Re: Diabetic diet information/recommendation

[Guest guest]

> My husband is a type I diabetic (since he was 8). He is pretty healthy -

> exercises a ton, muscular, little body fat, regular BMs, etc. But I still

> feel like he could be eating better, particularly for the long run. Are

> there any books, websites, gurus that anyone could recommend that give

> non-mainstream diet tips along the lines of NN?

> Thanks,

> melanie

The Nutrition Solution, A Guide to Your Metabolic Type by Harold J. Kristal

D.D.S. has a diabetes diet. Article by him

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ISW/is_2002_Dec/ai_94538640

Also, The Schwarzbein Principle by Schwarzbein, a diabetes doctor.

Both don't promote processed foods.

Recent NY Times article below with theory to type 1.

Celiac disease is being diagnosed increasingly with type 1. Allergy testing

probably a good idea.

Wanita

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/health/17diab.html

May 17, 2005

New Theory Places Origin of Diabetes in an Age of Icy Hardships

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE

When temperatures plummet, most people bundle up in thick sweaters,

stay cozy indoors and stoke up on comfort food. But a provocative new

theory suggests that thousands of years ago, juvenile diabetes may have

evolved as a way to stay warm.

People with the disease, also known as Type 1 diabetes, have excessive

amounts of sugar, or glucose, in their blood.

The theory argues that juvenile diabetes may have developed in

ancestral people who lived in Northern Europe about 12,000 years ago

when temperatures fell by 10 degrees Fahrenheit in just a few decades

and an ice age arrived virtually overnight.

Archaeological evidence suggests countless people froze to death, while

others fled south. But Dr. Sharon Moalem, an expert in evolutionary

medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, believes

that some people may have adapted to the extreme cold. High levels of

blood glucose prevent cells and tissues from forming ice crystals, Dr.

Moalem said. In other words, Type 1 diabetes would have prevented many

of our ancestors from freezing to death.

The theory is described in the March 30 online edition of Medical

Hypotheses, a journal devoted to publishing bold, even radical,

biomedical theories that are potentially important to the development

of medicine.

Dr. Clive Gamble, a professor of geography and an expert on ancient

human migration at the University of London, said the theory supported

a growing body of evidence that Europeans were descended from hunters

with a tolerance to cold climates and not farmers from warm ones. " As a

Brit, " he said, " this makes perfect sense to me. "

Dr. Hegele, an expert on diabetes and genetics at the University

of Western Ontario, said the theory was " an interesting attempt to

contribute a new idea to help understand the pathogenesis of Type 1

diabetes. " But, he added, it has a major shortcoming: it fails to

address the autoimmune nature of the disease.

Most doctors who treat diabetes are extremely skeptical about the idea.

In a typical comment, one doctor said, referring to a dangerous

complication of diabetes: " Are they kidding? Type 1 diabetes would

result in severe ketoacidosis and early death. "

Not necessarily, Dr. Moalem said in an interview. Back then, life

expectancy was about 25 years for many people. Those with high glucose

in their blood did not live long enough to suffer complications. But

they did live long enough, despite the extreme cold, to reproduce.

Today, when people live much longer, the ravages of high blood glucose

are all too familiar. They include heart disease, stroke, kidney

failure, high blood pressure, nerve damage, foot ulcers and gum

disease.

Dr. Moalem advocates using an evolutionary perspective to understand

why the body is not better designed and therefore why diseases exist at

all. By looking at the ancient environments in which humans evolved, he

says, it should be possible to see if certain illnesses offer

protective advantages.

For example, some diseases have been linked to human pathogens. A

disorder that leads to harmful levels of iron in the blood,

hemochromatosis, protects against bubonic plague. Sickle cell anemia, a

blood disorder, reduces the ability of the malaria parasite to destroy

red blood cells. Cystic fibrosis combats typhoid fever. Tay-Sachs

disease may have evolved to combat tuberculosis.

If the theory is true, Type 1 diabetes, which strikes an estimated

29,000 young Americans each year, will be the first disease shown to

have that evolved to protect people from the effects of rapid climate

change.

Diabetes comes in two types: Type 1 diabetes occurs when the immune

system destroys cells that produce insulin, a hormone that helps

deliver glucose throughout the body; Type 2 occurs when cells

throughout the body do not respond to normal amounts of insulin.

Without insulin, glucose builds up into the blood. Type 2 diabetes is

found all over the world, Dr. Moalem said, mostly in older overweight

people. But Type 1 diabetes shows an inexplicable pattern. It is most

prevalent in people descended from Northern Europeans. Finland and

Sweden have extremely high rates of the disease. But it is rare in

African, Asian and Hispanic populations. American Indians and Alaska

Natives almost never get it unless they have significant Caucasian

heritage.

Type 1 diabetes is diagnosed more often in winter than in summer. In

those with the disease, blood glucose rises in colder months,

regardless of diet. But in warmer climates, blood glucose does not vary

with the seasons.

When families with a genetic susceptibility to the disease move south

to warm climates, fewer people develop diabetes.

Numerous genes confer susceptibility to Type 1 diabetes, Dr. Moalem

said. Risk factors are inherited from both parents. Beyond that, most

experts believe that something in the environment may help set off the

illness, like a virus.

Or cold air. Cold may turn on one or more metabolic pathways involved

in the genesis of Type 1 diabetes, Dr. Moalem said. In fact, many of

the metabolic changes seen in Type 1 diabetes mirror those seen in

animals that are tolerant to cold.

Dr. Storey, a biochemist at Carleton University in Ottawa,

studies the wood frog, which is found in higher latitudes throughout

the Northern Hemisphere, including the Arctic Circle. " The frog is the

size of your thumb, " he said.

As soon as its skin begins to freeze in winter, its liver begins

pouring glucose into its blood. This depresses the freezing point of

body fluids, rather like a slushy beverage, and places a protective

barrier around proteins.

Eventually the frog produces so much glucose that its tissues are

completely protected from the cold. It freezes solid, with no

heartbeat, no circulation, no breathing, no muscle movement. In the

spring, the frog thaws out and resumes normal life. Its diabetes is

reversible.

Humans and other animals exposed to cold will first shiver to get extra

heat, Dr. Moalem said. But after a while, they generate more heat by

burning a special form of fat: brown adipose tissue. The ability of

this tissue to produce heat depends on having a large amount of

glucose. Insulin is not required. Thus, being diabetic would help shunt

glucose from the blood toward the heat-making pathway of the brown

adipose tissue.

Mice and rats exposed to cold become insulin resistant, Dr. Moalem

said. And high sugar grapes produced in cold regions, used in so-called

ice wines, produce high levels of sugar to ward off freezing.

Most adaptations to cold would have evolved gradually, as microbes,

plants and animals learned to cope with changing climates, Dr. Moalem

said. But ice cores from Greenland reveal a unique period in human

history that could have forced people living in Northern Europe to

adapt quickly or die.

The climate, particularly in Europe, began to cool 14,000 years ago.

About 12,600 years ago, conditions worsened. Huge drops in temperature

occurred over decades. Glacial-like conditions lasted 1,300 years in a

period called the Younger Dryas.

While northern Asia underwent glaciation at the same time, it does not

appear to have happened with the same speed and ferocity, Dr. Moalem

said, perhaps explaining why Inuits and other populations that have

long histories of living in frigid climates did not develop similar

protective responses to cold.

Rather, they developed a different kind of defense against famine,

called thrifty genes. People with such genes gain weight if they eat

more than 1,000 calories a day. In today's calorie rich world, that

might predispose them to Type 2 diabetes.

People living in the frigidity of far Northern Europe could have done

three things, Dr. Moalem said. They could have tried to outrun the

cold, or to build better shelters and cover themselves with animal

skins, or to undergo biological adaptations.

Gene mutations take a long time to accumulate, Dr. Moalem said. But

so-called epigenetic factors, which change the expression patterns of

genes without altering their basic structure, can produce adaptations

in just a few generations.

Dr. Gamble of London said that archaeological evidence supported a

large and rapid depopulation of Northern and Western Europe that

coincided with the rapid cooling and the spread of thick glacial ice of

the Younger Dryas. Humans huddled in Iberia, awaiting a warmer climate.

Some people appear to have ended up in Sardinia, which today has a high

rate of Type 1 diabetes, Dr. Moalem said. An analysis of the Y

chromosome indicates common genetic roots between modern Sardinians and

ancient Northern Europeans.

The idea that Type 1 diabetes is an adaptation to extreme cold needs

much more research, Dr. Moalem said. Cause and effect have not been

proved.

But it is not too early to explore biological solutions used by

cold-tolerant animals in dealing with the complications of high blood

sugar. Plants and microbes adapted to extreme cold might also produce

molecules that could help treat Type 1 diabetes, he said.

Dr. Storey found three genes in the wood frog that turned on in

response to freezing. He is now putting those genes into mammalian

cells to see what happens.

. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[Guest guest]

There is a fair bit of evidence that T1 diabetes is triggered

by IgA food allergies. Once the islet cells are gone, they are

gone, but most T1 folks don't know what the allergy was

that caused it in the first place, and if the allergy is

still intact it can cause other problems. The IgA tests

(York does a saliva one that is easy, and Enterolab

does a stool test that is maybe more sensitive) might

be worth doing.

-- Heidi Jean

>My husband is a type I diabetic (since he was 8). He is pretty healthy -

>exercises a ton, muscular, little body fat, regular BMs, etc. But I still

>feel like he could be eating better, particularly for the long run. Are

>there any books, websites, gurus that anyone could recommend that give

>non-mainstream diet tips along the lines of NN?

>Thanks,

>melanie

>

>

>

>

>

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[Guest guest]

> >My husband is a type I diabetic (since he was 8). He is pretty healthy -

> >exercises a ton, muscular, little body fat, regular BMs, etc. But I still

> >feel like he could be eating better, particularly for the long run. Are

> >there any books, websites, gurus that anyone could recommend that give

> >non-mainstream diet tips along the lines of NN?

Dr. Bernstein's " The Diabetes Solution " is a great book for both T1 and TII

diabetes.

He has an entire section devoted to diet and menu plans.

Diet forms > 50% of his book.

His diet principles are very low-carb, similar to Atkins (slightly more

restrictive) and

definetely WAPF compatible.

He requires the elimination of both grains as well as dairy, which would address

the

common IgA allergies that Heidi mentioned.

-Pratick

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