Quieting the insulin storm

1. November 2008 William Davis (15)
The cycle of eating, satiety, and hunger is largely driven by insulin and blood sugar responses.

For instance, if I eat a bowl of Cheerios, my blood sugar will surge to 140 mg/dl or higher (how high depending on insulin sensitivity). The flood of sugar from this Frankenfood triggers the release of insulin; blood sugar then settles back down.

The decline in blood sugar back down to normal or below normal powerfully triggers hunger. Variable degrees of shakiness, mental fogginess, and irritability also commonly occur. Most people experience this to some extent; some experience an exagerrated version called "reactive hypoglycemmia" and can suffer peculiar personality changes, irrational and even violent behavior.

Foods made with wheat or cornstarch raise blood sugar higher and faster than table sugar. Accordingly, blood sugar and insulin swing more widely with these food: highs are higher, lows are lower. People who therefore follow the standard mantra of "eat plenty of healthy whole grains" therefore experience a 2-3 hour long cycle of eating, brief satiety, and recurrent hunger. Cravings for snacks, impulsive eating, and overeating all occur during the period when blood sugar has dropped and hunger is powerfully triggered.

Eliminating this up and down fluctuation is therefore key to regaining control over appetite, losing weight, reducing small LDL and triglycerides, reducing blood sugar, and putting out the fires of inflammatory responses.

You can accomplish this by:

1) Eliminating foods that trigger the exagerrated rises in blood sugar--Wheat, cornstarch, polished rices, white and red potatoes, and candy.

2) Adding a healthy oil to every meal--a strategy that prolongs satiety and helps suppress sugar-insulin fluctuations.


The ful nuts and bolts details of this diet will be released with the New Track Your Plaque Diet. Part I has already been released; part II is coming any day on the Track Your Plaque website.
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Comments (15) -

  • Anne

    11/2/2008 11:08:00 AM |

    I bought your book 'Track Your Plaque' just over eight months ago and I am rather upset that you are bringing out changes to it which are only available to members of the TYP website. I cannot afford to join TYP and I guess the book is now out of date in parts :-(

    Anne

  • Peter Silverman

    11/2/2008 12:29:00 PM |

    I have to wonder why the countries that eat huge amounts of rice, Japan for instance, usually have such low rates of diabetes and heart disease.

  • Anonymous

    11/2/2008 7:00:00 PM |

    It's all quite confusing: Doctors such as Gundry advise eating even whole fruit, while other such as McDougall and Ornish say eat all you want. This simply shows that insulin control is poorly understood. What's a body to do?

  • madcook

    11/3/2008 1:19:00 AM |

    I am so looking forward to the debut of your new TYP diet plan.  Part I was interesting, but I am really looking forward having all the details in a concise format.

    I am also looking forward to the updated edition of Track Your Plaque, which I believe is due out next Spring.  We have learned so much about prevention and reversal in the past 5 or so years, an update is the logical progression!

    Thanks for all of your efforts on this blog, and on the TYP website.

    Terri
    madcook

  • Scott Miller

    11/3/2008 3:59:00 AM |

    Dr. Davis, I have spent 4-5 hours this weekend reading your blog, from the oldest post to the newest. I am a self-taught wellness expert (relative to most people--always learning, of course) of 12 years, having read over 200 books, and countless articles, blogs, newsletters, and I participate in numerous health forums. I specifically focus on longevity techniques, including strength training, nutrition, HRT and supplements (90-ish daily). At 47 yrs I'm in superb health, 11% bodyfat, and look 35-ish to most people. I test over 125 bio-markers 3 times every 2 years, via Kronos Labs.

    Anyway, I think your blog is superb and I have already begun recommending it to many others--as an influential person in the longevity community, I hope it drums up more readers for your enlightened straight talk.

    As enlightened as you are (relative to the vast majority of your colleagues), there are still numerous areas you haven't touched upon that are greatly beneficial to the goal of preventing & reversing heart disease. For example, the reduction and/or reversing of advanced glycation end-products, which is a key component to my supplement program, and many others in a similar position as me. Also, free testosterone is another critical factor that correlates with heart disease (practically all men over 35 have reduced free testosterone, leading to reduced vascular protection).

    Practically *everything* you have written agrees with the basic truths we've come to understand in the longevity community, such as grains being unhealthy, along with oxidized small LDL, low-fat diets (my diet is approx. 50% fat in terms of cals), and so on. Plus, you've accepted and seen the importance of D3, K2, you gave one post to cocoa (cocoa deserves a LOT more attention!), and you've mentioned resveratrol. But you're missing several others that can significant help, such as pomegranate extract (punicalagins), blueberry extract (pterostilebene--a resveratrol-like molecule), and GliSODin (brand name for a supp that elevates the plaque reversing natural antioxidant, sodium dismutase).

    Keep up the great crusade! But for all of us, there's still more to learn...

  • Anonymous

    11/3/2008 7:24:00 AM |

    I don't know what a "body" is to do, but apparently what PETA members are doing is trolling the net in a desperate attempt to spread disinformation about low-carb, since the science is so persuasively in its favor.

    "Poorly understood" my ass!

  • Anne

    11/3/2008 12:11:00 PM |

    I have had great success in reducing my blood sugar spikes by using a glucometer to identify foods that cause it to rise. I have found I can have fruit if I keep the serving very small. I do best with berries. My blood sugar use to zoom up to 200 after eating, now I can keep my blood sugar from going over 120 with food choices alone. I hope this is low enough.

    I followed the directions in Blood Sugar 101 on how/when to use the glucometer. Blood Sugar 101 is a blog and a book.

    Gluten Free Anne

  • Anonymous

    11/3/2008 6:19:00 PM |

    " I have to wonder why the countries that eat huge amounts of rice, Japan for instance, usually have such low rates of diabetes and heart disease."

    But don't individual Japanese tend to eat small portions frequently as opposed to the mounds that we Westerners consume at a sitting.

  • Dr. William Davis

    11/3/2008 8:23:00 PM |

    Hi, Scott--

    Thanks for your kind comments.

    Some of these topics are covered in the Track Your Plaque website. Others, like the Superoxide Dismutase, I am awaiting more persuasive real human experience with.

    I am also mindful of not deconstructing diet too much. In other words, I'd like to avoid replacing healthy foods with isolated components that recreate the effect of these foods.

    Nonetheless, your observation is similar to mine: many of us are heading in parallel in the same direction.

  • Dr. William Davis

    11/3/2008 8:27:00 PM |

    Peter--

    I am half Japanese and my Mom would cook us traditional Japanese fare when we were kids.

    Yes, we did eat rice, but the portions were modest. Rice also seems to lack the addiction potential of wheat and doesn't quite trigger blood sugar quite as profoundly. That said, I still think we should minimize our exposure to rice and rice products.

  • Scott Miller

    11/4/2008 3:07:00 AM |

    Something else I will add just as food for thought. Just as there are natural solutions to reversing heart disease and calcification (although, few doctors practise these solutions due the the extreme bias of using FDA-approved solutions), there are ALSO non-FDA-approved, yet highly effective ways of beating cancer, even many if not most terminal cancers.

    You will not find these solutions with the conventional wisdom of the American medical system.  But again, just as they exist for heart disease, there's a whole set of solutions that also work against cancer.  In fact, some of these solutions are the same, such as resveratrol, marine-based omega-3's and vit. D3.  Resveratrol, especially, deserves special mention as it combats cancer in the five currently known ways that cancer can be defeated, and without any negative effects.  No FDA-approved drug attacks cancer in more than one of these five ways, and none are side effect free.

    Many people have been cured of terminal cancer, by taking matters into their own hands, including a 70-yr-old genetic biologist who started mega-dosing on resveratrol after learning he only had a few months to live with leukemia -- that was four years ago, and he shows no signs of this cancer.

    Oncologist are just as bad as most cardiologist (of which Dr. Davis is a rare exception) when it comes to using money-making treatments like radiation and toxic chemo, while not recommending their patients, for example, stop eating simple carbs and grains, which merely feed cancer's growth like pouring gas on a fire.

    I wish we had a blog written by a practising oncologist as enlightened as Dr. Davis. The results would be just as fantastic, because the solutions to cancer are just as real and effect as the solutions to reversing heart disease.

  • Anna

    11/4/2008 7:23:00 PM |

    Peter,

    Have you ever been to Japan?   The differences between Japan and the US are far more complex than diet book writers and epidemiologists like to suggest.   Yet they can't resist distilling one or two obvious features of Japanese diets as reasons for better health and longevity.  But it wouldn't be wise (it's already been done with soy and that's been a huge, sad joke).  

    Aside from the huge differences between American and Japanese diets, cooking methods, and food production systems, we must consider vastly different social norms, which can't be overlooked.  

    America is a nation of people focussed on their individuality; Japan is a nation of people focussed on the group.  Those powerfully opposing ways of interacting.  I'm  not suggesting one is better than the other, just that they provide a different context to life in each place.  

    Even if we adopted a handful of Japanese foods that were scientifically proven to be of benefit to longevity and health, without the overall context of food and living in Japanese culture, I seriously doubt we'd start to see even a glimpse of Japan's health and longevity statistics here.

  • Dr. B G

    11/5/2008 6:14:00 AM |

    Scott,

    You make interesting parallel observations.

    Oncologists are often reimbursed by the RADS (dose of radiation) ordered.  There currently is no incentive for radiation-sparing treatment in other words. Much like cardiovascular prevention, my understanding is that no ICD (billing code) exists for obtaining reimbursement for consultation, nutritional counseling or office visits for coronary prevention at this time (in Medicare or elsewhere).

    Sad state of affairs, right?

    It's all upon the shoulders of self-empowered, fully-aware, intelligent people like you who do not feel entitled to a 'MAGIC PILL' that will solve everything...  ha haaa!

    -G

  • Dr. B G

    11/5/2008 6:14:00 AM |

    Scott,

    You make interesting parallel observations.

    Oncologists are often reimbursed by the RADS (dose of radiation) ordered.  There currently is no incentive for radiation-sparing treatment in other words. Much like cardiovascular prevention, my understanding is that no ICD (billing code) exists for obtaining reimbursement for consultation, nutritional counseling or office visits for coronary prevention at this time (in Medicare or elsewhere).

    Sad state of affairs, right?

    It's all upon the shoulders of self-empowered, fully-aware, intelligent people like you who do not feel entitled to a 'MAGIC PILL' that will solve everything...  ha haaa!

    -G

  • buy jeans

    11/2/2010 8:25:30 PM |

    Eliminating this up and down fluctuation is therefore key to regaining control over appetite, losing weight, reducing small LDL and triglycerides, reducing blood sugar, and putting out the fires of inflammatory responses

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