How a Low-Carb Diet Works
The Diabetes Diet : Dr. Bernstein's Low-Carbohydrate Solution
by Richard K. Bernstein, M.D.
enotalone.com
(Page 2 of 3)
A low-carb diet is superior for one simple reason: if done according to the guidelines (in this case I am referring to the guidelines in this book), people don't get fat, or don't stay fat, even as they reach the years of the supposedly inevitable "middle-age spread." In addition, all of the indicators for disease that are supposedly controlled by a low-fat diet, such as triglycerides and LDL (or "bad") cholesterol, descend to normal or low-normal ranges in most people. It's been shown over and over again that slim (not underweight) people live longer than fat people, or even people who are just heavy.
The reason that a low-carb diet can help you become or remain slim is tightly linked to the hormone insulin, which is the principal fat-building hormone. The process works like this: The lower the amount of fast-acting or concentrated carbohydrate you eat, the less significant is the increase of your blood sugar. The less significant the effect on your blood sugar, the less of the fat-building hormone insulin you will need (either injected or made by your body) to stabilize blood sugar. With less insulin at large in your bloodstream, fats you eat will not be stored but metabolized (you will literally pee them away as water or breathe them away as carbon dioxide). In addition, as blood sugars decrease, the efficiency of insulin increases, further minimizing insulin levels in your body, with the result that existing body fat will start to metabolize as well - it will, as they say, just melt away.
Besides playing a role in diseases that result from overweight and obesity, excessively high serum insulin levels are toxic to the body and carry a number of effects that reduce longevity. These include increased blood pressure and damage to the lining of the blood vessels, or endothelium. These effects increase the likelihood of heart attack, stroke, and atherosclerosis, in addition to other vascular difficulties.
In general, a low-carbohydrate diet provides the nutrients that people need without the excess carbohydrate that causes high blood sugars and requires high levels of insulin. In addition, protein, fat, and slow-acting carbohydrate, such as leafy and whole-plant vegetables and some kinds of root vegetables, tend to be broken down more slowly and continuously, so people who follow this diet tend to feel satisfied much longer after eating. It has also been shown that people on low-carbohydrate diets can consume more calories while losing the same amount of weight as those on simple restricted-calorie diets.
Although the diet I prescribe for my patients has been available to the public since the publication of my first book, Diabetes: The Glucograf Method for Normalizing Blood Sugar, in 1981, I never have published the diet separately until now. There are two reasons I have felt it necessary to do so.
First, as the number of diabetic, overweight, and obese people continues to increase, and as the popularity of lowcarbohydrate diets increases, many dieters, frustrated with the failure of the dietary recommendations of the American Diabetes Association and the American Heart Association (AHA), are looking for an alternative. Surfing diabetesrelated Web sites, discussion boards, and chat rooms, you'll see low carb everywhere - but you'll also see a lot of misconception as to what low carb means. As diabetics look for an alternative to the ADA and AHA recommendations, it's important that the advice be sound. Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution is a comprehensive program for normalizing blood sugar and covers all the bases - medication, exercise, diet, blood sugar self-monitoring - but I hear over and over again about the diet portion: "Nobody ever told me that before." People who despaired of ever losing weight, ever having energy, ever being able to carry on a healthy sexual relationship, have said again and again that the diet was the main thing that helped them regain control of their lives. I've seen people shed 50 or more pounds in a few months and say they had never before felt in control of their appetites or their lives.
The second reason for this book is that because diabetes, obesity, and overweight are so closely intertwined, I have treated many nondiabetics - some who were in danger of becoming diabetic, others who just wanted to lose weight. I have seen them reverse their complications (which they had despite being "not diabetic"), shed enormous amounts of weight, and regain their health and energy. I recently saw a man who weighed more than 400 pounds. Clinically speaking, he wasn't a diabetic. In working him up, I found that his blood sugar levels were indeed slightly elevated, although not as much as I had suspected, and that he already had about fifteen diabetic complications. Most doctors would say to this man, "Lose weight and let's keep an eye on those blood sugars." This is effectively shifting the burden to the patient and not providing medical care.
I treated him as though he already was a diabetic. My definition of diabetic is anyone with elevated blood sugars, relative to the mean of normal (or the average for the healthy, young, adult nondiabetic population). In all likelihood, however, even the mean of normal is questionable as a safe standard because of the way the general population eats. A recent study published in Diabetes Care showed that in the United States the mean of normal was an average blood sugar level of 95 mg/dl (milligrams of glucose per deciliter of blood). For what I see in slim, young adults, a mean of about 83 mg/dl is really normal.
What this demonstrates is that there are a lot of Americans walking around with elevated blood sugar levels, and over time, even if they haven't been clinically diagnosed as diabetic, they are at serious risk for developing the complications associated with diabetes. The diet in this book is not just a diabetes diet, it's a longevity diet, a disease-prevention diet, and a fitness diet. It is the reason that although I have a "fatal illness," I am healthier than many considerably younger people.
It is also the reason that the cardiac and kidney risk factors of the gentleman described above dropped signifi- cantly over the next few months and his weight is coming under control. |
