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Showing posts from April, 2013

Could Early Insulin Therapy for T2 be Coming to Canada?

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A short post here, because I have no peer review study to refer to. But Nigel Kinbrum recently blogged on this media report:  New treatment might put Type 2 diabetes in remission . This report touted 75% remission from T2 using self-administered insulin of 4 injections per day for one month.  This is less aggressive than reported in other studies (some summarized here , table below)  Most of these used insulin infusions for a couple of weeks and early response rate was around 90%.  This treatment may be more practical (and cost effective?) but perhaps not intensive enough to to get the optimum outcome.  Still, 75% is impressive.  The article discusses that they want to follow up with an oral diabetic drug to "save" the pancreas, which the studies above involved lifestyle "treatment" only. So this article is about a year old and I wondered if it ever made the literature.  I did a PubMed on Dr. Bernard Zinman and got no love.  But a Google Scholar s

Eating more fat ... Why where ever did anyone get that from?

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I received a link to this interesting post by Zoe Harcombe in the Inbox the other day:   What's this 'trying to eat more fat'?!   Zoe writes: Hi all - I've spotted a couple of comments from people saying that they're trying to eat more fat and the second one got me worried enough to start a thread. ... The Harcombe Diet is a diet based on a 5 day Phase 1 which is mostly meats and veggies (unless you are, as Zoe was for 15 years, a vegetarian, then you can substitute some brown rice, which makes no sense from a protein standpoint, but whatever).  Once you've cured your candida overgrowth which is one of the  prime reasons for obesity according to Harcombe, you move to other phases of the diet.  Harcombe believes in the separation of fats and carbs at meals on a metabolic "food combining" basis.  You don't want to eat carbs with fat because ... well ... the insulin!  Despite negativity about low fat diets, Harcombe counsels food separation and

First Phase Insulin ~ Physiological Relevance?

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Something I've been reading a lot lately would be along the lines of "first phase insulin response is deficient/missing from the early stages of diabetes".   This is true, but even in the peer review literature that term seems to be misused to equate with the acute spike in insulin levels to a high oral glucose load.  However the first phase insulin response, hereinafter FPIR, is a non-physiologic phenomenon sometimes used to assess pancreatic function.   First-phase insulin secretion: does it exist in real life?  Considerations on shape and function   (decluttered  of references, please see origina, some parts bullet-pointed, etc. for clarityl) IN THE PAST THREE DECADES, the relevance of insulin secretion abnormalities in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes mellitus have been extensively debated, and a consensus has been reached that, to fulfill its pivotal role in regulating glucose metabolism, insulin secretion must not only be quantitatively appropriate, but a

Processed ... Refined ... Definitions?

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A comment by Jane prompted this quick post here.  Often the terms processed food or refined food tend to be used interchangeably in the general nutritional discourse.  I get the general idea -- eating steak, broccoli and a baked potato is eating real, whole, unprocessed and unrefined foods.  Same meal but substitute brown rice for that potato and you have added what I would call a processed food.  The rice "kernel" had to be extracted from the plant.   So loosely speaking "processing" would include shucking, grinding, cracking, rolling, soaking, fermenting, and ... cooking!  So then that original meal was actually processed food because we didn't just slice off a slab of meat, wash the dirt off of a tuber and some broccoli and eat them.

Paleo on Oz ... Notes & Comments

UPDATE:   Link to Transcript Dr. Loren Cordain and Nell Stephenson (the Paleoista, who co-authored a cookbook with Cordain) were on The Dr. Oz show today.  I taped it.  Cordain describes the diet of having all healthy aspects including: high protein diet  (say what?) lots of fruits and veggies that contain beneficial phytochemicals, vitamins and minerals high in long chain omega 3 fatty acids Nell takes over with the nos -- classifying these as inflammatory foods dairy grains legumes refined sugars

Paleo™ *IS* a Fad Diet

... or rather a collection of fad diets. I remember back in 2009 when I found the LC online community and one of my wishes at the time.  Quite simply, I wanted to be able to tell my doc I was eating a very low carb diet most of the time and not have him/her gasp and presume I was eating caricaturistic Atkins.  You know -- pounds of bacon, steaks and butter on a stick (or by the stick).  Despite the prevalence of TWICHOO, there was (and is) a goodly sized body of scientific literature in support of low carb diets.  The problem with this body of work is that it doesn't answer the burning questions regarding whether the diet is healthy in maintenance over the long term.  I think the longest study on VLC was done by Dr. Eric Westman's group at Duke.  It involved diabetics following a VLC weight loss diet for 6 months.  

Ancestral Rabbit Starvation Medical Vacations! The next craze?

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I came across this study a bit ago and it caught my eye as I was transfering some stuff between computers:   Marked Improvement in Carbohydrate and Lipid Metabolism in Diabetic Australian Aborigines After Temporary Reversion to Traditional Lifestyle The rationale for the present study was that temporarily reversing the urbanization process in diabetic Aborigines should improve all aspects of their carbohydrate and lipid metabolism that are linked to insulin resistance. Ten full-blood, diabetic Aborigines from the Mowanjum Community (Derby, Western Australia) agreed to be tested before and after living for 7 wk as hunter-gatherers in their traditional country in northwestern Australia. They were middle aged (53.9 ±1.8 yr) and overweight (81.9 ± 3.4 kg), and all lost weight steadily over the 7-wk period (average, 8 kg). A detailed analysis of food intake over 2 wk revealed a low energy intake (1200 kcal/person/day). Despite the high contribution of animal food to the total energy

Paleo Science and the Paleo Diet II

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Have a listen to just 30 seconds of Robb Wolf, Diplomat Extraordinaire for Paleo™ from his recent podcast on the Christina Warinner  Debunking Paleo video ... transcript here .   Hosted by Kiwi6 file hosting Alan Aragon, highly respected author of the popular and informative Alan Aragon's Research Review , spoke recently at a conference of the National Strength and Conditioning Association, NSCA. They recently put the slides from his presentation online HERE .  Please do expend some "skull sweat" as Robb calls it to inform yourself of the full content of Alan's presentation.  Do especially take note of slide 53 which summarizes the paleo studies (some of which) Robb makes frequent reference to (and most of which I've discussed here).  Also take note that 

Chronic Exposure to Free Fatty Acid Reduces Pancreatic β-Cell Insulin Content by Increasing Basal Insulin Secretion That Is Not Compensated For by a Corresponding Increase in Proinsulin Biosynthesis Translation

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Coming next in the discussion of diabetes I am going to discuss insulin secretion in greater detail.  I was reminded of this post in the writing process.  So ... Bump! Original Publish Date:  4/4/11 Chronic Exposure to Free Fatty Acid Reduces Pancreatic β-Cell Insulin Content by Increasing Basal Insulin Secretion That Is Not Compensated For by a Corresponding Increase in Proinsulin Biosynthesis Translation JD McGarry contributing author. {Please note:  Excerpts from the text will be edited somewhat to avoid "cluttering" references, statistical values, and some rounding of numbers.  Text will sometimes be presented in bullet form or with paragraph breaks to ease reading.  It is not my intent to plagiarize nor to alter the content.  If anyone feels I've altered the content in any meaningful way, do please let me know!}  Direct quotes will be indented. FFA are an important physiological fuel for islets, and act as a supplemental nutrient secretagogue to poten

Exogenous Insulin Stimulates Endogenous Insulin Production

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Continuing with our discussion on diabetes ... In my last post on the topic , I introduced this paper:   β-Cell dysfunction vs insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes: the eternal “chicken and egg” question .  This got me to thinking again about early insulin treatment for Type 2.   In an ideal world a more thorough post on EIT for T2 would precede this one, but I've got a paper on this open in the browser and don't want to forget it.  There are, however, several studies out there employing insulin early in the diagnosis of diabetes that have had remarkable results and this is worth revisiting briefly here.  Three of these studies are summarized in the table below from this paper

Disqus Comments

UPDATE:  Comments have been imported successfully! I'm definitely going to be staying with Disqus.  Please read the new Comment Policy page.  Thanks, and let's have fun shall we? I'm trying out Disqus comments because this will enable a better flow of generally unmoderated comments but more control over blocking the razz matazz.   In doing this, it has temporarily "erased" all of the Blogger comments that are being imported.  I didn't delete all of your input!   Let's see how this goes.  Your feedback is welcomed!  If you log in/use a different ID than I and regular readers are familiar with, please do let us know!

Two Paleo Diets from Lindeberg's Group

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Here's another paleo diet study:   Beneficial effects of a Paleolithic diet on cardiovascular risk factors in type 2 diabetes: a randomized cross-over pilot study    It's from Lindeberg's research group but I'll refer to this one as Jonsson (lead author) to distinguish it from the others.   In a randomized cross-over study, 13 patients with type 2 diabetes, 3 women and 10 men, were instructed to eat a Paleolithic diet based on lean meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, root vegetables, eggs and nuts; and a Diabetes diet designed in accordance with dietary guidelines during two consecutive 3-month periods.   ... Study participants had on average a diabetes duration of 9 years, a mean HbA1c of 6,6% units by MonoS standard and were usually treated with metformin alone (3 subjects) or metformin in combination with a sulfonylurea (3 subjects) or a thiazolidinedione (3 subjects). Mean average dose of metformin was 1031 mg per day. The paleo diet outperformed the diabetes die

Paleo Science and the Paleo Diet

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There seems to be a wave of insecurity and fear sweeping through the paleo community.  This is, no doubt, due to the fact that "Paleo" has received a bit of mainstream attention of late -- and it hasn't been positive.  First there's Marlene Zuk's Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live .  From Amazon : An exposé of pseudoscientific myths about our evolutionary past and how we should live today. We evolved to eat berries rather than bagels, to live in mud huts rather than condos, to sprint barefoot rather than play football—or did we? Are our bodies and brains truly at odds with modern life? Although it may seem as though we have barely had time to shed our hunter-gatherer legacy, biologist Marlene Zuk reveals that the story is not so simple. Popular theories about how our ancestors lived—and why we should emulate them—are often based on speculation, not scientific evidence.

All Posts Chronological is Back

Since Blogger changed its platform, my Page + Widget stopped working (I think that's it because one of the settings I had to change is no longer available) and I received an email notifying me of that a little bit ago.  I've now managed to put it in a scroll box there on the right sidebar for anyone interested.