It is truly a shame that mainstream medical providers, highly trained and well-educated professionals, continue to encourage hundreds of grams of carbohydrate intake on a daily basis when simple logic shows that the approach is not helping to reduce elevated glucose, decrease weight, lower blood pressure, or improve health in any form at all. For many years, now, the nutritional guidelines have encouraged an intake of 200+ grams of carbohydrates daily, even though our bloodstream only requires 4 grams. For a person with diabetes and insulin resistance, this advice is detrimental to health. This recommendation contributes to significant over-eating, poor nutrient intake, and terrible internal chemical imbalance – all of which contribute to chronic metabolic conditions.
This advice does NOT differ for Type 1 diabetics, Type 2 diabetics, or for anyone with insulin resistance. Type 1 patients require insulin administration daily so they can metabolize & properly manage the carb & protein intake. Type 2 patients often end up using insulin injections because the tablets and diet do not provide enough assistance internally to lower glucose and organ damage. Patients with insulin resistance often require hundreds of units of insulin a day just to keep glucose levels less than 200. (Less than 100 is NORMAL.)
Anyone with an over-the-counter glucometer can determine this simple and logical conclusion quite easily. Test glucose prior to eating; test again about 2 hours after eating. If glucose level changes more than 10 numbers, there are likely many carbohydrates in that meal. So, next meal, test again, leaving out those particular carbohydrates. Determine for yourself just how to eat with minimal impact on glucose level.
Even a non-scientist understands the simple anatomy and physiological response within our bodies.
“The problem is that carbohydrates break down into glucose, which causes the body to release insulin—a hormone that is fantastically efficient at storing fat. Meanwhile, fructose, the main sugar in fruit, causes the liver to generate triglycerides and other lipids in the blood that are altogether bad news. Excessive carbohydrates lead not only to obesity but also, over time, to Type 2 diabetes and, very likely, heart disease.” – Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-questionable-link-between-saturated-fat-and-heart-disease-1399070926, retrieved 2/21/2018.
Why is testing like this necessary? Testing glucose is necessary to gain control of your own illness and health. Medical providers are trained to prescribe medications that are produced and sold to provide a source of steady income to drug companies. Medical providers need a steady and full schedule of patients in order to provide a steady income for their staffs and themselves. Medical providers have NO coursework in nutrition, except for a freshman or sophomore course as a pre-requisite to professional medical, nursing, or nutrition school. There is NO training whatsoever for medical providers to learn how to incorporate nutrition as a part of therapeutic treatment for chronic metabolic conditions. They never hear the word ketogenic nutrition; they have no idea what normal and natural ketosis is.
That said, mainstream providers do the best they can with info and training they’ve been provided; none of them actually WANT us sick or on meds. It is simply all they know. Medical providers have guidelines and “standards of care” to which we’re held responsible. These guidelines encourage us to prescribe certain medications as diabetes is diagnosed and then progresses. We are to obtain certain lab testing at specified intervals. We are trained to tell patients that an A1c of 7 or less is “NORMAL for a diabetic.” We are trained to use these guidelines as our “logic” and reasoning, even though very little of the guidelines has any actual research supporting the use; most of the research quoted has been debunked many times over the past 5-8 years by independent experts without financial interest in the outcomes.
Why do our trusted and trained medical providers offer such flawed advice? It goes back 50-70 years. It started in the 1950s when President Eisenhower suffered a heart attack while in office. Some strong personalities were already studying and researching diet and the impacts of diet on health. Ancel Keys is credited with starting this avalanche of low fat diet advice, but others quickly hopped on his bandwagon. The often-quoted and cited Framingham Study also released only part of the data collected and was used as “evidence” that saturated fats caused high cholesterol which caused deadly heart disease. However, Dr. William Castelli, a former director of the Framingham Heart study, stated in a 1992 editorial published in the Archives of Internal Medicine:
“In Framingham, Mass., the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate, the lower the person’s serum cholesterol. The opposite of what… Keys et al would predict…We found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories, weighed the least and were the most physically active.”
This major piece of data was NOT released as part of the study; it only came out later as part of the editorial by the former director of the study. By 1980, so much money and time had been invested in low-fat dietary research, it seemed no one could stop it. Thus, the “Standard Dietary Guidelines for Americans” was published. Later, the American Heart Association also joined in the support of these guidelines; the American Diabetes Association also began to support these guidelines. No science. No independent research data. Thus, we the people were “fleeced” and fell right in line with this dietary advice. We began cutting fats and one of the first fats to go was milkfat, and then animal fats.
However, look at what happened to the weight of Americans.
Multiple resources offer similar trends in weight; notice the trend of weight gain began during the 1970s and 80s, when low-fat dietary advice was pushed forward as “healthy.”
Using some simple common sense and logic, we can review history and data and draw some logical conclusions based on these numbers. As fat intake declined, obesity and heart disease rates increased. What replaced the fat?
474 grams of carbohydrates will be converted into 118 TEASPOONS of glucose – that’s 2.5 CUPS of sugar. Just what do medical experts EXPECT our bodies to do with this much glucose?
Even at the lowest ADA recommended intake of 165 grams of carbs per day, those carbs convert into nearly 7 ounces of glucose – almost 1 whole cup of glucose.
Think about our most vulnerable of our population: our children. Then, narrow down that population to Type 1 children. Current recommendations for managing this illness is to eat high amounts of carbohydrates and to administer higher and higher amounts of insulin to lower the glucose load. How does this advice even seem normal, now that we’ve seen the data? Do their brains develop normally with such significantly elevated glucose levels? Some experts are calling Alzheimer disease Type 3 diabetes because we now recognize the brain damage done by high glucose and high insulin levels – yet, it’s the “standard” treatment for our most vulnerable population? Why would we actually WANT our children to consume hundreds of grams of carbohydrates daily, just to be able to dose higher amounts of insulin? Why should we continue to advise high carb intake when it has now been linked to higher rates of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, infertility, and even cancer – even in our children? I fail to see the logic. Our children deserve better. Our children deserve NORMAL glucose levels. They should not be at risk for developing “double diabetes,” because we continue to encourage high carb intake and high insulin use, forcing their bodies to become insulin resistant over time. These children are one of our most valuable resources; why can’t we provide better advice and care?
One person at a time. One medical provider at a time. One conversation at a time, we are taking charge of our own health. We are doing the “research” by checking our own glucose. We track our intake. We, at the grassroots level, are doing research that government and agencies and companies should have done half a century ago. We are cutting out the highly inflammatory grains. We are cutting out sugar. We are eliminating the cause of our metabolic disease, and our health improves because we are PRO-active instead of reactive. We are using food as our medicine…. Isn’t that what Hippocrates said? “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” And our medical physicians take the Hippocratic oath, which includes the phrase, “do no harm.” I think it’s time we hold our providers accountable for their advice. What do YOU think?
NOTICE: This content is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of medical advice or treatment from a personal health care professional. All viewers of this content are advised to consult their own qualified health professionals regarding specific health questions. Neither KetoNurses or the publisher of this content takes responsibility for possible health consequences of any person or persons reading or following the information in this educational content. All viewers of this content, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition, supplement or lifestyle program.
