My Experience With Intermittent Fasting For Type 1 Diabetes
In a nutshell, intermittent fasting means closing the window of time during which you eat. If you have breakfast at 7am and finish dinner at 7pm, you’d be eating during a 12 hour window and fasting for the other 12. Many of us don’t do that, though. Nighttime snacking is likely an epidemic and from what I hear/read, it is wise to give your body at least 12 hours of fasting time. Have you ever skipped a meal and felt lighter, recharged, and not hungry? I have often felt this way. I understand about a third of you will probably be about the opposite but such is my experience. Intermittent Fasting for Weight Loss I was interested in intermittent fasting years ago when I read what Tim Ferris had to say about it. He has access to exceptional people, is wildly curious, and respects science to as much as a degree as I can tell so I tend to consider what he has to say. I started trying it a year and a half ago in the hopes it would help me lose some stubborn weight. If I didn’t have type 1 I might have type 2 diabetes. In other words, I become resistant pretty easily and quickly to insulin. If I eat my disciplined way and exercise my basal insulin is about 11 units every 24 hours. If I eat the standard american diet and don’t exercise it goes up to about 30 units every 24 hours. Big difference. Anyway, I began by just not eating breakfast and having my first meal of the day at lunch (noon) and then having dinner at about 6pm and finishing up at 7pm for the night. I continued my walking most days, trying to walk at least 3 miles a day. This was easy for me because I have always regretted breakfast. Seriously, I eat it and feel too full for lunch and if I skip lunch I get hungry so it just complicates things and zaps my precious energy. For so long though, the commonly he Continue reading >>
Intermittent Fasting: Not So Fast
I’m sure that at least a few of you have heard or read about the latest trend in weight loss called “intermittent fasting.” The very word “fasting” is probably less than appealing, as it pretty much means you don’t eat or drink anything (except perhaps water) for a specified amount of time. Starvation is not exactly recommended among health professionals. But intermittent fasting is different. Is it something you should try? What is intermittent fasting, anyway? Intermittent fasting has been the talk of the town, so to speak, thanks to two recent books to hit the market: The Fast Diet by Dr. Michael Mosley and Mimi Spencer, and The Overnight Diet by Caroline Apovian, MD. Intermittent fasting essentially means that you skip a meal or severely restrict calories on certain days of the week with the intention of losing weight, controlling blood glucose, and/or decreasing heart disease risk. But on the other days of the week, you can pretty much eat what you want (within reason, of course). For many people, this concept sounds appealing. Limiting calories for a couple days a week doesn’t sound that bad if you can eat what you want the rest of the time. The Fast Diet, also called the The 5:2 Diet has you eat between 500 and 600 calories (women get 500 calories, men get 600 calories) for two days out of the week, spread over two meals of about 250 to 300 calories. These fast days should not be right in a row, and your food choices ideally should be more plant-based and emphasize protein. The premise is that after several hours of fasting, the body burns up its carbohydrate stores and shifts to burning fat for fuel. Many claim that intermittent fasting also helps to blunt appetite. The Overnight Diet emphasizes getting enough sleep; a lack of sleep can disrupt met Continue reading >>
You Are “when” You Eat: The Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting (video)
Intermittent fasting is term coined by the research world that refers to an extended duration of minimal calorie intake. Believe it or not, humans are evolutionarily adapted to performing intermittent fasts – our ancestors performed extended fasts whenever food was unavailable, and feasted only when they could procure enough food to eat. However, in our modern world of abundance, deliberately fasting for an extended period of time is anything but “normal.” Fasting goes against every morsel of modern life, and is in direct opposition to the abundance-based food culture that we have worked so hard to create. In our world of fast food, on-demand food delivery and 24-hour convenience stores, choosing not to eat food can seem strange indeed. I spent my entire graduate career investigating the effects of intermittent fasting in rodents, in order to understand why calorie restriction and intermittent fasting are the gold standards for improving insulin sensitivity. As a result of this active body of research, tens of thousands of people across the world engage in intermittent fasting on a weekly basis, as a means of improving their body composition, losing fat mass, shedding pounds or observing a religious holiday. The research world has taken a large interest in calorie restriction and intermittent fasting, for the explicit purpose of identifying cellular mechanisms that may retard the aging process and promote excellent metabolic health. And in the process of studying intermittent fasting, researchers have uncovered a laundry list of health benefits that confuse even the most educated professors. The truth is that humans have been fasting for thousands of years. Modern research is playing catch-up, in order to understand why the health benefits are so impressive. The M Continue reading >>
Can You Do A 24h Fast With Type 1 Diabetes?
Recently, I’ve read a lot about fasting, intermittent fasting and how to do it. Intermittent fasting can be done in many ways, depending on your preferences and lifestyle, and basically means to cut down on calories for a limited period of time, to give the body a chance to use its own reserves. This can be especially helpful if you’re trying to lose weight, or keep your blood glucose levels more stable. In some cases, these two are interlinked (read: Type 2 Diabetes). What is important to remember is to still eat enough calories. You just do it within a limited time window. Intermittent fasting makes your body use the energy (food) consumed more efficiently. And no, skipping a meal (or even two) won’t send your body into a crisis-starvation mode. That takes a good few days to happen. Intermittent fasting usually has numbers attached to it, depending on how long you’re fasting for; – 5:2 means you’re restricting calories on 2 days of the week, while eating “normal” the other 5. – 20:4 means you fast for 20 hours, eating one or more meals within the remaining 4 hours. – 24/36/48/72:0 simply means a 24/36/48/72 hour fast. – 16:8 means you eat your meals within an 8 hour time span, fasting the remaining 16 hours. I’ve done a 16:8 fast in my daily life for a few months now. For me it works really well, as it enables me to keep my blood glucose levels more stable for a longer period of time (which is really beneficial on so many levels!). And to be honest, in practice it only means skipping breakfast, and eating lunch and dinner as normal. This feels doable for me, and I can easily function without having breakfast every day. But, is a 24 hour possible to do with insulin dependent Type 1 Diabetes as your BFF? I decided to test it out, in the name of s Continue reading >>
Intermittent Fasting And Its Beneficial Effects On The Body
Dr. Mark Mattson intermittent fasting research: old tradition potentially benefits body’s organs, providing possible cure and treatment. Research and a sit down with Dr. Mark Mattson at the NIH shows intermittent fasting is resurfacing as a medical treatment used in certain comorbidities, rather than medication. So often individuals consume food throughout the day without much energy expenditure, which over time becomes a problem due to the types of unhealthy food consumed, and the amount of food consumed. Hypertension, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and even diabetes become the end result of those behaviors. Fasting could be the new savior to these conditions, with the benefits going through the roof. — Click here to access Dr. Mark Mattson intermittent fasting video series & downloadable transcript – exclusive discussion with Diabetes in Control — Fasting means to eat only small meals, or none at all, for long periods of time. This can be done every day or even one day a month. Different types of intermittent fasting consist of alternate day fasting or ingesting less than 600 calories a day, eating a regular diet five days a week and only 600 calories the remaining two days, and lastly eating all of one’s calories during a 4-8 hour window. These different types of fasting can be tailored to fit each individuals needs and schedules, with the addition of not needing to eat breakfast. Dr. Mattson also debunked the rule of eating three meals a day with a valid point comparing earlier times to now. “There is evidence that the 3 meals/day routine began during the early period of the agricultural revolution when people were working hard on the farms every day. They undoubtedly had a high calorie requirement to support their high energy expenditure (e.g., 4000 Continue reading >>
How Fasting Reverses Type 2 Diabetes
While many consider type 2 diabetes (T2D) irreversible, fasting has been long known to cure diabetes. In our previous post, we considered bariatric surgery. While extreme, these surgeries have proven the point that the metabolic abnormalities that underlie T2D (hyperinsulinemia, insulin resistance) can be fully reversible even after a few short weeks. Many early studies were done with the heavy-duty Roux-en-Y surgery, which is the heavyweight champions of surgeries. The best weight loss. The most complications. This is the surgery that has ‘Go Big or Go Home’ tattooed on its massive bicep. But even milder forms of bariatric surgery show the same reversibility of T2D. A gastric band is essentially a belt implanted around your stomach. The surgeon keeps tightening the belt so that you can’t eat. If you try to eat too much, you’ll puke it all back up. Lovely. It ain’t pretty, but it sure does work. Again, long term results are kind of iffy, but short term results are pretty good. The results of gastric banding versus medical treatment showed a significant and pretty damn good drop in their fasting blood sugars. In other words, their T2D was reversing in a b-i-g way. Those given medicines alone basically stayed the same. They were no better than before. Gastric banding a 500 pound patient will still reverse 20 years of diabesity within weeks. One of the main questions is why? There are many hypotheses, but essentially, it is the sudden severe restriction of all calories that causes this beneficial effect. This is the same thing as the time tested, ancient healing tradition of fasting. Fasting is the voluntary restriction of food for religious, health or other purposes (eg. hunger strikes). Is bariatrics simply a surgically enforced fast? The short answer is yes. I Continue reading >>
Fasting Diet Combined With Beta Cell Regeneration Might Reverse Type 1 Diabetes
Periodic fasting has long been demonstrated to have beneficial effects on autoimmune disorders, cancer prevention and treatments, cardiovascular disease, and a myriad of other ailments. This most recent paper by Cheng et al. might add the treatment of Type 1 diabetes to that list[1]. If successful in humans, it has the potential to reverse some or most of the loss of insulin-producing cells within the pancreas. Just as remarkable, the treatment itself is relatively straightforward, consisting of a regimented protocol of periodic fasting-like conditions. Generally speaking, Type 1 diabetes results from an autoimmune mediated depletion of insulin-secreting pancreatic beta islet cells. In contrast, Type 2 results from lower cellular sensitivity to insulin. Type 2 is primarily caused by environmental factors such as poor diet. The current medical approach to treating Type 1 diabetes is the periodic administration of insulin, usually through self-administered injections. Most new therapies focused on curing Type 1 diabetes are looking to repopulating beta islet cells through the use of reprogrammed induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. However, these approaches are not as simple as the method demonstrated by Cheng et al in this recent study. The treatment consists of a “fasting mimicking diet” (FMD), which for mice corresponds to 3-4 day cycles of a high-fat and low-calorie diet, maintained for at least a month, followed by refeeding. This was performed on transgenic diabetic mice and also normal mice that had their beta cells depleted through the administration of high doses of a toxic drug. Results were also repeated using human diabetic primary beta cells in culture. In this case, the treatment consisted of the addition of human serum from individuals undergoing FMD. Continue reading >>
Intermittent Fasting Could Help Tackle Diabetes – Here's The Science
Intermittent fasting is currently all the rage. But don’t be fooled: it’s much more than just the latest fad. Recent studies of this kind of fasting – with restricted eating part of the time, but not all of the time – have produced a number of successes, but the latest involving diabetes might be the most impressive yet. The idea of intermittent fasting arose after scientists were wowed by the effects of constant calorie restriction. A number of studies in many different animals have shown that restricted eating throughout adulthood leads to dramatic improvements in lifespan and general health. The reasons for these improvements aren’t yet clear. Part of it seems to be that going without food gives cells in the body a much needed break to perform maintenance and repair. But the lack of food also forces cells to resort to alternative sources of energy. Some of these, such as ketones – molecules created in the liver from recycled fat – appear to be beneficial. ‘Fasting’ without fasting The problem is that constant calorie restriction isn’t practical: it’s easy for scientists to impose upon lab animals, but hard for humans to impose upon themselves in the real world. Fortunately, we’ve learned that constant calorie restriction isn’t really necessary. Intermittent fasting seems to have many of the same benefits. There are two main types of intermittent fasting. One type, known as “time restricted feeding”, requires eating only during a few hours of the day – say between 10am and 6pm. This approach gives the body a long break from food each night, and also reinforces beneficial circadian rhythms. The other type of intermittent fasting – made popular by the 5:2 diet – is known as “periodic fasting”. This approach involves alternating be Continue reading >>
Lchf For Type 1 Diabetes
I spend a great deal of time in my clinic dealing with the problems of type 2 diabetes. But occasionally, people ask about type 1 diabetes (T1D) as well. The reason why it is so rare for me is that I treat adult patients where T2D outnumbers T1D by at least 9:1. I was looking at a fascinating study that my friend, Ivor Cummins (The Fat Emperor) had alerted me to a few months ago. Dr. Richard Bernstein is a fascinating character. He had developed T1D as a child of twelve and began to have complications by his 30s. He eventually went to medical school in order to learn better how to treat his own disease. Eventually he decided that the proper treatment was a low carb diet. This was in direct contradiction to the prevailing wisdom of the time (1990s), which included treating patients with insulin and a diet high in carbs. Dr. Bernstein opened up a controversial clinic to treat T1D with a low carb diet and also wrote several best selling books discussing the same topic. Over the years, it has proven to be a safe treatment for T1D. While there are few long-term studies, Dr. Bernstein himself is living proof of the low carb T1D paradigm. In many ways, T1D and T2D are exact opposites of each other. T1D typically affects children who are usually quite skinny. T2D typically affects adults who are usually quite obese. This is not absolute, and we are seeing much more T2D in children as their weights have increased. There are also cases of normal or even underweight patients with T2D. But in general, that is the case. T1D is the severe deficiency of insulin where as T2D is the severe excess of insulin. Nevertheless, people often treat both types of diabetes in the same manner. Both are treated with medications or insulin to keep blood glucose in acceptable levels. Wait, you might Continue reading >>
Type 1 Diabetes And Intermittent Fasting
Are there any Type 1 diabetics doing intermittent fasting? If so could you please explain how it's working for you. I have had some success with blood sugar control while fasting. Specifically with using bulletproof coffee. Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Continue reading >>
Diabetes On A 65% Fat Diet, Chia For Breakfast, And Intermittent Fasting
80 days, 5 lbs of weight loss, and my strongest blood glucose numbers ever? I'm always experimenting in a constant quest to learn about my own diabetes and test things I hear about. This article shares the most fascinating food experiments I've been trying lately. Some of it has been so surprising to me that I thought it might be useful to share with diaTribe readers. If you find this article useful, check out my upcoming book, Bright Spots & Landmines! [Editor’s Note: As always, this article should not be interpreted as medical advice. Consult a healthcare provider before making significant changes to your routine, particularly if you are on insulin.] Three Fascinating Food Experiments 1. Over the past 80 days, I’ve seen excellent results from eating higher fat (65% of my calories) and a bit lower carb (about 90 grams per day) than I have in the past. I’ve spent 76% of the past 11.5 weeks in the tight range of 70-140 mg/dl, with a low average (118 mg/dl), low hypoglycemia, and low diabetes burden. Combined, these are the strongest numbers I’ve ever seen in myself over such a long time period. I’ve also lost 5 lbs. See CGM, weight, and cholesterol data below. 2. I now eat chia pudding most days for breakfast - little impact on blood glucose, very filling, three minutes to make (no cooking), inexpensive ($0.53/meal), highly portable, and stocked with Omega 3s and fiber. This is a breakfast game-changer, and I’ve created a recipe I really like. 3. For a week, I tried eating my first meal at 12pm and no food after 8pm (16:8 intermittent fasting). This schedule might be very effective for those struggling with breakfast highs or snacking too much at night. I loved having a clear line in the sand: “I don’t eat after 8pm. PERIOD.” Details, My Data, and Lesso Continue reading >>
How Intermittent Fasting Can Help Reverse Diabetes
The “Fast Cure” for Diabetes Though we may not like to admit it, type 2 diabetes is a disease chiefly brought on by our lifestyle choices.[1] Yes, genetics come into play too, but when it comes to type 2 diabetes, you are not a slave to your gene pool. You have the power to even alter your genes.[2] According to the American Diabetes Association, type 2 diabetes is increasing worldwide at an alarming rate due to obesity and a sedentary lifestyle.[3] So, let’s say that you (or someone you know) became overweight, were less and less active, and finally one day at a routine doctor visit, your doctor announced that you have type 2 diabetes and put you on medication to lower your blood sugar. Perhaps you’ve been taking diabetes meds for years now and the idea of reversing your diabetes seems far-fetched, even fanciful. Maybe your doctor doesn’t believe that type 2 diabetes is reversible. That has been the traditional medical thought greatly influenced by the pharmaceutical companies who want to push their expensive drugs. But a new day has dawned and many doctors are seeing their patients reverse their type 2 diabetes. One effective way people reverse their type 2 diabetes is by intermittent fasting. Dr. Jason Fung, MD, writes, “While many consider type 2 diabetes (T2D) irreversible, fasting has been long known to cure diabetes.”[4] Wow, “cure” is a strong word coupled with diabetes and spoken by a medical doctor! Harvard University is home to the famous Joslin Center for Diabetes. The center is named after Dr. Elliot Joslin, one of the greatest specialists in diabetes of all time. In 1916, Dr. Joslin wrote an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal about fasting for the treatment of diabetes. Based on his experience, he was convinced that all i Continue reading >>
Real Life Testimonial: Controlling Type 1 Diabetes With The Paleo Diet
This is part of an ongoing series of real life success stories from people all over the world who have been impacted by the Paleo lifestyle and The Paleo Solution. Read Kyp’s story below. Hello, My name is Kyp and I am a type 1 diabetic born on the 5th of May 1990 and diagnosed early August 2009. I wanted to contact you in regards to how eating a low carb paleo diet has helped me with my type 1 diabetes. I guess I’ll start from the beginning. Late 2008-August 2009. Over the course of the past nine months I had changed from a chubby 102 kilogram teenager who plays too many video games and ate too many Big Macs to several months later becoming a muscular and active (6 gym sessions per week) 92 kilogram young man. I thought that by adhering to the nutritional recommendations I was doing everything in my power to achieve an enlightened state of health. I simultaneously continued to lean out, six months later becoming a frail and disturbingly lean 70 kilogram male who looked like he needed to be sat down, force fed and watched to ensure he did not try to regurgitate what he had just swallowed. I had been losing weight at a steady pace, somewhere in the vicinity of none at all to half a kilo per week until June. Once June hit my weight began to drop at an alarming rate, anywhere from 1 to 2 and a half kilos per week. Me being me I put this down to my increased effort with my highly intensive physical labour in the mornings, eating a ‘healthy’ diet full of whole grains, milk for calcium and protein, lots of potatoes and pasta in the evenings with some red or white meat, and an increased frequency of cardio vascular exercise. I was drinking gallons of water per day which I thought was due to the amount of exercise I was doing and I had began to grow increasingly tired i Continue reading >>
Fasting Diet 'regenerates Diabetic Organ'
The pancreas can be triggered to regenerate itself through a type of fasting diet, say US researchers. Restoring the function of the organ - which helps control blood sugar levels - reversed symptoms of diabetes in animal experiments. The study, published in the journal Cell, says the diet reboots the body. Experts said the findings were "potentially very exciting" as they could become a new treatment for the disease. People are advised not to try this without medical advice. In the experiments, mice were put on a modified form of the "fasting-mimicking diet". It is like the human form of the diet when people spend five days on a low-calorie, low-protein, low-carbohydrate but high unsaturated-fat diet. It resembles a vegan diet with nuts and soups, but with around 800 to 1,100 calories a day. Then they have 25 days eating what they want - so overall it mimics periods of feast and famine. Previous research has suggested it can slow the pace of ageing. Diabetes therapy? But animal experiments showed the diet regenerated a special type of cell in the pancreas called a beta cell. These are the cells that detect sugar in the blood and release the hormone insulin if it gets too high. Dr Valter Longo, from the University of Southern California, said: "Our conclusion is that by pushing the mice into an extreme state and then bringing them back - by starving them and then feeding them again - the cells in the pancreas are triggered to use some kind of developmental reprogramming that rebuilds the part of the organ that's no longer functioning." There were benefits in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes in the mouse experiments. Type 1 is caused by the immune system destroying beta cells and type 2 is largely caused by lifestyle and the body no longer responding to insulin. Further t Continue reading >>
5:2 Fasting Diet
Tweet The 5:2 intermittent fasting (IF) diet, more commonly referred to simply as the 5:2 diet, has become one of the more popular diet plan in recent years. Studies have shown that the diet helps with weight loss and may also reduce insulin resistance, both of which are of particular interest for many people with type 2 diabetes or borderline diabetes. One reason for the popularity of the diet is that it allows a certain amount of flexibility, in comparison to low calorie diets, on most days of the week. Theory behind the diet The idea of the diet is that short periods of fasting prompt the body to repair damage but not enter a starvation mode of conserving energy. Whilst the theory has yet to be conclusively proved, clinical studies have shown promising results for the diet, however it has only been examined over relatively short time spans, of less than a year. How the 5:2 diet works The 5:2 intermittent fasting diet is based on a simple idea. 5 days a week you stick to meeting the daily calorie intake advised for people of a healthy weight, that being: 2,500 kcal per day for men 2,000 kcal per day for women For the other 2 days each week, the diet stipulates that you have only around 25% of the values above, which is equal to: 600 kcal on these days for men 500 kcal on these days for women The fasting days can be taken at any time during the week as long as you do not take 2 fasting days consecutively. Benefits of the 5:2 diet Clinical studies have shown that the benefits of intermittent fasting are largely similar to those of a calorie restricted diets. The most commonly reported benefits among people from following the 5:2 diet: Research has shown that periods of fasting can help to improve life expectancy and decrease risks of diseases including nerve disorders, Continue reading >>
