Saturday, August 17, 2019

Type 2 Diabetes and genetics

For my entire life, I have heard that being fat is the cause of diabetes. I was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 45. Yes, I was overweight, but I disagree that my weight was the cause. I always felt that being overweight was a symptom of the same disease process that caused the diabetes. Let me explain:
- Family history
My grandmother had type 2 diabetes. So did my Father, and my sister. So does my son. My brother does not.

All of us were overweight, except my son, who was diagnosed two years ago at only 28 years old. (My brother was overweight until he lost 30 pounds as a result of his recent cancer diagnosis.) At the time, he has six pack abs. So there are plenty of people who are fat and not diabetic, and there are people in my family who are diabetic and not overweight.

- My entire life, I have been a person who is famous for getting HANGRY. That is, when I am hungry, I get more and more surly eventually becoming rather difficult to be around until I eat.

Now that I am a diabetic, the doctor is constantly telling me that I need to watch my diet and exercise. I do both, but it is difficult to lower your A1C levels without medication when your fasting blood glucose is 140 when you wake up, after being only 120 when you went to bed the night before. When I am not taking medication, my morning blood sugar is in the 160s. Nothing I eat seems to change that, only medication.

During the day, diet and medication lowers that to the 100 level, but I still can't control what happens while I am sleeping. It is my opinion that this is a genetic issue.

2 comments:

WQ said...

Have you considered the ketogenic (or carnivore) diet?

I recommend picking up YouTube and catch some videos from Dr. Eric Berg, Dr. Ken Berry, and "2 Fit Docs." If you have even more time on your hands then "What I've Learned" is also highly educational.

Very possible you can manage it, or better yet improve it, or better still cure cure it, by dropping refined carbohydrates from your diet.

SiGraybeard said...

I'm a terrible evangelist, but you need to look into the peer-reviewed science being published by the Virta group in Indiana.

Short story: my brother and late mother are/were type 2 diabetics. 30 years ago I seemed to be heading the same way. At some point I asked myself "what if obesity doesn't cause diabetes but the same genetic problem that causes diabetes causes obesity first?". After all, there are fat people who aren't type 2 diabetics and T2Ds who aren't fat, so it's not clear that being fat is a necessary condition. It seemed to me that a genetic metabolic defect could be doing both or either one.

I started reading everything I could get my hands on, and things seemed to agree with that. I eventually settling on slightly low carb diet called the Zone, 40% calories from carbohydrate (40-30-30) which was popular toward the end of the 90s. Over the years, I kept lowering my carb intake until I was going ketogenic. I've kept from getting the diabetes diagnosis.

The Virta doctors are reversing diabetes in 60% of their patients (if I recall correctly) and getting more that that off one or more medications. All diet. Exercise has little to nothing to do with it. There are few theories with a solid theoretical background that have failed in practice as often as "just eat a little less and move a little more".

Just giving you the bibliography could be longer than this comment box allows. All MDs, or Ph.D. researchers (or both)
Dr. Sarah Hallberg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da1vvigy5tQ
Search YouTube on her name. Virtually anything of hers is worth watching.
Dr. Peter Attia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMhLBPPtlrY
Virta Health
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=virta+health
Dr. Eric Westman at Duke University
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toLvGpk3HLE
Dr. Brett Scher is a practicing cardiologist who does podcasts for
https://www.dietdoctor.com/
has or had his own podcast, "the Low Carb Cardiologist" and has many interesting videos on YouTube

In the last couple of years, I've "met" (online) more people than I can remember who have lost as much as 100, 200 or more pounds, reversed their diabetes, gotten off meds and changed their lives. Take a look at
http://success.2keto.com which redirects to:
https://www.ketogenicforums.com/t/the-great-big-public-keto-before-and-after-thread/38545

The main point I need to get across is that this is not lunatic fringe "new age", "health nut" sh*t, this is documented, rock-hard, science backed by randomized controlled trials. Of course, you can email me. I'm sure you know how.