Utvecklingen går framåt!
”Så blir åldersdiabetiker friska utan medicinering”
Debattartikel i DN om LCHF och diabetes typ 2. Utvecklingen går framåt som tur är!
Ett snabbt referat:
Det är sant att typ 2-diabetes har blivit ett av de största problemen inom sjukvården. I Sverige finns det minst 300.000 diabetiker och ännu fler i dess för stadium, det metabola syndromet. Inte nog med att livet förkortas; de sista åren i livet förpestas av infektioner, kallbrand, andra kärlsjukdomar, blindhet eller dialyskrävande njursvikt. Att den feta maten är boven är emellertid ett av de allvarligaste misstagen inom modern medicin.
Vid typ 2, den allra vanligaste, stiger blodsockret därför att insulinet inte fungerar optimalt. Att kalla sjukdomen för åldersdiabetes är emellertid vilseledande; i dag drabbar denna diabetestyp även unga.
Att det också är kolhydraterna och inte fettet som är boven vid typ 2-diabetes är solklart. Redan 1963 rapporterade läkaren George Campbell att en tredjedel av de indier som emigrerat till Sydafrika för att arbeta inom sockerindustrin fick typ 2-diabetes, medan frekvensen i hemlandet endast var 1 procent. Kolhydraterna är dock inte själva orsaken; annars borde de flesta av oss drabbas. Sannolikt finns det en ärftlig faktor. Men att sjukdomen ger sig till känna när maten innehåller för mycket socker och kolhydrater är gammal kunskap.
Varningarna mot det mättade fettet tog fart på 80-talet när kolesterolkampanjen startade. Amerikanska experter beslöt då att även diabetespatienter borde undvika det och föreslog därför en kost där kolhydraterna skulle täcka det mesta av kaloribehovet. Sedan dess har kolhydratkonsumtionen ökad kraftigt, medan konsumtionen av det mättade fettet har avtagit. Det är just under denna period vi sett den explosionsartade ökningen av övervikt och typ 2-diabetes!
Huvudinvändningen mot LCHF-kosten är att det saknas långtidsstudier. Det är emellertid föga sannolikt att en diet som redan efter några veckor kan normalisera blodsockret och blodets insulinhalt, sänka blodtrycket, öka insulinkänsligheten och minska kroppsvikten utan negativa effekter på blodets kolesterol, inte skulle vara gynnsam på längre sikt.
Det bör också nämnas att det inte finns något kostexperiment som visat att de nuvarande kostråden gör nytta, vare sig på kort eller långt sikt. Råden bygger på spekulationer; ingen har testat om de fungerar.
En korrektion: Det har publicerats två korta, positiva studier finansierade av sockerindustrin, men ingen har kunnat bekräfta deras resultat.
Läs hela artikeln genom att klicka på länken ovan!Why carbs are the devil incarnated
There was a very good article in the LA-times last week about carbohydrates and the way they´ve affected our lifestyle for the past 30 years. Since I´m very passionate about health and eating right (well it used to be my job for three years, telling people what to eat and how to be healthy. Ah, telling people what to do, those were the days...) it becomes a natural part of my blog to keep trying to spread the word. Here´s a somewhat shorter version of the article that I hope many people will read and take to their hearts:
Carb consumption has risen over the years. So have U.S. obesity levels.
Most people can count calories. Many have a clue about where fat lurks in their diets. However, fewer give carbohydrates much thought, or know why they should. But a growing number of top nutritional scientists blame excessive carbohydrates — not fat — for America's ills. They say cutting carbohydrates is the key to reversing obesity, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and hypertension.
"Fat is not the problem," says Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. "If Americans could eliminate sugary beverages, potatoes, white bread, pasta, white rice and sugary snacks, we would wipe out almost all the problems we have with weight and diabetes and other metabolic diseases."
It's a confusing message. For years we've been fed the line that eating fat would make us fat and lead to chronic illnesses. "Dietary fat used to be public enemy No. 1," says Dr. Edward Saltzman, associate professor of nutrition and medicine at Tufts University. "Now a growing and convincing body of science is pointing the finger at carbs, especially those containing refined flour and sugar."
All carbohydrates (a category including sugars) convert to sugar in the blood, and the more refined the carbs are, the quicker the conversion goes. When you eat a glazed doughnut or a serving of mashed potatoes, it turns into blood sugar very quickly. To manage the blood sugar, the pancreas produces insulin, which moves sugar into cells, where it's stored as fuel in the form of glycogen.
f you have a perfectly healthy metabolism, the system works beautifully, says Dr. Stephen Phinney, a nutritional biochemist and an emeritus professor of UC Davis who has studied carbohydrates for 30 years. "However, over time, as our bodies get tired of processing high loads of carbs, which evolution didn't prepare us for … how the body responds to insulin can change," he says.
When cells become more resistant to those insulin instructions, the pancreas needs to make more insulin to push the same amount of glucose into cells. As people become insulin resistant, carbs become a bigger challenge for the body. When the pancreas gets exhausted and can't produce enough insulin to keep up with the glucose in the blood, diabetes develops.
Here's how Phinney explains it: When you cut carbs, your body first uses available glycogen as fuel. When that's gone, the body turns to fat and the pancreas gets a break. Blood sugar stabilizes, insulin levels drop, fat burns. That's why the diet works for diabetics and for weight loss.
When the body switches to burning fat instead of glycogen, it goes into a process called nutritional ketosis. If a person eats 50 or fewer grams of carbs, his body will go there, Phinney says. (Nutritional ketosis isn't to be confused with ketoacidosis, a dangerous condition that can occur in diabetics.)
Beyond the fat-burning effects of ketosis, people lose weight on low-carb diets because fat and protein increase satisfaction and reduce appetite. On the flip side, simple carbs cause an insulin surge, which triggers a blood sugar drop, which makes you hungry again.
"At my obesity clinic, my default diet for treating obesity, Type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome is a low-carb diet," says Dr. Eric Westman, director of the Lifestyle Medicine Clinic atDuke University Medical Center, and co-author of the new Atkins book. "If you take carbohydrates away, all these things get better."
As nutrition scientists try to find the ideal for the future, others look to history and evolution for answers. One way to put our diet in perspective is to imagine the face of a clock with 24 hours on it. Each hour represents 100,000 years that humans have been on the Earth.
On this clock, the advent of agriculture and refined grains would have appeared at about 11:54 p.m. (23 hours and 54 minutes into the day). Before that, humans were hunters and gatherers, eating animals and plants off the land. Agriculture allowed for the mass production of crops such as wheat and corn, and refineries transformed whole grains into refined flour and created processed sugar.
Some, like Phinney, would argue that we haven't evolved to adapt to a diet of refined foods and mass agriculture — and that maybe we shouldn't try.
