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Originally Posted by Lisa N
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I am assuming we are talking about a person with a normal metabolism.
But, isn't true that in normal people, the rate at which insulin tells your body cells to use energy is only as much as is needed per amount of sugar you have in the blood? Insulin is in effect speaking to your body on behalf of the food you ate. That means the more food energy from sugar you are eating, the more energy you will receive.
In a normal person, the insulin in their body itself offers no metabolic advantages to increase metabolic rate, whereas a LC diet
does.
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Sometimes you can also become type 1 after a long enough time of being type 2.
Type 1 diabetes and type 2 have similar symptoms (uncontrolled blood sugars), but very different causes:
http://www.diabeteslead.org/300/330.html
For this reason, type 2's do not become type 1's although they can become insulin-dependent type 2's for a variety of reasons, but type 2's can eventually become insulin dependent due to beta cell burnout, not beta cell destruction (as in type 1). The end result is the same (no insulin produced by that cell any longer), but again the root cause is different. In beta cell burnout, the cells simply wear out due to high demand over a prolonged period of time, in beta cell destruction, the cells are directly attacked and destroyed.
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You are right, it wasn't accurate for me to say it is possible to become t1 after being an uncontrolled t2. The problems producing insulin associated with t1 come about by a very different mechanism than that of t2.
What I meant to (poorly) say was that eventually when you are t2 after a long enough time you can also have the problems making insulin of a t1.
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I think you're arguing two sides of the same coin here. Without the insulin, you would not experience that "sugar rush" because the sugar would have no way to get into the cells. Without the high amount of sugar/carbs, the high amounts of insulin would not be present that eventually will lead to IR in some (not all) people.
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I don't think I am arguing two different sides. I started my post saying I totally agree with Kent, that a high sugar diet causes an increase in metabolic activity rate (in that per unit of time, you will transform energy quicker if you recently ate 100 calories of sugar than if you recently ate 100 calories of fat or protein). But this is because of the way sugar is metabolized vs protein and fat, not because of insulin itself. Carbohydrate sugar eaten alone is broken down very rapidly, and floods your blood with energy. Protein is broken down into sugar slowly and steadily, as is fat synthesized into ketones, etc. It's the flood of energy causing the problem.
After a long enough time of bludgeoning your body with too much energy too quickly from a high sugar diet, the cells try to save themselves from early death by calcifying themselves to the effects of insulin. By ignoring insulin, they are also going to use less energy, and therefore age slower. Your body sends the sugar which can no longer be effectively used by the more insulin-resistant very metabolically active cells, to the more insulin-sensitive energy storing fat cells.
What I disagreed with is his over emphasis on blaming insulin. Insulin is reactionary. The cause of the problem is the diet itself, eating way too high a percentage calories from carbs
or having a genetic tendency to IR. The high levels of insulin, the body's self induced insulin resistance: these are just symptoms, reactions to the real problem, the diet itself.
Basically I look at it like this, again assuming for healthy individuals: While it is technically true that insulin contributes to an increase in metabolic rate in normal healthy people, it can and will only do this when appropriate energy intake from sugar is administered. The insulin reaction of a normal person is directly parallel to the action of eating sugar. A healthy body will
not produce insulin beyond what is needed, it only produces as much as is needed to "get the job done" and effectively allow the uptake of consumed food energy.
In other words, the insulin itself is only doing what is required of it; to get the energy "boost" you need to take that much energy in from sugar. Its the sugar calories giving the energy, by them entering the blood so rapidly. Insulin is merely doing what is required of it, and in of itself offering no metabolic benefits.
There are exceptions of course. People who are prone to hypoglycemia may for whatever medical reason produce too much insulin relative to what is needed, and in this case insulin truly is causing them to use energy
faster than they are taking it in. But, this is a condition and not how the body should normally operate. A normal body will only produce as much insulin that is required of it to deal with the sugar it has been given.
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I think a better question would be why it is that some people seem to be able to consume a high carb diet and not develop insulin resistance or diabetes. Along those lines, I think that genetics and activity levels play a big role.
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I agree completely.
Everyone
is different, some of our metabolisms are capable of handling and faring well on high-sugar. Some of us do poorly on high fat and feel sluggish and lethargic and do better with a little more carbs (yes these people do exist, you just don't hear about them often on a pro-lc website). The fact that this individual variance exists for what we do best on metabolically is strong evidence that something like metabolic typing might have some merit.
I think it is foolish to outright dismiss the possibility that
some people do better on more carb-heavy diets.