Thanks Dr. A., never knew dairy had sugar. Just a sincere request,  Please  include this wonderful resource in all your future books and PBS specials. It is a lifeline for me! Thank you and your team SO much!

Is that true?  I had not heard of that before. 

Yes raymondagaydos, that is true.  Something like up to 58% of the protein you eat could be converted to sugar if the body seems to need it.  If you don’t consume enough protein, the body will go after your muscles. If too much protein, then it can convert what you eat to sugar for storage — think fat.  Each person has different protein consumption needs, but keep in mind that it must also be high quality, “clean” protein free of herbicides, pesticides, and if animal protein, only from organically raised, non-GMO, hormone/antibiotic free animals.

Thank you, Coach Zoe. I have been using cinnamon in my smoothies for years. 🙂 I am reading the 10-day detox solution and following it. (Got it on Saturday!) Hopefully that will help knock things into place. My health care person doesn’t know about any of this; she’s with Kaiser, and they just keep telling me to exercise–which I have been doing. I will look into the alpha-lipoic acid. I’m hoping that in a short while I will be in better shape. I am throwing away a lot of stuff from our cabinets that I didn’t realize was so terrible, and using nuts and whole foods–which take up less room and taste yummy. And no dairy!

So far I seem to have lost about 5″ around my waist, so that’s good. I will get the blood sugar retested at the end of the month. Dr. Amen’s interview with Dr. Ludwig was immensely helpful–perfect timing for me!

Hi, swilgenburg.  I overcame Type 2 Diabetes 4 years ago using a very low simple carb Paleo strategy along with some critical supplements like, chromium,, magnexium alpha lipoic acid, acetyl L-carnitine, gymnema sylvestre, glucomannan, and berberine, along with Burst Training exercise.  It worked for me, but I must also say, IMO, you must measure every day, many times a day. 

Get a meter and some test strips, and test everything you eat to find out what the post prandial curve looks.  You can then find out exactly which foods are a problem for you, and which are not.  The curve I am looking for is one that peaks at about 1 hr, then goes back to baseline at about 2 hrs and stays there until the next time I eat. 

To know what your curve looks like, you need to keep a journal of what you eat, how much and when.  Test immediately before, then at 1 hr, 2 hr, 3 hr and 4 hr intervals.  I like to see a peak post prandial (after a meal) in the 25 pt range above baseline, tapering off to baseline by the 2nd hr.  If you get really high values, and/or slow tapering of the curve, remove that food item from your diet.  I was stunned when I tested my favorite breakfast — cooked rolled oats without additives — and it shot my blood sugar up about 90 points.  That was the last time I ever ate it.  Within 6 weeks of testing and adjusting, along with supplements and Burst Training, I had daily blood sugar in the 85 – 115 range throughout the day including 1 hr post prandials.  BTW, I also lost about 80 lbs, and I am now at a weight that works for me, and it is really easy to maintain.

To find out how your body reacts to the food you eat, get a meter and use it!!

Thank you. It’s wonderful how much your life has improved. It will be interesting to see how much has changed. So much to learn. Thank you for your encouragement!

Also, scale back on the protein and replace with high quality fat — healthy, free of herbicides/pesticides, etc. — i.e., free-range eggs, range-fed beef, uncured organically raised bacon, wild caught fatty fish, and foods like avocados and avocado oil, olives and olive oil, coconut oil and other forms of coconut, macadamia nuts, walnuts, pecans, Brazil nuts, cashews and some almonds.  I don’t count calories (a totally useless measure of nutrition), but if I did, fat would be at the top of the list, followed by high fiber carbs, then healthy protein which puts me in a state of nutritional ketosis.  In fact, today when my blood sugar started to rise from the 80s to the low 100s even though I did not eat anything (a sign of possible conversion of protein to sugar), I made a chocolate avocado mousse including a raw free-range egg (think high quality fat) and an hour later my blood sugar was back in the 80s.  Also, try to have a limited eating window of 6 – 8 hrs during the middle of the day when your energy level is, or needs to be, the highest, then fast the rest of the day.  Above all, do not eat within 3 hrs of bedtime — 5 hrs is even better.

Thank you. I am doing precisely the same thing. That’s why I’m beginning to question my insulin levels. I am not Type 2–insulin resistant. If so, this would not have occurred. I am fairly tall and athletic, and have eaten a low-carb diet for almost ten years now. Even so, the numbers are drifting up. I think I need to have fasting blood insulin checked. That’s the missing half of the story for me, I’m pretty sure. 

Did you mean Type 2 insulin dependent?  Anyway, fasting insulin along with fasting glucose is needed to get a clue if higher levels of glucose are a result of insulin resistance (high fasting insulin) or insufficient insulin production.  A more reliable, but not all that pleasant test is an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test where both glucose and insulin are tracked at fixed intervals after drinking a measured amount of glucose.
That said, the high protein factor is also essential.  Too much protein will lead to gluconeogenesis (making glucose out of protein) which is not only harmful (produces lots of metabolic pollution causing oxidative stress), but raises glucose levels even though you have not eaten any simple carbs.  Also, fasting glucose, while interesting, is not enough.  It is sometimes high in the morning as a result of the wakeup cycle where your liver dumps glucose into the blood stream because you will need it for energy after you wake up.  You need to find out what your glucose levels are doing throughout the day, both before and after eating.  Get a glucose meter and test strips if you do not have one and test, test, test.!!  Try a period of daily fasting, usually in the morning, and track glucose levels at frequent intervals (30 or 45 mins) to see if it goes down, bottoms out and turns back up even though you did not eat anything.  That is often a sign that protein is being converted to glucose.  There is a lot more to this, but remember, if you don’t measure, you don’t know.

How right you are about the need to give them up and how hard that can be.  I read a report on an animal study that showed rats actually preferred sugar to cocaine!! 

And if simple carbs also raise serotonin levels, that will also contribute to the addiction, right?  I just coached one of my clients who loves Italian pasta because it makes him “feel good” that he might try 5-HTP supplementation instead to see if that would help him to start removing grains from his diet.