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Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

nytimes.com

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Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#111

Post by apathy »

luketych wrote: post #100
CPLX wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Diet soda, although technically not containing carbs, prompts a similar insulin response to drinking sugared soda Is there any scientific basis for this claim?

I get annoyed when people stop a discussion dead in its tracks by asking for references like this, especially when they can easily look it up themselves if they actually cared about the answer rather than winning. If you think about it, any molecule that isn't sugar but tastes like sugar will have a similar molecular shape to sugar. Hmmmm I wonder if this will fit into receptors in other places in the body, not just…

> If you think about it, any molecule that isn't sugar but tastes like sugar will have a similar molecular shape to sugar.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and propose that you may not be a professional medicinal chemist.

Many theories conveniently support your position. Of course, many theories conveniently support the other side. How can we objectively determine who is right?

Well, let's look at (among many, many other experimental studies) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25786106 which is a recent study of metabolic differences between self-reported aspartame sensitive and non-sensitive individuals. Double-blind, randomised crossover study -- the gold standard. Any differences in metabolic profile between either control/aspartame or sensitive/not? None seen.

However, perhaps all non-nutritive sweeteners are not alike. The same senior author as above ran a separate study in a small sample of athletic males where aspartame in addition to carbohydrates resulted in lower insulin response during exercise: https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1550-2783-9...

Meanwhile, and in a different (grossly obese, NNS-naive) population, sucralose (Stevia) appeared to do the opposite: http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2013/04/30/dc...

> Many of these questions can be answered without slow, hard science

Sure, if we don't care whether the answers are credible.

Proof by analogy is fraud. If we didn't need evidence to make decisions we wouldn't bother accumulating it.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#112

Post by apathy »

luketych wrote: post #106
jschwartzi wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "keeping an open mind" means accepting statements without evidence until they are debunked. Rather, it means that if evidence arises which contradicts your presuppositions, you must not ignore it. But this all assumes there is evidence available. Is there?

What I am trying to say is that if we close our minds right away then we will miss obvious answers. We will tend to overcomplicate things and reach for our most-expensive tools. I've read "scientific" articles that make use of the most cutting-edge statistical models in order to "prove" that something like "emotional intelligence does not correlate with success." Ok, poor example, and I made it up. But there are many…

> Ok, poor example, and I made it up.

Why does this not surprise me?

Outside of mathematics, there really isn't anything resembling proof. There is the weight of the evidence, and the weight of any substantive critiques of bias in said evidence. That's about it.

> But there are many research articles out there that look impressive because of all the tools they throw at the problem. Under the surface these studies are bunk.

On this we can certainly agree. However, the replacement for a bad study is a well-designed study, not some statistical hocus pocus (1) or "going by your gut".

If your position is sound, there will (at some point) be someone bold and independently-funded enough to torpedo the status quo with a properly designed experiment. It may not happen as fast as you'd like. But there is nothing that academics like better than turning their rivals' sacred cows into hamburger. Of this I can assure you.

(1) I am a statistician, both professionally and by graduate training. I have no qualms about dismissing poorly designed studies regardless of post-hoc jiggery-pokery. A shiny autopsy won't reanimate the corpse of a dead experiment.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#113

Post by apathy »

terhechte wrote: post #104
CPLX wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Diet soda, although technically not containing carbs, prompts a similar insulin response to drinking sugared soda Is there any scientific basis for this claim?

I also can't find the link right now, but there was a study recently which claimed that Stevia, in particular, did not cause an insulin response after consumption.

The opposite, actually.

http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2013/04/30/dc...

Beware of small sample sizes in these sorts of studies. Until you get up into the hundreds or thousands, I personally would expect regression to the mean. Just FYI.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#114

Post by asldjhcakjhc »

luketych wrote: post #106
jschwartzi wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "keeping an open mind" means accepting statements without evidence until they are debunked. Rather, it means that if evidence arises which contradicts your presuppositions, you must not ignore it. But this all assumes there is evidence available. Is there?

What I am trying to say is that if we close our minds right away then we will miss obvious answers. We will tend to overcomplicate things and reach for our most-expensive tools. I've read "scientific" articles that make use of the most cutting-edge statistical models in order to "prove" that something like "emotional intelligence does not correlate with success." Ok, poor example, and I made it up. But there are many…

You can usually make up a bunch of conflicting stories about how some chemical will affect the body. For example, I could claim that there is an evolutionary basis for the body to assume that the taste of sugar means that food has been successfully obtained, and to react by being less conservative with calories, and reward us with a dopamine rush. Sounds like a great time to exercise!

Anyway, we can be lost in a sea of doubt with all our pet theories, or we can look at the available evidence.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#115

Post by apathy »

aduitsis wrote: post #71
CPLX wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Diet soda, although technically not containing carbs, prompts a similar insulin response to drinking sugared soda Is there any scientific basis for this claim?

A 15-second google search reveals this: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/artificial-sweeteners-insulin... Some interesting links to pubmed there. Seems that aspartame does not affect insulin fwiw.

Mark has a bit of an agenda. He is not nearly as full of shit as many others (to include many in academia) but he nonetheless has a financial conflict of interest due to the way he makes a living. I'm not saying he is wrong, but I am saying that you must think critically in the presence of COI.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#116

Post by tzs »

thoughtsimple wrote: post #20

I've been on a low carb diet since June. I've lost 30 pounds and my high blood pressure is now gone (I read 97/63 last week). My glucose went from 134 mg/do to 96 in 2 months. A1C from 6.5% to 5.5%. Now normal again. If you've been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes you should try a very low carb diet before anything else. It really seems to work.

> If you've been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes you should try a very low carb diet before anything else.

What do you mean by "very low"?

One year ago I lowered carbs, with a target of a maximum of 40% of daily calories from carbs. Results: 120 pounds lost, A1C from 8.1% (on Metformin and Actos) to 5.2% (no Actos, Metformin dose cut in half, and would not be surprised if my doctor suggests cutting it further when I see him next week).

Averages for this year so far: 2050 calories/day, 174g carbs/day (45g of which is added sugars), 112g protein/day. So that's an average of about 34% of calories from carbs (9% from added sugars), 22% from protein, and so 44% from fat.

Does this count as low carb?

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#117

Post by apathy »

luketych wrote: post #95
jcranmer wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic, everyone peddling any kind of diet, including paleo or keto or whatever diet is the fad of the day, is insincere. The actual truth of the matter is that nutrition is far more complex than any simple summary can give you. The data you get from nutritional and dietary studies is generally so poor in quality that you can find evidence for just about any assertion if you look hard enough.

Oh come on.. Nutrition is not that complicated. It only looks complicated because we are looking too closely at the details, resulting in myopia. We are overthinking it. For hundreds of thousands of years people didn't even know what a nutrient was, and yet they ate properly and never got any of these western problems. Reminds me of how our western science has overcomplicated studies on meditation and we are only now…

> For hundreds of thousands of years people didn't even know what a nutrient was, and yet they ate properly and never got any of these western problems.

Part of the reason for this is that there was no surplus of cheap calories and many people died of trauma or infection prior to becoming susceptible to degenerative disease.

As recently as 1900, the primary cause of death in the United States was infectious diseases. All-cause age-adjusted mortality in the population has halved since then. I suppose we could reduce the role of degenerative and "Western" diseases rather dramatically by discontinuing antibiotics and sanitation, but recent trips to Cambodia and Zimbabwe have me wondering if that's really what you want.

> our tools are finally sharp enough to our liking (fMRI).

fMRI is a false positive generating machine. I've never seen shittier statistical analyses than I see in "neuroscience" (at least the mouse guys use controls).

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#118

Post by sago »

mchmch wrote: post #88
sago wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.ncahf.org/articles/o-r/pcrm.html The guy on that video is well known by Quackwatch. He is a vegan evangelist, and also teaches that proteins are not required in the diet. It's motivated nonsense.

Speaking of "motivated nonsense". The millions of dollars the meat/dairy industry spends on political campaigns and the revolving door at the NIH might concern you :) http://qz.com/523255/the-us-meat-industrys-wildly-successful... Eating a diet based heavily on animal products is almost as stupid as smoking cigarettes. If we didn't have so many wonder drugs keeping people who make bad choices alive, it would be obvio…

The spending of any large industry on political influence concerns me.

But the link doesn't say much. Very similar arguments are used to discredit climate science ('big climate science') vaccinations ('big pharma') and things that do need discrediting ('big tobacco'). An argument like that has little signal, but it does allow people who are already convinced to post-hoc rationalise their position.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#119

Post by simik »

raverbashing wrote: post #31
dogma1138 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so what? A diet that says it's ok to eat a steak but an apple is bad because it has carbs in it? There is nothing wrong with carbs, carb free diets work because it's easier to create a caloric deficiency not because you some how can eat 3000 cals of w/e and lose weight. But in the long run they aren't healthy either try being on a low carb diet and exercise at the same time let me know how it's working for you. E…

low carb != zero carb Zero carb (or if too reduced) is really not sustainable And you're right, eating an apple is ok.

https://reddit.com/r/zerocarb - plenty of people sustaining zero carb for years.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#120

Post by benwr »

toasterlovin wrote: post #93
dogma1138 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being vegetarian and being "low carb" is to some extent oxymoronic, you are getting your calories from somewhere and if it is vegetarian it mostly going to be fatty acids and carbs. A few months with "light exercise" doesn't mean anything, your personal feeling is also not a quantifiable metric, if you were actually setting yourself a specific physical goal like to run say 10KM under 40min, or deadlift X lbs you woul…

You can be vegetarian and eat a low carb diet. It's not as easy as eating meat and eating a low carb diet, but it's eminently achievable. Eggs, cheese, nuts, avocados, and oils will probably comprise most of your diet.

Beans and vegetables too! But yes, this is mostly right.
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