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Dr. McDougall says he doesn't worry about high sugars when he takes patients off blood sugar meds. I am sure he means temporarily. You have to worry about long term high blood sugars, right?

I have read many places that blood sugars over 140 cause cell damage. I thought this meant fasting sugars but apparently the consensus is that any blood sugar over 140 causes sugar to stick to the cells, including post prandial blood sugars.

Yet, I cannot find any information proving this. I remember reading about the area under the curve of blood sugar plotted against time being more important than the height of a spike but can not longer find any info on this.

Does anyone have and references to this?

Didi

Found this on a "low carb" blog but the basic indication is that higher postprandial sugars do some sort of damage that leads to diabetes.

Dr. McDougall mentions this on this video, at about 24 min. -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iosoXlr3ZVI

Well, but this says nothing about complications. It looks like a predictor of who will get diabetes but I already know I have diabetes. Does it imply that the higher the one hour reading the more complications. I do not have any complications that I know of after twenty years. It also seems odd that an increasingly rising fasting number is not indicative of diabetes.

Didi

Perhaps there has been too much emphasis on fasting BG readings since high readings are HIGH regardless of the time! In other words, if your body is healthy, your BG will not be elevated.

here's a post about the A1c 3-month blood sugar test:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=27522

I have diabetes which I controlled pretty well with diet though my numbers were still higher than "normal". I wouldn't take medicine. also had high blood pressure and didn't want to take medicine but finally did. supposedly it all contributed (though I've been a vegetarian for 26 years) and I had a heart attack Jan. 23 with blockage at 70% to 100%. had bypass surgery Jan. 25. at the time I was doing good on the McD plan (having lost the weight a few years ago) and no added oil.

I am, at least temporarily, taking med for blood pressure and cholesterol though the latter wasn't high. nothing for diabetes but I eat less now and no oil so my morning fasting tests are good, about 113.

I assume I would still fail the glucose test like I did years ago.

Didi, this blog points to each of the studies it uses to make the following statements:

Well if this is true, then I should use the Fuhrman diet rather than the McDougall starch based diet because after eating potatoes, rice, oatmeal etc. My blood sugars often are above 200. I never worried about this but maybe I should. Dr. McDougall in his diabetes video doesn't seem to think these high values and even values much higher are harmful.

I am also wondering about the high blood sugars causing heart damage. Is it possible that it is insulin causing the damage to the heart if eating fat is making you insulin resistant?

I see the word prolonged in Kiki's post. If it goes up to 200 after starches but comes down before the next meal might be different from the sugar staying high even when it is time for the next meal. I like the McDougall way of eating and would hate to change.

Didi

didi, is the 200 after eating when the meal does not contain added oil?

what is the reading two hours after eating? it should have come back down by then.

re the potato, what if you have half a potato and extra veggies? (and no bread or other starch at that meal.)

also, I think losing just a few pounds when I was "satisfied" with my weight made my fasting blood sugar less.

The article that's behind that one sentence is on an in vitro experiment (in a petri dish) where they found that short term exposure to glucose produced reversible effects on pancreatic cells, long term (23 weeks?) produced irreversible changes. But, it's an in vitro experiment, so its findings aren't as suggestive as the studies done in the body.

However, the first experiment listed on neuropathy found that OGTT were of more value than fasting blood glucose in predicting nerve damage.



Edit: Didi, in your original post I thought you were looking for information on blood sugars more than advice on how to change your diet. The studies that I've pointed to are not necessarily indications that you should switch your diet. Even people who are eventually successful at getting their sugars to behave completely normally can have a long adjustment period where post-prandial sugars are high.

Didi, please correct me if my impressions are incorrect. You have written about this before. I have asked you about your BMI and you have not answered. I think that means that you have not sufficiently restricted your caloric intake to reach a low BMI (Perhaps between 18.5 and 22 would work.) .

As Jeff Novick has pointed out, CR is the crucial key to reversing DM. If you will use the tools here to practice CR and reduce your BMI to a low normal level, I expect you will see good results.

Again, if I am all wet about this, I apologize, but I am trying to get your attention! Please take care of yourself!

With BMI around 21 and no oil or fatty foods for two years I routinely went to 200 and above at the 1 hour mark. I switched to beans as my primary starch source and that brought it down to 140-160 range. Then I just started to emphasize the less calorie dense foods and now it doesn't go over 120 unless I overeat and stuff myself.

Geoffrey, do you mean vegetables when you say that now you emphasize the less calorie dense foods? If so, are you eating less beans and more veggies at your meals?

That's so great that you've been able to bring your 1-hour postprandial glucose down so much.

Didi, I sympathize about not wanting to give up eating this way! I love it too. I think you're already really careful not to eat too much starch per meal, correct? I wonder if you tried beans like Geoffrey, or worked to lower your BMI even more as Pinkrose suggests, if those would make a difference. Do you eat lots of veggies with your meals?

Yes, non-starchy veg is for sure my biggest volume. Also, forgot to mention a huge key for me was to quit eating between meals. Snacking (one between breakfast and lunch, another between lunch and dinner, and sometimes one before bed) never allowed my blood sugar to come all the way back to baseline before getting kicked back up by the next "dose" of food. When I quit snacking and made the other changes mentioned, my A1c which had been hovering around 6.0 immediately (3 or 4 months) dropped to 5.4 and then after anther 8 months or so down to 4.7.

My typical meal is one piece of fruit (usually as appetizer while cooking though sometimes for dessert instead), 4-6 cups chopped mixed veg, 3/4 cup beans, 1 tsp ground flax, a small amount of some other seeds. That is about all I ever eat. Occasionally I have a piece of buckwheat Manna bread that I make (mostly wife eats that)

I may have brain fog this morning as I worked the night shift but what is CR? RAS