Philip wrote:
>>First, I decided to upgrade to a new meter. You can get them for free
>>from various places; I used http://onetouch.orderpoints.com/.
>>
>>
>
>Thanks for the tip. What is your opinion of this meter?
>
>
I'm no expert. It's faster than my old meter, needs less blood to work,
and gives a plasma-calibrated readout. I think the latter is important,
since that's what the labs use. It beats doing the conversion
manually. But I haven't tried a lot of other meters so I can't really
give a comparative review. If you do a web search on "free blood
glucose meter" you'll find that there are a number of companies giving
them away, at least in the US. They do this because they make most of
their money on the test strips, so if you get the meter, you'll be
buying their strips. Test strips aren't cheap. If you can get your
doctor to write a prescription for them, so much the better, but I don't
know if the insurance companies will let them do that if you don't have
a diagnosis of diabetes. I actually don't imagine there are that many
people who *want* to do this unless they have to. Diabetics often test
three or four times a day (or should), and complain that their
fingertips get sore from all the punctures. The newer meters will let
you use blood from the forearms too, but it's still a nuisance. Now
that I have a pretty good picture of what's going on. I won't be
testing every day--probably just a few times a week.
>>... To my surprise, my
>>fasting BG (mid-afternoon) is 78-80, which is a respectable HG level,
>>and definitely the lowest I've ever tested in 3 or 4 years of having a
>>meter. ...
>>
>>
>
>That's great news, Todd!
>
>
Yep, it's very pleasing to get some quick validation.
>It looks like the addition of intermittent fasting to eating the right
>foods is giving you added benefits, just like you predicted. If you are
>able to maintain or further improve on this level of progress, will you
>try to report it to any of the IF scientists or Paleolithic nutrition
>scientists? I would be interested in it if I were one of them.
>
>
I will. Of course, since I'm not enrolled in any study my results are
strictly anecdotal, but I imaging they would still be interested.
>What is the hypothesized mechanism of IF? Could the long hours of no
>food sort of calm down or de-sensitize the insulin metabolism in the way
>that avoiding foods containing "foreign" (identified as antigens)
>proteins tends to calm the immune system?
>
>
The mechanism isn't understood yet, but there's some interesting
research indicating that brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) plays
an important role in regulating both appetite and glucose metabolism.
When BDNF levels are significantly higher or lower than normal (where in
animals "normal" is defined as what they would be in the wild state),
disorders appear, including obesity, insulin resistance, etc. It has
been known for a while that caloric restriction tends to return BDNF to
normal, but it was impossible to figure out whether this, or just the
weight loss, was fixing the metabolic problems. But now the preliminary
studies indicate the intermittent fasting does the same thing even when
there is no net restriction of calories (i.e., giving mice twice the
chow every other day). When you do IF in an ad libitum way, most people
and mice will consume somewhat fewer calories anyway, especially after
adaptation. The hypothesis is that going without food for a length of
time creates a certain kind of stress on the nervous system, and the
adaptation to that stress is beneficial. But there's a lot still to
learn about it.
In his blog on the subject, Mike Eades indicates that when doing IF you
can get away with eating more carbs, and still get the benefits. This
may be so, but I've found in my own case that it makes compliance
harder. In fact, when I tried this before, I wasn't able to stay with
it very long, and I believe that's why. Eating a liberal amount of
carbs at my one meal would tend to make me crave more of them later in
the evening and especially the next day. On my current regimen, as the
third week ends, I can honestly say that I don't even think about eating
until about 4:00 pm. It took about ten days to get to that point,
however. This is why some suggest a more gradual approach, first
skipping breakfast, then delaying lunch, and so on. I'm sure there are
many ways to do it. The Eades suggest an alternate-day approach: Have
breakfast and lunch, and maybe an afternoon snack, then stop eating at
6:00pm, and don't eat again until after 6:00pm the following day. The
DIF routine that I'm following actually involves more fasting time per
week than their routine, but the main reason I follow it is that it
suits me psychologically.
Todd Moody
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