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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