140412 Diabetic Athletes on a Low Carb Diet

From an athlete's discussion of low-carb diets:

What if someone’s afraid of fat, but they understand they need to cut back on carbs.  So they eat a 14 ounce steak at night to get energy from the protein in the steak.  Are they doing what you recommend.The Inuit were not a literate culture, meaning they didn’t write down what they ate.  But people who lived among the Inuit and, I think, accurately recorded it, pointed out that the Inuit avoided actually eating lots of lean meat.  They had a name for an illness that happened if they ate too much protein and not enough fat.  The English translated the name of that sickness as “rabbit illness,” because, if the Inuit had run short of their winter supply of food, the spring rabbits they could hunt were extremely lean, and eating too many made the Inuit feel sick.  If the Inuit killed a caribou that was not yet fattened up in the Spring yet, they would preferentially eat the tongue and the bone marrow and the liver, which are the fattiest parts of the animal.  They would save the roasts and steaks, which we consider the delicacies, those were saved for the dogs, because that was more lean, and a dog’s metabolism is more suited to handling a high protein meal.  The Inuit instinctively understood that.  They saved the fat for themselves, and they gave the lean to the dogs.  That way they saved themselves from gastrointestinal upset, swelling, malaise and in the most severe cases, kidney disease. -- Steve Phinney

Primitive cultures don't have a lot of time for philosophy; they usually stick with what works. Our modern diet is based as much on philosophy as evidence. The latest dietary recommendations put out by the US government cite global warming as a reason to eat or to avoid certain foods. "Nutrition be d*****!" they seem to say. I am not liking this. I used to joke that people of the future would look back at these times, point, and laugh. Now I am sure of it.

The body's storehouse of carbohydrates is limited to about 1500 calories. Fat stores are limited to the amount of fat a person has, which for the average person at his recommended weight is 40,000 or more. This man was talking about how low-carb diets take two weeks to transition the body from burning sugar to burning fat. Once that point is passed, however, one never again 'hits the wall' during extreme exercise. Good to know. That means I have another seven days before I can assume that my blood sugar won't crash during exercise. Yesterday, I ran out of steam after an hour of low impact aerobics. This is still much better than I was a couple of weeks ago.

Two weeks ago, I had another low-blood sugar incident. I was shopping and almost collapsed. I had to be helped to the car. Agent Em said I smelled sickly sweet. It took me three days to recover. After talking with some of my diabetic friends, I learned that all my symptoms were similar to theirs. My last blood glucose analysis some years ago had me borderline. I am proceeding as if I were indeed Type II diabetic like my mom and grandmother were. I've also slipped into Stage III of obesity. More on that later. Time to swim.