Most vegetable oils are bad for you!

I've said it before but rather than saying it again, I'm going to let this article do it for me.

Use of dietary linoleic acid for secondary prevention of coronary heart disease and death: evaluation of recovered data from the Sydney Diet Heart Study and updated meta-analysis

http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.e8707

It shows that most of the vegetable oils that we have been told are healthy not only are not but are, in fact, harmful. If you have consistently been reading this blog then you know I addressed this with this post some while back.

http://ketosisprone.blogspot.com/2011/07/thinking-about-western-technology-food.html

I won’t gloat. I reached my differing conclusions because as a Ketosis Prone Type 2 diabetic the advice that was given to me about health was an unmitigated disaster. This type of diabetes, makes us the knockout mice of diabetics. We always seem to stand outside the standard dogma and, because we do, we point at other answers that have been obscured or forgotten. This is why I say our type of diabetes should be studied and studied, hard. Of course, till that day comes, you’ve still got me. ; )

Anyway, I’ve no intention of reinventing the wheel. What I’ve done is gone off and found some very good discussions of this paper that you can read at your leisure.

http://stan-heretic.blogspot.com/2013/02/us-study-double-mortality-after.html

http://barrygroves.blogspot.ca/2013/02/heart-attack-risk-in-healthy-spreads.html

http://hopefulgeranium.blogspot.co.nz/2013/02/the-results-show-that-omega-6-linoleic.html

http://anthonycolpo.com/research-update-polyunsaturated-vegetable-fats-are-not-heart-healthy/ 

 

I want to add this brief addendum. Note that the reduction in cholesterol did not change the rate of mortality. This maybe the first nail in the coffin of the cholesterol hypothesis.

Here's some more on the same topic over at the "Heretic".

http://stan-heretic.blogspot.com/2013/03/more-animal-fat-less-veg-oils-longevity.html 

 

Traditional foods ... again

This popped up a few days ago and is very much in line with what I've been saying about diet and food.  Here.
  
This is a study done in Lebanon (KPD is well-documented in the Middle East). It should be noted that there was one other diet that was examined but it showed no association with diabetes. This diet would be close to a low carb diet.


The findings of this study demonstrate direct associations of the Refined Grains & Desserts and Fast Food patterns with T2D and an inverse association between the Traditional Lebanese pattern and the disease among Lebanese adults. 
 Dietary patterns and odds of Type 2 diabetes in Beirut, Lebanon: a case - a case study

What should be noted is that this diet maybe safe now but it too is subject to the substitution of ingredients as well so complacency, as regards ones diet, should be guarded against.

Contamination of traditional foods

I'm still off on assignment but this subject came up and I thought that it would be good to drop a brief note on it.

We tend to think that if we stick to traditional foods that we can expect to be safe from problems with blood sugar. What needs to be recognized is that traditional foods were typically raised by the consumer or the farmer was near to the consumer. Preparations were carried out by the person eating the food.

The modern world is different, however. You might very well be eating a traditional diet but what are its constituents? Is that wheat the traditional wheat which was used in the preparation of that bread? How was it prepared? This is important. Traditional preparation will do nothing to offset problems of diet, if the underlying food is problematic.

If you look at our "diabetes epidemic", you will note how much it has taken off in peoples of color across the world in the last few decades. I suspect that some of the reason has to do with newer varieties being substituted for old traditional foods. I know I keep harping on this but the only way to truly know is to test your blood. Don't be complacent. The world isn't very dietarily safe for you or me.

Thinking about: A1c Relapse Progression and the Insidious Nature of KPD

These are the graphs from Ketosis-Prone Type 2 Diabetes in Patients of Sub-Saharan African Origin. These graphs especially C & D  are too important not to be seen.

This is my recreation of C for clearer viewing.

Let's recap.

Ketosis Prone Diabetes is known for sudden onset without a precipitating factor. I posted this Here

The A1c at which the diabetes stayed controlled is about 6.3. This is in the previous post.  Here

Spontaneous Remission is the norm where there are no antibodies present. This is posted everywhere on this site.

What we have is a type 1 like syndrome that shows up out of seemingly nowhere then vanishes, leaving a type 2 diabetic, who can maintain blood sugars with diet and exercise.

My speculation is that the KPD syndrome is insidious. I have speculated in other posts using anecdotal evidence that this is the case but it occurs to me that there is enough here to do better.

The graph is important because what we need to wonder about is: what is a KPD before DKA?  This graph puts the regular blood sugars at about 6.3 A1c or 134. Jenny Ruhl's "Blood Sugar 101"  talks about dangerous blood sugars and, the short of it is, that blood sugars above 140 cause damage. She details other blood sugar levels that are considered safe but are bad as well. If you're new to diabetes I strongly advise you to read this site, carefully.

No one's blood sugar is steady. It goes up and down during the day and an A1c is best viewed as an average of blood sugars over a 3 month period. Actually, it's a measure of glycation of blood cells but seeing it as an average will do just fine for my purposes.

As I said, no ones blood sugars are steady and the more metabolic damage you have, the more they tend to fluctuate. Now, for whatever reason, KPD's tend to have great big fluctuations. This means that at 134 KPDs are going to spend considerable time above the dangerous 140. In fact it is so close to 140 as to almost be the same thing. KPDs have another trick that most other diabetics don't seem to have and that's remission. Rather than continue on a path of gradual rise, they can and do drop back to near normal. This would essentially reset their diabetes and they would, once again be back to a gradual rise.

What I'm saying is that the flat portion of this graph represents both the tendency to fluctuate wildly and the tendency to balance this with a fall back into remission. A KPD would get in trouble if the numbers stayed significantly above 140 but even then, if intensive insulin therapy were applied blood sugars once brought down would go back into a range where things would balance.

There is a problem here. Over time, continuous damage would be occurring. It would be small each time but the cumulative effect over decades would cause serious damage body-wide.

If we run this all back, we could start with a normal blood sugar but with a tendency to get large fluctuations from certain types of foods. Whatever the mechanism is for remission would keep pulling blood sugars down but over time they would rise as more and more damage was being done metabolically and to other body systems. The abrupt onset would occur when this remission mechanism itself broke down. Maybe it has a limited range to work in and the KPDs that go DKA have a functionally smaller range.

Okay, this is speculation. There are many ways this could be playing out, all I've done is outline one possible scenario. What isn't speculative is the nearness of normoglycemia to the line of danger and how quickly this takes off.

Once again we visit the ADA guidelines.

ADA Criteria for the diagnosis of diabetes

1. A1C 6.5%. The test should be performed in a laboratory using a method that is NGSP certified and standardized to the DCCT assay.*

OR

2. FPG 126 mg/dl (7.0 mmol/l). Fasting is defined as no caloric intake for at least 8 h.*

OR

3. Two-hour plasma glucose 200 mg/dl (11.1 mmol/l) during an OGTT. 

It isn't said but if the FBG (fasting plasma glucose) is below 126 most medical people will not go to the other tests. Even if they did, the next test would be an A1c and a KPD would pass there as well. The OGTT (oral glucose tolerance test) would catch it but it isn't done if the first two don't give indicators.

Years of damage with an attendant rise in mortality would occur because all those numbers sit in the danger zone for KPD's and the graph shows that DKA could easily be around the corner.

If you're reading this, you're probably KPD. You should recognize that it has a strong genetic component so if you've got family members they are likely to have it or some component of it. This is where I diverge from all the diabetic advice on diet. Screw looking at or adjusting diet. You don't know what precipitates KPD. The only thing that is known is that the blood sugar numbers represented by the "prediabetes" ADA recommendations are, in fact, the launching point for a serious diabetic emergency.

I said that the OGTT would more than likely have shown diabetes but this test tends not to be performed. You can do something similar with a meter, a couple of bowls of breakfast cereal and a glass of juice. Just test someone an hour after they took their first bite of breakfast and see if their numbers are above 160. I think that would catch a lot but since we really don't know what the bad actor in the food is, wisdom dictates testing the blood sugar with all types of food. What puts the blood sugar above 160 should always be avoided because whether you're a KPD or not, damage occurs to the body above that number diabetic or not.

Thinking about: Eating. Maybe one size does not fit all

Though most of the testing of KPD's tends to involve obese participants, it should be noted that many KPD's  are not only not obese, they are lean. Typically, when I look at papers where the participants aren't chosen, the lean members comprise a quarter to a third. Even in childhood DKA episodes, the obese number about fifty percent.

What does this tell us about KPD's and weight? I keep hearing and seeing ads telling parents to make sure their children are active and eating right. This is the answer to childhood obesity, exercise and diet. Okay, I am a fan of both sloth and gluttony, I tend to be good at them, but I have to admit there's nothing wrong with having children out there physically engaging the world without a candy bar in their mouths.

KPD is showing us something, however. What do you say to a person who is a thin diabetic? You obviously can't ask him or her to go on a diet nor would you put them on exercise schedule to help burn calories. We don't give the same advice to the thin KPD simply because it doesn't make obvious sense. They are thin. We give it to the heavy ones because they are fat. It's still the same condition with the same underlying causes. It gets expressed differently but the numbers between fat and thin are pretty much the same. I'm saying this because, I believe we have to look deeper than this. There is something going here and the range of body types it effects doesn't seem to point at behavior.

The people of sub-Saharan Africa have a much bigger problem with Ketosis Prone Diabetes but this tends to be more in urban environments. There hasn't been a study but I would hazard a guess that you could draw a trendline representing length of urbanization of KPDs and their families and find quite a correlation.

Another thing to note is it tends to cluster in people of color, not that whites don't get it, they do, but the prevalence is far higher in people of color. Now I'm pretty sure you don't want to say that all these people of color are lazy and eat too much. Besides, how could that be true if a good many of them are thin?

I believe that most of this is a response to diet. It is, after all, about metabolism. Its higher rate of prevalence in urban areas suggests that it has something to do with the moving from traditional diets to more modern diets. It would be logical to point out that there are many things that go with urbanization that could just as readily be pointed as a cause. This is true but I would say that this exists worldwide in varied modern environments so I would have to ask: how many things could this be? To tell the truth, I don't know nor does anybody else. What I do know is purely anecdotal and the KPD's I've talked to have had to change their diets significantly to hold their blood sugars down with diet and exercise, those on insulin, generally, have not.

This difference in insulin using KPD's and non-insulin using KPD's suggest that some element of diet is effecting blood sugars. Think of it as some sort of intolerance. What is it? I really can't know. I list a bunch of blogs I follow that are all about nutrition because I'm trying to find out.

I ate a very healthy diet before I was diagnosed but now I find I can't eat that same diet without a significant rise in blood sugar. Would I say that, simply because I can't eat it, no one should? No. What I will say is that KPD is different and pretending that it isn't does not work. We can not assume what is healthy. We must verify.

I've just read the usual recommendations of the ADA and others about what is healthy to eat but does it include KPD? I think not. If these foods are fine there is really only one way to know and that's to test the blood sugar. I see all these recommendations about what to eat but, one size does not fit all and this is especially true of KPD. What should be recommended is that all families get a meter and test what their food is actually doing to them. If there is a significant intolerance, blood sugar will exceed 140. If this was the recommendation of the USDA there would be far fewer DKA events in this country. It would also provide important data about what is safe and what is not about a whole range of products.

To repeat, there is something in the KPD diet, that may not effect others but which is probably poisonous to KPDs. We can't identify who is KPD but if people were checking their blood sugars and correlating it with what they ate, the KPDs that are out there, who aren't diagnosed, could see this truck coming

The obesity epidemic or what's up with all the fat people.

Most likely, if you're reading this, you're diabetic and you're overweight. You might have tried diets and lost a little bit or a lot but you probably gained it back and have pretty much learned to live with it. This isn't all that unusual unfortunately. We are in an unprecedented epidemic of obesity with rising diabetes.

The usual prescription is for more exercise and cutting the calories. The basic prescription has at its base the biblical idea of gluttony and sloth. If you are fat, you feel shame. I'm going to row against the tide on this one with something called "common sense".

I will start with the single principle that all humans are animals and that the basic principles of being a living being applies to all living beings. The idea I wish to bring forth from here has to do with eating and this idea is this: animals eat because they are hungry and they stop eating when they are not.

Now you could bring up various animal experiments about fat mice and rats and how they will eat long after they are so fat that they can't stand and other bizarre displays but I didn't mention obesity. I only said that:animals eat because they are hungry and they stop eating when they are not. I didn't mention obesity because I don't think it's relevant to the discussion. Obesity, I have come to believe, is a symptom and not a cause.

If obesity is not a cause but a symptom, what's the cause? Hunger! Yep, hunger. I'm putting forth the proposition that we are in the midst of famine.

My youngest boy is exhibit A. He was a poor college student who went to school in his hometown so he was able to scrounge food from family and friends. His typical procedure was to arrive for dinner and then try to eat - forever. He would sit and eat until he was full and then, not knowing where his next meal was coming from, would continue to try and put food away. It was horrible to watch. He would slowly chew with a mild revulsion on his face then swallow. No matter how hard he tried, he could never seem to get beyond a few fork fulls before he had to give up.

This isn't news. Eating after you're full is very hard and the thought of doing it over and over again makes you feel green. Try it. You can't do it. But you might say that you've seen people overeat all the time. Once again, stick with the idea. I didn't say people don't overeat. I said that it is nearly impossible to eat, if you aren't hungry.

I am exhibit B. For the last thirty years, I have been a bike rider. What ever I had to do, I would try to do it on a bike. I would put somewhere between four thousand and five thousand miles a year on a bike. I ate carbs like crazy in order to do this because carbo loading was the thing to do when you were putting in a lot of physical exertion. My reputation for absolute gluttony is based on this. I was never fat but I could eat plate after plate of food. I ate until my stomach was full and then ate some more but I remained hungry. This was my life. I couldn't stop eating because I was famished.

You can't diet, if you're hungry. It will only make you hungrier. You can't excercise when you're hungry because your body cuts back on motion. You can, however, grow fat because there really isn't a connection between appetite and obesity.

I hear the experts talk about empty calories, large portions and too many snacks but rats, no matter the density or type of calories, would stop eating. Hunger is basic and at a level far below regard.

Stole this from Peter of HyperLipid

Here

Now I'll say it again: we eat because we are hungry not out of some lascivious need. What we are seeing now is hunger, one that isn't slacked by eating. Something has gone wrong with our diet and we are now hungry at a level that causes us to eat in search of a satiation which we can't achieve.

Mike

Western Diet Implicated in African American Diabetes

PUT THE SODA DOWN, NOW!

Okay, now that I've got your attention, I want to tell you why. Diabetes has a very large footprint in the African American community and researchers have been looking for the reason why. Here I have a novel paper that says that it is genetic and that we are the victims of the FDA food pyramid. To put it concisely, people of African descent have a problem with processing carbohydrates at a genetic level. This may very well be the cause of a good deal of the metabolic problems noted in African Americans.

Stable Patterns of Gene Expression Regulating Carbohydrate Metabolism Determined by Geographic Ancestry

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0008183#pone.0008183-Lindquist1

Individuals of African descent in the United States suffer disproportionately from diseases with a metabolic etiology (obesity, metabolic syndrome, and diabetes), and from the pathological consequences of these disorders (hypertension and cardiovascular disease)...

...Differences in expression of several carbohydrate metabolism genes suggest both genetic and transcriptional mechanisms contribute to these patterns and may play a role in exacerbating the disproportionate levels of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease observed in Americans with African ancestry.

The KPD's I've spoken to all have lamented their problems with post prandial spikes. This specifically refers to the hour after a person has taken their first bite of a meal. This blood sugar should never go over 140. A normal blood sugar doesn't and there is a very good reason why. Research has shown this is the point where damage begins to occur throughout the body.

This link is to "Blood Sugar 101": http://www.phlaunt.com/diabetes/14045678.php . It is run by Janet (Jenny) Ruel and any time you spend there will be profitable if you're really interested in the ins and outs of diabetes.

If you have a genetic problem handling carbohydrates and have the added problem of being Ketosis Prone this combination will eventually move you into hyperglycemia and / or DKA. The eating of carbs will force your blood sugar up which will create glucostoxicity. This is glucose poisoning. Beta cells in the pancreases of KPD's are very sensitive to this and will slowly shutdown. The more carbs ingested the worse the condition will come and god help you, if you drink soda or juice to try to slack your thirst because they are almost pure carbs and filled with High Porn Corn.

The truth is there is almost no average American meal that will not push your blood sugar beyond the 140 mark. I can't handle better than 20 grams of carbs at any setting and those carbs need to be very complex to keep me from spiking my blood sugar. Even the supposedly healthy diet is problematic here. Whole grains, potatoes, brown rice, apples, bananas, oranges and pastas are just a few things that I have to avoid.

This doesn't match what you would get from a dietitian but you have to recognize that most of the research has been done on Europeans and the minority communities have not been factored into this. Some might claim this is racism but it more neglect than anything. We, much like the LADA and MODY community, must look after ourselves here. I've got one more piece of the puzzle that I want to put out and then I can really lay this out in a logical fashion.

Mike