[addicted]

There is nothing about carbs themselves that is bad for diabetics.

Carbs are necessary macronutrient for everybody.

If you mean certain foods that also have a high percentage of carbs then sure but carbs are not the problem.

Take this line from the article itself, for example.

> It can be challenging for many people with diabetes to forgo the breads, sweets, pastas and starches that form the basis of many diets.

What’s common about these foods isn’t that they’re high in carbs. It’s that they’re nutritionally deficient foods that have been stripped of all their fibers and basically reduced to sugars.

Further, the diets promoted as low carb popularly are not good diets either for diabetics or for non diabetics.

[kamens]

"nothing about carbs themselves that is bad for diabetics"

is like saying

"nothing about waves themselves that are bad for boats"

kinda sorta true...but turns out sailing in calm waters is a hell of a lot safer than heading into rough seas

(type 1 for 28 years)

[Sargos]

>Carbs are necessary macronutrient for everybody.

This is a wild claim to make and doesn't seem to hold true scientifically. Humans require fat, protein, and various vitamins usually received from vegetables. There is no requirement that comes from carbohydrates as they effectively are just empty calories.

[adrian_b]

Carbohydrates are not necessary for survival, but there are circumstances when they are necessary, for instance when a very intense effort is required to be sustained for a long time it is impossible to achieve a maximum performance without eating carbohydrates, because they can be absorbed and used for energy production faster than the alternatives.

Moreover, there is not enough data to decide whether a diet lacking almost completely carbohydrates results in optimal health in the long term, even if it may have favorable effects when replacing a worse previous diet.

Carbohydrates are also the cheapest kind of food. While eating them in excess is bad, obtaining less than 50% of the energy intake from carbohydrates still results in a much lower cost of the food than replacing all of them with expensive fats and proteins.

For diabetes prevention, it is likely that it is more important to avoid sugar than it is to avoid starch, because in many traditional societies where starch was a big fraction of their food, diabetes was nevertheless uncommon.

[watwut]

What is know for fact that this "carbs are evil" messaging absolutely sux for anyone having to deal with eating disorder - both sic people and their close ones. And if I had to choose between diabetes and eating disorder, I would go for diabetes.

Eff the demonizing of whole food groups of food.

[keybored]

> Carbohydrates are not necessary for survival, but there are circumstances when they are necessary, for instance when a very intense effort is required to be sustained for a long time it is impossible to achieve a maximum performance without eating carbohydrates, because they can be absorbed and used for energy production faster than the alternatives.

And some people require an intake of 8000+ kcal a day. Not relevant to anything.

[meroes]

Nothing gives me quick, accessible energy like carbs though. Energy to think and love my body. Yes I’ve seen documentaries on low carb high fat ultra athletes, but they still have their fats with a bowl of pasta. God only knows their saturated fat intake too. A carbless diet does not seem well rounded, and is thus unhealthy. So carbs are essential.

[cempaka]

It does not follow from you personally deriving psychological benefits or quick energy from eating carbs that a diet which excludes them is not well rounded or is unhealthy.

[toast0]

Keto isn't no carbs, but it's a pretty small number compared to typical diets.

It's not for everyone, but it can help some people manage blood sugar.

[kjksf]

So you go from "does not seem well rounded" to "therefore is essential"?

Here's some facts.

There are nine essential amino acids that our body needs to function properly and cannot produce by itself from something else.

Meat provides those amino acids and carbs do not.

Carbs are a source of energy but so is fat, proteins, ketones and alcohol.

In addition to reversing diabetes, people on low carb / high fat diets, including carnivore, often report increase in overall energy levels and lifting of a mental fog that they experienced on standard carb and sugar heavy diet.

That energy spike that carbs and sugar give you is a glucose spike in blood and the downside of it is that often it goes in the other direction (i.e. lethargy) when you come off of it.

That's the "nap after heavy meal" effect.

This is not an anti-carb just anti what you do, elevating carbs into some unquestionably good, unique energy source necessary for you to think or love your body.

Consuming carbs in moderation is fine.

The problem is that our modern diet and what is available in grocery stores or restaurants make it almost impossible to consume carbs in moderation.

And apparently plenty people like you don't even understand that carbs are, in fact, bad for most people.

U.S. stats on this are shocking: 73.6% americans over 20 are overweight and 42.4% obese (all obese people are overweight but not all overweight people are obese)

[adaptbrian]

This is exactly how I felt when I went keto/low inflammation foods. Would have never expected it.

[keybored]

> A carbless diet does not seem well rounded, and is thus unhealthy.

Why “thus”. Just saying that lacking something is not well rounded thus unhealthy just looks some sort of middle of the road fallacy.

Diets that are not about calorie restrictions are all about excluding certain things. And they all claim to be better than the potentially more versatile middle of the road diet.

[mlhpdx]

> There is nothing about carbs themselves that is bad for diabetics.

That is untrue. A Type 1 diabetic requires insulin proportional to the amount of carbohydrates they eat. The larger the insulin dose, the higher the potential error in the dose compared to the carbs (it’s inexact). If the error is on the “too much” side it can drive blood sugar fatally low. This happens, unfortunately often.

[pimeys]

Nowadays the artifical pancreas software can quite nicely counteract the carb spikes. It's not very hard, just take all your basals for the next two hours and then have no insulin delivery for that time. Especially if you eat fast carbs, this is the right strategy.

More complex is to dose for fat, protein and carb mixture. You basically need almost no insulin first, but in the next four hours you need 1.3-1.4x your basal to cope with the raising sugar.

[kjksf]

This is shocking misinformation.

> Meat is considered a complete protein source, meaning it contains all nine essential amino acids that your body cannot produce on its own

Do carbs?

> Carbohydrates primarily provide energy for your body and are not a significant source of amino acids. Essential amino acids, which your body cannot produce on its own, are primarily found in protein-rich foods such as meat, dairy, eggs, and some plant-based sources like quinoa and soy

So you're 100% wrong: carbs do not provide essential amino acids and meat does.

The mechanism behind type 2 diabetes is well known and it's all about eating too much carbs.

Sugars and carbs are converted to glucose in your blood.

You can't have too much (or too little) glucose in blood.

Some of it is burned as fuel but the rest has to be removed somehow so body starts producing insulin to push glucose into cells where it's get converted into fat.

If you can't produce insulin, you have type 1 diabetes and need insulin injections.

If you overeat carbs you store more and more fat. You become over-weight and insulin gets worse at moving glucose from your bloodstream.

The diagnostic test for diabetes is literally: do you have too much glucose in your blood (compared to what is healthy range) or related test a1c which tests for elevated levels of insulin in your blood.

If you know the above, then how in the world can you claim that carbs are not the problem? It is literally the thing that causes diabetes.

The simple solution to reversing type 2 diabetes is therefore to stop eating carbs. That's low carb diets like keto or carnivore.

You make very wrong assertions (carbs are not the problem; carbs have all macronutrients; low carb diets are bad) without a single supporting argument or reference.

[UncleSlacky]

> The mechanism behind type 2 diabetes is well known and it's all about eating too much carbs.

No it's not.

From https://www.ncl.ac.uk/magres/research/diabetes/reversal/#bac...

"We now know that type 2 diabetes is caused by excess fat inside liver and pancreas. ... The Twin Cycle Hypothesis described how it might be possible to explain the cause of type 2 diabetes in a very simple way. ... It was clear from that time onwards that type 2 diabetes is caused by too much fat building up within the liver, then overspilling to the rest of the body - including the pancreas. This starts up a second vicious cycle inside the pancreas, with the fat actually switching off normal insulin production...One of the most important discoveries is that of the Personal Fat Threshold. Type 2 diabetes is not caused by ‘obesity’. Different people have different levels of tolerance of fat within liver and pancreas. But if you have type 2 diabetes, you have crossed your ‘personal fat threshold’.

[themgt]

The explanation for T2D from the PDF paper from your own link explicitly singles out carbs and explains why they are critical to causing the disease process you describe.

> During any one period of time, if more calories are ingested than metabolized then any fat excess is stored either subcutaneously, viscerally or in the liver. But any excess carbohydrate cannot be stored once the glycogen depots are full. If more glucose is ingested than can be oxidized for energy or stored as glycogen, it has to be turned into fat by the process of de novo lipogenesis. This process only happens in the liver in humans, and triglyceride synthesized in situ is particularly likely to be stored in hepatocytes rather than exported for safe storage in subcutaneous adipose tissue.

> The newly synthesized fat has three possible fates: it can be oxidized for energy; exported as VLDL in the plasma to be delivered to other tissues or it can be stored in a rather full liver. As de novo lipogenesis is stimulated by insulin, those people who are relatively insulin resistant in muscle—and who therefore have a raised plasma insulin level—are especially likely to accumulate fat in the liver. This could explain the reason why muscle insulin resistance is the first detectable signal of risk for Type 2 diabetes.

https://www.ncl.ac.uk/media/wwwnclacuk/newcastlemagneticreso...