I’m never one to miss a chance to tout the benefits of various maligned substances such as coffee and wine (and heroin!) Time mag reports that coffee may offer some protection against Type 2 Diabetes.

The link between drinking coffee and a lower risk of type 2 diabetes onset has been previously discovered, though scientists were unsure why the connection was there. While there was some speculation that the caffeine in coffee might have a role, other data has suggested that people benefit even if they’re drinking decaf.
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When a person has diabetes, he or she become insulin resistant. Unregulated blood sugar levels also characterize the disease. The researchers found that cafestol increased blood sugar intake in the cells and that both cafestol and caffeic acid increased insulin secretion. The fact that the two components targeted systems and actions related to diabetes suggests they could be the components that give coffee its protective benefit. The dual benefit of cafestol was especially noteworthy to the study authors.

The usual caveats apply. The study was done on rats and scientists don’t think they understand all the details. Still, have another cup on me!

I’ve talked a bit in the past of Gary Taub’s and others’ argument that much mainstream advice on nutrition is wrong. Fat and meat have been condemned, they say, when the real culprit is carbs. The reason being that digested carbs convert to sugar and cause a blood sugar spike, raised insulin levels and increased fat storage. This leads to diabetes, heart issues and obesity. The message is: avoid carbs and sugars.

However, a new study discussed over at ScienceDaily says it’s not that simple. Not everyone gets a blood sugar spike from the same foods. One person can eat a banana and get a sugar spike and eat cookies and not get one, and the reverse is true. And…

The scientists were able to show that lifestyle also mattered: The same food affected blood sugar levels differently in the same person, depending, for example, on whether its consumption had been preceded by exercise or sleep.

This rings a bell for me. For a long time a treat for breakfast was waffles and syrup—basically all carbs and sugars. It was a great tasting meal but often I would get what felt like a sugar crash (meaning, I think, that I’d had a spike and it had depleted) just before lunch—I would get really really hungry fast. I don’t experience this with my usual breakfast of beans, a bit of potatoes and protein (eggs or meat.) However, I’ve also noticed that even if I eat a high carb dinner it’s never followed by this sugar crash. There’s something about the evening meal that just feels different, less likely to lead to a sugar spike.

i never been anywhere near what people might call fat. But my weight has fluctuated over the years. At one point several years ago I was down to about 160 (after a trying a non gluten diet to cure the dizziness I’ve complained about. It didn’t work.) A couple years after that I ballooned up to 180 or so and it showed. Since then I probably float around 170. I usually don’t look fat but I sometimes have a smallish belly—sort of like the characters from Doonesbury.

As you can tell from reading this blog lately, I’ve been reading about diet and have been intrigued by the argument that carbs are the real cause of fattening. So for the past month or so I’ve been “sort of” avoiding carbs—not eating much toast, rice, pasta etc. It’s not something I’ve put much thought into, just a general disinclination towards carbs. (Not total avoidance. I had a hamburger with a white bread bun last night.) And I have clearly slimmed down quite a bit.

(To be more precise, I’ve really been avoiding simple carbs and sugars. I still eat a fair amount of beans which are a complex carb.)

So what is the crux of the argument against carbs? Gary Taubs is a science writer and the leading voice in the anti-carb movement. He has a semi-recent NY Times op-ed stating his point:

If obesity is a fuel-partitioning problem — a fat-storage defect — then the trigger becomes not the quantity of food available but the quality. Now carbohydrates in the diet become the prime suspects, especially refined and easily digestible carbohydrates (foods that have what’s called a high glycemic index) and sugars.
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The obvious mechanism: carbohydrates stimulate secretion of the hormone insulin, which works, among other things, to store fat in our fat cells.

Basically, carbs are sugar, and sugars spike your insulin causing your body to hoard fat (and ultimately set you up for diabetes.)

As Taubs states at the end of the piece, this is not an ironclad argument. More research needs to be done, blah, blah, blah. But he does voice the obvious thought.

From this perspective, the trial suggests that among the bad decisions we can make to maintain our weight is exactly what the government and medical organizations like the American Heart Association have been telling us to do: eat low-fat, carbohydrate-rich diets, even if those diets include whole grains and fruits and vegetables.

Now, I mentioned before that there was another time my weight dropped: when I was avoiding glutens (as well as dairy and a few other things. Not meat though.) When you skip glutens you avoid a lot of carbs—glutens are in bread, cereal etc. My one junk food treat in that time was potato chips which are gluten free. So, I was probably on a low carb diet, just not really thinking of it in those terms.

As a counterpoint to all this I offer my Dad who ate plenty of carbs, drank a fair amount, basically put no thought into his diet yet remained thin his whole life. (He did have heart issues though.) So there’s probably no one-size fits all method here. But I suspect fat’s reputation is going to rise in coming years and carbs’ will decrease.

I mentioned a while back that I was reading the book “The Big Fat Surprise” which argues that—contrary to conventional wisdom—a diet high in saturated fats (e.g. meat, dairy etc) is good for you. This should not be understood to say that a diet high in trans-fats (e.g. Cheetos, crackers, etc.) is good for you. Because it is not.

The book also states that a diet high in carbs is bad for you, leading to obesity and diabetes.

These are controversial assertions, certainly, and they basically imply that the U.S Government has been recommending an awful diet (high carbs, low fats) for years.

Nonetheless, I’ve noticed several pieces popping up recently on a science blog I frequent called Science Daily that seem to support the arguments made by “The Big fat Surprise.” Consider…

Trans fats, but not saturated fats like butter, linked to greater risk of early death and heart disease

A study led by researchers at McMaster University has found that that trans fats are associated with greater risk of death and coronary heart disease, but saturated fats are not associated with an increased risk of death, heart disease, stroke, or Type 2 diabetes.
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The team found no clear association between higher intake of saturated fats and death for any reason, coronary heart disease (CHD), cardiovascular disease (CVD), ischemic stroke or type 2 diabetes.

However, consumption of industrial trans fats was associated with a 34 per cent increase in death for any reason, a 28 per cent increased risk of CHD mortality, and a 21 per cent increase in the risk of CHD.

Or…
Low saturated fat diets don’t curb heart disease risk or help you live longer

Diets low in saturated fat don’t curb heart disease risk or help you live longer, says a leading US cardiovascular research scientist and doctor of pharmacy in an editorial in the open access journal Open Heart.

Now I’m the first to admit that one should tread carefully here as none of these statements has really been “proven.” (Studies need to be replicated about a billion times to really have merit.) But “The Big Fat Surprise” did make some interesting anecdotal points that stuck with me. Consider Eskimos. For years they basically ate a diet of fatty fish and game—and had rates of cardiovascular disease much lower than non-Native Americans* (e.g. white people.) Then they shifted over to the high carb diets of the white man and they were assaulted with such disease. The Masai in Africa are a similar case study.

* Here’s an interesting Discover magazine article about this called “The Inuit Paradox.”

So it seems fair to ask questions.

I’m often talking about the foibles of the medical establishment, though usually as related to pain management and such. But I’ve been reading a bit about cholesterol and it seems like conventional wisdom about several aspects of the topic has been turned on its head.

For example, the decades old advice about avoiding foods with high cholesterol (like eggs) doesn’t seem to hold up. Avoiding these foods doesn’t have much correlation with the cholesterol levels of your body. (Cholesterol is actually produced by your body.) In this case, you aren’t what you eat. Don’t take my word for it.

In February, however, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) rocked the nutrition and medical worlds by changing their tune.

In its report, the committee states: “Previously, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommended that cholesterol intake be limited to no more than 300 mg/day. The 2015 DGAC will not bring forward this recommendation because available evidence shows no appreciable relationship between consumption of dietary cholesterol and serum (blood) cholesterol. … Cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.”

Perhaps more interesting is the news on saturated fats which we’ve been advised to avoid for years because it raises cholesterol levels. You probably know that there are two types of cholesterol: Good HDL cholesterol and bad LDL cholesterol. But is LDL really bad? It turns out there are different subtypes of LDL…

LDL comes in four basic forms: a big, fluffy form known as large LDL, and three increasingly dense forms known as medium, small, and very small LDL. A diet high in saturated fat mainly boosts the numbers of large-LDL particles, while a low-fat diet high in carbohydrates propagates the smaller forms. The big, fluffy particles are largely benign, while the small, dense versions keep lipid-science researchers awake at night.

So, by advising people to avoid saturated fats and eats more carbs, health advisors may have been inadvertently raising people’s levels of really bad, small LDL cholesterol.

Oops.