Amazon delivered my copies of Dr. Bernstein’s famous books. I’ve skimmed the main text, “Diabetes Solution” and it is not at all what I expected. The introduction alone was well worth the price of both books. Dr. Bernstein was an engineer before he was a doctor, and so he recognized the value of being able to test his various ideas in a very impressive and rational format. We engineers do love process.
To quote from the introduction, “Every few days I’d make a small, experimental change in my diet or insulin regimen to see what the effect would be on my blood sugar.” Bingo. What he’s done here is invite the GI/GL ideas in for a no holds barred cage match. He might even lose, but seems very confident that if it’s tested, low-carb is better than right carb for diabetics.
What’s more, by tested, Dr. Bernstein means that a diabetic should match a non-diabetic set of blood glucose levels throughout the day. If you look at what is, traditionally considered well controlled diabetes and compare it to a non-diabetic the overall range is quite different. A non-diabetic shows meal spikes in the 30 ml range. Dr. Bernstein put his own sensitivity to carbohydrates at a 5 ml per gram ratio. In his case, just six grams of carbohydrates would put him smack at the top of a non-diabetic’s curve.
One very small dollop of peanut butter.
John Hopkins’s, the AMA and the ADA (the mainstream) meanwhile consider your diabetes to be, as the John Hopkins’s guide to diabetes put it, “Stable, well controlled” if kept under 180, which is why that is my current goal. Their top of the curve had a variance of 72 ml for dinner for a "good" diabetic.
So far, the best point made by the traditionalists is that the lowest (average) carb diet in the world is in the U.S. which also has the highest incidence of type II. You don’t see the same explosion going on in Asia or Africa where diets are often 80% carbohydrates. The ADA’s recommendation is just 45% by comparison. The new school among them, the mainstream, is blaming the type of carbohydrates Americans eat, rather than the amount. High GI carbs are faster acting, therefore the glycemic index will help us control spikes by steering us to slower acting carbs.
To quote from the introduction, “Every few days I’d make a small, experimental change in my diet or insulin regimen to see what the effect would be on my blood sugar.” Bingo. What he’s done here is invite the GI/GL ideas in for a no holds barred cage match. He might even lose, but seems very confident that if it’s tested, low-carb is better than right carb for diabetics.
What’s more, by tested, Dr. Bernstein means that a diabetic should match a non-diabetic set of blood glucose levels throughout the day. If you look at what is, traditionally considered well controlled diabetes and compare it to a non-diabetic the overall range is quite different. A non-diabetic shows meal spikes in the 30 ml range. Dr. Bernstein put his own sensitivity to carbohydrates at a 5 ml per gram ratio. In his case, just six grams of carbohydrates would put him smack at the top of a non-diabetic’s curve.
One very small dollop of peanut butter.
John Hopkins’s, the AMA and the ADA (the mainstream) meanwhile consider your diabetes to be, as the John Hopkins’s guide to diabetes put it, “Stable, well controlled” if kept under 180, which is why that is my current goal. Their top of the curve had a variance of 72 ml for dinner for a "good" diabetic.
So far, the best point made by the traditionalists is that the lowest (average) carb diet in the world is in the U.S. which also has the highest incidence of type II. You don’t see the same explosion going on in Asia or Africa where diets are often 80% carbohydrates. The ADA’s recommendation is just 45% by comparison. The new school among them, the mainstream, is blaming the type of carbohydrates Americans eat, rather than the amount. High GI carbs are faster acting, therefore the glycemic index will help us control spikes by steering us to slower acting carbs.
The counter-punch though, from the low-carb believers is, if carbohydrates in general aren’t making diabetics meals peaky, then why the artificial difference between a good level for a diabetic, and a just plain good blood sugar level? Why shouldn’t they be the same?
They might both be right.
It violates the principle of small changes, over time, but I thought to do a smack down, right here, right now, not as definitive but just to see my own bodies response. The good Doctor has a large group of foods that are off limits that I still had in the fridge. Pasta, tomato sauce, bread, carrots, and fruit; all Bernstein’s no-no’s.
It violates the principle of small changes, over time, but I thought to do a smack down, right here, right now, not as definitive but just to see my own bodies response. The good Doctor has a large group of foods that are off limits that I still had in the fridge. Pasta, tomato sauce, bread, carrots, and fruit; all Bernstein’s no-no’s.
So I tested for a baseline and got a 91. Then I carbo-loaded on pasta, ate noodles in commercial soup, ate two slices of sourdough bread and had a fruit-cup. A pound an a half of high carbohydrate, low glycemic index food. Thirty minutes in I was at 175. An hour in I was beginning to drop at a 128. Ninety minutes along and I’m 141? Even the curve for unstable, uncontrolled diabetes doesn’t swing back up. Am I sticking myself like mad just to feed a faulty meter? Just a bad strip? Ugh, test again and I’m running out of fingers. Next test is an error. Drat. 140, if it’s an error it certainly is a consistent one. Just two more tests at two hours and four. Two hours in, the traditional time to measure and I’m a 125. Finally, 109. Ouch, my poor fingers.
My results, for my body, show that even with the highest volume of low-GI carbs I don’t match the extremes of Dr. Bernstein’s sensitivity of 5 ml per gram. Thank God, at about a hundred and sixty grams of carbo-loading that would have put me in the morgue with top end near nine hundred. Anyway, my spike was 84, or about a half a ml per gram. I’m already “well-controlled” even with that extreme load, for a diabetic, and if the ratio holds up I should be able to target a hundred forty as a peak by keeping, as a rule of thumb, my carbohydrates to a hundred grams of low-GI carbs, or less, which should be easy.
The double spike was interesting. When combined with my being thin it leads me to suspect I’ve been misdiagnosed as a type 2. I may be a 1.5, but that is a later post. Next up I’m going to drop my carbs in a similar size meal and do it again (sorry fingers) just to see if the ratio holds up.
My results, for my body, show that even with the highest volume of low-GI carbs I don’t match the extremes of Dr. Bernstein’s sensitivity of 5 ml per gram. Thank God, at about a hundred and sixty grams of carbo-loading that would have put me in the morgue with top end near nine hundred. Anyway, my spike was 84, or about a half a ml per gram. I’m already “well-controlled” even with that extreme load, for a diabetic, and if the ratio holds up I should be able to target a hundred forty as a peak by keeping, as a rule of thumb, my carbohydrates to a hundred grams of low-GI carbs, or less, which should be easy.
The double spike was interesting. When combined with my being thin it leads me to suspect I’ve been misdiagnosed as a type 2. I may be a 1.5, but that is a later post. Next up I’m going to drop my carbs in a similar size meal and do it again (sorry fingers) just to see if the ratio holds up.
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