Why is Diabetes Increasing?

Why is Diabetes Increasing?

http://www.diabetesandenvironment.org/home/hypotheses

Wow there's a lot of hypothetical information there!

Quote from a blog long ago

"So it seems we've really got this perfect storm of factors: refined carbohydrates causing insulin resistance, refined grains damaging gut flora, increased wheat consumption increasing gut permeability causing more inflammation, industrial oils causing inflammation, over-consumption of fructose contributing to inflammation and insulin resistance.

And probably all of these factors have tipping points. We could take some amount of all of them, and function. But with all of them acting at the same time, an increasing segment of the population is going to develop the problems we're seeing. "

Jenny has some ideas about endocrine disruptors. As I look back over my history, which covers the development of the current "epidemics" of diabetes and obesity (and a little known fact is that the rate of increase of Type 1, especially in adults, is actually HIGHER than the rate of increase in Type 2, or was) I'm remembering the comparative lack of complex chemicals in things like soap, shampoo and makeup compared to today. Oh and room odorisers.

One things for sure the experts despite all the research don't have a clue as to how to curb the increase.

Off topic but I just came across this study and I come under subtype2 

Type 2 Diabetes Has 3 Distinct Types: Study
 

• Patients in one group of diabetics (which the researchers called subtype 1) were younger, ith wa higher risk of obesity, kidney disease, and the eye problems that can lead to blindness. They also had lower white blood cell counts.
  

      •    A second group (subtype 2) showed a greater risks for cancer and heart disease, but were less likely to be obese. 
      •    The third group (subtype 3) had higher risks for heart disease, as well as mental illness and allergies.

http://www.newsmax.com/Health/Diabetes/diabetes-three-types/2015/11/02/id/700195/

Oh I think there must be more subtypes than that. NO-ONE in the diabetic side of my family EVER had cancer. Not many in the other side either. I wonder if there's some protection against one disease along with the increase in the other, which may explain why the genes persist. The pattern appears to be skinny with Type 2/metabolic sydrome and CVD or plump and healthy. Tell doctors that and they assume you are lying, but actually it's the people who feed them their stats that have it wrong.

chris c wrote:Oh I think there must be more subtypes than that. NO-ONE in the diabetic side of my family EVER had cancer. Not many in the other side either. I wonder if there's some protection against one disease along with the increase in the other, which may explain why the genes persist. The pattern appears to be skinny with Type 2/metabolic sydrome and CVD or plump and healthy. Tell doctors that and they assume you are lying, but actually it's the people who feed them their stats that have it wrong.

Yes I'm sure there are far more subtypes but as far as I'm concerned as long as we keep our blood sugar controlled the risk of these supposed side effects will be minimised.

Everyone is born glucose intolerant just with different thresholds, that why low carb make sense. Just as too much water can kill you too much glucose that overwhelms your system will have the same effect.

The body has to keep many systems on a narrow ranges of parameters for that it uses resources different resources. That is the case for blood glucose, we are all genetically different and have different tolerance to glucose. As we age and encounter different environmental insults our thresholds suffer and we can no longer process the same amount of glucose without doing damage to the system. The more you overwhelm your system with glucose the more damage you do and the lower your tolerance will be until you are diagnosed a diabetic. So is a combination of various contributing factors that lead you the diagnosis of diabetes, what factors lead you there probably a combinations of factors in each person probably each with different degrees.

The solution for everyone from a young age should monitor is glucose and eat according to your threshold, try not to overwhelm your system eating too much glucose at a time. Avoid as much as you can environment contamination air, food, water and medications and try not to abuse your body as you age. So you can preserve your glucose tolerance not to end on the parameter were you are diabetic.

That's a great post Yoly. Everything we eat or drink has the potential to be a poison, if taken in enough quantity, even water.
We all know low carving makes sense but getting this message out to Joe Public is tough. The message IS getting through but slowly. That's what we should all be pushing for. The population needs a change in dietary mindset and it needs to start with the young. Trouble is, our Gov't have so many vested interests in pharma and carb laden food production companies. There's not a great deal of profit in an egg unfortunately, unless it's a Cadbury's one !

yoly wrote:Everyone is born glucose intolerant just with different thresholds, that why low carb make sense. Just as too much water can kill you too much glucose that overwhelms your system will have the same effect.

The rest of the post is excellent too!

Yes IMNSHO that's where Joseph Kraft's Diabetes In Situ comes in, basically it is identifying people with insulin resistance (or IR above a certain level) who are more likely to be broken by excess carbs.

Where as we all know "excess" may be a fraction of what we are told is "essential" but obviously isn't. IF anyone had bothered to look at my postprandial glucose, let alone insulin levels, at any time since early childhood, they would have spotted a problem and maybe in those days they could have told me how to fix it.

Spot diabetics early today and this would just give us longer on our low fat diet and cause us to disintegrate quicker and sooner. And ramp up the drug bill, which is why they like to make the diagnosis as late as possible

<sigh>

of course just like the people who remember a time before Low Fat diets, the diabetics who remained well controlled for decades are also dying out from old age, as are the original doctors who used low carb as a matter of course.

When we lived on the South Coast in a place known as Gods's waiting room, because so many people were old, we met many who had been type two diabetics for over twenty years. Back in those days they were told to go low carb. All the old timers except one (an amputee) had no serious complications and were healthy and active. Non on insulin and only diabetes medication metformin.

For people in their sixties like me and becoming a type two diabetic is a minor annoyance. Some of my favourite grub got ditched over seven years ago, so what no big deal. When I hear or read about people moaning about changing their diet it makes me puke. So many people live bravely with terribly painful illnesses and would do anything to live a pain free life, while others spend their time telling us what foods they can't stand and carry on like their lives were over. God help them if they ever have a real problem to deal with.

Pot noodles comes immediately to mind.

Yes on the various forums, and newsgroups before them, you will see loads of older diabetics who have been so for 20 or more years without degenerating and many/most of them started on low carb when it was the diabetic diet of choice. I think the record holder died at 89 by which time he'd had diabetes for 42 or 43 years - and in that time it had never progressed.

I suspect none of the recently diagnosed Type 2s will be that lucky - UNLESS they have access to the internet or the few decent books on Type 2.

Likewise for many Type 1s who are taught to "carb up and shoot up" as opposed to those who were properly informed about carbs in the first place or found Bernstein, Type 1 Grit and similar sites.

Hehee, I just remembered someone else who went to a diabetes group meeting just once after being diagnosed. He said the reason he never went again is that they spent all their time talking about cake. They really didn't understand why he immediately went low carb. He's still climbing mountains in his seventies, I wonder how many of the cakelovers are still alive.

Because none of the anti hypertensive drugs I have been taking for about 2years now, have had any appreciable effect on blood pressure, but significant unwanted side effects, I recently asked to be taken off all medication.
After a lecture on how this would immediately increase my risk of stroke, heart disease etc., etc., a trial period of three months was agreed upon.
Sixty days later, and low carb as usual, I have noticed a slight, but real, downward trend in the systolic, and apparent normalising of my pulse rate. I suspect any beneficial effect would be due to the low carb woe.
It is sometimes sad that diabetic friends cannot relinquish the foods that are contributing to the disease, but the realisation has to come to each individual. I cannot believe that more medication is the answer.
Thanks for this forum.

merrylizard1314 wrote:Because none of the anti hypertensive drugs I have been taking for about 2years now, have had any appreciable effect on blood pressure, but significant unwanted side effects, I recently asked to be taken off all medication.
After a lecture on how this would immediately increase my risk of stroke, heart disease etc., etc., a trial period of three months was agreed upon.
Sixty days later, and low carb as usual, I have noticed a slight, but real,  downward trend in the systolic, and apparent normalising of my pulse rate. I suspect any beneficial effect would be due to the low carb woe.
It is sometimes sad that diabetic friends cannot relinquish the foods that are  contributing to the disease, but the realisation has to come to each individual. I cannot believe that more medication is the answer.
Thanks for this forum.

Agreed medication is not the answer and as diabetics we are prescribed far more than the the general public. Not only do medications come with unwanted side effects there are also many interactions between the drugs.

Don't know if you saw this thread re hypertensives

https://lowcarbdiabetic.forumotion.co.uk/t2247-antihypertensive-drugs-could-up-risk-of-cardiovascular-death-in-diabetes-patients

High BP and crap lipids preceded my "diagnosis" by decades - I was on losartan which appeared to be side effect free.

I had just reached the stage where I was due a medication increase when I started low carbing and quickly my BP fell back to normal - but I remained on a minimal dose which didn't bother me too much as ARBs and to a lesser extent ACE inhibitors supposedly have kidney protective effects along with the BP lowering.

I got literally sick of being insulted by the receptionists and patronised by the nurses, and the last straw was when I was taken off losartan and changed to olmesartan, then six months later changed back again, obviously a clinical trial I was entered into without being informed and without permission being asked. So I stopped all my meds. BP stayed around the same for a long time, until my thyroid went south.

Next time around a different GP - "mine" was too busy and I couldn't get an appointment - put me on amlodipine along with the carbimazole for the thyroid. I think the latter has been most responsible for dropping the BP, I'm not happy with the amlodipine which may be causing skipped heartbeats and cyclic BP changes as it did for my mother - or it may be permanent damage from the thyroid or the decades of alternating high BG and high insulin finally catching up with me.

I'm due another appointment soon and will try to see my original doctor. The PCT has gone away along with the previous Practice Manager and I'm hearing far fewer complaints about the staff so maybe things have changed back for the better. They were excellent until they were "modernised" several years ago. Think I'll try to get changed back to the losartan, a minimal dose may be worthwhile.

I don't mind taking drugs when they are worthwhile, but it most cases the old fart pills - statins, BP meds, PPIs - are used as antidotes to a crap diet. Get the diet right - low carb, avoiding the "Neolithic Agents Of Disease" like sugar, wheat and Omega 6 seed oils especially laced with trans fats and then IF things are still out of line drugs may be worthwhile to fine tune things. Of course if everyone did that there would be drug companies and foodlike substance manufacturers going out of business right left and centre. If everyone followed Dr David Unwin and each GP saved £10 000 - £30 000/year there would be economic disaster.

As John Wayne nearly said "get on your carbs and eat your statin"

Hi, @chris c
When I had amlodipine, almost two years ago - it was the first antihypertensive prescribed for me, it had a side effect of gum hyperplasia, which required surgery to correct, and possibly was the cause of episodes of atrial fibrillation. I am happy not to be taking Telmisartan, as even the minimal dose gave me leg rashes.
Getting the diet and life practices right, as you say, is the answer, and it is maddening how health services continue to promulgate dietary regimes which are mostly harmful.
There is a TV programme called Catalyst which tonight is dealing with T2D. I am wondering if there will be anything new, and hoping....

Wasn't Catalyst the one that was eventually banned for praising low carb and rubbishing statins a while back? Hope the diabetes one is at least as good!

The gum thing is interesting, one of the many symptoms my doctors ignored was rotting gums which I had for years, and which cleared up completely with low carb. It wasn't "eating too much sugar" at all, it was the starch.

Your fellow countryman Alan has some good stuff on gum disease

There are still reverberations of the Catalyst programme about statins, there were claims that it had caused thousands of people to stop taking the drug, and hundreds of deaths had resulted, but these are controversial, as no proof has been shown that deaths eventuated due to the airing of opinions about statins.
The programme with Michael Mosley and Roy Taylor, was actually an episode of "Insight" and harsh things were said about low fat,high carb and starchy foods. There was a representative from Diabetes Australia who attempted to defend the food guidelines on the website which encouraged folk with diabetes to eat low fat, whole grain foods and pasta.
An opportunity was missed there, as being "fair" seemed destined to create more confusion.
Call me sceptical, but confusion seems to benefit fake food producers.

A recent study showed that at best statins could "save" life for about THREE DAYS. At the wrong end too

At best (principally in males who have already had a heart attack) they may reduce deaths from CVD - but they also seem to increase deaths from other causes. Low carb may or may not decrease cholesterol but it almost inevitably improves its quality. Conversely low fat diets may slightly reduce LDL but inevitably also decrease HDL and increase trigs, suggesting that the LDL that is left is the small dense type. Whether this is actually causal of anything or just an indicator of insulin resistance, high insulin and potentially high BG, which are, remains unclear.

I have always worked on the theory that as long as the HDL was high and the triglycerides were low, it did not really matter what the overall cholesterol count is.
I have never knowingly consumed anything specifically advertised as a low fat version of a normal food, mainly because I am quite cautious, e.g., low fat milk, low fat cheese, low fat shortbread(what would that be like?) now we do not have things in the house that we do not eat, like bread, pasta.,rice, potatoes, cereals not even for visitors! This is because my husband was recently diagnosed with a gluten intolerance. There are many good things to devour without incurring spikes in BGL, or provoking the gut.

chris c wrote:A recent study showed that at best statins could "save" life for about THREE DAYS. At the wrong end too

At best (principally in males who have already had a heart attack) they may reduce deaths from CVD - but they also seem to increase deaths from other causes. Low carb may or may not decrease cholesterol but it almost inevitably improves its quality. Conversely low fat diets may slightly reduce LDL but inevitably also decrease HDL and increase trigs, suggesting that the LDL that is left is the small dense type. Whether this is actually causal of anything or just an indicator of insulin resistance, high insulin and potentially high BG, which are, remains unclear.

A low carb diet will ultimately increase total cholesterol but by far the biggest contributor to the total is HDL, most see a large decrease in trigs, and many will see improvements in cholesterol ratios.  A rise in LDL pales into insignificance compared with benefits gained with LC.

That said my own LDL remained pretty static with only minor fluctuations either way

merrylizard1314 wrote:I have always worked on the theory that as long as the HDL was high and the triglycerides were low, it did not really matter what the overall cholesterol count is.
I have never knowingly consumed anything specifically advertised as a low fat version of a normal food, mainly because I am quite cautious, e.g., low fat milk, low fat cheese, low fat shortbread(what would that be like?) now we do not have things in the house that we do not eat, like bread, pasta.,rice, potatoes, cereals  not even for visitors!  This is because my husband was recently diagnosed with a gluten intolerance. There are many good things to devour without incurring spikes in BGL, or provoking the gut.

Sadly, or should I say SADly, I got suckered into the low fat thing long ago. I always had low HDL, high LDL and very high trigs, I suspect for about fifty years before I finally wised up, so now I am largely firefighting against years of damage from doing what I was told. Far from uncommon.

You were lucky, a lot of "low fat" food tastes like crap, and has extra sugar added. I really don't miss "basing every meal on starchy carbohydrates" at all.

graham64 wrote:

That said my own LDL remained pretty static with only minor fluctuations either way

My HDL doubled and my trigs fell to about 1/10 of what they were. Originally my LDL went up a bit - common when losing weight - but when I'd lost what the dietician made me gain the LDL went back down again. trigs/HDL went from nearly 7 to under 1, suggesting I used to have very high insulin resistance and now I don't.

The weird one was that when I went hypERthyroid my LDL dropped by about the same amount as a statin. Who knew? Well I suppose it was obvious in retrospect as hypOthyroid makes LDL go up. Now my thyroid is under control (or I suspect a bit low) and my LDL will have gone up again I expect to be dragged over the coals. The doctor semi-understands about the ratio but fails to believe that "cholesterol" doesn't really cause anything.

I know not a few people whose tests have come back marked "high" for HDL, which is a tad ridiculous. In fact I know many low carbers who have higher HDL than LDL. Not a few have HDL over 100 (US numbers, 2.6 UK) which breaks most of the "heart health" indicators that aren't designed for three digit input.

I am quite interested in the link, if there is one, between thyroid problems and T2D, and wondering if the medication prescribed for hypertension, might be causal to some extent.
Some groups of antihypertensives seem to have side effects which can cause insulin resistance, for example. I am wondering if the increase in thyroid problems, which can affect the liver and kidneys, is really a follow-on to the increased incidence of T2D in the population.

Thyroid T3, along with insulin and leptin, is a "master hormone" which has knock-on effects onto many other things. Some people make scary noises about how low carb diets increase hypothyroid but of course the vast majority of cases is in people eating low fat - as is the case for nearly all diseases, so I don't know how much of what you read is believable.

There are definite links between hyperinsulinemia from a high carb diet on top of insulin resistance and T2D and hypertension and weight gain, but it may not be in the order commonly assumed. My suspicion is that IR evolved as an adaptive mechanism for food partitioning - sending the glucose one way and the fat and ketones another - and also as a storage mechanism for a glut of food. This works when the IR is subsequently switched off again so the stored fat can be metabolised and it's the switching off that never happens with high carb diets - they convince the body to store food for a "winter that never comes". Quite possibly the thyroid downregulation is another stage of food partitioning - when food is scarce, as in the body thinks winter has come, it lowers its metabolic rate. Maybe food full of carbs but lacking in fat and other nutrients makes this happen.

The entire endocrine system is so interlinked that when you use drugs to tinker with one part of it there may be unintended consequences in another. I strongly suspect that thyroid, along with gout, Crohn's disease (inflammatory) and in fact many other inflammatory conditions like asthma and allergies, Alzheimers and a whole bunch of other things which have increased since low fat diets were invented, are all part of the constellation of "metabolic syndrome", ie. trying to drive the body outside of the parameters it evolved to handle. Then using drugs to change the end results without changing the metabolism just adds to the fun.

I think you may be right. Scary, isn't it?