The Daily Mail has been running some detailed reports on a major new survey published by the British Heart Foundation. It is very large survey of half a million people and establishes a clear link between obesity (bmi > 30), diabetes type 2 and heart disease.
For the first time the evidence that Diabetes 2 can be controlled and removed by a low carb diet has been clearly mentioned, along with improvements or prevention of heart disease. The report also comments that this diet may be the only effective way of stopping Diabetes 2. I have also posted a more detailed comment on the BHF website.
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I don't understand. I can find nothing on the DM website about this, and googling for "BHF survey" does not seem to produce relevant results.
Frankly, if the DM is promoting it, my assumption would be it is not true. They have just bullied NICE into removing David Unwin's infographics. They are not interested in truth, just clicks and their own agenda, which I cannot guess at.
I couldn’t find it either. But I did find a piece about an NHS trial of 5k people on a shakes, bar & soup 810cal a day diet for 12 weeks. Finally, the NHS is doing something about the information already out there (Prof Roy Taylor did this about 5 years ago. The article even mentioned him.) Maybe we won’t have to wait until the next century before a real food alternative will be endorsed by the NHS.
I did a more detailed post on the BHF health unlocked site. I will dig out the details and put them up later. It was quite a major survey of something like half a million people and the findings were quite clear. Come back to you later.
That is the article I was referring to. First time I have seen direct, authoritative, reference to a low carb diet being so effective in dealing with obesity, diabetes and heart disease. The size of the survey at nearly half a million is quite impressive. I believe this report was first published at a European Cardiology Conference and the information was taken from the UK databank, a reputable data source.
I found this on the BHF website, but nothing more detailed. I'm very interested to read more about it. Do you have any link you could add to your post? Many thanks.
But they can’t help themselves with the eat less, move more mantra!
‘If you are overweight, making small, long-term changes to your lifestyle such as reducing portion sizes and being more physically active can help lower your BMI, which is good for your heart and blood vessels.'
And BMI is a very blunt tool. Most of this info has been out there for ages - at least a lightbulb has gone on somewhere, let’s hope the shilling doesn’t run out before anything gets done! (Yes, I’m that old 😀)
The first few in the comments section made me smile.
It is known the most successful way of putting type 2 diabetes into a remission state is to lose weight, with the Mediterranean diet or a low-carb diet being encouraged by doctors.
In 2019, approximately 463million people worldwide had diabetes, including 4.7million in the UK and 34.2million in the US.
The vast majority of cases (around 90 per cent) are type 2 diabetes, which is often triggered by being overweight, not exercising, and eating an unhealthy diet.
Professor Jeremy Pearson, the BHF organisation's associate medical director, said: 'This important study of nearly half a million people shows that BMI is a more vital risk factor for type 2 diabetes than we previously realised.
'When someone's BMI goes above their personal threshold, blood sugar levels increase, triggering the onset of type 2 diabetes, which can lead to damaged blood vessels and increased risk of developing heart and circulatory diseases.
'If you are overweight, making small, long-term changes to your lifestyle such as reducing portion sizes and being more physically active can help lower your BMI, which is good for your heart and blood vessels.'
"It is known the most successful way of putting type 2 diabetes into a remission state is to lose weight, with the Mediterranean diet or a low-carb diet being encouraged by doctors."
That is not what the gist of the article at all. That paragraph is in there, but it is clearly extemporised by the journalists. Nothing in the rest of the article supports it. It is all about low calorie and portion control. The quotes from the BHF do not mention carbs.
And it is not in any sense "known". The NHS guidelines for diabetes default to low fat, ditto for Diabetes UK. And when I searched for "diet" on the BHF site, I quickly found this. bhf.org.uk/informationsuppo...
I agree with your comments. The BHF is a bit like a super tanker and sticks to its course until someone gives it a push with a very big tug. I think this report may the first step in this process. It will be very interesting to see if the follow up processes to monitor weight loss will take place and the development of individual blood sugar targets proceed to be investigated. The strange part is that the Med 'n diet has long been advocated by the BHF. It takes very little tweaking to turn it into a low carb diet.
Sorry but "reduce portions sizes and being more physically active" can easily be interpreted as the traditional "eat less, move more" story. The bulk of the article is just about BMI and losing weight to reduce it. And note the other headline claim that "most Type 2 diabetes can be reversed". When you look at the detail it's only most recently diagnosed diabetes. Not quite the same thing.
Mediterranean or low carb diets get only a passing mention, though it is good to see them mentioned at all.
This also ties in with today's report that the NHS are "giving free food to diabetics" which refers to the extension of the DiRECT trial of fast weight loss via very low calories soups and shakes (more a crash diet than normal healthy eating). But at least the maintenance diet after the initial weight loss does emphasise lowering carbs and maintaining protein levels. So bits of the NHS are getting at least parts of the message.
‘ At least now the NHS can’t possibly prescribe carbs with everything any more - or can they? ‘
Oh I’m sure they can!
They’ve been doing it for so long and anyway they anyway, all know that ‘overweight people just need to eat less and move more’ and be sure to eat carbs with every meal.
I also think the T2 ‘cured’ or ‘in remission’ is a bit of a red herring. What does it matter if it is cured or ‘only’ in remission as long as you cut the carbs - it’s gone for as long as you get a grip of your diet.
I ate my way out of T2 with LCHF - I know I could easily eat my way back to T2 if I go back to my former high carb lifestyle, but at present I don’t have T2 and I’m quite happy with that.
Initially 5,000 patients will be given 'total diet replacement products' as part of a diet plan that will include advice from dieticians and will be encouraged to exercise more. As a result of the 2017 study of 468 patients , weight loss trail programs using low calorie shake and soups (800 calories a day) were put in place, with advice for 'follow on diet' progression.
Half the people who took part in this trail went into remission and stayed there 12 months later. After 2 years 70% of them were still in remission. These results are the same as bariatric surgery and stomach gastric bands, but far less risky, and dramatically less expensive.
During this time only 4 % of the people who were in the standard GP care group went into remission - less than 1 in 20. Treating Type 2 diabetes and it's awful complications now costs £10 ,000,000,000 per year and doubles your chance of dying from Covid19.
Brian Ference , from the University of Cambridge "aggressive weight loss early on should be able to reverse this disease in most cases". Tom Whipple and Tom Jones writing in the Times on Tuesday looked at the effects of genes on the development of this disease . The study of about about 500.000 people did not make this link.
However the way in which the risk kicks in when patients cross a specific level of blood sugar, which can vary from individual to individual. is new .
It is only 8 minutes long, and says nothing about diet at all. It just says two obvious things.
Genetics isn't a huge factor with type 2 diabetes. Well, we knew that, because we are basically genetically the same as we were 3 generations ago, but diabetes was almost unknown back then. That proves it must be mostly environmental or possibly epigenetical.
And the other is the whole personal BMI set point. As we know some people get diabetes at a lower BMI than other people, and indeed my Indian neighbour is struggling to get her hba1c much below 39, as she is already at a low BMI and cutting carbs makes her lose more weight. So it's already kind of obvious. Also, they may be co-variants..eg diabetes and obesity are both caused by insulin resistance, but how fat we get is personal.
Either way, nothing is mentioned about diet or blood sugar. It has no relevance to the low carb community.
Every diabetic I know (all over 50) has been educated to eat less carbs, traditionally they weighed them. The fact is any carbs can increase blood sugar, (even good carbs if not burned) unlike proteins or fats. I really don’t get why scientists go round in circles trying to prove what has always been known and why doctors are failing to emphasise the need for a change in diet and lifestyle for the newly diagnosed. Have they become too polite these days or been told they can’t tell a patient that they are fat?! One thing I do know is that protein can be more expensive and it does appear the least financially advantaged are going to need more help.
I think you'll find that protein also increases blood glucose which is why many scientists now emphasise replacing carbs with fats and keeping protein down to the needed level. Hence LCHF. I'm not 100% convinced myself but I'm getting closer.
Not quite. De novo gluconeogenesis is believed to be demand driven. That means eating protein won't cause it to happen and if your body needs it, it will take it from your lean tissue if you haven't supplied it in your diet.
However, one of the aims of low carb diets is to reduce insulin, and protein triggers the release of insulin even without conversion to glucose.
So it's still not a good idea, but for different reasons 🤓
I took a while to accept the high fat message, but now if I have my doubts, I just need to look in the mirror
That's not quite what I read so I'll have to do some more checking but if so then I'm slightly less convinced about LCHF. It's really interesting but not yet quite convincing. Still that's no-one's problem but mine.
Sure, it's your problem, but most of us have been there. I was critiquing HelloFresh because of the amount of saturated fat per serving (more than the NHS's recommended daily amount) on the 2nd of December last year, yet on the 11th, I started Fast800 which was my first tentative step towards LCHF. I took a lot of convincing. There seems to be an assumption (not necessarily from you) that those who are convinced about LCHF are immune to evidence. In fact it's the other way: we have allowed evidence (scientific and personal experience) to change our opinion 180°.
One thing that really convinced me was a fruitless search for high quality evidence that a low fat diet was healthy. As they have been studying that for 50 years, the evidence in favour of it should be overwhelming.
Well, it's good that the "experts" are finally acknowledging what proper scientists have been telling them for 20 years, ie., T2D is reversible and that it is not a progressive condition.
It's sad that they're still banging on about weight being the proximate cause.
As someone mentioned up there in the other responses, people who are able to gain weight are actually less prone to T2D. This is quite predictable really: T2D happens when your body is out of other options for curtailing blood sugar excursions, and packing on fat mass is a pretty good means of dealing with it.
About a third of T2D patients present with a normal BMI (depending on how you describe 'normal'). So what the BHF suggest those people are supposed to do is anybody's guess.
But yeah, low-carb gets a passing mention, so ... well, small victories I guess. It used to be a sort of rite of passage for every Daily Hate Mail journalist to write an article trashing low-carb (actually knowing what low-carb involves was not a prerequisite).
Don't get hooked on the "high" fat. It's only "high" in relation to the standard advice to avoid fat like the plague. We really should switch to the more accurate low carb, healthy fat label.
Did you lose weight eating the same way you're eating now i.e. meals you've posted in the past week or so? If so, that's consistent with the "high" fat element of LCHF - eggs, oil, butter, avocado, bacon, oily fish, cream, cheese. And varied and tasty
What Bridgegirl said - it's only "high" in relation to the standard advice to eat no fat at all.
None of us are sitting here drinking lard milkshakes or carving off slices of butter to eat for lunch. We just eat foods with the natural amount of fat in them.
Logically, though, if you remove a lot of carbs then you have to be getting your daily energy needs from fat. Say you're consuming 400kCal as protein and another 300kCal as carbs (ie., a standard LCHF maintenance amount). That means the average person needs maybe another ~800kCal (90g) of fat to meet his/her daily energy needs. 90g of fat is easy. You can eat that much without even noticing ... and you probably are.
I think you're getting me wrong. I don't think your meals look high in fat. I think they look healthy in fat, just as on a LCHF plan. The only people who would say they are high in fat are those who wanted to scare the living daylights out of us about fat
I'm not sure there is an exact ratio or, if there is, I have no idea what it is! I don't go in for counting. I just have a good idea of the ingredients with the most carbs and steer clear of them, then make my meals out of the low carb stuff
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