Just Read: What should people with diabetics eat? Study of a low-calorie ketogenic diet

Just catching up on my blogging and continuing a closer look at nutrition and health.

This paper discusses a different and emerging approach about diet in people with diabetes, beginning with the declaration that we really don’t know what the optimal diet for people with diabetic is:

The optimal degree of caloric restriction and macronutrient distribution of medical nutritional therapy in T2DM is not well defined.

Traditionally, a low-fat diet has been prescribed, which really is a high-carbohydrate diet that brings with it questions about why feeding carbohydrates to people who are intolerant of them makes sense.

In this intervention, subjects were divided and some were feed a ketogenic (higher fat, lower carbohydrate) diet. In medical school, we’re taught that ketones are a bad thing because of their association with a life-threatening condition known as keto-acidosis. However, in people who have some insulin left, ketones become an alternate fuel from the breakdown of fat.

The diet used here appears to be a little “engineered” compared to what I have read is also done, which is little to no calorie restriction.

And…the results show significant weight loss, glucose control, and as seen in other studies, a significant drop in triglycerides, that other under-emphasized lipid in our training (I’ll post on that later).

Interestingly, I ran across this medical practice based in San Francisco (@VirtaHealth) using this approach to achieve better outcomes in Diabetes. So, I suppose this is becoming a thing. With science attached to it, including its own published intervention trial.

Maybe we are set to really change the way we think about healthy eating….

Ted Eytan, MD