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Insulin Resistance is the start of (all?) metabolic disease. So easy to resolve using fasting, intermittent fasting, keto, carnivore etc diets. Unfortuneately it slowly builds up over decades and only once disease has progressed do Drs move on to treat the resultant disease (and mainly with cholesterol lowering drugs). Instead of measuring fasting glucose levels (which indicate diabetes), insulin levels should be measured as they are the leading indicator. |
To preface, I'm a long-time intermittent fasting, and tend to eat fairly carnivorous (though supplement with a lot of vegetables and legumes). But none of what you've listed is a silver bullet.
The research is pretty conclusive that the proximate cause of all metabolic disease is caloric intoxication.[1] Regardless of the timing and consumption of calories, if a person continuously has an excess energy balance they're at risk of metabolic disease. In particular, the more dogmatic proponents of keto are refuted by the fact that some hunter-gatherers, like the Hazda, consume up to 50% of their calories from simple sugars. And like all hunter-gathers, they have virtually zero incidence of metabolic diseases.
That isn't to say that diet isn't important. Excess calories are the proximate cause, but the type of food being consumed ultimately influences satiety and therefore overall consumption. In particular, the highly processed, hyper-palatable, easily digestible, highly convenient, hyper-varied, calorically dense food found in the industrialized West makes it extremely easy to overeat. In some sense, we're literally getting fatter because our food is becoming more delicious. Quoting the famous Matt Crowley tweet: "We take it for granted today, but a single Dorito has more extreme nacho flavor than a peasant in the 1400s would get in his whole lifetime."
Low-carb, low-fat, intermittent fasting, six small meals a day, no eating after 6, cleanse detox, vegetarian, carnivore, keto, high-fiber, high-protein, gluten-free, etc. They all seem to work to a certain extent, even when they directly contradict one another. And that's largely because any arbitrary restriction on food consumption decreases variety (fewer options), reduces convenience (arbitrary rules makes it harder to eat take out), and lowers palatability (many recipes require substitutions or removals that ruin the taste).
The upshot is that the older and more popular a fad diet becomes the less effective it will be. When enough of the market's on a diet the food industry will figure out how to make hyper-palatable that still conform to the rules.
[1] https://www.stephanguyenet.com/why-the-carbohydrate-insulin-...