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Cure and prevent diabetes mellitus with diet, not drugs
Part 4: Why carbs are the wrong foods for diabetics
Obviously something has gone very wrong with the conventional treatment of Type-2 diabetes and a growing number of nutritionists and nutritionally oriented doctors are beginning to question the conventional wisdom behind the standard diabetic diet. In this part we discuss what that might be.
What Is Diabetes?
I believe we need another definition of Type-2 diabetes. And that is:
Diabetes mellitus is a chronic disorder of carbohydrate metabolism
The chief substance in the body responsible for keeping blood-sugar levels in
check is the
hormone insulin. In diabetes, either there is insufficient insulin or the
insulin simply doesn't do
its job. Between 5% and 10% of diabetics has what is known as type 1 diabetes,
where the
body fails to make sufficient quantities of insulin. In the more common type 2
diabetes, there is
usually plenty of insulin around — the problem is that the body has
become resistant to its
effects.
Whatever the precise nature of the diabetes, eating a diet that helps to keep
blood-sugar levels
on an even keel is of obvious importance. Until recently, the traditional view
has been that
sugar, because it causes surges in blood-sugar levels, should be limited in the
diet. On the
other hand, starches such as bread, potato, rice and pasta are recommended by
doctors and
dieticians because of the long-held belief that they give slow, sustained
releases of sugar into
the bloodstream. Fruit is also recommended because it is believed the sugar
fruit contains — fructose — also does not raise insulin levels.
And this approach shows better than anything just how little the diabetes
establishment
understands about diabetes — because, biochemically, it makes no sense
whatsoever.
Let me give you a short chemistry lesson.
Sugars
The first and most important point to make is that
all carbohydrates are sugars
, although we
do not normally call them that, but differentiate between those that taste
sweet, which we call
'sugar', and those that don't, which we call 'starch'.
The simple sugars in foods that are most important to human nutrition are
called sucrose,
fructose, lactose, and maltose. But the body is only interested in the simple
sugar called
glucose, so these other simple sugars break apart in the digestion to become
glucose.
Sucrose
is the white granulated stuff we call 'sugar' and put in bowls on the table.
Sucrose is
the form of sugar we are most familiar with. It is obtained from sugar cane,
sugar beets, and
the syrup from sugar maple trees. It is also naturally present in some amounts
in most fruits
and vegetables, along with higher amounts of other sugars. Whenever the word
'sugar' is used
in common conversation, it is usually sucrose that is being referred to.
Sucrose is a
disaccharide (meaning 'two sugars') which hydrolyses to glucose and fructose.
Fructose
is the form of sugar found in fruits, honey, and corn syrup. It is 1.7 times as
sweet as
sucrose. In recent times fructose, which is every bit as much a sugar as
sucrose, has been
added to processed foods so that the manufacturers can say on the packet that
their product
'has no added sugar'. It's a legal loophole as fructose is a sugar. Fructose is
a monosaccharide
(meaning 'one sugar') which is absorbed intact and changed into glucose by the
liver. Diabetics
are told that they can eat fruit so, presumably fructose is thought to be all
right.
Lactose
is the sugar found in milk and cottage cheese. A disaccharide, it is hydrolysed
into
glucose and galactose. The galactose is changed into glucose in the liver
Maltose
is a disaccharide sugar found in grains. It hydrolyses into glucose and
glucose. Thus,
for diabetics it seems to be the worst 'sugar'.
Note that all these sugars end in 'ose'. Anything you see on the label of a
product ending with
these three letters is almost certain to be a sugar. Dextrose, for example, is
merely another
name for glucose. The only exception is cellulose, which, while it is a complex
sugar molecule,
is the material that plant cell walls are made of. Cellulose only has a food
value for a
herbivore. It is inedible to a carnivore and as the human digestive system has
no enzyme to
digest it, cellulose has no nutritional value and passes straight through you.
It used to be called
'roughage'; we now call it fibre.
Dietary Nonsense
Next we need to understand how the current recommendations are actually based on what I can only describe as dietary nonsense.
Note that DiabetesUK recommendations are to eat at least five servings of fruit
and vegetables
every day and base meals and snacks on starchy foods. Also note that on the
plate (left) sugar is
lumped together with fats at the bottom. Now this is why this is nonsense:
You are told to 'Cut down on . . . sugary foods'
The chemical name for sugar — the white granulated stuff you put
in your tea — is sucrose. Sucrose is a
disaccharide
, which means two sugars. Its chemical formula, C
12
H
22
O
11
, means that it is made up of twelve atoms of carbon, twenty-two atoms of
hydrogen and eleven atoms of oxygen. When it is digested, it enters the
bloodstream as the blood sugar, glucose, whose formula is C
6
H
12
O
6
. In this process one molecule of C
12
H
22
O
11
ends up as two molecules of C
6
H
12
O
6
. But you will notice that sucrose has only twenty-two hydrogen and eleven
oxygen atoms, before it can become glucose, it must gain two hydrogen atoms and
one oxygen atom somehow. It does this very simply by combining with water whose
chemical formula is H
2
O (which means it has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom — exactly
what we
need). The process is illustrated thus:
1 Sucrose + 1 Water == 2 glucose
The addition of the water molecule to the sugar molecule increases the total
energy content. In
this way, 100g of sugar, which you would think contains 400 kcals, ends up as
105g of glucose or 420 kcals.
'Base meals and snacks on starchy foods'
The situation is similar with starches. Dieticians call starches 'complex
carbohydrates' or
polysaccharides
, which means many sugars. Our digestion also converts these into glucose but,
in this case, the formula is a little different. Starch is made up of strings
of thousands of sugar molecules fastened together. The formula for each of
these individual sugar molecules is C
6
H
10
O
5
so, to make it into C
6
H
12
O
6,
it again needs to find two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. So one molecule
of water, H
2
O, is combined with each of the starch sugars. In this way:
Starch + Water == glucose
But as the atoms from the water now form a greater proportion of the total in
this equation,
100g of starch actually become 111 g of glucose or 444 calories.
That's more than the sugar!
So if you are taking DiabetesUK's advice for weight loss and trying to reduce
your calorie
intake, basing meals on starchy foods doesn't look like a very clever thing to
do.
And the second piece of advice appears to be no more sound:
Q: What are diabetics told to eat?
A: "5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day"
Q: What carbohydrate do fruit and vegetables contain?
A: FRUCTOSE — which is a sugar!
Ah, yes . . . but . . . glucose raises blood levels very quickly (Fructose is
preferred to glucose because it is thought to take longer to raise blood sugar).
Earlier I lied . . . well didn't tell the whole truth. You see C
6
H
12
O
6
is the formula for both
glucose and fructose
Sucrose hydrolyses to 50% glucose and 50% fructose. In other words, table sugar
is half
fructose . . .whereas starch hydrolyses to glucose alone. So does that make
sugar healthier than
fruit?
Perhaps not . . .
You might point out that, on DiabetesUK's plate, equal emphasis is given to
both glucose-producing starch and fructose-producing fruit and veg. In the USA,
the American Diabetes
Association places a bigger emphasis on starches, telling diabetics to eat 6 to
11 portions of
bread, pasta and so forth a day — so is that healthier in the USA than
fruit?
The belief seems to be that glucose raises blood levels and, consequently,
insulin levels quickly
but, as fructose doesn't require insulin, it is healthier.
But again it isn't that simple. The aim of diabetes treatment is to reduce the
complications, the
major one being heart attacks. In this respect fructose does not seem to be a
good choice
because:
Fructose Increases CHD Risk!
- fructose glycosylates haemoglobin 7 times faster than glucose. (1) This may be important because glycosylation (as well as oxidation) of other proteins, including LDL & HDL particles, may increase the growth rate of atheroma.. (2)
- Fructose also appears to increase Total Cholesterol (TC) primarily by elevating LDL-C. (3) Increasing dietary fructose from 3% to 20% of calories at the expense of starch increased Total Cholesterol by 9% and LDL by 11%.
- It appears that every 2% increase in dietary fructose raises LDL by more than 1%. Swanson et al say that "There is now reason to believe that dietary fructose will increase the risk of atherosclerosis."
The glycosylation of proteins is also responsible for the other complications
of diabetes which
were listed in Part 1
So one has to ask: why are diabetics at such risk told to "Eat five portions of
fruit and
vegetables a day"?
Conclusion
Diabetes mellitus is a disease of incorrect nutrition.
The disease develops as a result of a high intake of carbohydrates — the
'healthy' diet.
Since 'healthy eating' was introduced, type 2 diabetes has become epidemic to
such an extent
that it now affects children.
This increase at such a time is NOT a coincidence — it is cause and
effect.
The reason conventional treatment of diabetes fails is because authoritative
bodies such as
DiabetesUK and the American Diabetes Association promote the very diet that
caused the
disease in the first place — a diet that actually makes the condition worse.
Fortunately Type-2 diabetes is easily treated without the need to resort to
drugs by:
A strategy that offers the prospect of cure or successful treatment for
diabetes is one that
limits hyperinsulinaemia by restricting carbohydrate intake — the exact
opposite of the
conventional approach.
Part 5
looks at some of the evidence that eating a low-carb, high-fat diet is better
for diabetics.
References
1.
Bunn HF, Higgins PJ. Reaction of monosaccharides with proteins: possible
evolutionary
significance.
Science
1981;213:222-9.
2.
Bierman EL.
Arteriosclerosis and Thrombosis
1992;12:647-646.
3.
Swanson JE, Laine DC, Thomas W, Bantle JP. Metabolic effects of dietary
fructose in
healthy subjects.
Am J Clin Nutr
1992;55:851-6.
Introduction
Part 1: The scale of the problem
Part 2: What is diabetes -- Are you at risk?
Part 3: Conventional treatment for Type-2 diabetes – and why it fails
Part 4: Why carbs are the wrong foods for diabetics
Part 5: The evidence
Part 6: The correct diet for a Type-2 diabetic, (or treatment without drugs)
Part 7: Treatment for Type-1 diabetes
Suitable foods for diabetics
Last updated 6 February 2008
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- A vitamin B1 deficiency may make Diabetes a killer
- How Diabetes Ignorance Increases Heart Risks
- Diabetic Neuropathy is Preventable with Low-Carb Diet
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