Let’s talk about a couple of case histories. These are actual patients that I’ve seen
Patient A saw me one afternoon and said that he had literally just signed himself out of the hospital “AMA,” or against medical advice. Like in the movies, he had ripped out his IV’s.
The next day he was scheduled to have his second by-pass surgery. He had been told that if he did not follow through with this by-pass surgery, within two weeks he would be dead. He couldn’t walk from the car to the office without severe chest pain. He was on eight different medications for various things. But his first by-pass surgery was such a miserable experience he said he would rather just die than have to go through the second one and had heard that I might be able to prevent that.
To make a long story short, this gentleman right now is on no insulin. I first saw him three and a half years ago. He plays golf four or five times a week. He is on no medications whatsoever, he has no chest pain, and he has not had any surgery.
Patient B had a triglyceride level of 2200. Patient B was referred by patient A. His cholesterol was 950. He was on maximum doses of all of his medications. He was 42 years old, and he was told that he had familial hyperlipidema and that he had better get his affairs in order, that if that was what his lipids were despite the best medications with the highest doses, he was in trouble.
He was not fat at all, he was fairly thin. Whenever I see a patient on any of those medications, they’re off the very first visit. They have no place in medicine. He was taken off the medications and in six weeks his lipid levels, both his Triglycerides and his cholesterol were hovering around 220. Six more weeks they were both under 200.
I should mention that this patient had a CPK (creatine phosphokinase, an enzyme found mainly in the heart, brain, and skeletal muscle) that was quite elevated. It was circled on the lab report that he brought in initially with a question mark by it because they didn’t know why. The reason why was because he was eating off his muscles, because if you take (gyinfibrozole) and any of the HMG co-enzyme reductase inhibitors (cholesterol lowering drugs) together, that is a common side effect, and they shouldn’t be given together. So he was chewing up his muscles, including his heart which they were trying to treat. So if indeed he was going to die, it was the treatment that was going to kill him.
Patient C: a lady with severe osteoporosis. A fairly young woman and she was put on a high carbohydrate diet and told that would be of benefit, and placed on estrogen, which is a fairly typical treatment. They wanted to put her on some other medicines which she didn’t want, she wanted to know if there was an alternative. Although we didn’t have as dramatic a turn around, we got her to one standard deviation below the norm in a year, taking her off the estrogen she was on.
Insulin in Chronic Disease
What would be the typical treatment of cardiovascular disease? First they check the cholesterol. High cholesterol over 200, they put you on cholesterol lowering drugs and what does it do? It shuts off your CoQ10. What does CoQ10 do? It is involved in the energy production and protection of little energy furnaces in every cell, so energy production goes way down. A common side effect of people who are on all these HMG co-enzyme reductase inhibitors is that they tell you their arms feel heavy. Well, the heart is a muscle too, and it’s going to feel heavy too. One of the best treatments for a weak heart is CoQ10 for congestive heart failure. But medicine has no trouble shutting CoQ10 production off so that they can treat a number (cholesterol figure).
The common therapies for osteoporosis are drugs
For cancer reduction there is nothing.
But all of these have a common cause.
The same cause as Aging.
Aging
There are three major centenarian studies going on around the world. They are trying to find the variable that would confer longevity among these people. Why do centenarians become centenarians? Why are they so lucky? Is it because they have low cholesterol, exercise a lot, live a healthy, clean life? Well the longest recorded known person who has ever lived, Jean Calumet of France who died last year at 122 years, smoked all of her life and drank. What they are finding on these major centenarian studies is that there is hardly anything in common among them. They have high cholesterol and low cholesterol, some exercise and some don’t, some smoke, some don’t. Some are nasty and ornery as can be and some calm and nice.
But one thing is common, they all have low sugar, relatively for their age. They all have low triglycerides for their age. And they all have relatively low insulin. Insulin is the common denominator in everything I’ve just talked about. The way to treat cardiovascular disease, the way I treated the high risk cancer patient, and osteoporosis, high blood pressure, the way to treat virtually all the so-called chronic diseases of aging is to treat insulin itself.
The other major avenue of research in aging has to do with genetic studies of so-called lower organisms. We’ve the entire genes mapped out for several species of yeast and worms.
We think of life span as being fixed but in lower forms of life it is very plastic. Life span is strictly a variable depending on the environment. If there is a lot of food around they are going to reproduce quickly and die quickly, if not they will just bide their time until conditions are better.
We know now that the variability in life span is regulated by insulin.
Insulin is found as in even single celled organisms. It has been around for several billion years. And its purpose in some organisms is to regulate life span. The way genetics works is that genes are not replaced, they are built upon. We have the same genes as everything that came before us. We just have more of them. We have added books to our genetic library, but our base is the same. What we are finding is that we can use insulin to regulate lifespan too.
If there is a single marker for lifespan, as they are finding in the centenarian studies, it is insulin, specifically, insulin sensitivity or insulin resistance.
Insulin Resistance
Insulin resistance is the basis of all of the chronic diseases of aging.
In almost all cases if you treat a symptom, you are going to make the disease worse because the symptom is there as your body’s attempt to heal itself. The medical profession calls the symptoms diseases. Using Ear Nose and Throat medicine for example, that patient will walk out of there with a diagnosis of Rhinitis which is inflammation of the nose. Is there a reason that patient has inflammation of the nose? I think so. Wouldn’t that underlying cause be the disease as opposed to the descriptive term of Rhinitis or Pharyngitis? Some one can have the same virus and have Rhinitis or Pharyngitis, or Sinusitis, they can have all sorts of “itises” which is a descriptive term for inflammation. They treat what they think is the disease which is just a symptom.
It is the same thing with cholesterol. If you have high cholesterol it is called hypercholesterolemia. Hypercholesterolemia has become the code for the disease when it is only the symptom. So they treat that symptom and what are they doing to the heart? Messing it up.
If you are going to treat any disease, you need to get to the root of the disease. If you keep pulling a dandelion out by it’s leaves, you are not going to get very far. But the problem is that we don’t know what the root is, or we haven’t. They know what it is in many other areas of science, but the problem is that medicine really isn’t a science, it is a business.
It doesn’t matter what disease you are talking about, whether you are talking about a common cold or about cardiovascular disease, or osteoporosis or cancer, the root is always going to be at the molecular and cellular level, and I will tell you that insulin is going to have its hand in it, if not totally controlling it.
The Purpose of Insulin
As I mentioned, in some organisms it is to control their lifespan, which is important. What is the purpose of insulin in humans? If you ask your doctor, they will say that it’s to lower blood sugar and I will tell you right now, that is a trivial side effect. Insulin’s evolutionary purpose is to store excess nutrients.
Storing Fat
We come from a time of feast and famine and if we couldn’t store the excess energy during times of feasting, we would all not be here, because we all have had ancestors that encountered famine. So we are only here because our ancestors were able to store nutrients, and they were able to store nutrients because they were able to elevate their insulin in response to any elevation in energy rich foods that the organism encountered. When your body notices that the sugar is elevated, it is a sign that you’ve got more than you need right now, you are not burning it so it is accumulating in your blood. So insulin will be released to take that sugar and store it. How does it store it? Glycogen. Do you know how much glycogen you have in your body at any one time? Very little. All the glycogen stored in your liver and all the glycogen stored in your muscle if you had an active day wouldn’t last you the day. Once you fill up your glycogen stores how that sugar is stored? Saturated fat.
So the idea of the medical profession to go on a high complex carbohydrate, low saturated-fat diet is an absolute oxymoron, because those high complex carbohydrate diets are nothing but a high glucose diet, or a high sugar diet, and your body is just going to store it as saturated fat. The body makes it into saturated fat quite readily.
Building Muscle
It is an anabolic hormone. Body builders are using insulin now because it is legal, so they are injecting themselves with insulin because it builds muscle, it stores protein too.
Storing Magnesium
A lesser known fact is that insulin also stores magnesium. If your cells become resistant to insulin, since you can’t store magnesium so you lose it, in the urine. What is one of magnesium’s major roles? To relax muscles. Intracellular magnesium relaxes muscles. You lose magnesium and your blood vessels constrict, which increases blood pressure, and reduces energy since intracellular magnesium is required for all energy producing reactions that take place in the cell. But most importantly, magnesium is also necessary for the action of insulin. It is also necessary for the manufacture of insulin. So then you raise your insulin, you lose magnesium, and the cells become even more insulin resistant. Blood vessels constrict, glucose and insulin can’t get to the tissues, which makes them more insulin resistant, so the insulin levels go up and you lose more magnesium. This is the vicious cycle that goes on from before you were born.
Insulin sensitivity is going to start being determined from the moment the sperm combines with the egg. If your mother, while you were in the womb was eating a high carbohydrate diet which is turning into sugar, we have been able to show that the fetus in animals becomes more insulin resistant. Worse yet, we are able to use sophisticated measurements, and if that fetus happens to be a female, they find that the eggs of that fetus are more insulin resistant.
Retaining Sodium
What else does insulin do? We mentioned high blood pressure, if your magnesium levels go down you get high blood pressure. We mentioned that the blood vessels constrict and you get high blood pressure. Insulin also causes the retention of sodium, which causes the retention of fluid, which causes high blood pressure and fluid retention: congestive heart failure.
One of the strongest stimulants of the sympathetic nervous system is high levels of insulin. What does all of this do to the heart? Not very good things.
There was a study done a couple of years ago, that showed that heart attacks are two to three times more likely to happen after a high carbohydrate meal. They said specifically NOT after a high fat meal. Why is that? Because the immediate effects of raising your blood sugar from a high carbohydrate meal is to raise insulin and that immediately triggers the sympathetic nervous system which will cause arterial spasm, constriction of the arteries. If you take anybody prone to a heart attack and that is when they are going to get it.
Mediating blood lipids.
The way you control blood lipids is by controlling insulin. We won’t go into a lot of detail, but we now know that LDL cholesterol comes in several fractions, and it is the small, dense LDL that plays the largest role in initiating plaque. It’s the most oxidizable. It is the most able to actually fit through the small cracks in the endothelium. And that’s the one that insulin actually raises the most. When I say insulin, I should say insulin resistance. It is insulin resistance that is causing this.
Cells become insulin resistant because they are trying to protect themselves from the toxic effects of high insulin. They down regulate their receptor activity and number of receptors so that they don’t have to listen to that noxious stimuli all the time. It is like having this loud, disgusting rap music played and you want to turn the volume down. You might think of insulin resistance as like sitting in a smelly room and pretty soon you don’t smell it anymore because you get desensitized. It’s like you are starting to go deaf and your are telling others to speak up because you can’t hear them, so if I was your pancreas, I would just start talking louder, and what does that do to your hearing? You would become deafer.
Insulin Restistance Role in Heart Disease, Cancer and Osteoporosis
Insulin stimulates cells to divide. If all of the cells were to become resistant to insulin we wouldn’t have that much of a problem. The problem is that all of the cells don’t become resistant. Some cells are incapable of becoming very resistant. The liver becomes resistant first, then the muscle tissue, then the fat. When the liver becomes resistant insulin suppresses its production of sugar. When you wake up in the morning it is a reflection of how much sugar your liver has made. If your liver is listening to insulin properly it won’t make much sugar in the middle of the night. If your liver is resistant, those brakes are lifted and your liver starts making a bunch of sugar so you wake up with a bunch of sugar.
The next tissue to become resistant is the muscle tissue. Insulin allows your muscles to burn sugar for so if your muscles become resistant to insulin it can’t burn that sugar that was just manufactured by the liver. So the liver is producing too much, the muscles can’t burn it, and this raises your blood sugar.
Fat cells also become resistant, but not for a while. It is only after a while that they become resistant. It takes them longer. Liver first, muscle second, and then your fat cells. So for a while your fat cells retain their sensitivity. As people become more and more insulin resistant, their weight goes up. But eventually they plateau.
As all these major tissues become resistant, your liver, muscles and fat, your pancreas is putting out more insulin to compensate, so you are hyperinsulinemic and you’ve got insulin floating around all the time, 90 units, more. But there are certain tissues that aren’t becoming resistant such as your endothelium, the lining of the arteries do not become resistant very readily. So all that insulin is effecting the lining of your arteries.
Insulin floating around in the blood causes a plaque build up. Insulin causes endothelial proliferation, that’s the first step, it causes a tumor, an endothelial tumor. Insulin also causes the blood to clot too readily. Every step of the way, insulin’s got its fingers in it and is causing cardiovascular disease. It fills it with plaque, it constricts the arteries, it stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, it increases platelet adhesiveness and coaguability of the blood. Any known cause of cardiovascular disease, insulin is a part of.
I mentioned that insulin increases cellular proliferation, what does that do to cancer? It increases it. And there are some pretty strong studies that show that one of the strongest correlations to breast and colon cancer are with levels of insulin.
Hyperinsulinemia causes the excretion of magnesium in the urine. What other big mineral does it cause the excretion of? Calcium. What is the cause of osteoporosis? There are two major causes, one is a high carbohydrate diet which causes hyperinsulinemia. People walking around with hyperinsulinemia can take all the calcium they want by mouth and it’s all going to go out in their urine.
The medical profession just assume a Calcium supplement has a homing device and it knows to go into your bone. What happens if you high levels of insulin and you take a bunch of calcium? Most of it is just going to go out in your urine. You would be lucky if that were the case because that part which doesn’t does not have the instructions to go to your bone because the anabolic hormones aren’t working. This is first of all because of insulin, then because of the IGF’s from growth hormone, also testosterone and progesterone, they are all controlled by insulin and when they are insulin resistant they can’t listen to any of the anabolic hormones. So your body doesn’t know how to build tissue anymore, so some of the calcium may end up in your bone, but a good deal of it will end up everywhere else. Metastatic calcifications, including in your arteries.
Causes of Insulin Resistance
High Carbohydrate Diets
Any time your cell is exposed to insulin it is going to become more insulin resistant. That is inevitable, we cannot stop that, but the rate we can control. An inevitable sign of aging is an increase in insulin resistance. That rate is variable, if you can slow down that rate you can become a centenarian, and a healthy one. You can slow the rate of aging. Not just even the rate of disease, but the actual rate of aging itself can be modulated by insulin. We should be living to be 130, 140 years old routinely.
We talk about simple and complex carbohydrates, that is totally irrelevant, it means absolutely nothing. Carbohydrates are fiber or non-fiber. If you have a carbohydrate that is not a fiber it is going to be turned into a sugar, whether it be glucose or not. It may be fructose and won’t necessarily raise your blood glucose, but fructose is worse for you than glucose.
Throughout most of the history of life on Earth there was no oxygen. Organisms had to develop very specific mechanisms of dealing with high levels of oxygen before there could ever be life with oxygen. So we evolved very quickly, as plants arose and developed a very easy means of acquiring energy, they could just lay back and catch rays, and they dealt with that oxygen with the carbon dioxide by spitting it out, they didn’t want it around. So the oxygen in the atmosphere increased. All the other organisms then had to cope with that toxic oxygen. Many perished if they didn’t have ways of dealing with it. One of the earliest ways of dealing with all that oxygen was for the cells to huddle together, so that at least the interior cells wouldn’t be exposed to as much. So, multi-celled organisms arose after oxygen did. Of course, with that came the need for cellular communication.
Everyone knows that oxygen causes damage, but unfortunately, the press has not been as kind to publicize glycation. Glycation is the same as oxidation except substitute the word glucose. When you glycate something you combine it with glucose. Glucose combines with anything else really, it’s a very sticky molecule. Just take sugar on your fingers. It’s very sticky. It sticks specifically to proteins. So the glycation of proteins is extremely important. If it sticks around a while it produces what are called advanced glycated end products: AGEs.
That acronym is not an accident. Glycation damages the protein to the extent that white blood cells will come around and gobble it up and get rid of it, so then you have to produce more, putting more of a strain on your ability to repair and maintain your body.
That is the best alternative; the worst alternative is when those proteins that can’t turn over very rapidly get glycated , like collagen, or like a protein that makes up nerve tissue. These proteins cannot be gotten rid of, so the protein accumulates, and the AGEs accumulate and they continue to damage. That includes the collagen that makes up the matrix of your arteries. We know that there are receptors for AGEs, hundreds of receptors for every macrophage. They are designed to try to get rid of those AGEs, but what happens when a macrophage combines with an AGE product? It sets up an inflammatory reaction. We know that cardiovascular disease is an inflammatory process, any type of inflammation. You eat a diet that promotes elevated glucose, and you produce increased glycated proteins and AGEs, you are increasing your rate of inflammation of any kind. You get down to the roots of chronic illness, including arthritis, diabetes, headaches.
So we age and at least partially we accumulate damage by oxidation, and one of the most important types of tissues that oxygenate is the fatty component, the lipid, especially the poly-unsaturated fatty acids, they turn rancid. And they glycate, and the term for glycation in the food industry is carmelization. They use it all the time, that is how you make caramel. So the way we age is that we turn rancid and we carmelize.
Diet for Healing Insulin Resistance
Caloric Restriction. There are thousands of studies done since the fifties on caloric restriction. They restrict calories of laboratory animals. It has been known since the fifties that if you restrict calories but maintain a high level of nutrition, called “C.R.O.N.’s:” Caloric restriction with optimal nutrition, these animals can live anywhere between thirty and two-hundred percent longer depending on the species. They’ve done it on several dozen species and the results are uniform throughout. They are doing it on primates now and it is working with primates, we won’t know for sure for about another ten years, they are about half way through the experiment, our nearest relatives are also living much longer.
Nutrient Dense foods are key.
There are fifty-some essential nutrients to the human body. You know you need to breathe oxygen. It gives us life and it kills us. Same with glucose. Certain tissues require some glucose (which can be made from fat). It is essential. It gives us life and it kills us. We know that we have essential amino acids and we have essential fatty acids. They are essential for life, we better take them in as building blocks or we die. If we took all the essential nutrients that are known to man and computed the top ten foods that contain each nutrient that is required by the human body, grains would not come up in the top ten.
What is the minimum daily requirement for carbohydrates? ZERO. The food pyramid is based on a totally irrelevant nutrient.
Let’s back up even further? Why do we eat?
- To gather energy. The body stores excess energy as fat. Why does the body store it as fat? Because that is the body’s desired fuel. That is the fuel the body wants to burn and that will sustain you and allow you to live. The body can store only a little bit of sugar. In an active day you would die if you had to rely one-hundred percent on sugar.
- To replace tissue, to gather up building blocks for maintenance and repair.We need the building blocks and we need fuel, to have energy to obtain those building blocks and to fuel those chemical reactions to use those building blocks. So what are the building blocks that are needed? Proteins and Fatty acids. Not much in the way if carbohydrates. You can get all the carbohydrates you need from proteins and fats.
Sugar was never meant to be your primary energy source. Your brain will burn sugar, but it doesn’t have to, it can burn by-products of fat metabolism called ketones. You can get enough sugar that your brain needs actually from fat; just eating one-hundred percent fat. Two triglycerides will give you a molecule of glucose. Glucose was meant to be fuel used if you had to, in an emergency situation, expend and extreme amount of energy, such as running from a saber tooth tiger. It is a turbo charger, a very hot burning fuel, if you need fuel over and above what fat can provide you will dig into your glycogen and burn sugar. But your primary energy source as we are here right now should be almost all fat.
But what happens if you eat sugar. Your body’s main way of getting rid of it, because it is toxic, is to burn it. That which your body can’t burn your body will get rid of by storing it as glycogen and when that gets filled up your body stores it as fat. If you eat sugar your body will burn it and you stop burning fat.
When you are insulin resistant and you have a bunch of insulin floating around all the time, you wake up in the morning with an insulin of 90. How much fat are you going to be burning? Virtually none. What are you going to burn if not fat? Sugar coming from your muscle. So you have all this fat that you’ve accumulated over the years that your body is very adept at adding to. Every time you have any excess energy you are going to store it as fat, but if you don’t eat, you will still burn sugar because that is all your body is capable of burning anymore. Where is it going to get the sugar? Well you don’t store much of it in the form of sugar so it will take it from your muscle. That’s your body’s major depot of sugar. You just eat up your muscle tissue. Any time you have excess you store it as fat and any time you are deficient you burn up your muscle.
So where do carbohydrates come in? They don’t. There is no essential need for carbohydrates. SO why are we all eating carbohydrates? To keep the rate of aging up, we don’t want to pay social security to everyone..
I didn’t say you can’t have any carbs, I said fiber is good. Vegetables are great, I want you to eat vegetables. The practical aspect of it is that you are going to get carbs, but there is no essential need. The traditional Eskimo diet for most of the year subsists on almost no vegetables at all, but they get their vitamins from organ meats and things like eyeball which are a delicacy, or were. So, you don’t really need it, but sure, vegetables are good for you and you should eat them. They are part of the diet that I would recommend, and that is where you’ll get your vitamin C.
Fruit is a mixed blessing. You can divide food on a continuum. There are some foods that I really can’t say anything good about since there is no reason really to recommend them. And the other end of the spectrum are foods that are totally essential, like:
Omega 3 fatty acids for instance which most people are very deficient in, and even those have a detriment because they are highly oxidizable, so you had better have the antioxidant capacity. So if you are going to supplement with cod liver oil you should supplement with Vitamin E too or it will actually do you more harm than good. Omega 3 oils can be a double edged sword. Most food is a double edged sword. Like oxygen and glucose, they keep us alive and they kill us, eating is the biggest stress we put on our body and that is why in caloric restriction experiments you can extend life as long as you maintain dense nutrition. This is the only proven way of actually reducing the rate of aging, not just the mortality rate, but the actual rate of aging, because eating is a big stress.
Chromium
Chromium, it depends on who you are dealing with, but are we talking about a diabetic patient which is supposed to be the topic of this talk, yes, all my diabetics go on 1,000 mcg. Of chromium, some a little bit more if they are really big people. Usually 500mcg for a non-diabetic. It depends on their insulin levels. I don’t care so much what their sugar levels are, I care what their insulin levels are, which is a reflection of their insulin sensitivity.
Carnitine
Carnitine is a shuttle. It takes fatty acids into the cell. You can’t burn fat without it. I say they should take as much carnitine as they can afford.
Co Q10
It is involved in the energy production of all cells. It protects the mitochondria from electron leakage and damage. Give anywhere from 100 to 500mg, depending on the kind of Q10, some are more absorbable than others.
Vanadyl Sulfate
An insulin mimic, so that it can basically do what insulin does by a different mechanism. If it went through the same insulin receptors, then it wouldn’t offer any benefit, but it doesn’t, it actually has been shown to go through a different mechanism to lower blood sugar, so it spares insulin and then it can help improve insulin sensitivity. On someone who I am trying to really get their insulin down I go 25mg 3X/day temporarily.
B Vitamins are necessary in the conversion of all energy, so they all get extra B Vitamins, usually in a multi.
Glutamine
I put people on glutamine powder. Glutamine can act really as a brain fuel, so it helps eliminate carbohydrate cravings while they are in that transition period. I like to give it to them at night and I tell them to use it whenever they feel they are craving carbohydrates. They can put several grams into a little water and drink it and it helps eliminate carbohydrate cravings between meals.
Other therapeutic doses of nutrients include:
Elemental magnesium 300 to 400 depending on what their gut can tolerate. I like I.V. magnesium to replenish them.
Vitamin E, big fan of Vitamin E, I would go to 2000mg.
Zinc, 30 to sixty mg, balanced with 2mg of copper per 15 mg of zinc, usually 4mg of copper sebacate.
Taurine: 1gm twice a day.
Vanadium 25mg for about two to three months. Then down to 71/2 mg three times a day, then I’ll go down further, then I take them off completely once they are better.
They can have as much glutamine as they want and as much carnitine as they can afford. The more the better
I use gymnema sylvestre a lot.
Sardines are a very good therapeutic food. They are baby fish so they haven’t had time to accumulate a bunch of metal. They are smoked so they are not cooked and the oil is not spoiled in them. You have to eat the whole thing. Not the boneless and skinless. You need to eat all the organs and they are high in vitamins and magnesium.
DNA glycates. So if people are worried about chromosomal damage from chromium, what they should really be worried about instead is high blood sugar. DNA repair enzymes glycate as well. Insulin is by far your biggest poison. .
Insulin should be tested on everybody repeatedly, and why it is not is only strictly because there hasn’t been drugs till recently that could effect insulin, so there is no way to make money off of it. Fasting insulin is one way to look at it, not necessarily the best way. But it is the way that everybody could do it. Any family doctor can measure a fasting insulin. There are other ways to measure insulin sensitivity that are more complex that we do sometimes. We use intravenous insulin and watch how rapidly their blood sugar crashes in a fasting state in 15 minutes and that assesses insulin sensitivity, then you give them dextrose to make sure they don’t crash any further. There are other ways that are utilized to directly assess insulin sensitivity, but you can get a pretty good idea just by doing a fasting insulin.
Related Information
Acid/Alkaline
It is a high protein diet that will increase an acid load in the body, but not necessarily a high fat diet. Vegetables and greens are alkalinizing, so if you are eating a lot of vegetables along with your protein it equalizes the acidifying effect of the protein. I don’t recommend a high protein diet. I recommend an adequate protein diet. I think you should be using fat as your primary energy source, and fat is kind of neutral when it comes to acidifying or alkalinizing. In general, over 50% of the calories should come from fat. When we get to fat, the carbohydrates are clear cut, no scientist out there is really going to dispute what I’ve said about carbohydrates. There is the science behind it. You can’t dispute it. There is a little bit of a dispute as to how much protein a person requires. When you get to fat, there is a big grey area within science as to which fat a person requires. We just have one name for fat, we call it fat or oil. Eskimos have dozens of names for snow and east Indians have dozens of names for curry. We should have dozens of names for fat because they do many different things. And how much of which fat to take is still open to a lot of investigation and controversy.
My take on fat is that if I am treating a patient who is generally hyperinsulinemic or overweight, I want them on a low saturated fat diet. Because most of the fat they are storing is saturated fat. When their insulin goes down and they are able to start releasing triglycerides to burn as fat, what they are going to be releasing mostly is saturated fat. So you don’t want to take anymore orally. There is a ration of fatty acids that is desirable, if you took them from the moment you were born, but we don’t, we are dealing with an imbalance here that we are trying to correct as rapidly as we can. You have plenty of saturated fat. Most of us here have enough saturated fat to last the rest of our life. Truthfully. Your cell membranes require a balance of saturated and poly-unsaturated fat, and it is that balance that determines the fluidity. As I mentioned, your cells can become over-fluid if they don’t have any saturated fat. Saturated fat is a hard fat. We can get the fats from foods to come mostly from nuts. Nuts are a great food because it is mostly mono-unsaturated. Your primary energy source ideally would come mostly from mono-unsaturated fat. It’s a good compromise. It is not an essential fat, but it is a more fluid fat. Your body can utilize it very well as an energy source.
Sugar and Hormones
We only have one hormone that lowers sugar, and that’s insulin. Its primary use was never to lower sugar. We’ve got a bunch of hormones that raise sugar, cortisone being one and growth hormone another, and epinephrine, and glucagon. Our primary evolutionary problem was to raise blood sugar to give your brain enough and your nerves enough and primarily red blood cells, which require glucose. So from an evolutionary sense if something is important we have redundant mechanisms. The fact that we only have one hormone that lowers sugar tells us that it was never something important in the past.
So you get this rush of sugar and your body panics, your pancreas panics and it stores, when it is healthy, insulin in these granules, ready to be released. It lets these granules out and it pours out a bunch of insulin to deal with this onslaught of sugar and what does that do? Well the pancreas generally overcompensates, and it causes your sugar to go down, and just as I mentioned, you have got a bunch of hormones then to raise your blood sugar, they are then released, including cortisone. The biggest stress on your body is eating a big glucose load. Then Epinephrine is released too, so it makes your nervous and it also stimulates your brain to crave carbohydrates, to seek out some sugar, my sugar is low. So you are craving carbohydrates, so you eat another bowl of cereal, or a big piece of fruit, you eat something else so that after your sugar goes low, and with the hormone release, and with the sugar cravings and carbohydrate craving your sugars go way up again which causes your pancreas to release more insulin and then it goes way down. Now you are in to this sinusoidal wave of blood sugar, which causes insulin resistance. Your body can’t stand that for very long. So you are constantly putting out cortisone.
The more hormones your cells are exposed to, the more resistant they will become to almost any hormone. Certain cells more than others, so there is a discrepancy. The problem with hormone resistance is that there is a dichotomy of resistance, that all the cells don’t become resistant at the same time. And different hormones affect different cells, and the rate of hormone is different among different cells and this causes lots of problems with the feedback mechanisms. We know that one of the major areas of the body that becomes resistant to many feedback loops is the hypothalamus.
Hypothalamic resistance to feedback signals plays a very important role in aging and insulin resistance because the hypothalamus has receptors for insulin too. I mentioned that insulin stimulates sympathetic nervous system, it does so through the hypothalamus, which is the center of it all.
About the Author...
Ron Rosedale, M.D., is an internationally renowned expert in nutritional and metabolic medicine and is a specialist in the biology of aging. Dr. Rosedale has helped thousands suffering from so-called incurable diseases regain their health. As a keynote speaker, he has appeared before such prestigious groups as the Eighth International Congressional Conference on Molecular Medicine in RÃÂo de Janeiro, the First European Conference on Longevity Medicine and Quality of Life in Brussels, Belgium, and many more. He has been interviewed on many national and local television and radio stations. He is the author of the recent book, The Rosedale Diet, and Insulin and its Metabolic Effects. He is currently chief medical officer at Advanced Metabolic Laboratories AdvancedMetabolicLabs.com in collaboration with the University of Colorado and lives in Denver, CO.
Feb 6th, 2008 at 6:28 am
I am sending this article to my parents, my father is on high blood pressure meds as well as a low fat, low protein, canola oil substituting, low carb diet. I will also be printing this article out to give to my clients at the gym. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us!
Feb 6th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Excellent and informative. I prescribe a low / no carb diet to my clients at Placid Wellness. This gives me more scientific backing as I explain the facts to them. Most have been brainwashed to believe the nutritional dogma that’s been around for the last half-century. Let’s all strive to subvert the dominant paradigm!
Feb 11th, 2008 at 6:54 am
Very interesting, I look forward to reading his book and also “Mastering Leptin” which I heard was along the same lines but more detailed.
Trixie
Feb 18th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Absolutely amazing article. Should be required CE for every doctor on the planet.
Feb 19th, 2008 at 11:41 am
I find it interesting that the author states he will list the important foods and goes on to name a slew of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. This is great, but not one of the items mentioned is a food. He finally mentions sardines.
It seems he is suggesting eating as little as possible (”eating is a big stress”) and simply pop pills. From the above text, I think it is fair to say that sardines and 30 supplements are what constitute this author’s suggestions to live long. Have fun on that diet.
Feb 19th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Travis, I think the main point of this article is that the modern high-carb, low fat diet is the cause of so many modern diseases today. Dr Rosedale quite clearly states that we should be eating a low carb, nutrient dense diet with lots of vegetables and moderate amounts of fruit. I would say that people with serious illnesses such as diabetes and high blood pressure need supplements to correct the imbalances in their bodies. He also talks about weaning his patients off the supplements once their bodies/conditions have come more into balance.
Feb 22nd, 2008 at 4:24 am
This is what a doctor of trad. chinese medicine says about the above discussed condition:
Insulin resistance in theory is very easy to cure - just eat fewer carbohydrates…but this is not so easy to do for most severely deficient people. Many deficient people crave carbs although they have way too much sugar in their systems - this is because the body thinks it needs energy because it is so tired.
OK - he says much, much more but it is written in TCM jargon, which some of you may not be familiar with.
My question to Dr. Rosedale is: how on earth can people get going on the high-pro/low-carb diet in the first place? I doubt that the glutamine supplementation would be enough. Maybe I am wrong. I would like to see detailed advice. People want practical answers. Thank you kindly. And, Travis, I appreciate what you had to say!
Feb 22nd, 2008 at 8:31 pm
I don’t like Dr Rosedale’s use of the word saturated fat when describing the stored fat in our adipose tissue. He should refer to it as triglycerides. Its bad enough the whole world has a fat phobia and especially to saturated fat.
I think Dr Rosedale was very clear on what to eat. Moderate protein, low carb fairly high fat. So that means moderate free range/pasture fed meat, lots of vegetables, lots of good fat which doesn’t mean polyunsaturated fat. If you need more info probably read his book.
Feb 25th, 2008 at 5:03 am
I enjoyed the article, but it was clearly not written, but rather captured at a lecture. This may explain why he has looping thoughts and does not give sources of any research. He does spend much more time on explaining the supplements rather than explaining how to get those nutrients from foods. We don’t eat nutrients, we eat foods. We shop for foods, we consume foods. Pollen discusses this at length in his various articles. Our alienation from real food is the reason why people are in this predicament in the first place and, actually, is the reason why this website exists.
Feb 25th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Agreed Everett. It was such a succinct and simple explanation of Insulin Resistance, however, we simply had to include it. I guess readers could search for the nutrients Rosedale recommends on this site and read more about the whole food sources of them. I have heard many a practitioner state that bodies in advanced stages of disease can not regenerate with out assistance from high doses of supplementation. I don’t know what to think about this. What about you, dear Nourishers? What are your thoughts on the matter?
Feb 26th, 2008 at 8:50 am
This is to follow up on the last couple of comments regarding the supplements and dietary approach. There have been many excellent and informative comments, some adding to the controversy (which is a good thing). The framework is set: a low-carb, high good-fat, moderate (that which is enough to sustain life) protein diet. Supplements are to augment what the diet is trying to accomplish. A mistaken and common view is that supplements are pills and are not part of one’s diet. Supplementation can be and should be viewed as “eating” and not as a separate event. Therefore, the idea that “we don’t eat nutrients, we eat foods” is not exactly correct. We cannot get all that we need from foods and that is why “eating” supplements is necessary.
Mar 26th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Hello John,
Who says we cannot get all we need from foods? Where is the empirical proof of this assertion? Individuals were incapable of living “optimally” before supplements? A great idea would be spending money on the organic and grass-fed and natural food sources, economically bolstering the ability for these markets to thrive, instead of spending money on processed nutrients found in pills. Whole-food supplements precariously straddle this divide, but anything less than this is moving in the wrong direction.
Jul 28th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
I’ve been following the Rosedale eating program for about six weeks now. I’ve not been able to get the supplements here in Australia until yesterday. A few pointers for the hesitant: I’ve never felt hungry. I’ve lost weight. Cholesterol is down. I’ve never lacked energy. Oh yes - and I’m vegetarian, so that cuts out a whole wad of protein sources Rosedale recommends. So with all those results, all I can say is to give it a try. Study the book. Get Mercola’s interview with Rosedale and listen to it carefully. It’s I think available on you tube. It’s certainly a radical change from the diet I had before - whole grain foods, plenty carbs, low fat. The first three days I did not feel all that great, I must admit, as I became accustomed to the new regime. But slowly things got very much better. The cholestrol test was taken after only 6 days on the diet. There’s much to be said in this world for the power of logic and research, and Rosedale has plenty of both. Only one thing I must say is that exercise should be done moderately strongly for about 45 minutes per day for no less than 5 days a week. Just a recommendation from me, personally, but it will help the process, supplements or no supplements.
Sep 7th, 2008 at 5:21 am
Joseph,
Congratulations on your new regime! The first three days were probably difficult because the enzymes in your digestive system needed to catch up to different foods. Indeed, your whole body needs to adjust to such a radically different regimen. You are, however, experiencing what most people would experience after adding some healthy fats, lowering starches and carbs, and limiting grains. I would even argue that you didn’t crash too much from the diet change BECAUSE you’re not eating meat. The enzymes, bile, etc. needed to handle animal products need time to get going, and you’ve avoided that aspect of it, for now. Do you plan on staying vegetarian? Also, simply moving in a healthful manner for 45 minutes a day will cause improvements as well. Your experience seems to validate normal recommendations for health, not necessarily the Rosedale Diet.
I couple of questions: What are you eating if you’re not eating meat and not taking supplements, and how exactly does this translate into “nutrient dense foods?” Have you added fermented drinks like beet kvass or kombucha? Are you allowing yourself to eat eggs and cheese?
Thanks for sharing your experience. May other vegetarians follow your ways…
Sep 8th, 2008 at 12:33 am
Hi Travis,
It’s so nice to have some feedback on what is for me a lonely path here in Perth, Australia, where nobody has heard of the Rosedale Diet (to my knowledge) and very few of even Mercola. My Naturopath has now studied the Rosedale book and we work together. I will next week take a new blood test to test effects of the Rosedlae diet on many test variables - Leptin, Insulin, blood glucose, tri-glycerides, LDL, HDL and so on. I take the Rosedale supplements as instructed in the book and the brochure that comes with the supplements. They are very good. My hunger switch is absolutely under control. I have no cravings for sugar, starch or any carbohydrate foods at all. I can go for a whole day with no eating - although I consciously try not to do that. I eat nuts as Rosedale recommends, for snacks - and they satiate, as he said they would. To answer some of your questions: I have been vegetarian for over 30 years. I do not take eggs, meat or fish or anything made of these things. I eat cheese and milk, all vegtables, tofu, tempeh, natto, lentils etc. I eat many salads, avocado, sometimes beans, feta, olives, steamed vegetables particularly brocolli, vegetarian “sausages”, and the soya based proteins mentioned. Very occasionally I eat low carb bread - maybe a slice or two once a week. I also take “good fats” - olive, walnut and hazelnut oils. Coffee is decaf skinny. Cheese I love and eat that - we have a very good selection here in Australia.
I also eat Yoghurt and sometimes I make Kefir. Exercise regime is essential, although if I eat much cheese I need to do longer workouts - up to an hour on the cross-trainer. I’m starting to do PACE type exercises - curious to know if that really works. I’l post my new blood test results when I get them. My weight has kept low, most clothes are too big for me now. Oh yes - I’ve sent a copy of the Rosedale book to my doctor!
Sep 9th, 2008 at 8:38 am
given that the Rosedale diet recomends a lot of meat and fish, do you mind giving a sample day of what you would eat doing a vegetarian version of his diet?
Sep 11th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Hi Jad,
Yes sure, here’s what I eat. Of course day to day the foods vary, but here’s a typical “work” day.
Morning: - 2 tablespoons flaxseed oil. In this oil I mix the Rosedale “water soluble” and “fat soluble” supplements ( I remove them from their animal gelatine softgels). In addition I take Chlorella, glucosamine and Nattokinase (the latter from Mercola.com). I also have one decaf skinny flat white on the way to work. At the office I snack on walnuts, cashews and almonds.
For lunch I eat a salad mix of spinach, lettuce, feta, avocado, olives, some roasted pumpkin, grated parmesan, balsamic with olive oil, peppermint tea, occasionally a piece of cheddar or good blue cheese as well. There’s a good cafe not far from where I work that makes really good salads. Occasionally I have lentils and salad. Depends on the day. As I said above, sometimes I skip lunch also, but I try not to do that.
For dinner we make another salad (more leafy) - lettuce varieties, some lightly roasted macadamias or other nuts, roasted Haloumi cheese or feta or goats cheese (for salads), with dressing of olive oil and good balsamic or other vinegar and some salt.
In addition I like to make a small mix of tempeh, walnut oil, sesame oil (a small amount of this), salt, chilli, perhaps some fried garlic (in coconut oil) to taste.
On other nights we make vegetarian sausages (low carb) or other vegetarian protein based food of which there is an abundance here.
Sometimes I make a nice mix of good mushrooms varieties lightly fried in coconut oil with maybe a dash of walnut oil with garlic and then I add cream to the pan and reduce to form a nice sauce. Not too much cream, just enough to coat for flavour and smoothness. Same can be done with spinach, or spinach and mushrooms together.
All takes a short time to make, and really nice.
We also often steam vegetables for dinner - broccoli, courgettes, small squash, spinach and even button mushrooms are quite good steamed.
The trick with all this is to drizzle the vegies with good oil. Walnut is a favourite, olive oil as well and also if you can get it a sprinkle of truffle oil and a nice vegetable salt to add flavour.
Some evenings I fry up some tofu with garlic and curry leaves and some salt to taste - delicious, but use coconut oil.
The coconut oil I use is organic with the coconut flavour removed.
All satiating, very nourishing, good food.
The routine is supplemented with at least 30 minutes of exercise per day either at the gym or at the local swimming pool.
I hope that gives some idea of an average day. Please feel free to ask any other questions.
Sep 13th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
awesome that sounds like something I could do. Im not veggo anymore but still find it hard to eat much meat, not for digestion reasons Im just not use to the taste and find I only wnt a small amount, except for fish.
What coconut oil do you use that doesnt taste coconutty? I love fresh coconut and coconut milk but the small of coconut oil overpowers food so much it makes me ill.
cheers,
Sep 14th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Hi Jad,
The coconut oil we use is from the Philippines from where it is exported. It is sold here in health shops under the label “Frysafe Refined Coconut Oil” and is certified organic.
The company the distributes this ( I’m examining the label) is called “Aclara Health Gourmet Foods”.
The best place to search for a coconut oil near to you is your local health food shop.
But examine the labeling to ensure that the flavour has been removed. And also that the oil is organic. Actually some organic coconut oils with the flavours not removed are quite tasty, but I do agree with you that the taste can be overwhelming. Get the oil with the flavour removed and you will have no problem. When you use the oil, remember that the oil is saturated and therefore quite “thick”. You do not need too much of it, and it does not smoke much at all, but it is still hot.
It is different to vegetable / olive oil / butter but gives a good fry and no coconut flavour. My kids can’t stand the taste of coconut in oil either, but when I use this oil there is no problem at all.
Oct 10th, 2008 at 4:31 am
The best book I know for a detailed discussion of dietary fats is EAT FAT/LOSE fat by Mary Enig and Sally Fallon. Mary Enig is a world recognized expert in fats and oils. Sally Fallon is the founder of the Weston Price Foundation. Enig doesn’t like the “deodorized” coconut oil because the coconut is allowed to get rancid in the processing to make the oil and heat and chemicals are used to process and deodorize it. She doesn’t come right out and say it is unhealthy but she certainly doesn’t recommend it. She recommends Virgin, Organic Coconut Oil which has the coconut flavor whihc I do not find overpowering. I too take 2 Tablespoonfuls of flax seed oil (daily) blended with 2 Tablespoonfuls cottage cheese and a small amount of milk to make it liquid. I add some Equal, stevia, vanilla extract and fresh berries or coco powder. This is the maintenance dose of flax oil per the Budwig protocol.
Oct 16th, 2008 at 2:28 am
I’ll certainly try to get a copy of the Enig / Fallon book you recommend because this is such an important subject.
Your recommendation of unrefined coconut oil is interesting. We can get this here in Australia, I’ve seen and tasted some very nice tasting organic unrefined coconut oil, but my kids just will not eat the stuff. I love your recipe for flax seed oil - I’ll try it as well! Many thanks for the book reference, and I’ll slowly try to “wean” my family off refined coconut oil with the taste removed - I must admit I had a hard time just getting them to accept coconut oil at all - it’s just that they are not used to the taste.
Oct 30th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
My quest for a vegetarian-friendly diet for insulin resistance has just begun and I was thrilled to read this article. The various comments from readers are also very useful. Thank you. Undoubtedly, food is the most powerful drug when it comes to managing insulin. Will share experiences when I come across anything of value. In my case I’m also combating Vitamin D deficiency and Graves’ disease.
Nov 26th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Hi
I posted my question somewhere else on this community and it was deleted, so I’m hoping someone can help.
Does anyone know if raw dairy products increase insulin levels? Or is it only the commercial pasteurised dairy products?
My naturopath showed me a AMA research study that showed that dairy products increased insulin almost as much as bread, despite dairy’s low GI.
I am just transitioning to the nourishing traditions lifestyle (have sourced my raw milk, still looking for raw cheese etc) and just want to be sure that raw dairy doesn’t make insulin resistance worse as I have insulin resistance and pcos?
Would love to hear others opinions.
Thank you,
Kate.
Nov 27th, 2008 at 10:49 am
I imagine it would be the same. Milk is designed to help a baby to grow quick, so its natural it would provoke a hhigh insulin responses as insulin is out main growth hormone. If you have insulin resistance I would cut back on dairy foods for a while and see how you go. Butter and cream would be alright as it is the protein fractions of milk that cause the insulin release.
Plenty of traditional cultures consumed dairy and appeared to be in great health, so consider it in the context of your whole diet and ancestry. They also however, regulalry and daily exercised. The masai consume huge amounts of milk, they also walk more in a day than the avg. westerner does in a week.
Or if you really enjoy milk consume it within an hour after exercise, when our insulin senstivity is higher, the milk then will help to drive nutrients into the muscle cells.
However, one thing I would suggest is that if you do drink a lot of milk then dont consume it with any wheat, and minimise the glycaemic load (Gl) of the rest of your diet. Cordains work regarding wheat and milk shows the two are probably not good together !
While I disagree with Sally and Enigs claims on a number or issues, their essential position that traditional cultures were healthy and thriving is a very good place to start with achieving good health.
cheers, jad
Nov 28th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Joseph
the virgin coconut oil sold by Green Pastures http://www.greenpastures.com.au is delicous! The best oil I’ve tasted yet and my daughter loves it too!
Nov 28th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Jad
Are you talking about RAW or processed milk? The study you mentioned probably used processed milk.
I doubt raw milk would be harmful and certainly not raw milk yogurt or kefir. The reason traditional cultures did so well consuming dairy is because it was raw and often fermented.
Jad have you read Weston Price’s ” Nutrition and Physical Degeneration” ?
Anamika
The work of Dr Weston Price is the very foundation of Nourished Magazine. Price travelled the world for 10 years studying in total 14 indigenous groups both isolated from civilization and once in contact. These isolated communities enjoyed perfect physical and mental health etc and non of these groups were vegetarian.
Animal fats and proteins will help you and so will a daily dose of sunshine.
Read Sally Fallon’s ” Nourishing Tradition” and Dr Weston A Price’s ” Nutrition and Physical Degeneration”. Especially if you plan to have children.
Nov 28th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Kate
in last months issue of Nourished Mag there was a blog / article on Fromart cheese. These guys sell real RAW Swiss cheese and its absolutely delicious, satisfying and light! I bought some on line and I’m hooked. Never could eat cheese before except Frances raw Rockerfort. Legally Australia must allow some raw cheese into the country. Sadly Fromart need to make their own cheese from pasteurised dairy but their Swiss range is all raw. Buy the sample pack at $20 which includes postage and enjoy it with friends and wine, its great value and incredible delicious!
http://www.fromart.com.au
Nov 28th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Kate
sorry me again, haven’t had so much free time in ages!
Swiss Raw cheese should be completely safe for you as its been aged 6 to 12 months.
Nov 28th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Joseph
Have you read Sally Fallon’s info on the dangers of eating soy foods that haven’t been fermented? See http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz I’m sure Dr Mercola warns about it too as well as many others.
Soy that hasn’t been fermented for many months should be avoided. Vegetarian sausages are really bad too. Soak all your nuts before eating them.
Read ” Nourishing Traditions “.
Nov 29th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Yes I have copies of Nourishing Traditions and Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, both two of my fave books. That being said doesnt change the fact that milk is insulinotropic, and for someone with issues with insulin resistance this may be a problem. Plenty of traditionally eaten foods are high Gi, or insulin stimulating, this is not a bad thing, but for someone with an already disrupted endocrine system they may want to cut back on these foods and see how they go.
Only a few of the cultures Price studied drank milk, all in excellent health, but there were many he studied that did not drink milk and were also in excellent health.
I think possibly milk is fine for the majority of people if prepared traditionally and consumed within the context of a whole food based diet (by wholefoods I mean it in the sally fallon style, not endless plates of bran and oats lol ). But that being said if you are insulin resistant you may want to give up milk for a period and see if things improve.
Dec 1st, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Hi Jad
of course you’ve got those two books! They’re my favourite too. I was just checking because in your posts you haven’t differentiated betweed raw and processed milks and Kate specifically asked about Raw dairy. We know that raw dairy is a very different food once heated or homogenised. Raw milk is also very different once its been fermented and so beneficial. Good saturated fats are so important for regeneration especially when eaten raw making raw dairy an extrememly valuable food unless a person can enjoy raw liver and eggs every day and has the time to regularly simmer up gelatinous bone broth.
Yes many indigenous groups didn’t drink milk, milk is a new food on the big scale of things but it sure made life easier and more enjoyable once we learnt ( supposedly from an Angle ) how to milk animals.
I don’t agree that milks effects are in context with our whole diet and how active we are. From Price we learn that milk should only be consumed raw and for some/ many of us consumed fermented. I find raw milk kefir and raw cheese two of the most easily digested and complementary foods with its dense vitamins and minerals so easily assimilated.
I think when we talk dairy we should mention if its raw or processed before we warn against it and the even healthier option of fermenting should be explained because there is too much to lose from avoiding this food.
I had a little look at studies that you mentioned on milk being insulinotropic and the two I read were studies using rehydrated milk, so it was processed.
Dec 2nd, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Yeah I agree totally, there may be big differences in a lot of milks properties raw/fermented vs pastuerised and god forbid ultra heat treated (what really freaked me out about that stuff is when I read one of Sally/Enigs articles saying that you cant make yoghurt using UHT milk as it wont support the beneficial microbes, that really freaked me out that not even bacteria can eat the stuff!). However, my point with insulin resistance is that milk helps a young baby mammal to grow faster, there are a lot of natural substances in milk that help growth hormone and insulin to work. One of these, betacellullin, is found in all forms of milk - raw, pasteurised, etc. It can bind to epithelial cell growth receptors and stimulate growth etc. Many studies on dairy consumption have found it can increase IGF and other hormones ( again on pasteurised milk , but I see no reason why raw would be different as the function of milk is to enable fast nutrition and growth in an infant mammal). This can be a good thing, eg someone underweight, or recovering from illness, or someone who has been malnourished for a while, can really benefit from it.
But my concern is still for someone with insulin resistance - these people metabolisms already have issues with tissue hypertrophy and insulin excess. So anything that promotes those things I would be cautious with. I doubt many traditional cultures were insulin resistant, as they had eaten a wholesome diet their whole lives, so adding milk or not to their diet may not have been a problem.
But some people, either through previous diet and activity, or through an ancestry that didnt include many of those foods, may become insulin resistant and in my opinion itr may be beneficial for them to avoid milk for a while and see how their body goes.
As with anything listen to how you feel, see how things change etc. I tolerate milk totally fine and love the stuff. But I dont think its for everyone.
Try and see I guess is what I mean :-)
Jan 7th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Thank you everyone for your replies to me above.
I’ll try raw milk in the form of kefir and yogurt for now and see how I go. When my health improves, I’ll try raw milk on it’s own.
Kathy, I’ve had a look at the fromart cheese (yum :-) and only one of the swiss cheese’s are organic and raw (the le baron). Does the raw cheese have to be organic also? I have no idea on whether pesticides, hormones and antibiotics are used over there.
Kind regards,
Kate.
Jan 27th, 2009 at 1:33 am
Oh I cant believe what I have read….. I am a mother of two trying to find an answer!
Both my teenage children have recently been told they have insulin resistance.
I will certainly get hold of the books mentioned and any others that may help.
It all makes sense now my 13 yr old is much worse suffers from sleep apnea, asthma, sinusitis and a few tummy problems of late and Im sure the fact that he loves sweet foods and milk has so much to do with it.
This has only been in the last four yrs as his weight is getting to be a problem, if it wasnt for his love for basketball, rugby, soccer, waterpolo and surfing im sure his problem would be worse.
Until we came across this Endocronologist who did some fasting blood tests.
We have spent much of 2007 & 08 going from dr to dr trying to find answers of course many of them dont know anything about insulin resistance or dont wish too.. (I get weird looks!)
Ive been begging him to change his eating habits but he can be very stubborn, unfortunately this kid hates vegeatbles (not as an infant or toddler) and yes all the problems started when he was rejecting vegetables in his daily intake.
As a family we love fresh healthy foods, and I enjoy preparing nutrional meals, in fact i get most of my vegies from my fathers garden and a variety of everything.
Where do I start? Its 2am in the morning & I feel like waking up my husband to show him what I have read!
Thankyou all for taking part in this …it was definitely valued reading .. a change for the better!
Jan 28th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Jad, thanks heaps for that explination. Since weaning my daughter I’ve discovered she has a problem with straight up raw milk as her intake of it has now increased big time. This is a shame because she loves it so much but its constipating her. She does really well on kefir raw milk so thank goodness I still have this easy nutrient dense food source to give her.
Do you think kefir raw milk could work for those who have insulin resistance?
Hello Kate
I just saw some of the Cheese Links doco’s with Will Studd on how these cheeses are made etc including Frances raw Rockerfort. Honestly, it doesn’t look like there would be much difference between organic and non organic. All animals over there are treated like family and the natural environment looks so lush and beautiful. I want to go there! You could e mail Christian at Fromart and ask him, he’s great at answering questions and even on the phone, he’s lovely. Personally I mostly eat organic but I haven’t been concerned with these Swiss cheeses. I buy the 2.5 kg cheese as its much better value and I sell off some to friends who have become addicted, without profit.
Kind regards,
Cathy.
Apr 3rd, 2009 at 9:55 am
Thanks to all those who have put their opinnions on this blog as I have found it so informative and had no idea of all these things before I found this website. I have had a real weight ploblem since October 2008 and have only just entertained the idea of insulin resistance being my problem which I think it maybe.
I do not want to go vegetarian as I do like to eat meat in some form once a day. I like vegetables and eat a lot, also fruit and dairy products but it looks like dairy products are not very good for this problem. Also I don’t understand about ‘fermented milk’ as I cant imagine anything fermented can be good for the gut as several diets state. I would like to find out about a diet I can follow to help with insulin resistance, to lose excess weigth(about 9 kgs) suggestions for breakfast lunch and dinner type of thing. Can anyone help with websites or publications to help me with this please.
Jun 5th, 2009 at 8:26 am
Hello. It appears that Dr. Rosedale is still not around. Can anyone answer this question? What does this mean, please: Fasting, my Insulin level = <2.0, C-Peptide Serum = 0.9, Glucose = 81, Leptin serum = 17.4, Triglycerides = 35. Is this pre Diabetes Type 1, or not a concern? My insulin is low, but Dr. Rosedale does not say in his book if there is a low that is too low. Apparently low Insulin and low C-Peptide mean something, but all the other tests are well within what he calls ‘optimal’ except he would say that the Leptin is too high. Can I still follow his program to reduce the Leptin or will it make my Insulin level even lower? Dangerously lower? Or will it help me? Any answers? Thank you.
Jun 6th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Try asking Dr Mike at http://www.proteinpower.com
he is incredibly good at helping people out with all that sort of stuff I have no idea how he finds the time to do so many posts and reply to so many comments. I wouldnt be concerned with the low insulin but im not familiar enough with the other values to comment.
Jun 8th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Diane, I recently went through a diagnosis of insulin resistance. Besides Nourishing Traditions, which is an invaluable resource for both information and recipes, there were a few other things that were of help to me. First, a naturpoathic physician was the only one who recognized my problem. Second, a website that put it into plain English is http://www.womentowomen.com. A book called the Schwarzbein Principle also helped explain the science of insulin resitance. I needed this information to wrap my head around some of the dietary changes I needed to make, becuase they were so different from what I was taught. I am still working on it, but I do feel better. Good luck to you!
Jun 8th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
AFter I read Audrey’s post I saw an old one of mine. I’d like to elaborate on something….. my daughter can drink raw milk straight up but it must be luke warmed. It was the cold milk straight from the fridge that was constipating her.
Jun 11th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Thanks Jad,
Have gone to Dr. Mike’s site and cannot figure out how to ask him a question. Blog or Discussion Forum? He is the only one that post on the Blog. The Discussion Forum would not accept my email address so have emailed the administrator. Am I missing something there? Thank you.