Low Carb Vs. High Carb - My Surprising 24-day Diabetes Diet Battle

Low Carb vs. High Carb - My Surprising 24-day Diabetes Diet Battle

Twitter summary: What I learned from doubling my carb intake: the same average blood sugar, but four times as much hypoglycemia, more work, stress, & danger.
As a teenager, I ate a high carb diet that included lots of Goldfish crackers, white sandwich bread, pasta, and white potatoes. It was tasty, but it put my blood sugars on a wild roller coaster every single day. Things turned around in college when I learned about nutrition, got on CGM, and spent time with health conscious friends. I soon realized that eating less than 30 grams of carbs at one time was a complete gamechanger. I’ve stuck with that approach ever since.
But is this lower carb method actually better for my blood sugars, or have I just been fooling myself? To find out, I took on a somewhat terrifying self-tracking experiment:
12 days of my usual, lower-carb diet, which averaged 146 grams of carbs per day (21% of daily calories). My carbs were primarily from nuts, seeds, vegetables, and a bit of fruit.
12 days of a higher-carb, high whole-grain diet, which averaged 313 grams of carbs per day (43% of my daily calories). My sources of carbs were NOT junk food: plain oatmeal, whole wheat bread, quinoa, wild rice, and fruit.
Neither of these was unrealistic. My lower-carb diet was nowhere near Atkins level (20 grams per day), and the higher-carb diet was consistent with the “average” 45% carb diet in people with diabetes (according to ADA).
Even though this was a one-person (n=1) experiment, I wanted to be as scientific and fair as possible: eating whole, unprocessed foods in both periods; counting and tra Continue reading

Rate this article

Total 1 ratings

This is What Type 1 Diabetes Looks Like

This is what Type 1 Diabetes looks like. Pretty normal, right?
Well, what you can’t see right now is someone recovering from a severe low blood sugar. The now dried sweat that, moments ago, drenched a shirt and made puddles on the floor.
And you definitely can’t see the room spinning, as the body grows weaker and weaker, almost to the point of collapse as this person frenetically rummages the shelves for something sweet before his blood glucose drops so low it might literally hit the ground.
He’s home alone, and in his panicked, cognition-disabled mind he thinks, maybe this is the one that gets me … Of course, there was OJ in the fridge. 20 minutes pass and he comes to, albeit physically exhausted on par with recovering from running a marathon with the flu. But he’s fine.
He’s been here before and he’ll be here again … But that’s just it. He WILL be here again.
And again and again and again.
This is his life, the hand he’s been dealt. Not a lifestyle choice he’d made, or a bad dietary decision. What will tomorrow bring? A daylong, crippling high sugar that robs him of joy and mental clarity, that brings him to his proverbial knees as his blood becomes molasses and replaces hunger with nausea? Does he have enough insulin? Can he afford to keep using test strips to stabilize his numbers? What if he runs out of supplies??
He does his best to control what’s to come, but the truth is, there’s no knowing.
This disease is an autonomous executioner who will sprinkle a momentary reprieve, only to retract it and come back double-downed. So he clamps down, bi Continue reading

Introduction to Type I Diabetes

Three Articles On Type I Diabetes:
Article #1: Introduction to Type I Diabetes (This Article)
Article #2: Possible Causes of Type I Diabetes
Article #3: The Treatment of Type I Diabetes
Introduction to Type I Diabetes
Did you know that there are two products that have cured advanced Type I diabetes cases? Both of them will be discussed in this article. But more importantly, one of these products can reverse cumulative severe side-effects of Type I or Type 2 diabetes.
Type I diabetes is actually a set of symptoms, meaning it can be caused by several different things. The symptoms are that the blood lacks insulin. There are actually several things that can cause an abnormally low level of insulin in the blood.
Type I diabetes is a very severe disease. The average lifespan of Type I diabetic is 5-8 years shorter than an average person. But death is not the worst thing about Type I diabetes. Here is a list of some of the health problems it can lead to:
Amputation of limbs
Blindness (retinopathy) – diabetes is the leading cause of new cases of blindness in America — 12,000 to 24,000 case annually
Kidney failure (nephropathy) – frequently leading to dialysis or a kidney/pancreas transplant
Liver disease
Arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries)
Heart disease
Stroke (e.g. paralysis)
High blood pressure
Nerve damage (neuropathy)
Dementia
Urinary tract infection (mostly in women)
Depression – Note: Aspartame (e.g. Equal, NutraSweet, etc.) and sugar are the leading causes of depression in non-diabetics. However, because the average diabetic consumes more aspartame than the Continue reading

What is diabetes? How diet, lifestyle and even ethnicity can affect DEADLY disease

Diabetes cases are said to have soared by 60 per cent in the last decade, and it now affects over 3 million people in the UK. According to studies undertaken by Diabetes UK, this number will rise to 5 million by 2025.
Worryingly, it is thought that there are 900,000 people in the UK who don’t yet know they already have diabetes. Dr Adam Simon, chief medical officer at PushDoctor.co.uk, has spoken to Express.co.uk about what diabetes is, the difference between the types and how people can avoid it.
What is diabetes?
Diabetes is a disease where the level of glucose in the body is too high, either because the hormone Insulin, that allows the body to use the glucose as an energy source, is not produced, or the insulin is not working properly.
Insulin is made in the pancreas which is located in the upper central abdomen. When the body’s glucose level rises, the pancreas makes insulin which allows the glucose to pass into the body’s cells where it can be used as energy.
Food is broken down in the intestine into fats, proteins and glucose. Glucose is our main energy source and our bodies normally keep glucose levels carefully controlled. When the glucose level falls between meals, insulin production falls and this keeps the glucose level in the blood balanced.
Explain the difference between Type 1 and Type 2
There are two main types of diabetes Type 1 and Type 2. Eighty five per cent of people with diabetes have Type 2 diabetes and 15 per cent have Type 1.
Type 1: This tends to occur in children and young adults. In this case the body stops making insulin. The body cells can Continue reading

Can people with diabetes eat popcorn?

Popcorn can be a healthful snack for most people, depending on how it is prepared. With its fairly low calorie and high-fiber content, air popped popcorn is often a go-to snack for dieters.
However, people with diabetes have more to worry about than their waistlines when snacking on popcorn.
People with diabetes can eat popcorn but need to choose carefully the type of popcorn, how it is cooked, and how much they eat, due to popcorn's high carb content.
Nutritional information
Air-popped popcorn offers very few calories per cup. In addition, a cup of air-popped popcorn contains a little over 1 gram (g) in fiber. It also contains about 1 g of protein and about 6 g of carbohydrate.
Additionally, popcorn contains zero cholesterol and is almost fat-free, far less than 0.5 g per cup. The total calories in a 5-cup serving are between 100-150.
Popcorn qualifies as a whole-grain food. One serving can provide about 70 percent of the recommended daily intake of whole grain.
Popcorn is full of vitamins and minerals. A single serving of popcorn contains a number of vitamins and minerals, including:
vitamin A
vitamin E
vitamin B6
pantothenic acid
thiamin
niacin
riboflavin
A serving of popcorn also contains iron and trace amounts of manganese, calcium, phosphorus, copper, magnesium, potassium, and zinc.
The popcorn's hull or shell is the source of much of its nutritional value. The shell contains beta-carotene, lutein, and zeaxanthin, which are important for maintaining eye health.
The shell also contains polyphenols with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, which may protect aga Continue reading