DIABETES | More Thoughts

DIABETES | More Thoughts

I was shocked to learn that there are a quarter of a million diabetics in the UK on the wrong (low carb) diet, and being advised and encouraged by https://www.diabetes.co.uk/ to eat low carbs.

How can they even claim to get good results? And even win awards? Maybe, temporarily, in the short term...

Jason Fung advocates low carb, keto diet yet he says ectopic fat is the cause of insulin resistance... Can’t he see the elephant in the room?

My theory on “why some people eat a western diet and are not diabetic” (yet) is simple: They have lots of fat cells to store the fat they eat but don’t burn up. 

Its only the ectopic fat that becomes intramyocellular lipids that causes insulin resistance; not fats stored in fat cells.

Why they have lots of fat cells and not others is largely genetic. However, when their fat cells are saturated and if they continue to eat excess fat, they’ll get ectopic fat and develop insulin resistance.

Its not weight reduction per se that is the end goal but getting rid of the intramyocellular lipids and fat in fat cells. While getting rid of those fats will result in weight loss, exercising will build muscle mass and may actually result in some weight gain.

Its percentage body fat that needs to come down.

Fats in the liver is a bit tricky to get rid off as exercise doesn’t help. I’ve done coffee enemas and they’ve helped me. Mastering Diabetes seem to be silent on this modality, largely, I suspect, simply because they just have yet to explored it.

I see the liver as a battery. An energy storage battery that you charge by feeding it glucose. It converts the glucose to the polysaccharide glycogen and stores it. When the body requires energy, it converts the glycogen back to glucose and releases it into the bloodstream for uptake by the muscles.

When a battery is already fully charged, it will not be able to store more energy. Likewise, the liver which is already full of glycogen will not be able to store more so it just doesn’t convert glucose to glycogen, resulting in elevated blood glucose levels.

I have an issue with the common diabetic medication metformin, which works by impairing the liver’s ability to convert glycogen to glucose. By reducing the amount of glucose it releases into the bloodstream, it keeps blood glucose levels low.

But, at what cost? The corollary is that it keeps glycogen levels in the liver high, indirectly keeping it saturated and reducing its ability to convert excess blood glucose to glycogen and hence keeping blood glucose levels elevated.

This is where fasting comes in, to get rid of all that excess energy already in the body - glucose, glycogen and fats - all in one stroke.

Then, when we do eat, its vital to not add more fat to avoid becoming more insulin resistant. To eat complex carbohydrate, not monosaccharides or disaccharides. Even though all carbohydrates eventually get broken down to glucose, the idea is to drip feed the body with glucose, not inundate with a tsunami of glucose.

The operative word is “eventually,” - the longer this takes, they less likely of a blood glucose spike. Without exercise, the body burns energy at a steady rate, if we add more energy than the burn rate, we have excess energy and end up with an energy storage problem. In the first instance, as elevated blood glucose.

Of course, we can increase the burn rate - that’s where exercise comes in.

An extreme would be to exercise while fasting. That would be like cleaning out the fuel storage tanks.

We need to set the example and be the change we wish to see in the world...

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