I followed Dr. Bernstein’s very low carb woe for 11 years. I tend to be extremely disciplined. My alc was 4.6 but eventually it creeped up although it was always non diabetic. Eventually I started gaining weight.
My LDL rose to unhealthy numbers, but I followed some of the thinking of the time and ignored my LDL. That was a huge mistake because I ended up with two heart stents. I don’t blame this all on the diet, because I had already been a type 1 for 51 yrs and during the years of urine testing, my glucose levels were all over the place.
I know that I have repeated this several times here, but for some people this woe is dangerous. It caused my BP to suddenly drop and I hit my head several times and ended up in the ER. Also the diet eventually caused me to have severe migraines.
4 yrs ago I switched to a low fat plant based diet and I stopped passing out and the migraines ceased. The two type 1 diabetics who started the website Mastering Diabetes are extremely bright and healthy. I get tired of their sales pitch, but their book Mastering Diabetes has all the info. It was a New York Times best seller this year.
I don’t hate the very low carb diet and I think it is great for losing weight, and keeping glucose in control, but it can be disastrous for some people in the long run.
I still greatly admire Dr. Bernstein, and am thrilled that he has lived so long with type 1 diabetes.
I’m so sorry you had to go through Covid, but glad you are recovering. It wouldn’t surprise me if it impacted your inner systems in any number of ways—it just seems like there are still a lot of unknowns with Covid…Wishing you good health!
Terry, I’ve seen your comments on other threads. I’m new here (brand new Type 2 diabetic- diagnosed 2 days ago w 11.3 a1c). I joined a Facebook group focused on “reversing” diabetes and I’m looking for more info on what that means.
I understand your preference for the term remission and I understand the mounting evidence that ketogenic diet can reliably reduce a1c levels. I fully understand that I cannot continue to eat in the same way, if I want to try that for reversing or reaching remission. Here’s my question about ever having a glass of wine or piece of birthday cake again:
does this mean a single, occasional high-carb choice will throw it all back out of whack?
I know A1C is a 3-month average, so I want to believe that it’s possible to enjoy things like this occasionally without ruining my remission (once I get there. Which I intend to do!)
I’m so glad I found this forum because Facebook groups are like the Wild West
NoNo. You’ve just got to develop the discipline to have the occasional brownie or potato or whatever you consider a treat and that’s it. That’s it. You immediately go back to minimal carbs. At first, it is definitely risky–that just depends on how bad your carb addiction is—and we all battle that one in our own way. The key is always to TestTestTest. Trial and error…Also, develop some short, vigorous exercises that will help you burn a few carbs after eating them! I have a clear path from bathtub to kitchen sink and back and forth—I can bop about for a few minutes. I also do some aerobic sitting exercises…
No, you can have the occasional small treat but it takes a heck of a lot of discipline to not have those treats turn into the occasional cheat day, followed by cheat week, ending up at square one. We all, however, still need our occasional treat and to make up for it, we take a 1-2 hour walk, bike ride, or other forms of exercise to burn off the carbs.
You have probably checked it out but you sound like an ideal candidate for Virta Health, in case you need a little help on the way to getting your A1C back to normal.
I agree with the what others have already answered. The occasional treat is not a problem. The biggest risk of the occasional treat is that it triggers your desire to eat that again – soon. Highly palatable processed foods scratch a deep seated itch and often leads to a lapse of discipline.
Every one is different. If your willpower fails in the wake the occasional treat then avoiding the treat altogether might be the best solution. It depends on your temperament.
In the last year or so I bought some low carb chocolate bars sweetened with monk fruit that were delicious and only a few net carbs. I found that my mind was magnetically drawn to that treat each time I entered my apartment. I had to exert willpower to resist increasing this treat to more than one serving per day. I failed more than once in this effort. I didn’t buy any more of those chocolate bars; I could not have them in the house as I was unable to resist the siren song of their call.
While the net carbs were low, this treat still contained calories and eating it two or three times per day affected my blood sugar management. I didn’t order that treat again since it required significant willpower on my part to not increase my treat rate.
I think allowing a treat once or twice per year is much more doable that managing a weekly treat. Because it messes with your willpower expenditure and threatens undermining the whole project. This is highly individual and can only be judged by each person.
Good luck with your T2D remission project! There is much evidence that this is possible and if you’re successful, it can dramatically change your longterm health for the better. It is a prize worth fighting for!
Thank you all for the supportive and thoughtful comments, suggestions, and recommendations. I feel much better already. I’m grateful that found this forum!
I don’t think 2 x dapagliflozin and metformin caused the current situation with your diabetes. I would ask to be blood tested for late onset T1. Low carb can help stabilise your BG, but you may not get off insulin.
The low carb reversing diabetes idea is just an extension of blaming the patient for your condition.
If you ate better you wouldn’t have diabetes.
It has been proven wrong over and over.
Low carb just lowers the bar so you can manage at a lower level
It doesn’t change the underlying condition.
That is just not sexy!!! Just think if you were trying to sell a service like virta health, or a supplement that really “helps” but does not actually reverse or cure the underlying condition. Saying what you just said would never sell their product or service.
The only thing the US really is better at than any other country in the world is marketing and selling the sizzle and the steak sells itself. We know all the trigger words and how to present them to stay within the law (barely) that make a customer anywhere in the world buy.
Of course, don’t point this out to a salesman because you will be told both interpretations are right, just a difference of opinion.
If you lose weight, go off of all your diabetes meds including insulin, and still maintain gluco-normal blood sugars – that’s some trickery or false claim?
You trade in your more sedentary lifestyle, drop eating processed and packaged foods, eliminate all the quick-to-turn-into glucose starches in your diet, and instead eat less processed nutritionally dense foods, and in return you get a well-functioning glucose metabolism that runs on automatic – beyond my wildest dreams as a T1D!
Low carb means control. It never means going back to eating lots of potatoes. But control is its own reward; it’s own sense of making peace with the rest of your life…
Besides, once you get the hang of it, you can eat like royalty. If it is sweets you crave, look for all the low carb substitutes—from pound cake and cheesecake and walnut cake to many kinds of cookies—change your ingredients and you’ll be able to bake up a Bakery full of diabetic sweets—almond flour, splenda, etc…And experiment with Portion Control–there may be no real substitute for a baked potato with butter and sour cream, but cut it up and share it!
Never Reversed, but Controlled in very satisfying ways—that is entirely possible…Good luck to all…Judith in Portland
I don’t think it was mentioned here but all of this comes down to two scenarios In my mind.
Person can make enough beta cell mass.
Person cannot make enough beta cell mass.
In the first, they can reverse and it would probably be due to weight loss since liver and pancreas fat hurt insulin sensitivity. This will not be everyone of course.
In the second, they will never ever reverse it but it could be managed with low carb and eating to their meter since they physically do not have the production to eat carbs.
A minor bit but IMO important to the overall thought as to what is going on. For the individual it may not matter though I do worry about the people who do keto and see their LDL go too high. No amount of David Diamond or [insert low carb doc here] videos will fix it. The data is too compelling.
Type 2 can be reversed while eating plenty of fruit, vegetables, grains, potatoes, legumes etc. Keeping fat in the diet at 10 to 15% and adding exercise enables many with type 2 diabetes to eliminate their diabetic medications while eating a very healthy diet.
I am a type 1 but I eat about 275 carbs a day eating my fill of all of those foods and more. I also exercise. This is an extremely healthy lifestyle and the diet is similar to the Mediterranean diet without olive oil. See Mastering Diabetes if interested.
I take about 22 units of insulin, my A1c is 5.1 and my TIR is about 80 or so %.
I spent 11 yrs on the Bernstein diet, and should have watched my LDL.
Not if significant beta cell death has occurred. While they are somewhat able to regenerate it is not always the case. It is most likely why the Dr. Barnard trial that lasted for 74 weeks on such a diet failed horribly.
Dropping from 8 to 7.6 A1C is hardly reversal. You could argue 20% fat was still too high but 20% is the conventional number used to define low fat.
I’ve done it, hated it, but if it works for you then that’s what matters. You can see on their site, and Cyrus (spelling?) has even admitted it doesn’t work for everyone. Probably due to beta cell death.
I think, like the very low carb diet, many people can’t stick to it. After 11 yrs on the Bernstein diet, my 4 yrs on the Mastering Diabetes diet has been very refreshing. I have never been a big meat eater and I was just too sick to follow Bernstein any longer. After 4 yrs of very low carbing I started falling apart. During the 11 yrs eating 30 carbs a day, I received 2 heart stents, and had migraines, bladder cancer, and extremely low blood pressure which caused me to pass out.
My husband followed Bernstein too and within those 11 yrs he had esophageal cancer, prostate cancer and skin cancer.
His parents, grandparents, and brothers never had cancer. No one in my family ever had cancer.
I would never go back to a very low carb diet. For us it definitely was not healthy. It kept my diabetes in check easily, but a lot can go wrong with our bodies besides diabetes. At 70, I am now healthier than I have been in years even after living with type 1 for 63 yrs. Recent tests show that my heart is strong and my coronary artery disease hasn’t progressed.
does this mean a single, occasional high-carb choice will throw it all back out of whack?