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Type 2 diabetes: NHS to offer 800-calorie diet treatment

bbc.com

71–80 of 208 posts

Re: Type 2 diabetes: NHS to offer 800-calorie diet treatment

#71
post #7

I think that this is effective because it reduces the carbohydrate load. Protein and fat consumption also increase insulin response but not nearly as much. Type 2 diabetics could get most of the blood sugar reducing benefit of this by just removing/replacing the carbs. That has been my N=1 experience with both fasting and carb restriction.

Did you see the diet? Another commenter posted it [1], and it has 132g carbohydrates. Doesn't seem like a small load (though it may be an improvement over what they're currently doing!). At 4 cal/carb [2], that's over half the diet's calories.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18571000

[2] https://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/how-many-calories-are-one-gram...

Re: Type 2 diabetes: NHS to offer 800-calorie diet treatment

#72
post #15
post #3

Losing a lot of weight with very low calorie diets is hard, but not regaining it over the next couple of years is next to impossible. Your body will try all the tricks in the book, it will reduce your metabolism to way below that of the person of the same weight, it will amp up your hunger hormones so much that you will think and dream about food 24/7. Only 5 to 7% of people that lose a large amount weight are able t…

This new diet is specifically tailored to avoid this yoyo effect. It’s currently not yet clear whether this is indeed the case (hence this expanded epidemiological study) but preliminary results indicate that this is indeed the case. In other words, this specific diet (severely limited calories as well as restriction of food to almost completely liquids) reportedly helps sustaining the weight loss long-term (and is a…

Are you saying they stay on 800kcal/day for long-term? I'm skeptical. Usually the problem is when you switch to the maintenance diet.

Re: Type 2 diabetes: NHS to offer 800-calorie diet treatment

#73

The 800 calories they are eating doesn't seem terribly healthy: "patients were asked to follow either a ‘home-made’ milk- and fruit-juice-based diet (811 kcal/day, 64 g protein, 132 g carbohydrate, 6 g fat) with a multivitamin/mineral supplement (Forceval® [Alliance]), or a micronutrient-replete commercial LELD (832 kcal/day, 87 g protein, 120 g carbohydrate, 12 g fat). I imagine these people are probably staving...…

So I guess back in the day, milk and bananas were considered an ideal food combination,

A bowl of milk with bananas and about 1/4 cup of sugar. My grandpa ate that right up until he died. Man never gained a pound.

Re: Type 2 diabetes: NHS to offer 800-calorie diet treatment

#74

When people will realize that carbs are the only non-essential macronutrient? The sports community (especially bodybuilding) knows that for decades. If an athlete says to me that a thing he does to his body work 95% of the time, I would consider to try it, and already did, some things against over-the-counter conventional medicine like this no-carb diet.

It's only non-essential because your body has backup mechanisms for when carbs aren't available, ketosis for instance. That doesn't mean it's an ideal state to be in constantly.

Re: Type 2 diabetes: NHS to offer 800-calorie diet treatment

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dr. Michael Greger, Dr. McDoughall are my heros. Carbs and starch are not the problem, animal fats and proteins are. Whole food plant based diet are the best

It's interesting that once I cut out grains, potatoes, pasta, fruit/sweets, starches and continued to eat beef, chicken, fish, Organ meat, low carb vegetables and foods filled with fat (nuts, cheese, olives, etc) caused a 100lb weight loss that I have kept off over 3 years. This was without any exercise or extra activity. Perhaps I am an outlier.

Worked for me too.

Still mad about eating breakfasts of skim milk and unsweetened shredded wheat for years.

Now it is whole milk with bacon and eggs every morning.

Re: Type 2 diabetes: NHS to offer 800-calorie diet treatment

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Superb. Clearly in your case you summoned the necessary will to lose all that weight. But I think another important factor is that you established a new lifestyle/better eating habits.

"Summoned" implies it's only possible for people who know the arcane secrets, I'm not personally a fan of removing people's agency when talking about something like this.

In some cases at least consider this is like discussing the agency of a person addicted to narcotics.

Re: Type 2 diabetes: NHS to offer 800-calorie diet treatment

#77

The 800 calories they are eating doesn't seem terribly healthy: "patients were asked to follow either a ‘home-made’ milk- and fruit-juice-based diet (811 kcal/day, 64 g protein, 132 g carbohydrate, 6 g fat) with a multivitamin/mineral supplement (Forceval® [Alliance]), or a micronutrient-replete commercial LELD (832 kcal/day, 87 g protein, 120 g carbohydrate, 12 g fat). I imagine these people are probably staving...…

It's targeted at people with type 2 and are obese .. which is an ever increasing issue in the UK. The BBC don't like to rock the boat.

Re: Type 2 diabetes: NHS to offer 800-calorie diet treatment

#78
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I guess back in the day, milk and bananas were considered an ideal food combination,

A bowl of milk with bananas and about 1/4 cup of sugar. My grandpa ate that right up until he died. Man never gained a pound.

Yeah I think I had it backwards it was nutrients that mixed perfectly, I was editing my post as you wrote that about weight gain. I thought Norman Rockwell used it to try and join the war.

Re: Type 2 diabetes: NHS to offer 800-calorie diet treatment

#79

Makes sense, it is a diet related illness, so it should have a diet related treatment. Instead of treating the symptoms, treat the cause.

> Makes sense, it is a diet related illness, so it should have a diet related treatment. Instead of treating the symptoms, treat the cause. Type 2 diabetes isn't caused by diet. Certain diets can increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes, but it's not a foregone conclusion, and it's not uncommon to develop Type 2 diabetes despite an otherwise healthy diet.

T2D is caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors such as diet, and you're correct that someone can get T2D based mostly on genetic factors alone. It is however very uncommon, and diet plays a role in the majority of cases. There are several studies that show this.

Re: Type 2 diabetes: NHS to offer 800-calorie diet treatment

#80
I am not a doctor. This is what I have learned so far (there are no references here - sorry, I will need to dig up the material to substantiate this if you ask):

The upshot: Managing diet is not sufficient (for type 2) remission. The damage is at cellular level. That damage needs to be reversed. Therefore muscles need to be rebuilt. Even for the over 60 years!

The thinking: Diabetes Type 2 is the end point of years of abuse the body endures with elevated insulin and the _extent_ of insulin resistance the body progresses to. Diabetes therefore is a spectrum - the end point is when the pancreas bonks out and refuses to produce any more insulin. It's a tiny tiny organ and I think it's fragile. And it's threshold is also genetically determined. The interesting thing is that we all (including healthy folks) have levels and sometimes acute bouts of insulin resistance! The thing that made sense to me, reading about this, was that insulin resistance is a function of your muscle cells denying entry to glucose. And the insulin concentration in the bloodstream is a direct function of the concentration of free flowing glucose. Poor Pancreas is only doing its job but the muscles are not taking in any new glucose. They are refusing (resistant). Pancreas tries its best by pumping more insulin and for longer but the adamant muscles are the contract breakers in this arrangement - they don't open the gates for glucose.

The only way to change direction permanently in type 2 is to rebuild muscles which will have better insulin receptors to allow glucose to be shunted into the cells. For this to happen you have to do strength training. Lift sufficiently heavy. (No, not Arnie levels by any measure.)

(I recently read a study that administering testosterone to type 2 diabetics improved their insulin resistance. What happens with testosterone and anabolic steroids? New muscles, that's what.)

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