1. I was sent a video that claimed the early signs of prediabetes are depression, belly fat, irritability, hunger after meals, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), nigricans/acne/skin tags, worsening vision, frequent urinary infections, slow healing cuts, thirst, burning/numbness in feet, fatigue and an HbA1C of 5.6 - 6.4. They insisted that you only need to have your HbA1C checked, and they also claimed that the "cure" for prediabetes was "very easy" - to just follow "keto" or carnivore. Is this all true?
Where do you guys get this nonsense from? Really? There's a lot of bull to process here so bear with me. This is called throwing as much crap as possible around to see what sticks. None of that crap is prediabetes. In fact, worsening vision, frequent urination, slow healing cuts and burning/numbness in feet are possible signs of full-blown diabetes, not "pre" anything.
The only correct sign of prediabetes on that list is an HbA1C of 5.6 - 6.4. Period. The only sign of metabolic dysfunction on that list is belly fat.
HbA1C is a blood test which is usually ordered by your doctor during your yearly physical. It's part of the Comprehensive Metabolic Panel. Most doctors order it, but it appears that some don't. Some insurances cover it, but some don't. For some, it depends on your fasting blood glucose result. If your fasting blood glucose is normal, they might not cover it and/or your doctor might not order it. Insurances change frequently and what was once covered, may no longer be unless a specific diagnosis is made to justify the testing.
I don't know why this person is insisting on you having your HbA1C checked as it is pretty much a useless marker for prediabetes considering that you would have to already have prediabetes in order for it to be useful. By then it's too late. But I bet whoever made that video is selling HbA1C test kits, aren't they? They are all so predictable. If only the roulette table in Vegas was this predictable, I wouldn't be sitting here but enjoying my winnings in Hawaii instead.
Anyway, if you want to know whether you truly are prediabetic, before you become prediabetic, get a blood glucose meter. They are available at Walmart, with no prescription needed, and they have become very inexpensive. I also don't sell them. This way you can check your fasting and postprandial blood glucose readings at home, which are much more telling if you are at risk of prediabetes than an HbA1C test. You have to check for large disparities in blood glucose between your fasting numbers and your postprandial numbers. You should aim for no more than a 40 point difference between the two. That's all that's needed.
I also can make a bet that whoever made that video is also "selling" the diets they are recommending, right? That's why they have the easy "cure" for your prediabetes. They create the problem and sell you the cure. The only thing that will reverse prediabetes or reduce your risk of developing prediabetes is to follow a diet, any diet, that prevents large disparities between fasting and postprandial blood glucose. In other words, any diet that preserves normal blood glucose regulation.
Carb restricted diets work very well for this but there are other factors involved that have nothing to do with diet at all. Quantity of food in one sitting can disrupt glucagon function which can raise postprandial blood glucose abnormally high, contributing to large disparities. Fasting for long periods of time can do the same. Type and frequency of exercise can contribute as well. Any of these can result in a compromised metabolic system which is very difficult to "reverse" but can certainly be "managed" and prevented from worsening.
Lastly, I'm always leery of anyone that says anything is "easy". There is nothing easy about reversing metabolic adaptations.
2. I have heard of "amylase" on some low carb websites. What is it and why should I be concerned over it?
You shouldn't be concerned over it. It's nonsense.
Low carb advocates are always bringing up some elusive and irrelevant biological function to cause confusion and have something to talk about. They are constantly trying to find what to focus on rather than focusing on what the real problem is. This of course is strategic on their part as they need to have something else to blame as a backup for when their protocol fails.
Amylase is an enzyme that helps you digest food. Particularly, it breaks down starch into sugars. Amylase is mostly made in the pancreas and salivary glands. A larger or smaller amount may mean that you have a serious disorder of the pancreas, such as pancreatitis. This can result from an infection, alcoholism or some other medical condition. Your doctor would suspect if you were having problems with your pancreas by assessing your symptoms and ordering the appropriate tests of which amylase could be a part of.
Who knows what this has to do with low card but anything that has to do with sugar metabolism is immediately honed in on by these clowns as their foolery knows no bounds. I'm guessing that since amylase helps break down starch, they figure the less of it you produce, the better, as it would theoretically mean less blood sugar? Who knows. That's how imbecilic and simpleton their train of thought is. To the layman, it would make perfect sense though.
Don't be taken in by this nonsense. Amylase doesn't cause nor prevent diabetes. Diabetes is a syndrome which is multifactorial and lifestyle driven. In fact, the pancreatic conditions that result in an abnormal amylase test do not even include diabetes or even high blood glucose. So whatever effect amylase has on blood glucose is insignificant and completely irrelevant.
3. Is it true that carnivore does not work for women?
It is impossible to know whether a diet will "work" for you or not, as an individual. Results are dependent on a lot of factors, most notably how well it can help you regain and sustain proper blood glucose regulation.
All diets work a lot better for men than women. This is not particular to carnivore. This is simply because a man's body is made for leanness so it will always prefer its natural state. The only men who have a difficult time losing weight, are the ones who are estrogen dominant. But normally, a man's higher muscle mass and testosterone always works to keep them lean. Leanness is their default state. This is why men tend to stay lean for longer and become lean faster than women.
Women's bodies are not made for leanness. Leanness for a child bearing hunter/gatherer means probable death. For this reason, estrogen causes for women to store and spare fat. We even have specialized areas on our bodies - hips, thighs, buttocks, breasts in order to carry this extra fat without reducing our mobility. A woman's body rejects low fat percentages and easily resorts to a starvation response to prevent it so I always tell women to be realistic with their weight loss goals. The younger you are and the less years you have been marinating in estrogen, the easier it is to become lean but as you get older, watch out.
Though humans have always had the capability to live for a very long time, it usually didn't ever occur. Child delivery could easily kill off half the women in a tribe. So, we now live longer in estrogen and this is obvious by how we begin to expand as we get older. Some women are lucky and have great leptin expression which keeps them lean forever as it is perfectly balanced with estrogen but the reality is that they are anomalies and wouldn't have survived very well in the wild. That's why they are not common. The vast majority of us become fatter with age. We do not retain our youthful figures.
So when finding a diet, find one that keeps you under obesity and preserves as much metabolic health as possible.
4. I was told to forget about fat loss and focus on "health gain". Will that ward off diabetes?
No. Fat loss is health gain. In fact, that's the first sign that you are gaining health. Without fat loss, you have gained nothing.
The first sign that your metabolism is failing, is the gain of excess body fat. That's the canary in the coalmine. Losing it is the first sign that your metabolism is normalizing. This is because body fat determines how profoundly you are affecting your metabolism. Everything else that happens to your metabolic panel may show you are headed in the right direction but it's ultimately the loss of body fat that signifies you have reversed the starvation adaptation which stores and spares it.
Because it is so difficult to affect metabolism profoundly enough to lose body fat, people simply give up. Since there is no one dietary protocol that can promise the loss of body fat, the ones selling you it will try to divert your attention elsewhere when they fail. Don't let people's failures redefine what you need to do to get healthy.
Targeting body fat is always the goal, period. The only ones who can reverse and ward off diabetes are the ones who lose body fat. Everyone else is constantly at the brink of diabetes, and will develop the same pathologies as a diabetic with time, from chronic metabolic syndrome. Having excess body fat will deteriorate your health. There are no healthy, vibrant, 400 lbs. 60 year old's. You will lose your mobility and you will be on a slew of medications to prevent death, even without having full blown diabetes. Diabetes is not the worse thing that happens to people with metabolic syndrome.
5. Is diabetes having "too much insulin in the body"?
No. This is why the insulin-carbohydrate hypothesis is null and void.
Diabetes is the result of abnormal blood glucose regulation. This abnormality results in metabolic pathologies that include excess fat storage and sparing, high body fat/blood glucose set points, exaggerated adrenal stress responses and a malfunction in insulin expression. Insulin is under expressed in tissues and organs but over expressed at the fat mass. Insulin malfunction contributes to everything from kidney disease to cardiovascular disease. All of these conditions are common in diabetics and even in people with simple metabolic syndrome.
This insulin malfunction is commonly referred to as "insulin resistance" and it can sometimes manifest as higher than normal fasting insulin serum levels but often times it doesn't. After all, insulin can malfunction at any serum level. Sometimes the body doesn't compensate for this malfunction by producing more insulin at all. This is why there is a percentage of overweight/obese/diabetic people who have completely normal insulin levels. This is also why insulin is usually not a metric that is measured in people with Type II diabetes. It's too imprecise and very variable. Also addressing its levels will not magically "fix" its malfunction.
This is why you shouldn't think of diabetes as having "too much insulin in the body" but having abnormal insulin expression instead.
6. Are carbohydrates "toxins"?
No. Carbohydrate is a macronutrient.
Anything in excess is toxic from water to oxygen. The dose makes the poison. The problem is that no one can determine what the proper "dose" for anything is until it kills you. Macronutrients do not kill you. This is why their "excess" is subjective.
People have tried to determine macronutrient excess through the counting of calories but that has been a total bust. People have tried to define excess through "moderation" but no one knows how to quantify that. So no one knows what exactly "excess" is.
In this blog, when we speak about excess, we are only speaking of what your individual macros have determined is excess. We do not use calories and we do not use "moderation". We only use your body fat, gender and goals to determine what excess would be for you. You can calculate your individual macros here.
As far as carbohydrates are concerned, they aren't toxins. They are simply useless. This is great news because for someone who is trying to control their blood glucose, they can completely eliminate carbs without any adverse effects. Since carbohydrate is the macronutrient that most effects blood glucose homeostasis it's a good idea to do just that.
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