carbs are poison

The Carb Bubble: On how the theme “carbs are poison” relates to this blog

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The US government promoted carb bubble

A person surveying this blog may find it difficult to understand how the themes of this blog, especially the latest category, “Carbs are poison”, cohere except that they all involve the author’s own concerns.  I started this blog with the idea that a Christian could be an investor, and that there would be right ways to do it and wrong ways.  So it touches upon issues of Christian ethics and praxis, especially in the area of investing and finance.  But does low carb dieting relate to these themes?

Imagine that I was writing instead about the production, marketing and exportation of a substance that causes lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease; many ethical investors would argue that one should not invest in a product that is essentially a dealer of death.  Tobacco, of course, is off the list of many people’s investment portfolio for ethical reasons.  If I started sharing about how I stopped smoking and began to expose how tobacco is a killer; and I began to recommend that others quit smoking and stop listening to all the ads that say that smoking is cool; if I recommended divesting oneself of tobacco stocks, I think it would be easier to see the connection between the this subject of investing and Christian ethics. But people would soon become bored.  We’ve known about the evils of tobacco for decades now.  It would hardly be contrarian to oppose tobacco.

Lately, however, I’ve been railing against carbohydrates.  Unlike tobacco, which carries warning labels about how deadly it can be, carbs market freely in our world with no such  labels.  Here would be an appropriate label for a loaf of whole grain bread:  “Warning: the Minster of Health has determined that this food is high in carbohydrates; the excess consumption of carbohydrates can lead to diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer, Alzheimers and death.”  In the small print, “Please check your blood sugar level after the consumption of this product; you may be suffering from dangerously high, organ-damaging blood sugars.”

Food is a big part of our economy, and a large part of the population in the world suffers from diseases related to uncontrolled blood sugars that damages, among other bodily tissues, the eyes, the nerves, the kidneys, the arteries, the pancreas and the brain.  Excessive blood sugars can also feed cancerous growths and are likely related to terminal cancer.  Blood sugars spike in normal people after the consumption of high carbohydrate foods.  The person with metabolic syndrome, prediabetes or diabetes, however, will have high blood sugars for many hours after such a meal, high enough to cause cause physical damage that can lead to premature death.  These facts are scientifically verified and hardly controversial.  What is controversial are the opinions as to the best way to deal with the problem.  Most doctors, dieticians, and even diabetes specialists and associations (e.g., both the American and the Canadian Diabetes Associations), recommend that diabetics and prediabetics lose weight by avoiding too much red meat, dietary fat and by consuming a low calorie, high carbohydrate diet–i.e., they recommend that people receive the majority of their calories from the very carbohydrates that lead to uncontrolled blood sugars.  If you don’t believe me, google the “diabetic food pyramid” and see that according to official recommendations diabetics should eat a “Standard Western Diet”, high in carbs and low in meat and dietary fat.

Thus, just like my fear of hyperinflation and my investment in silver and gold, oil and gas, my low-carbing is contrarian.  All you have to do is walk into Costco to see how contrarian it is.  While I know a handful of people who have started low-carbing, including other members of my own family, the vast majority of the people you see in grocery stores are carrying about 25-100 lbs too much weight.  Rarely do you see anyone under 30 who looks like they are at a healthy weight, and when you see their grocery carts, they are always buying high carbohydrate food and drinks, such as juice, fruit, and wheat products.  The stores have multiple aisles (essentially all the middle aisles) with high carb foods that I can’t purchase or consume, and I assume they do this because these products sell very, very well.  I’ve also had some folks at my church walk away from me as I tried to explain how I lost weight on a high fat, low carb diet.

The public, it seems, is not at all aware or accepting of this reality and it seems that we are towards the end of the first stage of a low-carb bull market (“shock and fear”–not of carbs but of the good foods: e.g., red meat and dietary fat; see this post for the six stages of a bull market) of what I think is a “bull market” in nutritional change, that begins perhaps with the life work of Dr. Robert Atkins, the quintessential contrarian.

With the seminal work of Gary Taubes, Good Calories, Bad Calories; the effective diabetes therapy of Richard Bernstein, The Diabetes Solution; and the condemnation of modern wheat by William Davis, Wheat Belly, and finally, many paleo-diets, we are seeing a significant upward trend in low-carbing; however, we are still only at the beginning of the second stage of “guarded optimism” by only a few contrarian dieters.  Eventually, as with well-performing companies, the market may remain irrational for months or even years, but eventually the fundamentals will win out.  Unfortunately, many millions of people will die before this low-carb bull market comes into full swing.  The standard fear of fat and low-carb dieting still prevail.

Thus, good nutrition is like good investing.  The best hope that anyone has is to be contrarian and do the opposite of the what the majority of experts recommend.

In the meantime, we live in a major carb bubble and it manifests many signs of distress, just like the housing bubble.

  1. About one out of every four people in Canada and have diabetes or pre-diabetes.  In the United States it is almost one out of every three people.
  2. I go to an aging church: many parishioners are suffering from diseases related to high blood sugars: obesity, artery disease, cancer and Alzheimers.  However, you would never know this from our table of hospitality at coffee time–full of an assortment of high carb treats. I used to partake handsomely and every Sunday afternoon I would sleep for about three hours to recover.  Thankfully, they sometimes also offer cheese, and the occasional vegi platter and cold cuts:  I can also have the coffee with 10% cream and this contributes to conviviality, the ultimate goal of our coffee time.
  3. When I eat in a restaurant, I usually have to order a large steak (12 oz) in order to not leave the table hungry.  If you ask for more vegetables instead of potatoes and bread, they are unable or unwilling to provide adequate quantities, so the only way to compensate for it is to order a over-large steak.  I haven’t seen a low carb restaurant yet, though some have a few low carb choices.
  4. Marketing promotes low fat products, even when they are loaded with carbs:  e.g., low fat honey.
  5. Marketing promotes “heart healthy whole grains”.  The book Wheat Belly explains how that is actually quite the opposite of the truth.
  6. Some ethicists have promoted the eating of grains instead of meat in order to fight world starvation.  For example, Christian writer Ronald Sider, Rich Christians in an age of hunger (IVP Press, 1977) famously claimed that it takes thirteen pounds of grain to provide one pound of meat, and that Christians should respond by eating grain directly instead of feeding it to livestock (p. 42-43).  We now know that these grains are poisonous to many people.  What are they supposed to eat when meat is off the table?  Didn’t Jesus declare all foods clean (Mark 7.19)?
  7. Sugar and grain industries have had great success in lobbying to the effect of having their products declared safe for human consumption, even for diabetics.  The bacon and egg industries have been far less successful.
  8. Governments have largely promoted high carbohydrate dieting (see USDA food pyramid above).  Thus, like the housing bubble, the carb bubble is a beneficiary of various kinds of government policy and stimulus.  Government literally promote nutrition which destroys the health of the population.

Exercise to lose weight to avoid or treat diabetes? Give me a break

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A few years ago, a missionary friend of mine visited us here in Ontario.  He was keen to go fishing, and so one early afternoon, we rented a canoe at Lake Opeongo and headed towards North Opeongo beyond which was located our campsite.  But the winds were against us and soon they had driven us to the far shore of East Opeongo; and so we had no choice but to make camp there despite not having a permit for that area.  My friend was in pain, especially in his shoulders and he slept badly.  I thought it odd that a few hours of paddling had put him in such agony.  The next day, he called canoeing an “extreme sport”.  A few years later, this same friend had to leave the mission field for a medical furlough.  His vision had clouded over and the diagnosis was Type II Diabetes; his hbA1C was 14%. He had undoubtedly been suffering from hyperglycemia and experienced a bout of severe tendonitis from our little excursion.

I remembered this story recently, as I was thinking back about the many sports injuries I myself had suffered trying to stay active to lose weight.  Peripheral neuropathy destroyed my ability to canoe–the tingling in my hands was too severe; it also hindered weight training.  Later, weight training became impossible when I experienced debilitating rotatory cuff tendonitis.  Often, after playing basketball, I couldn’t even walk for three to four days, and I frequently suffered from Achilles tendonitis, a couple times so bad that I needed crutches.  I had lost most of my flexibility, but if I stretched, I could cause severe injury to my tendons.

It is commonly thought that an effective treatment for diabetes is exercise.  That’s fine and may help, but if the patient has tendonitis, peripheral neuropathy, or loss of proprioception (loss of coordination–I often fell inexplicably when working around the house, walking up steps or when doing sports), then the devastating effects of high blood sugars would make exercise at best difficult at worst impossible.  Diabetics and prediabetics who like me suffer from tendonitis must first control their blood sugars before they can expect to exercise.  In his book, Why we get fat and what to do about it, Gary Taubes makes an important point:  We don’t get fat because we don’t exercise.  We don’t exercise because we are getting fat.  In other words, therapists (e.g., physicians and nutritionsts) who recommend losing weight and exercise to treat obesity and diabetes–i.e., the vast majority of the imbeciles who practice medicine and nutrition–have a buggy-driven horse.

As soon as I gained control of my blood sugars I began to notice major improvements.  After a couple weeks, though I had the energy to walk, I still suffered injury to my knees and Achilles tendons, but now these problems are much less severe after exercise.  Before I started to low-carb, I tried to do my rotator cuff exercises after a hiatus of many moons; I suffered an immediate relapse of the tendonitis which took a couple weeks to lessen.  It is clear to me that I couldn’t exercise to lose weight that way.  But now that my blood sugars have normalized after four months of low carbs, I can pretty much exercise every day as necessary.

I am exercising in the evening to achieve perfectly normal over-night blood sugars and I am having considerable success with it.   This is about fine tuning the blood sugars. That is impossible on a high carbohydrate diet, and it is often cruel to recommend to diabetics that they must exercise to control blood sugars.

I become angry when I read that diabetics and prediabetics must exercise and lose weight to control their diabetes.  Rather, those of us who suffer from hyperglycemia must first achieve normal blood sugars via low carbohydrate diet, and then the weight loss will take place naturally and exercise will become possible.  I look forward to going canoeing again now that my peripheral neuropathy is gone.

Could a ketogenic diet help prevent or even cure cancer?

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In 1977 my mother passed away from cancer at the age of 47.  I was thirteen and my little sister was eight.

Fairly recent research has shown remarkable facts about cancer cells (Gary Taubes, Good Calories, Bad Calories, ch. 13):  cancer cells use thirty times as much glucose as healthy cells because they depend on fermentation for energy.  Furthermore, they are not insulin resistant–when other cells in the body resist the efforts of insulin to import glucose for energy, cancer cells happily accept them.  Thus, cancer cells apparently thrive in people who have high levels of blood sugar (e.g., prediabetics who have glucose intolerance), for diabetics and prediabetics have a much higher rate of cancer than people with normal blood sugars.

So I ask myself if it would be possible to starve cancer cells to cure cancer or to prevent their appearance in the first place.  With a little bit of internet research, I found a some sources that may suggest this:  (1) A 2011 scientific study shows that a low carb diet could prevent cancer in lab mice; (2) Some claim that a ketogenic diet (i.e., a diet consisting of a absolute minimum of carbohydrates resulting in the burning of fat for energy) is a useful therapy against cancer, also in combination with traditional therapies (chemo or radiation).  One man claims that a ketogenic diet cured his cancer when doctors had given him only three months to live (see here).

Now the medical profession as a whole has been slow to accept low carb dieting, and this is much to their shame.  Personally, I’ve benefited from low carbing: I now enjoy normal blood sugars, normal blood pressure, 35 lbs of weight loss, and a significant attenuation of all my diabetic symptoms.  I feel better and I have hope that I may actually be able to live longer with much better health.

My mother was a physician and she had diabetes.  But I am certain that she did not have her blood sugars under control–our family ate rice everyday, along with other high carb foods.  Moreover, the technology to be able to monitor blood glucose at home did not exist before 1977. Dr. Richard K. Bernstein champions the Diabetes Solution, which requires diabetics to monitor their blood sugar several times a day and implement an ultra low carb diet (30 gm of carbs per day)–Dr. Bernstein only started using a portable glucose tester for the first time in 1969 (p. xvi).  The makers of this glucose tester designed it for hospital use only, but Dr. Bernstein, who was an engineer at the time, was able to obtain one through his wife who was a physician.  Then it took him a few years to perfect a technique for establishing normal blood sugars.  Today, many diabetics use his method to successfully maintain normal blood sugars.

It makes me wonder:  Had my mom been able to control her blood sugars, could she have prevented her cancer? I hope through this blog post to encourage low carb dieting as a legitimate effective therapy and preventative method–for many ailments related to diabetes, but perhaps also for cancer.  I think that this is where the research is leading us, and hopefully the medical profession will pay attention.

PS:  As I finished writing this post the news of Hugo Chavez’ death from cancer at age 58 has surfaced.  Undoubtedly, he suffered from metabolic syndrome, as his girth would suggest.

How I came to know that I am diabetic

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Last November I realized that I had diabetes.  For years I’ve worried about becoming diabetic because it runs in my family.  Since about last summer, I’ve suspected that I might be diabetic but put off going to the doctor, for the ailments from which I suffered were not so acute that I felt compelled to consult the medical profession.  A good friend who is a missionary in Africa told me last Spring that he had returned to the US to deal with his failing health and learned that he was diabetic.  When he described his symptoms, such as constant thirst and blurred vision, I wondered if I too was becoming diabetic.

Finally, it came to a head in November because my wife asked me to put some carriage lights up on our garage.  After the first weekend of some minor work around the garage, my feet were in pain which seemed disproportionate to the level of exertion.  Not only so, but I fell off the ladder twice and also stumbled on the last step leading down to the garage.  I was wondering if this lack of co-ordination could have anything to do with diabetes.  So I looked it up and found that it was so.  I then investigated each of my other problems to see if there was a relation to diabetes and concluded that I had such a convergence of symptoms that I should get myself tested.

Pre-Diabetes or just Diabetes?

So I went to a walk-in clinic and asked to be tested for diabetes.  The physician took my blood pressure and filled out an order for blood work which she told me to take to nearby blood lab after fasting twelve hours.  When the lab work returned the clinic called me back in to inform me that I was not diabetic.  My blood worked showed a HbA1C of 6.0 and fasting glucose of 6.0 (108).  All clear, the doctor said.  But since I had elevated cholesterol levels he suggested avoiding saturated fat, high cholesterol foods, and since uric acid levels were higher than normal, he suggested eating less red meat.  (On my low carb diet, I’m actually doing nearly the opposite of what he suggested).

If not diabetic, I asked him, then why did I have symptoms (viz. peripheral neuropathy) consistent with diabetes.  He seemed to have no answer.  One conspicuous problem with his diagnosis, was that he did not even mention prediabetes.  Prediabetes is a condition of having abnormally high blood sugar but not at levels that the medical profession or the diabetes associations would consider diabetic.  At present, however, there is some dispute as to the accuracy of the term “prediabetes” since some therapists today would consider it only a milder form of diabetes.  Indeed, Dr. Richard Bernstein, who has a very successful practice of helping his patients control their glucose levels, says that he would treat prediabetics as diabetics (see The Diabetes Solution, p. 35).  I conclude that prediabetes is merely a less severe form of diabetes.  The prediabetic’s glucose levels are above normal but not so high that the medical profession, in general, is happy treating you.  You aren’t dying fast enough for them.  To be sure, I was sick, but not sick enough.  To relieve any doubt that I am diabetic, I will now explain the many diabetic symptoms that I had which are caused by elevated blood sugars, and I urge anyone with the same symptoms to take them more seriously than I did.  The websites which I link to are by no means definitive but merely representative expressions of how each symptom is potentially caused by diabetes.

My Diabetic Symptoms
citizenship day

On citizenship day, 28 February 2011, Petros showing visceral obesity

  1. Obesity:  According to Gary Taubes’ research, the main cause of obesity is insulin resistance resulting in elevated blood sugars.  This is also what causes the cravings and any excessive eating.  Thus, obesity is a symptom not a cause of diabetes.  I was 65 lbs overweight and had a waist measurement (pants size, i.e., not true waist) of about 43 inches.  The pot belly (a.k.a. visceral obesity) is the most dangerous form of obesity.  I have struggled with my weight during my childhood and it started to become a problem again in my late twenties.
  2. High blood pressure:  In November when the physician tested me, I had a reading of 140/90.
  3. Peripheral neuropathy:  I had frequent and debilitating tingling in my hands when holding steering wheel, canoeing, playing guitar, or typing on a keyboard.  I’ve had this problem for about the last ten years. Peripheral neuropathy also probably explains the pain I had in my feet after doing the work in the garage.
  4. Skin Tags: I seemed to be getting a large number of these in the last few months.
  5. Dizziness:  I had a single incident of dizziness last summer that caused me considerable concern.
  6. Sleepiness:  I became sleepy after every meal except, most of the time, breakfast.
  7. Dry mouth and bad breath:  I experienced dry mouth that drinking seemed to help only a little.  Also, my wife began to complain that I had persistent bad breath.
  8. Loss of proprioception:  This is also related to peripheral neuropathy.  But I felt that I should explain why I fell three times as I explained above.  Proprioception is the sense of where the different parts of your body are, and I had apparently lost some of my sense of where my feet were and where they were going.
  9. Scalp acne: I have had chronic scalp acne for about ten years.
  10. Diabetic dermopathy (shin spots) and other sores that take a long time to heal.  I have a line of about four inches long of scars on both legs, right along where the shin bone is closest to the surface of the skin, which was caused by frequent scabbing.  I only learned today that this condition is called shin spots or diabetic dermopathy.
  11. Arthritis:  My pain was similar to a basketball injury of spraining a finger (finger jam).  But I couldn’t remember injuring myself.  But it was so severe in both hands that, if I shook hands with someone, I would winced in pain.  It wasn’t until I went on the low carb diet and lowered my glucose levels that I realized this arthritis was related to diabetes, because it has nearly completely disappeared.  I had had the arthritis for about 9-12 months.
  12. Athlete’s foot:  I have this condition frequently; blood sugars apparently feed the fungus.
  13. Ingrown toenail infection:  I had my worst infection ever last Fall.
  14. Tendonitis:  I had a couple years ago a very bad rotator cuff tendonitis and often experienced severe achilles heal tendonitis.  These injuries occurred especially when I was a member of a gym.  Here is the dilemma:  I thought that exercise was necessary for weight control but my high blood sugars were making it difficult to exercise.  Now I am able to control my weight through low carb dieting, and I believe I will be less susceptible to injuries.

These symptoms are all related to elevated glucose levels, and many of them are going away now that I am on a low carb diet leading to much lower blood sugar levels.  While in the prediabetic range, my average blood sugar was nearly double normal.  The percentage of glycated hemoglobin (HbA1C) of 6.0 showed that I had an average glucose of 7.8 (141) for the last three months, while normal levels are much lower (4.6 (83) fasting glucose is normal).  So for quite a number of years, my glucose levels were causing problems to my nerves, to my skin, and likely to many other tissues and systems.  Problems to the kidneys and arteries, for example, are less discernible but much more dangerous.  So it is important to take visible manifestations seriously and to control them through the reduced intake of carbohydrates.  Carbs are poison.  Well, they are to those with diabetes, even those like myself who are in the prediabetic range.