 diabetes without causing other issues. If you have T2 diabetes and don't want to adopt a diet that will expose you to high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, kidney issues, gallbladder removal, etc.. a very low fat diet is the solution. Just do it you will be happy you did.
The fact is: fat tastes good. Nobody want's to give up bacon and cheese so we keep looking for ways to say it is "OK". Big Pharma really wants you to keep eating your fats too. They make billions of dollars a year selling people drugs to offset their lack of will power.
> but [a vegan diet] is the best way to prevent/cure T2 diabetes without causing other issues.
There is basically no science that allows you to state this confidently.
> The fact is: fat tastes good. Nobody want's to give up bacon and cheese so we keep looking for ways to say it is "OK". Big Pharma really wants you to keep eating your fats too. They make billions of dollars a year selling people drugs to offset their lack of will power.
It's been repeatedly shown that basically all fats, even the once thought of as "bad" like saturated fats, do not clog arteries (or raise cholesterol, while we are here) when not in the presence of caloric surplus. I don't follow it, but the success many have had with the keto diet is one great example of this. It's just not as simple as you are saying.
Could you recommend some useful links about this? In particular it is interesting to know if there is some range with fat/carbo ratio when the result is particularly bad.
This is a nice digest of a lot of the science around fats, that while somewhat biased, is a pretty good summary and includes links to studies should you want to dig deeper.
Please don't trust your health to people selling Paelo diet t-shirts, books, and diet bars... A high fat diet will kill you in the long term. Idea: Call 10 cardiologists, ask them if you should increase your fat consumption... then call 10,000 more and hear the same thing.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fat+causes+diab...
I totally agree, which I why I encourage you to read the numerous studies linked in the post. Note that you've basically said: don't trust your bullshit experts, trust this random youtube search. I'm asking you to read the bullshit expert's digestion of the science, and then read the science, and then tell me where the bullshit expert has gotten it wrong.
I totally agree that the nutritional "science" community is filled with snakeoil salesmen and that you have to careful.
But also, note that there is a difference between increasing your fat consumption absent of any other changes to your diet, and moving to a diet based mostly on fats, and that those changes have been pretty well described by me, to you, in our previous posts. I would agree that if you make no other changes, for the every day person increasing fat is bad. But literally no one is telling you to do that. NO ONE.
Here is a simple way to see the results for yourself.
1)Spend 30 days eating paleo.
2)Monitor your blood pressure, energy levels, bowel movements, sleep quality
3)Get a fasting glucose test and complete blood lipid profile including HDL/LDL. Research how to read it or ask your dr to interpret the results.
4)Do the same for a very low fat diet (about 10% total calories from fat)
Prediction: You will notice the difference in your body and your energy levels. Your Dr will like the results of the low fat diet much better. (Spoiler: I went through a Paelo/Crossfit phase too so I have already tried this and I personally know many others who have so it is fairly easy to predict what will happen. )
This is the last comment that I will make... I don't want to offend anybody. Rather, I hope somebody finds this useful and starts on a path to being much healthier...
Remember: Fat+Carbs, not just carbs, causes insulin resistance and leads to type 2 diabetes. If you eliminate the fat your diabetes will improve. If you eliminate the carbs your diabetes will also improve... but you will reduce your energy levels by forcing your body into ketosis and greatly increase your odds of high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, digestive problems and more.
So I mean that is basically useless because I'm definitely not here to argue that if something works in me it will work in everyone. Diet is a really hard thing to create broad models that works for everyone, and that's sort of my major point: there are many ways to make a diet that works and saying "this is the best and only diet" pretty much is definitionally wrong.
> This is the last comment that I will make... I don't want to offend anybody.
No offense taken, I greatly appreciate the conversation and apologize if I've implied otherwise.
> Remember: Fat+Carbs, not just carbs, causes insulin resistance and leads to type 2 diabetes. If you eliminate the fat your diabetes will improve. If you eliminate the carbs your diabetes will also improve... but you will reduce your energy levels by forcing your body into ketosis and greatly increase your odds of high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, digestive problems and more.
I would totally agree except that all of the things you mentioned as bad effects of a ketogenic diet are well studied bad effects of moderate fat moderate carb diet, not a high fat low carb (ie: keto) diet. I'm not here to argue for keto, just to say that there are many roads to the same place. A vegan diet may even be the best one for the most people, but if you believe that science is the best way to understand this stuff (and I do) then there isn't science to support that position.
That mostly defends high-fat/low-carbo diet. What I am looking for is where exactly should one put boundaries.
For example, if both high-fat/low-carbo and very-high-carbo/no-fat are good, can one combine them? If one eats very high fat meal, how long one has to wait before eating carbos-without-fat? Is it just few hours? Or should it be 16 hours? Or should one just not do that?
I think those are great questions and anyone who gives you a confident answer on them is kind of full of shit. The bottom line is nutrition is just not that well understood scientifically, and since there is so much evidence emerging showing people reacting pretty differently to the same dietary inputs I think it's that much harder to answer nutritional questions that precisely and build nutritional models that work broadly.
Yeah, I think this post is good at explaining the nuance that there are thresholds at which "things become different," but I'm not sure the thresholds he provides are well supported, which is what I thought you were looking for. No one is going to be able to say 30g fat / 100 g of carbs is ok but 30g fat / 110g carbs is not.
Vegetarianism/veganism may help with diabetes, but it's probably not because of reducing fat intake.
"Less fat" has been the dominant message since the late 70's, and it's coincided with the explosion in the rate of consumption of sugar, overweight people and diabetics. The epidemiology suggests you're mistaken.
I agree. A high fat vegan diet is also bad. You need to bring saturated fat near 0 and keep the rest of your fat intake down to about 10% of total calories.
Many vegans have a predisposition to hate fat and ignore contrary medical research because a lot of dietary fat in the average person's diet is gained through the consumption of animal products.
For eight weeks, the patients drank a diet milkshake three times daily and ate some 200 grams of non-starchy vegetables, totaling about 700 calories a day.
The average weight loss among participants was about 14 kg (33 pounds). And in many of them, the diabetes disappeared. Nearly half the participants had no symptoms of diabetes for nearly six months after they went back to eating normally.
There is an Indian Facebook group about Paleo diet, where dozens if not hundreds of people followed simple LCHF diet and reversed their type 2 diabetics and got type 1 under control among other improvements. Few physicians also got cured and they started advocating the diet. These doctors are working towards getting Indian Diabetes Association to recognize LCHF diet as a viable remedy.
I literally can't believe how you haven't realized you can reverse diabetes and get rid of it, permanently. Not only type 1 diabetes but also type II. My friends mother had it, until she found this and now she's been cured ever since. http://thehealthspecialists.com/diabetes-destroyer
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 200 ms ] threadMy brother has autoimmune diabetes (aka Type 1). We give to and volunteer with the JDRF as a result, because its mission is laser focussed on type 1 related research. I do not give to or support the ADA, because their efforts are really diffuse and seem to focus more on the cheeseburger type.
AFAIK there are certain correlations with the condition and the presence of certain gene combinations, and hypotheses abound that it is indeed a genetic condition, but they are still just hypotheses - research is ongoing.
Obese Type-2s should really be called "Type F" because it's not fair to people who didn't self-inflict their condition.
But no, let's shame everyone who is fat for being overindulgent.
Maybe having diabetes wouldn't be stigmatized so much if so many Type-1s didn't participate in it as well.
(Non-diabetic here, I have no dog in this fight.)
Do you have any evidence that it's most?
>let's shame everyone who is fat for being overindulgent.
Being overweight is tied to many diseases, and costs me a lot of money in health care costs. I have a say in this.
The beautiful thing about figuring out a treatment is that it'll help you if you're Type-2 diabetic and should ease your suffering from the disease regardless of your fitness level.
I didn't say they didn't. The OP said "most" people who get type 2 aren't fat. I merely asked for any evidence.
Edit: OP didn't actually say that.
But:
>Just look at family and ethnic correlation.
"People of different racial and ethnic groups are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. African Americans, Mexican Americans, American Indians, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans have a higher risk for these deadly diseases. This is partly because these populations are more likely to be overweight, have high blood pressure and have type 2 diabetes. - See more at: http://www.diabetes.org/are-you-at-risk/lower-your-risk/nonm...
I'd say "family" is much the same, since eating habits are learned at home.
I realize not everyone with Type-2 can help it. I also realize there are many overweight people who can.
Just look at family and ethnic correlation. (rare) Monogenic diabetes is even hereditary!
If you have a say in this you might want to look at effective ways to push your message.
We know from lots of research that merely yelling "GO FOR A JOG FATTY" does nothing to help fat people lose weight, and probably makes things harder for them.
While some people respond to a pat in the back, others respond to a kick in the butt.
Sources? That'd be some weird research.
Regardless, it isn't my job to "fix" overweight people. They are welcome to their indulgences. I just do want to pay for the ill effects of bad habits. I have a feeling if they were on the hook for related costs, we'd have a different looking society.
It's like we live in a world where all of the inner aisles of the grocery store are stuffed with $3 liters of Vodka and the outer aisles $20 20oz bottles of water and then blame and ridicule people for boozing...
It's not your job to make judgemental comments on every single thread that mentions weight, but you never fail to do so.
Considering MonadQueen said "* 60%* of type-2 diabetics" and "Obese Type-2s" (emphasis mine) I wonder where you got the idea that she as "completely ignoring" anything.
> But no, let's shame everyone who is fat for being overindulgent.
When and why did telling fat people that being fat hurts their health become "shaming"? Why does telling someone that always jump to a presumption of moral judgment?
The accusation was that these cases are self-inflicted. It's WAY more complicated than that.
Accounts for about 10 extra pounds on a normal-sized human. Didn't stop me from losing 35 pounds in four months when I was 100 pounds overweight.
> PCOS
Same as above, assuming PCOS is a cause and not an effect. There seems to be some debate on that in the Ob-Gyn community.
> Cushing's syndrome
Cushing's is fairly rare, and is usually curable.
> complications of depression
Yes, depression is a big psychological cause of overeating. Been there. Disentangling the depression from the food is part of the therapy, though. Particularly since it becomes a self-reinforcing cycle where depression begets comfort eating which begets more depression.
> The accusation was that these cases are self-inflicted. It's WAY more complicated than that.
Always self-inflicted? No. More complicated? Yes.
However, except in rare circumstances every underlying condition is treatable or curable. There are synthetic hormones for hypothyroidism. There are cortisol blockers, surgeries, and other treatments for Cushing's. PCOS is incurable but treatable, ironically considering the subject by weight loss. Depression is treatable, though it can be a struggle.
Obesity may not be self-inflicted in all cases, but it is almost always resolvable. I'm resolving it, despite having two of the things you listed. You can't just throw your hands up and complain about "conditions" as an excuse to not do anything about the problem. Hell, everything you listed has potentially serious problems if untreated even if it doesn't cause weight gain.
What about being ugly, does that hurt your dating options?
Like being fat, both are things you can improve/fix with enough work.
Also, no one gets cured of diabetes type 2, you just control your blood glucose levels better and in effect alleviate the symptoms of diabetes, but you still have diabetes. If you think you don't, do a glucose tolerance test (i.e. drink a sweet drink and measure your blood glucose 1 hr later) and you will find that your glucose tolerance is still compromised no matter how well you managed to control your glucose levels by avoiding eating high glycemic food for life.
Yep. The inheritance in families with monogenic diabetes and high incidence in certain ethnic groups make this pretty clear.
That may not have been T2DM. One of the things research has revealed over the past 30 or so years is that there are far more manifestations of diabetes than the old two-mode model though. Incidentally, that is one reason the types were renamed "Type 1" and "Type 2", to acknowledge that there are likely more types. There is a particular subtype known as Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults (LADA), which some researchers have named "Type 1.5" because it shows signs of both T1DM and T2DM. It initially presents as T2DM, though, so people are often misdiagnosed at first. This manifestation has only been known for about 20 years, though, so it isn't surprising.
> Also, no one gets cured of diabetes type 2, you just control your blood glucose levels better and in effect alleviate the symptoms of diabetes, but you still have diabetes. If you think you don't, do a glucose tolerance test (i.e. drink a sweet drink and measure your blood glucose 1 hr later) and you will find that your glucose tolerance is still compromised no matter how well you managed to control your glucose levels by avoiding eating high glycemic food for life.
This is flat-out contradicted by Dr. Taylor's research. He is demonstrating that patients on a hypocaloric diet, either from bariatric surgery or just a medically-supervised diet, can (and in many cases do) regain normal glucose control after about 10% loss of body weight. I personally went from borderline diabetic to normal glucose control (I can pass an OGTT) after a four-month, 35lb weight loss. I changed nothing about my diet except amount of consumption.
A team from Newcastle University, UK, has shown that Type 2 diabetes is caused by fat accumulating in the pancreas -- and that losing less than one gram of that fat through weight loss reverses the diabetes. "So if you ask how much weight you need to lose to make your diabetes go away, the answer is one gram! But that gram needs to be fat from the pancreas. At present the only way we have to achieve this is by calorie restriction by any means -- whether by diet or an operation."
It's actually a fairly complicated and can be quite difficult for people to break out of, even people who desperately want to change. When people follow the standard guidelines (which are beginning, slowly, to change) to avoid fat and reduce calories, they end up feeling hungry all the time, and have to white knuckle their way through. This is not a state that people can maintain long-term.
Starvation studies from the University of Minnesota have been described this way: "During the semi-starvation phase the changes were dramatic. Beyond the gaunt appearance of the men, there were significant decreases in their strength and stamina, body temperature, heart rate and sex drive. The psychological effects were significant as well. Hunger made the men obsessed with food. They would dream and fantasize about food, read and talk about food and savor the two meals a day they were given. They reported fatigue, irritability, depression and apathy. Interestingly, the men also reported decreases in mental ability, although mental testing of the men did not support this belief."
In addition, there is evidence that the body begins to reduce energy output in response to reduced energy input, thus making the advice every overweight person hears from nearly every source to "eat less and move more" a load of nonsense. That can work short-term, but the combination of reduced energy output and constant hunger make that recipe very ineffective long-term.
There is even more to complicate the story (e.g. it is common for overweight people to feel hungry even with massive amounts of energy stored in fat due to some of the effects of what's now being called variously, metabolic syndrome, syndrome X and diabesity).
In short, when people become overweight, which is a progressive condition of insulin resistance that grows slowly over time, or in other words and emergent hormonal dysfunction because of diet, they cannot "eat less and move more." To that extent it is not self-inflicted especially since millions of Americans are doing exactly that as told by their doctors and it is having no effect.
The only way to really change body composition long-term, is to change diet in a way that is at odds with what doctors learned twenty years ago in the two days they studied nutrition in medical school, which, as it turns out, is wrong.
Those people were actually starving. Their fat stores had dropped to 4% or less, which is very dangerous when not on a strictly controlled and supervised diet. People with normal or above normal stores of body fat can be hungry and malnourished, but will not be starving (in the medical sense of the word, which is what the Minnesota experiment was testing).
> In addition, there is evidence that the body begins to reduce energy output in response to reduced energy input, thus making the advice every overweight person hears from nearly every source to "eat less and move more" a load of nonsense. That can work short-term, but the combination of reduced energy output and constant hunger make that recipe very ineffective long-term.
I would like to see this in reputable studies, because everything I have read on the subject rejects the hypothesis that there is a physiological change in energy usage as a result of lowered intake. In fact, it a) doesn't make any sense since fat is supposed to be a store of energy for lean times and b) if the body could function at its current level on less energy, it would.
This is still talking about near starvation mode. People who stop menstruating and who grow lanugo are doing stuff that reduces their need for energy.
(I'm not sure it's accurate even for this extreme state though. Re-feeding is risky, but I don't know if "starvation mode" is part of the cause of that risk.)
On the starvation study it's merely one example that highlights how calorie restriction affects people. Yes, it's an extreme version, but it is different only in degree from any other calorie restriction, and when people try to reduce by X calories, it's probably a linear effect; more restriction, more of these effects. Oddly though, fasting tends not to have these effects, it's only in sustained calorie restriction, so fasting in various forms is one of the tools people can use to lose weight.
As for the lowered energy output Jason Fung wrote (pg. 53 of the Obesity Code, "One major problem is that the basal metabolic rate does not stay stable. Decreased caloric intake can decrease basal metabolic rate by up to 40 percent. We shall see that increased caloric intake can increase it by 50%."
If you want to learn more here are some sources:
Jason Fung - The Obesity Code: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01C6D0LCK/ref=dp-kindle-re...
Robert Lustig on sugar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
and also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxyxcTZccsE
Peter Attia on ketosis and fat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqwvcrA7oe8
Reversal of diabetes by diet, also Jason Fung: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAwgdX5VxGc
No dude, you are ignoring the fact that these people did not have ample fat stores. It is completely unreasonable to expect that obese people would behave the same while restricting calories than people who are already borderline starving (4% BF). These aren't effects of caloric intake restriction, they are effects of caloric restriction in general, which is a state obese people are not, have not been in for years and will not be in for years.
> One major problem is that the basal metabolic rate does not stay stable. Decreased caloric intake can decrease basal metabolic rate by up to 40 percent
This is basically unrelated to your statements about insulin though, so don't conflate the two. This statement does not support the idea that obese people cannot harvest energy from their fat stores, it supports the idea that you get less energy output from less energy input which is almost tautologically true.
I don't think I am ignoring it. You seem to be asserting that their issues with calorie restriction were lack of body fat. There is no evidence for that I am aware of. A simple rejoinder based on anyone's experience, do fat people get hungry? If they do, why? They have all that energy available. But I don't need to rely on arguments like that, since in the vast corpus of research on this at this point, it's pretty well established that calorie restriction by itself (even with exercise) does not work long-term. The failure rate is astronomical and it is in part due to what plain old calorie restriction as we've been told to do it does to metabolic energy and also due to the psychology of hunger. Also, and this is very important, a full fast does not have these effects according to the evidence. People can totally abstain from food for very long periods of time (depending on body fat), with very little hunger. It is smaller scale calorie reductions, without breaks (like the breaks intermittent fasting provides) and without much dietary fat since fat is highly satiating, that cause these reactions to calorie restriction.
> "This is basically unrelated to your statements about insulin though, so don't conflate the two."
Again, I'm not. I was responding to the request for a source on the idea of energy output reduction in response to lower calories. I'm not claiming there is a link between energy output reduction and insulin.
Fat people can get energy from fat stores, just not in the way we are typically told. If it was impossible to get energy from fat no one would ever lose weight, which is trivially and obviously not true.
No I'm asserting that what happens to people's bodies at 4% body fat when in severe caloric restriction is very different than what happens to people's bodies at 40% body fat with severe caloric restriction, and so we can't apply the metabolic damage/starvation models to fat people. Fat people just need to eat less, and the issue basically comes down to compliance. How do we get people to stay on a healthy diet long term?
> do fat people get hungry? If they do, why?
Because, as even you have shown, hunger is not a reflection of your bodies actual caloric needs, it's hugely a reflection of blood sugar levels, among other htings. Given enough time (in the order of magnitude of minutes to hours) in an obese but otherwise healthy person fats will be broken down and blood glucose will increase and hunger will decrease. It's getting through that period that is a mental compliance issue, but not otherwise physiologically challenging.
> The failure rate is astronomical
Again, this is a compliance issue. People absolutely lose weight on caloric restriction, and starvation issues like low metabolism do not become an issue until you are very low body fat. You simply do not see obese people going into so-called "starvation mode." In fact there are a few cases, though admittedly not many, of obese people that abstain entirely from eating for months at a time without long term "metabolic damage."
> People can totally abstain from food for very long periods of time (depending on body fat), with very little hunger.
I think we basically agree, then, that it's mostly a compliance issue and not an issue of caloric restriction working or not, and also that hunger is not a reflection of the body's actual metabolic state (especially in obese people).
> Fat people can get energy from fat stores, just not in the way we are typically told.
Fat people get energy from fat stores in the same way skinny people do. Very skinny people on severe caloric restriction are not a good model for the general population.
On oversimplification, but the crux of the issue. The astronomical failure rate is because of compliance. The prescription you seem to be suggest is "comply more! comply better!" but the biology of this is exactly why it fails so often. The type of food you eat is what sets you up for sustainable long-term success or its opposite. What you wave away with a wash of the hand--compliance--is the reason people fail and more willpower is not the issue and not a solution. It's a dysfunction of the hormones brought on by high insulin resistance brought on by excessive sugar and flour, which becomes a hunger trap, unless you add fat to your diet, which is exactly what people are told not to do. So, I do think hunger tends to differ when you suffer from fatty liver disease and insulin resistance. People can endure calorie restriction and lose weight for a while doing low-fat but they do not stay on it. Saying that people should just comply more is like telling someone with sleep apnea to sleep better. They need a different intervention.
edit--A failure rate of 80-90% is not an anomaly, it's a colossal failure. It's not something to be overcome, it's an indication of wrongness. By asking for more compliance you are asking people to fight their biology and they will lose this fight. Instead the intervention should be to employ their biology as their ally, and lose weight more easily and without much hunger and that's possible. It's just not helpful to tell people to eat less. We've been telling them that for forty years.
(Side note. The 4% bodyfat in the UofM study you mention is an assumption of yours, and not the starting weight of the people in the study. I think you're unfairly dismissing the study and presenting it as if it's a binary condition between starving/not starving, and that may be a thing, but it's not certain that it is. I'm merely cautiously using it as evidence that calorie restriction is difficult (actually more than difficult) to maintain, which anyway we all know from experience. It would be good to explore other studies on the topic). Intermittent fasting, for example, is vastly easier than consistent calorie restriction, and you're consuming the same number of calories as calorie restriction (if you design it right). That's not a matter of willpower, that's a different intervention).
Unfortunately I don't have time to continue the conversation, but take the time to explore some of the links I posted (there are tons more)--they go into way, way more detail and make the argument better than I have.
You've offered introducing fats as a way to stave off hunger (aka increasing satiety) but introducing fats are far from the only way to increase satiety. Introducing fiber, for instance, is another way.
You also seem to be in favor of a ketogenic diet. Let me say that I totally believe that a keto diet is a great way to eat healthily and boost compliance for some people. Others have a really hard time tolerating large amounts of fat, and so we still need to find alternative solutions for them.
I agree that simply telling people to have more willpower is not the solution, but I think it's important to recognize that the diet is not causing physiological damage to the vast majority of people (it's not the insulin spike in and of itself that causes damage, it's what happens after that, ie: more food intake). So maybe we can attack this from the pure will power front and leave the diet alone (or maybe not, but let's be deliberate about what we are doing).
Regardless, the UofM study is heavily discredited and I still maintain that it is not relevant to what you are arguing either way: the study is designed to study extreme starvation and famine. Brink of death type stuff. Obese people who feel hungry are not that. We know this because if you don't feed them they don't die.
FWIW I actually have read/watched all the links you've posted (I had before this conversation as they are all relatively well known), and I still hold by all my points.
I don't think there is anyone recommending reducing fats and calories as the only thing. Both of those are positive things to do to your diet, but if taken while ignoring the rest of the actual "standard guidelines" (which include eating more fiber and fruits and veggies), then yes, you are basically simply reducing calories (which is good) and increasing glycemic index (which is bad, for some).
> In short, when people become overweight, which is a progressive condition of insulin resistance that grows slowly over time, or in other words and emergent hormonal dysfunction because of diet, they cannot "eat less and move more."
I don't believe this is true but would be interested in seeing a study.
> To that extent it is not self-inflicted especially since millions of Americans are doing exactly that as told by their doctors and it is having no effect...The only way to really change body composition long-term, is to change diet in a way that is at odds with what doctors learned twenty years ago in the two days they studied nutrition in medical school, which, as it turns out, is wrong.
People have success with every kind of diet program, and it's a bit of a strawman to argue that the medical profession is advocating a diet that is only low in fat, but still high in sugar (which is what produces the results you're talking about). In fact, millions of Americans are following only a small portion of their doctors' advice (ie: lowering fats) which has the effect of lowering satiety, increasing overall glycemic index of their consumption (while ignoring the advice that they should eat more fiber and less sugar). There is no doctor out there recommending that as long as you eliminate bacon you can drink all the gatorade you want.
Let me repeat: There are zero (0) medical professionals advocating for a high sugar diet. The "high carb" part of the recommended diet is meant to come from vegetables and whole grains (which contain a fair amount of fiber).
There isn't any evidence I'm aware of showing people eating a calorically balanced, low fat, high carb, low sugar, moderate fiber, micronutritionally balanced diet and having diabetes. I understand that's more complex that saying "low fat/high carb" but again, there aren't doctors out there recommending cutting out fats and subsisting on sugar. So yes, it's a complete and total straw man, but when you only consider large macronutrient groups and ignore the rest of nutrition it's easy to see why that seems ignorable.
That's true as far as it goes, but the internal fight inside the medical research community was whether it was fat or sugar that was the culprit in a host of physical problems. Fat won in a slam dunk, even though it turns out to be wrong. Doctors are largely not researchers, and they are taught what was the conventional wisdom. There is no suggestion of malice, just bad (or at least overturned, but it was actually bad in this case) research that has been promulgated in the medical community. A lot of doctors think fat is bad and pay less attention to sugar.
The Guardian recently wrote about this: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-con...
So, it's not bullshit to say a lot of doctors don't understand the nutrition.
OK, later! :)
The idea that you can isolate it down to fat vs. carbs is "not even wrong." It doesn't ask the right questions, and ignores many other confounding factors. I don't really want to keep restating this point.
There are healthy high fat diets. There are healthy low fat diets.
I was not ignoring your argument but rather pointing out that there is data showing a correlation between doctors advocating low fat/high carb and obesity in America.
Now, what is a straw-man is to put forth a theoretical/never seen in reality diet and claim that no one has ever gotten fat eating it. Sorry, but an extrapolation from a population of zero to 350 million is a bit much for me.
I think the one point we do agree on is that this is a complex issue. So, you can blame fat people for not listening to their doctors, doctors for not checking the research or food companies for bastardizing what doctors actually recommended to sell low fat/high sugar food and label it "healthy." But it's quite obvious that the advice doctors have been giving for the past few decades has not had the intended effect.
> data showing a correlation between doctors advocating low fat/high carb and obesity in America
No there isn't because no doctor advocates that without the other nuances I provided in my post. I still feel like you are ignoring my posts, because my last post was literally entirely devoted to addressing this nuance. The simple fact is that there is not a large group of people eating according to the medical communities recommendations who are obese. The rise of obesity in America is people largely ignoring medical recommendations. Yes, low fat was in fad for a while, but there is plenty of evidence that a low fat diet can be healthy, and that a high fat diet can be healthy, so, as I've repeatedly said, it depends.
> I think the one point we do agree on is that this is a complex issue.
100%
> But it's quite obvious that the advice doctors have been giving for the past few decades has not had the intended effect.
When you radically simplify their advice, sure. When you actually follow what is recommended, no not really.
If you want to be unbanned you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com and promise not to do this any more.
there's no junk food.
there's nothing junky in a hamburger. on the other hand, it is unhealthy if you eat hamburger every day or so.
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/myths/
here's american diabetes association recommending a normal healthy high-carb diet with low GI foods.
it is also advised, funnily, that fruit consumption shouldn't be restricted.
http://www.badscience.net/2007/02/the-truth-about-nutritioni...
You are giving us anecdotal advice and advice of an unknown authority that can be questioned.
American diabetes association provides its advice given the vast amount of evidence that high-carb diets work for lowering or eliminating the symptoms of diabetes.
Pretty easy to sift through all that beautiful evidence. The fear of sugar is unfounded. But I guess people would rather live in fear than just eat healthy.
https://scholar.google.hr/scholar?hl=en&q=high+carb+diabetes...
of course, there's evidence that low-carb also works, ketogenic too, and paleo even, and all fad diets alike. that's because they are in many ways healthier than what the diabetes patients had before but that doesn't mean they are objectively superior to diets with all various foods without no restriction.
these diets, unfortunately, very often cause orthorexic tendencies, where people become obsessed with the substances they are consuming, they demonize foods (hamburgers, french fries, sugar, etc.), they think there's something natural, organic, healthy or unhealthy, despite the "fact" all foods are healthy, and only diets can be unhealthy.
https://vimeo.com/103656060
the plank (an exercise to help lose excess fat round the stomach)
This is incorrect. The plank is an excellent exercise for building core strength (much better than situps), but it does not help lose excess fat around the stomach more or less so than any other exercise does.
Cringe. Hard to take the writer seriously after this statement. The rest of the article seemed fine so I googled around to see if there was some stunning new research showing the plank (or any specific movement) spot-reducing fat. Nope.
Nutrition and fitness seem to be areas which really lack good, hard science behind the many assumptions we make about them.
A year later I'm still off the medication, my last HBA1C was 5.7 which is considered normal. Maintaining that does require daily exercise (and I do mean _every_ day) and good diet management but I've found it a fairly easy regime to follow (half an hour of 80% intensity is enough most days).
My quality of life is now excellent (it was terrible on the medication) and I'm able to eat a little more freely. The only big differences regarding diet are that I now only drink a couple of times a month and I don't go near anything with wheat flour in it.
EDIT: google docs doesn't seem to allow me to share the docs publicly (I can only share with specific email addresses or within my domain) so I've made them available as csv and excel files.
[1]
CSV - https://www.dropbox.com/s/tr1xwd3l6ziiows/newcastle_diet.csv...
Excel - https://www.dropbox.com/s/12tjf23oz7ihq4d/newcastle_diet.xls...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/fountain-of-youth-drug-trial-has...
"Behind the mania is a widely used, inexpensive generic pill for Type 2 diabetes called metformin. Scientists are planning a clinical trial to see if the drug can delay or prevent some of the most devastating diseases of advanced age, from heart ailments to cognitive decline to cancer. To test the pill, gerontologists at 14 aging centers around the U.S. will follow 3,000 seniors for six years. Half the seniors involved would get the drug, while the others would receive a placebo."
My personal hypothesis is that some people have intestinal bacteria that are really, really good at breaking down sugar very quickly. So when you eat high GI foods, your gut turns them into glucose very quickly releases them into your blood, and your body has to deal accordingly. IMO that would help explain why people who are very obese get type 2 with some regularity, but how otherwise healthy adults who are simply moderately overweight can also develop it.
A corollary to this hypothesis is that the ability of your (personal) intestinal bacteria to break down different types of foods at different rates means that there is no such thing as a "universal diet". Some people will be healthiest eating large amounts of red meat, some will be healthiest on a high-carb diet, while others may need something more fiber-rich (assuming appropriate calorie control, of course). This appears to be borne out anecdotally, with diet plans having different efficacy on different people.
Intestinal flora is something the medical community is just now beginning to research and understand. There's something unique that happens in our intestines, and while there's obviously a genetic component to it, the genes your intestinal flora carry may be just as important. We don't understand the system or the feedback loops (maybe eating too much sugar causes these bacteria to over-populate the intestines in some people and crowd out other bacteria?) The point is, there's a whole lot we don't know about how our bodies process the nutrients we take in. There are a lot of studies underway, but holistic medicine is pretty obviously a real thing -- we just don't understand the science behind it yet.
"[W]e just don't understand the science behind it yet" because there is none. Holistic medicine is quackery that has failed scientific tests if efficacy time and time again.
Are there such bacteria? I only know about intestinal bacteria breaking down indigestable carbohydrate (also called soluble "fiber") into short-chain fatty acids. Other carbs except fructose (handled by liver) should be broken down into glucose via digestive enzymes prior to colon throughout the digestive tract starting in your mouth.
> IMO that would help explain why people who are very obese get type 2 with some regularity, but how otherwise healthy adults who are simply moderately overweight can also develop it.
Well many obese also never develop T2DM either. The non-fat people who become T2 might have been on a high-carb-low-fat regimen rather than a high-carb-high-fat regimen.
> A corollary to this hypothesis is that the ability of your (personal) intestinal bacteria to break down different types of foods at different rates means that there is no such thing as a "universal diet". Some people will be healthiest eating large amounts of red meat, some will be healthiest on a high-carb diet, while others may need something more fiber-rich (assuming appropriate calorie control, of course).
This seems to assume an unduly large role for intestinal bacteria in digestion. Stomach acid and digestive enzymes do the bulk of the work prior, and colon bacteria get leftovers that our bodies don't handle "natively" AFAIK. Exception is some cause or other flushing stuff down the tract prematurely prior to absorption, perhaps something dangerous that stomach acid didn't neutralize, enzyme problems, overstuffing or what not..
> Intestinal flora is something the medical community is just now beginning to research and understand. There's something unique that happens in our intestines
I agree but people shouldn't forget bacteria only get the leftovers and if bacteria are found to be the cause of weight or health issues, maybe one should first evaluate whether enzymes are broken or too much (improperly preprocessed) cellulose is being consumed?
I've read some advice about not drinking water with meals for this reason. The idea is that it will dilute your stomach acid making it more basic and less effective.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17927751 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11157352
If the lactose passed through intact, it wouldn't be a problem. If enzymes weren't responsible for breaking down sucrose and there were bacteria doing it, HFCS would probably be even more popular.
What's interesting is that intestinal flora can take time to adjust in response to dietary changes (wish I could find some good figures on precisely how long, but the whole field of research on the subject is so new). This means that those on a seemingly unhealthy diet can initially do far worse switching over to 'unfamiliar' healthy food as their gut flora are presented with something they have little 'experience' digesting.
In my own experience, cutting out grains and milk from my diet resulted in a good few months of problems before things settled down again which seemed very counter intuitive until I read up on the significant role gut bacteria play in digestion.
Edit:
Thanks!
It seems to me that you are treating your condition without medication, not reversing it. Exercise and regulating your blood sugar using diet is what doctors suggest but not many people follow it. You still have permanently increased insulin resistance and you must stay on your exercise and diet to prevent it getting worse.
> So, nearly four years down the line, is my diet still successful? Yes – but it takes close monitoring and willpower. We all know that diets are notoriously hard to stick to – unless the incentive is powerful enough. In my case, it is.
> …and the 1,750-calorie diet he follows now
As the theory goes some people are genetically predisposed to accumulating fat within the pancreas which causes insulin resistance. The (hypothesised) reason that the diet works is that it causes the body to use up fat from within the pancreas to the point where it begins to function again. Unfortunately the tendency remains, without continued management the pancreas will accumulate the fat again and the diabetic symptoms will return. This is borne out by the fact that a year later many of the original participants were experiencing diabetic symptoms once again.
Dr. Taylor's research, along with other research currently being done, is demonstrating that insulin resistance is not permanent as was once believed. The problem is, as ollysb noted below, getting people to make the lifestyle changes necessary and stick to them. Most people are not willing and able to make the changes required to keep the disease from progressing, let alone increase their insulin sensitivity again.
FAT causes diabetes (and high blood pressure and heart disease) NOT Sugar. Dietary fat clogs up your bloodstream preventing insulin from effectively doing it's job.
http://www.amazon.com/Neal-Barnards-Program-Reversing-Diabet...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N636ftTJ10
So while you actually might be right, that in many cases a low fat vegan diet helps T2 diabetes, it's only one of many strategies to arrive at a suitable diet.
The fact is: fat tastes good. Nobody want's to give up bacon and cheese so we keep looking for ways to say it is "OK". Big Pharma really wants you to keep eating your fats too. They make billions of dollars a year selling people drugs to offset their lack of will power.
There is basically no science that allows you to state this confidently.
> The fact is: fat tastes good. Nobody want's to give up bacon and cheese so we keep looking for ways to say it is "OK". Big Pharma really wants you to keep eating your fats too. They make billions of dollars a year selling people drugs to offset their lack of will power.
It's been repeatedly shown that basically all fats, even the once thought of as "bad" like saturated fats, do not clog arteries (or raise cholesterol, while we are here) when not in the presence of caloric surplus. I don't follow it, but the success many have had with the keto diet is one great example of this. It's just not as simple as you are saying.
This is a nice digest of a lot of the science around fats, that while somewhat biased, is a pretty good summary and includes links to studies should you want to dig deeper.
I totally agree that the nutritional "science" community is filled with snakeoil salesmen and that you have to careful.
But also, note that there is a difference between increasing your fat consumption absent of any other changes to your diet, and moving to a diet based mostly on fats, and that those changes have been pretty well described by me, to you, in our previous posts. I would agree that if you make no other changes, for the every day person increasing fat is bad. But literally no one is telling you to do that. NO ONE.
1)Spend 30 days eating paleo.
2)Monitor your blood pressure, energy levels, bowel movements, sleep quality
3)Get a fasting glucose test and complete blood lipid profile including HDL/LDL. Research how to read it or ask your dr to interpret the results.
4)Do the same for a very low fat diet (about 10% total calories from fat)
Prediction: You will notice the difference in your body and your energy levels. Your Dr will like the results of the low fat diet much better. (Spoiler: I went through a Paelo/Crossfit phase too so I have already tried this and I personally know many others who have so it is fairly easy to predict what will happen. )
This is the last comment that I will make... I don't want to offend anybody. Rather, I hope somebody finds this useful and starts on a path to being much healthier...
Remember: Fat+Carbs, not just carbs, causes insulin resistance and leads to type 2 diabetes. If you eliminate the fat your diabetes will improve. If you eliminate the carbs your diabetes will also improve... but you will reduce your energy levels by forcing your body into ketosis and greatly increase your odds of high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, digestive problems and more.
> This is the last comment that I will make... I don't want to offend anybody.
No offense taken, I greatly appreciate the conversation and apologize if I've implied otherwise.
> Remember: Fat+Carbs, not just carbs, causes insulin resistance and leads to type 2 diabetes. If you eliminate the fat your diabetes will improve. If you eliminate the carbs your diabetes will also improve... but you will reduce your energy levels by forcing your body into ketosis and greatly increase your odds of high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, digestive problems and more.
I would totally agree except that all of the things you mentioned as bad effects of a ketogenic diet are well studied bad effects of moderate fat moderate carb diet, not a high fat low carb (ie: keto) diet. I'm not here to argue for keto, just to say that there are many roads to the same place. A vegan diet may even be the best one for the most people, but if you believe that science is the best way to understand this stuff (and I do) then there isn't science to support that position.
For example, if both high-fat/low-carbo and very-high-carbo/no-fat are good, can one combine them? If one eats very high fat meal, how long one has to wait before eating carbos-without-fat? Is it just few hours? Or should it be 16 hours? Or should one just not do that?
is more closer to what I was looking.
"Less fat" has been the dominant message since the late 70's, and it's coincided with the explosion in the rate of consumption of sugar, overweight people and diabetics. The epidemiology suggests you're mistaken.
The average weight loss among participants was about 14 kg (33 pounds). And in many of them, the diabetes disappeared. Nearly half the participants had no symptoms of diabetes for nearly six months after they went back to eating normally.
http://qz.com/669254/its-possible-to-reverse-type-2-diabetes...
You can see many medical reports posted by the members for your reference. https://www.facebook.com/groups/tamilhealth/
https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/437lyj/nsv_take_that_... https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/1dws7z/nsv_defeated_d... https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/3v1nq3/nsv_im_officia... https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/41cu92/sv_nsv_pics_lo...