Why the Low Carb Diet is Best - Diabetes Health
Virtually the entire evolution of mankind occurred when our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, well before the inventions of agriculture and animal husbandry. (2) These people had scarcely any access to dietary carbohydrate and certainly no access to animal milk, cereal grains, whole-grain and refined breads, refined sugars, and sweet fruits. They ate almost exclusively lean meat and fish, plus small amounts of leafy and other low carbohydrate vegetables. Some humans, such as Eskimos, consumed only fat and protein. Our pre-agriculture ancestors frequently had violent deaths, but no coronary, kidney, or arterial disease, no tooth decay, and no diabetes.
By 1969, when I first began to measure my own blood sugars, I was already suffering from about 15 major and minor long-term complications of diabetes, thanks to the low fat, high carbohydrate diet I had been following for 23 years. By about this time, scientific studies of animals had demonstrated the prevention and even reversal of many diabetic complications by blood sugar normalization.
I soon discovered that even multiple daily insulin injections (basal/bolus dosing) would not achieve anything close to steady normal blood sugars. It was not until I lowered my carbohydrate consumption to a daily total of 30 grams (mostly from leafy and cruciferous vegetables) that things fell into place. Today my A1c is 4.5% (normal is 4.2-4.6%), and my target blood sugar is 83 mg/dl (about mid-normal for young non-diabetic adults).
Virtually the entire evolution of mankind occurred when our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, well before the inventions of agriculture and animal husbandry. (2) These people had scarcely any access to dietary carbohydrate and certainly no access to animal milk, cereal grains, whole-grain and refined breads, refined sugars, and sweet fruits. They ate almost exclusively lean meat and fish, plus small amounts of leafy and other low carbohydrate vegetables. Some humans, such as Eskimos, consumed only fat and protein. Our pre-agriculture ancestors frequently had violent deaths, but no coronary, kidney, or arterial disease, no tooth decay, and no diabetes.
By 1969, when I first began to measure my own blood sugars, I was already suffering from about 15 major and minor long-term complications of diabetes, thanks to the low fat, high carbohydrate diet I had been following for 23 years. By about this time, scientific studies of animals had demonstrated the prevention and even reversal of many diabetic complications by blood sugar normalization.
I soon discovered that even multiple daily insulin injections (basal/bolus dosing) would not achieve anything close to steady normal blood sugars. It was not until I lowered my carbohydrate consumption to a daily total of 30 grams (mostly from leafy and cruciferous vegetables) that things fell into place. Today my A1c is 4.5% (normal is 4.2-4.6%), and my target blood sugar is 83 mg/dl (about mid-normal for young non-diabetic adults).
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