A classic study conducted back in 1927 by Dr. Shirley Sweeney clearly told us which aspects of the diet cause diabetes [1], but the underlying mechanisms wasn’t discovered until later. What Sweeney did was he took four groups of college students and fed them different diets and then he measured their fasting blood-sugar.
Group-1 were put on a high-carbohydrate diet; consisting of: sugar, candy, syrup, baked-potatoes, oatmeal, white-bread and pasta.
Group-2 were put on a high-protein diet; consisting of: lean-meat, lean-fish and egg-whites.
Group-3 were put on a high-fat diet; consisting of: olive-oil, butter, mayonnaise and egg-yolks.
Group-4 were put on a fasting-diet or temporary starvation.
Sweeney tested the blood-sugar of each of the groups and found that all of the groups were diabetic except for the high-carbohydrate group. People on the high-protein diet however, were somewhat less diabetic than the students in the high-fat group, in which some were considered severely diabetic.
He took one student from Group-1 and switched with over to group-3 and found that he quickly went from being non-diabetic to diabetic.
Dr. Walter Kempner of Duke University realized the importance of this classic study which inspired him to create: The Rice Diet, which was composed of rice, fruit and sucrose. He created this diet in order to save people who had sever diabetes and suffering all the complications of diabetes, like kidney-failure, retinopathy, atherosclerosis, hypertension, obesity… these people were extremely sick and diabetic, their bodies were falling apart at an accelerated rate due to a lack of insulin.
Kempner knew this and figured these people needed to be on an extremely high-carb/fat-free diet, the kind of diet Sweeney used in his classic study… so he gave them fruit and rice (which do contain trace amounts of essential-fats) along with sucrose.
What he found, and what was reported back in the scientific-literature in the 1950’s, was that diabetes and all the diseases that stem from insulin-resistance were completely reversed with The Rice Diet [2-4].
Another important study conducted in 1971 by Brunzell et al. He took people that were insulin-resistant and had them on a diet that was 45% sucrose and then put them on a diet that was 85% sucrose, what they found was that all aspects of the insulin-resistance got better; insulin-sensitivity, fasting blood-sugar, fasting insulin, etc [5].
Studies from the Pritikin Longevity Center, which uses a very low-fat diet based on beans, grains, vegetables and fruit with lean proteins in small amounts… combined with daily exercise, has also been shown numerous times to completely reverse diabetes and metabolic-syndrome [6]. The Pritikin-diet is: 75% carbohydrate/15% protein/10% fat. A diet similar to Sweeney’s.
Sweeney’s experiment was considered a huge paradox, why would consuming sugar lower the levels of blood-sugar in the body? And how could eating fat cause a huge rise in blood-sugar?
The epidemiological data also seemed to support this strange paradox, such as immigrants from Oriental countries who get the majority of their calories from white-rice are normally free of diabetes, yet when migrating to the USA or Europe, they quickly develop diabetes once they consume less rice and more animal-protein and total fats and oils [7].
But with the primary study conducted by Sweeney, followed by epidemiological observations, the use of The Rice Diet to cure metabolic-syndrome by Kempner and clinical studies conducted by the Pritikin Longevity Center, all seem to indicate that carbohydrates makes diabetes better not, worse… which is what we commonly hear today.
Brunzell even stated in his research paper: “This data suggests that the high carbohydrate diet increased the sensitivity of peripheral tissues to insulin.”
Sooo…
The explanation of this paradox lies in the metabolic control of gluconeogenesis, which is your body’s way of making glucose, when it is needed by the body. The brain and the red-blood cells must have glucose to function properly. When you restrict glucose from the diet (like what happened in groups 2, 3, and 4) the body will actually begin to undergo gluconeogenesis, in order to make more glucose for the brain and blood-cells. It does this by converting branched-chained-amino-acids (BCAA’s) into glucose.
There is a feedback mechanism in the body that closely monitors glucose metabolism. If you eat lots of glucose, the body doesn’t need to synthesize any more glucose. If you restrict carbohydrates and glucose, then the body will make more of it and release it into circulation. The release of glucose into the circulation (via gluconeogenesis) is what caused the elevated blood-sugars found in groups 2, 3, and 4.
Insulin is the main regulator of gluconeogenesis, when insulin is secreted, gluconeogenesis is inhibited and blood-sugar is soaked up by the muscles and liver and converted into glycogen. This causes a decrease in blood-sugar and also allows leptin to make its way thru the blood-brain-barrier, thus turning off your appetite.
The problem is that fat and protein don’t cause insulin-secretion like carbohydrates do, thus with less insulin-secretion, blood-glucose cannot be converted into glycogen and stored away in the muscle and liver… plus gluconeogenesis cannot be inhibited. Thus the blood-sugar stays elevated and continues to rise as gluconeogensis stays uninhibited from the absence of insulin, due to a lack of carbohydrates.
The reason why fasting causes diabetes long term, is due once again, to a lack of insulin-secretion.; without adequate insulin-secretion, gluconeogenesis and lipolysis remain uninhibited, thus you see an increase in blood-sugar and free-fatty-acids observed in diabetes.
[1] Arch Intern Med (Chic). 1927;40(6):818-830. Dietary Factors That Influence The Dextrose Tolerance Test. Sweeney S.
[2] Am J Med. 1948 Apr;4(4):545-77. Treatment of hypertensive vascular disease with rice diet. KEMPNER W.
[3] Postgrad Med. 1958 Oct;24(4):359-71. Effect of rice diet on diabetes mellitus associated with vascular disease. KEMPNER W, PESCHEL RL, SCHLAYER C.
[4] Z Klin Med. 1954;152(4):328-45. Effect of rice diet in experimental hypertension and in patients with heart, kidney and vascular diseases. KEMPNER W.
[6] N Engl J Med. 1971 Mar 11;284(10):521-4. Improved glucose tolerance with high carbohydrate feeding in mild diabetes. Brunzell JD, Lerner RL, Hazzard WR.
[5] Diabetes Care. 1983 May-Jun;6(3):268-73. Long-term use of a high-complex-carbohydrate, high-fiber, low-fat diet and exercise in the treatment of NIDDM patients. Barnard RJ, Massey MR, Cherny S.
[7] Food Nutr Res. 2012;56. Changes in dietary habits after migration and consequences for health: a focus on South Asians in Europe. Holmboe-Ottesen G, Wandel M.
Edited by misterE, 30 July 2013 - 05:14 AM.
