My hubby's BG numbers are too high again so I need to visit her site and see what I can find that he'll follow. He makes me crazy since he won't change his eating habits.

Recently I started reading about zinc and other minerals and vitamins for my own purpose. I found that zinc supplementation has an effect on insulin (decrease), BG (decrease), HOMA-IR (improved), IGF-1 (increase), testosterone (increase), to name a few. The implication is that diabetes type 2 is not a disorder of overeating, but a disorder of malnutrition, specifically of deficiency of certain minerals like zinc. The standard treatment includes eating less and exercising more due to the correlation between diabetes type 2 and obesity, and the assumed causality arrow between the two, with the suggestion that losing weight would improve diabetes type 2. The problem here is that eating less and exercising more would likely exacerbate the possible malnutrition and deficiencies, especially of those things which we excrete more of during exercise.

A few papers I found on the topic of zinc supplementation and the other stuff. I got more but these should serve as a good basis for further investigation, especially if you got a BG/ketones meter:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20045801
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3784553/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23955401

The point here is that I see nothing like this anywhere in the official guidelines to treat diabetes type 2 or obesity or basically any other disorder involving insulin, BG, IGF-1, and all the other stuff zinc is involved with. There's obviously ongoing research, but the discoveries don't seem to influence treatment protocols.

Here's a meta-analysis of zinc supplementation: http://www.dmsjournal.com/content/4/1/13

Zinc piqued my interest, but the first thing found is how hard it is to test reliably. Claims that each method doesn't tell the true story, so how would you know if you had a deficiency? After possibly over supplementing with VitC and finding out later that can impact blood sugar, I am leary of picking any nutrient and deciding that one would help BG levels.


Iceberg, "you can lead a horse to water, etc, etc. " Her "rules " posted on the previous page are the simplest LC guidelines I have ever seen, but he would have to change eating habits. You can totally clean out your house of foods not on plan, but can't follow him to the coffee shop. Often it takes a health crisis first for someone to be serious about diet. There are more talks you can find on the diabetes forum by other doctors, maybe another might appeal? http://youtu.be/FcLoaVNQ3rc
Or if you like Dr Hallberg's TEDTalk, her one hour class for patients from Oct 2014 adds more detail. Happy to direct you to whatever type of information will help you, but he has to be ready to hear it

I utterly believe many of our chronic illnesses come from malnutrition, but it's not as easy as "putting them back in."

• We have to know we're deficient.
• We have to know how much we do need.
• We have to know how to put it back in.
• We have to know when to stop.

Don't get me wrong; the SAD is a recipe for under-nutrition. But supplements can't fix that. The phytates in grains, the toxic effects of sugar, and the effects of insulin on the body can't be supplemented away.

Eating better is just the unavoidable first step in getting better nutrition. And I do supplement: Vitamin D3 and chelated magnesium are excellent choices for almost anyone because we are so sun-averse and our soils are known to be magnesium depleted. B complex is a good thought for beginner low carbers because it's something grains deplete and it's water soluble so the chances of overdoing it are lessened.

In order to treat my Cortisol Resistance, I'm supplementing pregnenolone, niacin, curcumin, and Lipo-C.

It's not that I'm averse to supplements. After decades of under-nutrition, I think a targeted program is an excellent idea. But it also won't make up for a bad diet.

Sorry to hear about that, that must be hard.

For you two, has it worked before to help him change, where you do the research? In my experience, it works better when the person who needs to change, does the research. in other words, you could switch from looking for programs, to looking at things that will help HIM look.

Maybe start with the "Your Own Personal Diet" or "Don't let your belly steal your breakfast " guy, Butter Bob Briggs. I wuv him.

My DD has an obese kid and she used to think it was CICO and not enough activity, while she continued to make sandwiches for his lunch, carbs for breakfast, carb for snacks, carbs for dinner.

Watching Taubes turned on the light bulb for her. Plus the butter guy. She watched Taubes and the butter guy and now he eats low carb at home because she figures he gets enough junk at kid activities - it's endless. She started talking with other moms and now His lunches are eggs, meat, cheese, carrots, and ranch. Sausages for breakfast. And he didn't whine one bit about the change! that was what she was afraid of.

My sister's husband has been listening to us blather on about low-carb for years. Really, he's never doubted it works, but actually eating that way has never appealed to him. Three weekends ago they were up at the cottage and me and Dad were going on about intermittent fasting and Dr. Jason Fung's blog. Three weeks later, and my sister says he's lost a bunch of weight, his blood pressure has gone down, etc. We weren't really trying to convert him or anything, it's just something we talk about a lot anyways, and he just happened to be here while we were doing that. You never know when something's going to just sort of click for somebody. Somebody who's not yet willing to change what they eat might find skipping breakfast more appealing. Or being allowed all the foods they would normally have eaten, but within an eight-hour eating window. This that and the other would improve blood glucose etc., faster, but this or that still has some benefit.

Anyways, if you just keep the information out there--which you naturally would anyways, just by staying on-plan--you just never know when it might sink in.

Well, I was just trying to make a point about the official guidelines and standard treatment protocols and how basically none of it reflects the findings from those papers I found while I was researching for my own purpose. I wasn't extrapolating from my experience to the rest of us, but my own experience helps me understand what I find in those papers and vice versa. Specifically for zinc, I suggested anybody could test that with a BG/ketone meter cuz of the effect of zinc on BG/insulin, with ketones being a proxy for insulin level. I mentioned zinc because of the effect I read in those papers. BG and insulin are primary factors for the topic of this thread. Indeed, some of the papers I read look at the correlation between zinc and diabetes type 2, either as preventive or curative. If I understand correctly, preventive doesn't seem to work, but curative seems to work to some degree due to the effect on BG/insulin/HOMA-IR. The implication here is that whatever causes diabetes type 2 also causes zinc deficiency, if not in parallel, at least down the line.

To answer your question, how would I know if I had a deficiency. I can't be sure if all I know is what effect I get from supps, if I don't look at internal status with blood work for example. But it's simple logic. The premise is there's homeostasis of everything, and this requires adequate intake and internal status. (Above this adequate level, excess is stored or excreted, but this doesn't serve our purpose here. We're dealing with toxic effects of excess at this point.) Lack of adequate intake and status suggests supplementation will likely have an effect. Therefore if there is an effect, then it's likely there was a deficiency. However, the logic doesn't necessarily go in reverse, i.e. if there is a deficiency, then supplementation will have an effect. That's because if there's multiple deficiencies, and we only supplement with one, we're left with other deficiencies that could prevent the supps from having its effect. It's the water barrel analogy. This is one reason why many supps come combined with other supps, like vitD+calcium, CalMag, or plain old multi-vit, etc. So you can see why I can't be sure there is or was a deficiency, but you can also see it's a reasonable way to see possible deficiencies.

In my journal, you can read about the vitamin A protocol I did recently. I saw a tremendous effect on specific symptoms. Here too, I can't be sure, but the effect was so strong and obvious and immediate and up to now persistent, there's very little doubt in my mind.

What she said. There are so many inter-dependencies, so many nutrients need to be presented in the right food context to be absorbed properly, and there are surely many more vital nutrients that we haven't even discovered yet. I think it is quite presumptuous of us humans to think we can pop a few pills to replace thousands of years of evolution--like we know better than nature what we need! Or where to stop supplementation. There is absolutely no substitute for a good diet. And I also have zero trust in the USDA dietary guidelines for nutrition.

That said, if it can be shown a likely reason why I might be deficient in a certain nutrient, and the dosage is physiologically reasonable, I would consider supplementation. Such as in the case of Omega-3 oils when I'm not eating pasture-raised meat all the time. But supplementation based on symptoms really seems like shooting in the dark to me.

Well yes, it is like shooting in the dark, at first. But later on when you've accumulated data in your logs, you're no longer shooting in the dark. Also, it's not like we start with zero info about symptoms. We got tons of resources - like this forum and its many members and this very thread about Sarah's Ted Talk - to tell us possible causes of those symptoms. But I agree we gotta reason it out and it starts with a good diet.

I'm going to write that phrase on the inside of my eyelids. I want to be able to repeat it to newbies who come here, seeming to think this WOE is a quick fix. "I'll just lose the weight and then go back to life as usual." It took me all these years to realize this has to be my 'life as usual.' Thanks, Janet.

I just saw this on Dr. Hallberg's Facebook page and got excited. She's looking for participants for a two-year trial.




I like that they will be checking for plaque build up via carotid ultrasound. We need more studies like this with harder endpoints than just risk factors. It's not clear if there will just be the one test or if only one test is free. There would have to be at least two test to be meaningful in any way.

It'd be better to recruit subjects who aren’t already low carbing though, or the results won't seem as dramatic.

Disclaimer: I am not Dr. Sarah Hallberg.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3...RUbmktdjBB/view

Well, hell, I'm too old! Oh well. Let us know how it works out.

...and too healthy A candidate also needs a current diagnosis of T2 diabetes/pre-diabetes, be overweight or obese, and ideally can drive to Lafayette weekly and have an insurance company to pay for all those weight management appointments. That note about additional exclusions may be if you are currently eating LowCarb, or not on any diabetes meds or don't have a significant amount of weight left to lose.. you may be excluded. I question mixing a distance and local program but option 2 indicates they will get the same advice.
The $ incentive to stay with the program two years isn't much, but just being part of a study and "the group" may give participants a good incentive to change their habits. Great opportunity for someone in Indiana

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_...1&v=da1vvigy5tQ

Can a person be "cured" of Type 2 Diabetes? Dr. Sarah Hallberg provides compelling evidence that it can, and the solution is simpler than you might think.