Cyrus Khambatta PhD High Carb Low Fat advocate

(Nigel Williams) #1

Just watched a presentation by Cyrus Khambatta. He’s saying that low carb high fat works for a few months then it makes us ill. But high carb low fat reduces insulin production.

The food he recommends is plant, no meat no dairy, but underlying his view is not processed. He even said olive oil is too processed likened it to processed sugar beet becoming sugar crystals.

He believes if you eat less fat then we use up our fat in each cell, this allows glucose to refill the fat cell then that too gets used thus reducing blood glucose and therefore insulin production.

It sounds odd to me but he refers to many successes in helping both type 1 and 2 diabetes. Just wandered if anyone here has heard of him or tried his solution.

His website is www.masteringdiabetes.org

Interested in your guys insights

(John) #2

I searched because I was interested in what science there was to back up any of these frankly nonsensical (to me) claims, can’t find anywhere that anyone actually showed proof of anything.

I found this, I think we would have heard about this since it is easily testable. Reverse type 2 diabetes in 16 days on a low fat diet…

The most surprising result was that more than 50% of subjects were able to discontinue insulin after only sixteen days on a low-fat diet, having lived with type 2 diabetes for multiple years.

He refers to low carb diets in this manner. Fancy diets with their scientific research and fancy shmancy words.

It’s easy to believe these claims, because they are always backed up by scientific research and communicated using fancy words that are very convincing.

And he is a PhD in biochemistry and nutrition that believes:

Even though a low-carbohydrate diet can drop your blood glucose, it is generally not a sustainable approach and increases your risk of heart disease significantly.

Fat makes you fat and kills you… been debunked for a long time.

Fortunately it is easy to test, eat low fat for 16 days and report back! Double bonus if you are type 2 and go off all your meds.

(Nigel Williams) #3

A common link between all the various solutions seems to be exercise specificallly resistance training. On the last episode of 2ketodudes they talked about exercise being the only way to empty glycogen from muscle helping lower insulin. Also Dr Ted Naimen and Dr Shawn Baker believe in higher protein even just meat and resistance training. Cyrus too believes in resistance training. So perhaps that’s the secret.

I know all believe diet first and you can’t outrun (exercise) a bad diet.

So perhaps the middle ground is resistance training and unprocessed food. Whether that food is high carb, high fat or high protein. Although everyone I learn from seem to agree don’t mix carbs with fat or protein.

#4

This blows my mind!! So he admits LCHF is backed up by SCIENCE but still denounces it. What a dipshit.

(John) #5

It’s just hard for me to believe that high carb works for 2 reasons

  1. People have been trying low fat for years and it doesn’t work
  2. excess carbs are converted to fat and stored

2 means that a high carb diet is also a high fat diet unless you can use it all up and then you are essentially just CICO which works if you restrict calories, but not long term.

(Brad) #6

It is basically all fruits and vegetables. no grain,sugar, meat, or dairy from what I can tell.

Bacon…nuff said

(Siobhan) #7

Well, I’ve been on keto for nearly a year and I haven’t dropped dead yet.
My blood pressure is also now normal, and my prediabetes is gone.

It is true that getting rid of processed food helps quite a bit, but I would really want to take a peek at his research so see what he is talking about.
Regardless, he is wrong. Keto is completely sustainable. Just ask @brenda and @richard

(8 year Ketogenic Veteran) #8

THE KETOGENIC DIET IS SUSTAINABLE FOR ME!
Year 3.5 for me.
Cured type 2 diabetes, neuropathy, hypertension and depression.
My A1c was 12, trigs 1200.
Now? A1c 5.5, trigs 90.

NOT DEAD YET

EDIT 5/4/20
hbA1c is now 5, in my 7th year of the ketogenic diet.

(Brad) #9

You should do a 30 day blueberry challenge…LOL

(8 year Ketogenic Veteran) #10

I can just see the blue diarrhea now…

#11

I would hate eating this way, but I’ve seen it work for some folks, and there are starch-based diet gurus who have some success with treating all sorts of things.

I think it must depend at least some on genetics, and also this: the LF in this case is really low, like crazy low. Much lower than what most SAD-eating people think of when they think “low fat.”

I’ve always assumed there’s some mechanism at work when you use primarily glucose/starch as your fuel, without asking the body to process fat at all. Who’s that crazy doctor in the 1940s or 50s who put his diabetic patients on a sugar and rice and oj diet and reversed T2D in many of them? Mind you, I wouldn’t vouch for their mental health, nor the sustainability of this WOE, and it seems like you’d be missing so many nutrients, so it seems like it would be terrible for long-term health…but for a high-sugar diet to reverse T2D there must be something at work that’s not explained by our usual glucose/insulin response model.

(Sheri Knauer) #12

I’m not dead either and have been keto almost 11 months. I did not read his website but I bet the people he used for the study were eating crappy carbage before so just removing the crappy carbs was enough to help lower insulin over the course of 16 days irregardless of whether it was low or high fat. I’d like to see where they are in 6 months eating that way

#13

Sometimes the harshest keto critics have a (not so) hidden agenda of pushing a vegan lifestyle for personal reasons. That said, it is possible to do a basically zero fat diet - like the potato fast - to control insulin. Insulin needs some fat for synthesis.
The refined starches are no better than, if not worse than sugar, so that is a good point.
But it’s not wise to eliminate all fats long-term, whereas carbs are non-essential long-term.
And I won’t even get into the fiber debate. You can have it if you want it on keto.

#14

I love coming back to evolutionary guidelines or common sense on some of these questions. When there was difficulty with hunting/fishing, did humans sit in a corner and starve? Nope. We’re pretty smart :slight_smile: We dug up tubers, found a bunch of alternate sources of nutrition, and in some parts of the world this might have happened for long-ish chunks of each year. Depending at least somewhat on our genetic background, we probably have ways to survive and actually do fine when fat is not available. I can’t imagine it’s the ideal diet for fertility and vibrant health, but for limited periods of time, we can manage that.

BUT - would we bother with digging up tubers if we had just killed a woolly mammoth and could feast on all that fat and amazing organ meat? I really doubt it.

Does any of this lovely metabolic flexibility fit with our current environment of readily-available super-processed food that’s high in both fat and carbs and loaded with all sorts of nasty additives? (and that we don’t even have to break a sweat to acquire)? Definitely not. Relative to SAD, a very low fat starch-based diet is probably healthier for a lot of people, at least in the short term, and I don’t think we need to be surprised that it can help with some illness - but that doesn’t mean it’s the WOE that will bring us the best health in the long run.

(Brad) #15

Would love to get IVOR or one of the experts to rip this apart.

(A ham loving ham! - VA6KD) #16

Back when I was a kid and my folks had those blue toilet bowl tablets that sat in a basket clipped to the rim, I was finishing up one fine day and managed to hook the basket on the back of my undies when I pulled them up. I came out of the bathroom trailing a dark blue flow. I freaked out when I saw it because 1) I had no idea where it was coming from, but it was from around my arse area, and 2) I couldn’t stop it no matter how hard I clenched.

Thanks for bringing that repressed memory back! :smiley:

(KetoCowboy) #17

Ya gotta love it when 3 people under 40 assert that “there’s no question” that “carbs were never the problem.”

(8 year Ketogenic Veteran) #18

@keehan you poor thing!! That sounds nightmarish, but also made me Lol!

(Christopher John Howson) #19

not dead either - 2 years.

im a hyper responder for cholesterol (LDL) but in all other measurements it got better
HDL went up
trigds - Down
blood pressure good
weight loss 89kg to 72 and sustained ever since
BF% 25 down to <10 and sustained
bone density increase and muscle added - exercise related.

needless to say there have been no ill effects YET!!!
and out of all my years of training - I have never achieved the goals I have now while being ketogenic.

it works FOR ME. (and I do not think I am an isolated case!)

(Saladman) #20

So many flaws and half truths in Cyrus’ talks… don’t know where to begin.


The above video by Dr. Ted Naiman has a more detailed, more compelling biochemical explanation of insulin resistance, hyperglycemia, and hypertriglyceridemia. Start watching at ~19 minutes if you are pressed for time. A plant based diet that is very low fat does lead to fat loss and prevention of fat accumulation (b/c it is not available to accumuldate). BUT, a high fat, low carb diet ALSO leads to all the benefits that Cyrus mentions — anyone whose been on a keto or low carb diet (<50-75g/day) for a few weeks sees immediate results. However, Cyrus’ claims of long term harm of low carb are NOT evidence based! He sites no studies, just speaks in platitudes. Ignorant at best, deceptive at worst. His interpretation of the biochemistry is incorrect. Naiman nails it… Cyrus is a vegan animal rights guy. They don’t follow the science to its logical conclusion; their philosophy drives their interpretation… his explanation off “insulin resistance” is not an explanation at all! He never answers why. Naiman’s talk makes more sense, and explains biochemically (see Malonyl CoA) why both a very low carb, high fat diet and a very high carb, low fat diet are efficacious (“efficacious” is distinct from the term “effective”) for weight loss. We in this chat room prefer the low carb.