Dr’s orders - abandon carbs!

jessetfan

One other thing that you might want to watch, especially if you already maintain a pretty healthy diet overall, is how protein affects your numbers. Overdoing it on protein can also raise blood sugar (certain amino acids are glycogenic). One of my relatives who struggles to maintain blood sugar mentioned that eating a steak raises his blood sugar more than eating a couple slices of pizza.

I'm working on both losing weight and reducing my blood sugar, and cutting carbs way down has been a big help. With my doctor's blessing I'm off insulin and working to get off metformin.

As others have mentioned, exercise definitely helps as it can make your cells more receptive to glucose. It's also great for mental health and heart health.

neanderthin

jessetfan wrote: »

One other thing that you might want to watch, especially if you already maintain a pretty healthy diet overall, is how protein affects your numbers. Overdoing it on protein can also raise blood sugar (certain amino acids are glycogenic). One of my relatives who struggles to maintain blood sugar mentioned that eating a steak raises his blood sugar more than eating a couple slices of pizza.

I'm working on both losing weight and reducing my blood sugar, and cutting carbs way down has been a big help. With my doctor's blessing I'm off insulin and working to get off metformin.

As others have mentioned, exercise definitely helps as it can make your cells more receptive to glucose. It's also great for mental health and heart health.

Just want to mention protein on it own doesn't actually increase blood sugar, it increases the release of insulin which helps shuttle amino acids into muscle and slows muscle breakdown and actually helps the clearance of any existing blood glucose. Glucogenic amino acids happen when gluconeogenesis takes place. Blood glucose is raised from consuming carbs and from gluconeogenesis which helps maintain balanced blood glucose levels when blood sugar falls below base line and other peripheral tissue that requires glucose, basically, from my understanding of the process. Cheers

rileysowner

wfpbcarmen wrote: »

neanderthin wrote: »

Insulin resistance is basically the body inability to shuttle glucose into tissue in a reasonable time frame.

This is true, but but the rest of your post doesn't actually address the reason most people have insulin resistance. Dietary fats. Fat modules are absorbed into the bloodstream and then into your cells, blocking the insulin receptors causing insulin resistance. Reducing processed carbs is always important, but it is even more essential to reduce dietary fats, especially animal based sources. Whole sources of carbs slow down the body's release of insulin and improve glucose control.

I would love to see actual randomised control trials that show this. I was in pre-diabetic A1C area, went keto, and now not only is my A1C normal, but the infrequent times I eat high carb my body has no issues handling the carbohydrates. In two hours my blood sugar will be down to the lower end of what is considered normal for 2 hours after eating. Making a claim that fat is causing insulin resistance would go against the clinical experiences of people like Dr Westman who has been working with people clinically for 20 year or more using keto diets to deal with things like insulin resistance, pre-diabetes, and diabetes. Regardless of what you post, without solid, repeated, randomised trials I will keep doing keto since not only has it dealt with my blood sugar issue, but I find it works as a way I can see myself eating for the rest of my life.

EricExtreme

A typical doctor has no more than 20 hours of instruction in basic nutrition. You are better off speaking with a nutritionist who knows what they are talking about.

AnnPT77

EricExtreme wrote: »

A typical doctor has no more than 20 hours of instruction in basic nutrition. You are better off speaking with a nutritionist who knows what they are talking about.

In the US, "registered dietitian" (RD), not just "nutritionist". It varies by US state, but there are places where anyone can advertise themselves as a nutritionist with zero education; in other places, that's not permitted, but a weekend-type short course is enough. RDs are degreed professionals who meet defined standards of knowledge.