Carbohydrates don't cause insulin resistance or diabetes

insulinresistance
pufa
carnivore
saladino
linoleic
#1

… in a metabolically healthy individual.

Crazy talk, I know, and the first time I heard it I rolled my eyes - but have any of you heard Saladino’s latest podcast (Fundamental Health, August 14)?

His hypothesis is that the metabolic dysfunction is caused by high levels of linoleic acid/ PUFAs. Once someone is metabolically deranged, higher carbs of course lead to fat gain and further dysregulation (and lower carbs will lead to improved metabolic health and fat loss), but the initial driver is PUFA.

He points to so many examples, and I think that some of them have stumped us on here in the form of questions from some newbies. A few:

Sumo wrestlers: very fat, but it’s all subcutaneous (apparently they have very low visceral fat?!) and they are insulin sensitive;

Many many cases of indigenous people who eat relatively high carb and are metabolically healthy;

Saladino himself, who eats 120g of carbs/day in the form of honey and has an A1C of 4.8

This might explain also why some folks who are eating conventionally raised animal meats/fats and lots of nuts might not get the results they want from Keto.

Any thoughts, lovely forum people? I’m intrigued enough that I’m going to do a blood test to determine my linoleic acid levels. I’ve avoided conventional vegetable oils for years now, but both bacon and nuts are staples for me. (My last A1C was 4.8 so I don’t have any serious dysregulation happening, but I’m going to experiment with ZC and I’m very curious to see if there’s a change in that blood reading.)

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #2

Au contraire, our farmer ancestors, including the Egyptians, did not have the benefit of concentrated PUFAs in seed oils and still got diabetes and other metabolic diseases:

Personally, I think some folks can eat pretty much anything they want and remain relatively healthy. I could until the age of 60 and nearly so afterwards. Luck of genetics? I don’t doubt that concentrated PUFAs have exacerbated the problem, but the essential problem remains carbs.

#3

hmm - thank you! I will watch this.
Diabetes has definitely been around for a long time - ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece - but it’s like an epidemic now, and I know folks who have pretty severe insulin resistance and PCOS who are not low carb but also not crazy high carb/sugar either, and this feels like a missing piece in the puzzle for me. But I’ll watch the video. Thank you, Michael!

(Troy) #4

I enjoyed it🙂
Does it mean I will befriend him?:sweat:

:slightly_smiling_face:
No!

Love to listen and learn
Open mind
Just like I experiment w my own WOE
To each their own

#5

Yes! I love this. I’m going to do a carnivore experiment for a while and then test foods. I really really like doing my own N=1.

(Troy) #6

Who Who …who let the " dogma " out
:wink:

Topic song pun I guess
I could not resist😩

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #7

It may not be only PUFAs either but the ratio of ω6:ω3 which is totally skewed in seed oils, 10:1, 15:1 and up to 20:1. Plenty of our paleolithic ancestors ate high levels of fish full of PUFAs, but the ω6:ω3 ratio was much closer to 1:1.

#8

Yes, I’m sure- I think there is so much about modern processing which messes us up.
I’m curious about whether ancient diabetes was mostly T2 or T1 (but I haven’t watched the video yet! so don’t worry about filling me in :slight_smile:

(Scott) #9

A normal A1C doesn’t mean much. I can remember Carl testing an IT worker at his wife’s business that was so obese he couldn’t walk down the hall to check a PC. Carl said his A1c is going to be off the charts and it was normal. As long as your insulin can can counter act sugar A1C will be in check…until it isn’t.

(Ronald Weaver) #10

I’ve always been curious about Sumo wrestlers. They seem to pile on lots of weight but when they retire they lose it as quickly. Anybody know of any research on Sumos’ long-term health ?

(bulkbiker) #11

I think their average age of death is around 60 yo… buggered if I can remember where I read that but I think few have a healthy old age even in Japan…


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(Bunny) #12

Processed; hydrogenation or hexane gassed (chemical extraction) linoleic acid//PUFAs? Take refined sugar and mix it with that? Then take that and put it in processed foods?

Natural linoleic acid//PUFAs are harmless to humans.

Sumo Wrestlers sleep right after they eat that’s how they keep their body from going into lipolysis and they can store up to 15 pounds of water.

High carbs from Whole Foods are not bad for you, it is when you become insulin resistant or don’t have enough insulin is where the problem really starts with refined sugars and Highly concentrated processed foods?

(bulkbiker) #13

Well they are when you are insulin resistant… wouldn’t you agree?
I’m sure a ton of mashed potato would not have done my blood sugar much good.
People spike with plain rice after all…

(Bunny) #14

…eating too much?

Unlimited leafy greens and cruciferous always does the trick and hard to over-eat, especially with time, take it easy on the starchy stuff.

Footnotes:

[1] Obese subjects carrying the 11482G & A polymorphism at the perilipin locus are resistant to weight loss after dietary energy restriction. Corella, D., Qi, L., Sorlí, J.V., Godoy, D., Portolés, O., Coltell, O., Greenberg, A.S., Ordovas, J.M. J. Clin. Endocrinol. Metab. (2005) [Pubmed] …”

#15

Yes, this is all true, but I’m not sure how it enters into the PUFA question. It may be that someone who eats very high carb (and/or is obese) and has relatively little PUFAs in the diet (or handles them differently… I’m sure there’s a lot of variation) takes longer to become insulin resistant, and that could be reflected in A1C staying stable for longer.

#16

That would fit with the insulin sensitivity theory!

Not sure about the early death though :frowning: It’s probably still not great to have carried around lots of extra fat for so long.

(Kirk Wolak) #17

My friend is a Fluffy Fat person. He has perfectly normal glucose control, despite eating crap foods.
loads of carbs.

Genetically, he is the opposite of the people from India who can be Severely Insulin Resistance with + 10 lbs… They gain visceral fat quickly, and cannot store much subcutaneous fat.

My buddy makes and stores fat VERY easily, but has very little visceral fat. GENES matter.

His father became T2D very late in life, and it was very quick, after years of being obese but with good glucose control.

There can be MULTIPLE causes (PUFA and Sugar/Grains/Inflammation), and there can be multiple types of bodies that are predisposed to certain ways of dealing with this. This is how we SELECT superior genes for survival of our offspring…

#18

From my experience. Refined sugar is highly addictive and it dysregulates the nervous system while organic fruit does neither.

All junk/isolated food leads to metabolic dysfunction. Even the so called healthy isolated fats.

Whole foods contain protein which shuttles the fat in muscle. Including edible nuts and oily seeds.

Notably, dietary supplementation with arginine enhances protein deposition in skeletal muscle and intramuscular lipid concentrations, while reducing body fat mass in growing-finishing pigs (15). These studies suggest that arginine regulates lipid and protein metabolism in a tissue-specific manner.
-https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3422877/

#19

Its all the processed foods. Everything on the shelf made to last has carbs introduced for longevity and taste. There is some movie about it on Netflix I think. Something about introducing carb rich foods to the aborigine tribes in Australia and then watching these people go from slim to obese since about the 1950s. Also sugar was unknown in Europe until around 1350. I guess they used honey to sweeten their foods. In those times the most prevalent cause of death were infections. Today we have heart attacks and strokes and Type 2 diabetes to thank for that as the major cause of death in the elderly. Big increase in obesity in general since the 1950s. But this is when processed foods became more and more prevalent. Its to make life “easier” so the households didnt have to make everything themselves from scratch. And the result is buying those processed foods so as not to have to cook, and instead of making life easier- it is killing us.

#20

@anon81060937 and @Chantarella @CaptainKirk
There’s no doubt that refined sugar and processed foods in general are terrible for human health and that there’s enormous genetic variation in how we handle the absolute disaster that is modern food. What’s a new idea (for me at least) is that the dysregulation begins with the fats rather than with the carbs. [I think the main contradiction to that so far in this thread is the fact that we have ancient cases of diabetes. I’m only partway through the Eades video that @amwassil posted.]

In any case, everyone- if you have time, have a listen to the podcast! For me as a long-time LC person it was definitely thought-provoking.