Protein causes insulin release also? So what CAN we eat then?

I've been trying to figure out how insulin works so I can modify my diet, and I've been off the carbs as much as possible to get my insulin levels down and my candida levels down also because I do have an overgrowth, but now I'm reading that protein causes insulin release also. AND ontop of that, proteins that are not used up in the body to build muscle are later converted to sugar and raise insulin even more! So if carbs and proteins raise insulin, what CAN we eat? Just high fat foods?

Your problem is that you believe insulin is inherently evil. We need to stop with all-or-nothing ways of thinking. First it was fats, now it is carbs/insulin. Your body did not create insulin arbitrarily. It is a very important hormone. The problem, as with most things, comes from abuse.

Ideally you want the insulin response to food to be carefully measured and relatively slight. All sugars--refined and natural--cause an oversecretion of insulin. In other words, your body releases far more insulin than is necessary to "get the job done." In time, this causes insulin resistance and a host of hormonal problems (indeed, 2 of IH's "top 6" supplements are intended to combat this very thing).

But eating too few carbs is just as bad (if not worse). Your brain needs glucose for fuel. When the body is short on glucose, it triggers a famine mode. This skews hormones towards cortisol dominance, leads to lowered metabolism, and causes a breakdown in muscle tissue, among other things.

The key here is two factors: (1) quantity and (2) quality. You should avoid eating too many carbs with a meal. Regarding quantity, 50 grams should be the upper limit unless you are extremely active. This works out to a serving of rice, oatmeal, a couple slices of good quality sourdough, or a moderately sized potato. Regarding quality, as much as possible you should avoid sugar, both natural and refined. The refined is obvious, but the natural sugars (particularly fruit) are not as obvious. Our culture has romanticized fruit consumption because it is "natural" and raw, but the fact is that never in man's history has fruit consumption comprised a large part of the diet on a consistent basis. From an insulin standpoint, it is not very different from refined sugar. (BTW, I think most people sense this when they eat sweet fruit, but ignore that realization because they want to believe that it is okay. They rationalize that it is natural and therefore must be okay. Also, since they've demonized starch, this is the only thing left. As a result, they will cling to it for all they're worth.)

Obviously, avoid refined starch and stick to the natural types. Whole oats, tubers, whole grains (rice, quinoa), etc. A good quality sourdough (stoneground) would be as "refined" as you should go.

BTW, this is not just the latest dietary "fad"; this is the same model that cultures across the world have been using for centuries. Note also that the temptation to overconsume starch disappears when one eliminates sugar. It is the sugar that leads to the overconsumption of starch, not starch per se.

EIC,

Is there any evidence that early man did not consume fruit on a regular basis, or is this just theory? How could we have actual evidence of this?

It just seems odd to me that with all the different kinds of wild fruits and berries that there are, combined with the need for much more energy for hunting, gathering, mating, and fighting/fleeing, that we wouldn't have been eating fruits whenever possible. I would guess that fruits would have been more abundant and obviously edible than eggs. I don't understand either why raw animal milk is supposedly good for you when we would not have been milking back then.

JHarsh80 wrote:EIC,

Is there any evidence that early man did not consume fruit on a regular basis, or is this just theory? How could we have actual evidence of this?

It just seems odd to me that with all the different kinds of wild fruits and berries that there are, combined with the need for much more energy for hunting, gathering, mating, and fighting/fleeing, that we wouldn't have been eating fruits whenever possible. I would guess that fruits would have been more abundant and obviously edible than eggs. I don't understand either why raw animal milk is supposedly good for you when we would not have been milking back then.

Well the evidence is looking at traditional cultures. Across the world, fruit was never a significant part of the diet on a consistent basis. Consider also that fruit is seasonal. In most western countries, we have fruit imported from all over the world so that it is available all year. This is an anachronism. Consider also that the availability of fruit is a result of our agriculture. It is not as though every tree was an apple tree before the dawn of civilization. Take a walk in a national forest and tell me how many fruit trees you come across. Consider also that fruit would be a rarity at certain latitudes. Finally, consider that fruit we have available today has been genetically selected over and over to be extremely sweet. All of this suggests that regular consumption of the fruit today is totally out of whack for mankind.

As I've said before, early man probably went hungry a large amount of time. He probably also ate a lot of insects. (Indeed, we produce chitin, the enzyme for digesting insect exoskeletons.) Next would be reptiles. A fair amount of meat was scavenged from other animals' kills. Fruit probably came in the form of small, tart berries that could be found on occasion.

That said, I am not convinced that we need to eat like paleolithic man. Most people might do so because it is assumed that doing so is the healthiest way to go about things. Thus, the paleolithic diet (whatever it is) because a proxy for the ultimate healthy diet. But we know from traditional cultures that they can eat non-paleolithic foods (raw dairy, for example) and still be perfectly healthy. Thus, if either road leads to excellent health, we might as well copy the diets of traditional cultures, which we can verify, rather than guess at what early man ate.

In other words, paleolithic man was eating a diet based on availability rather than optimal nutrition. As such, it does not answer the question of whether paleolithic man COULD HAVE eaten, for example, raw dairy. Traditional cultures answered that question. In so doing, I think they showed that the human being is capable of comfortably eating a wide variety of food right from the start. The amount of time we have been eating dairy as a species would be irrelevant if we already had the capacity to do so right from the beginning, eh?

You make some good points. About paleolithic man... I guess I'm wondering how he would be able to digest something without evolving eating it- like dairy. Or at least digest it well. Wouldn't evolution see to it that whatever the limited availability was would eventually become optimal nutrition, or is my logic flawed there? The only experience I have with forests is in the west, so I have no idea what is available fruit/vegetable wise in Africa where we were "born".

JHarsh80 wrote:You make some good points. About paleolithic man... I guess I'm wondering how he would be able to digest something without evolving eating it- like dairy. Or at least digest it well. Wouldn't evolution see to it that whatever the limited availability was would eventually become optimal nutrition, or is my logic flawed there? The only experience I have with forests is in the west, so I have no idea what is available fruit/vegetable wise in Africa where we were "born".

Evolution needs to play a part, no doubt, but I'm just not sure that we need to eat a specific food in order to force the evolutionary process. This is all just a guess. But what isn't a guess is that traditional cultures were healthy and robust on a diet that differs from the paleolithic models in a number of ways. That should be enough right there.

Regarding forests, as I recall paleolithic man was not confined to the African continent. Were not remains of early humans discovered in Europe? Moreover, there are large areas of African without forest whatsoever. On the African plains, fruits and vegetables would be slim pickings.

Regarding insulin and protein. As EIC pointed out, perhaps either abuse of protein consumption or stress/high cortisol levels. Under high cortisol that can convert protein to glucose.

Thanks for the great replies!

Concerning the natural diet for a human, we could look at gorillas and other primates. They eat mostly fruit (~70%), and the rest being plants/leaves/tubers, followed by a little bit of insects. But yeah you're right we can't find that much fruit because we don't live in the jungles in Africa.

I suppose the best way to find out what is natural for a human to eat is to go out into a national forest and eat what you can without using fire to cook, weapons to catch, or tools to acquire. Only use fire so you don't freeze at night. That would give us an idea of what our ancestors ate. My guess it would look something like this:

Mostly insects (Easy to catch them with our bare hands, termites and large ants are everywhere, it's hard to find a campsite without having them crawl over you at night, almost all insects are edible raw)

some raw plants (cat-tails, leaves, and I'm not sure about this but I think we can chew on grass and pine needles to get the nutrients and spit out the remains)

No mammals or fish (without projectile weapons or traps, it is almost impossible to catch small, quick animals, and ontop of that we would have to have the ability to produce fire to cook them to aid digestion and avoid parasites)

Oh and also, about fruit, remember that our ancestors burned a lot of the sugar in the process of gathering the fruit. Wheras today we just walk to our kitchin and grab it. So it wouldn't raise their insulin levels as much.

Just a heads up for everyone, but whey protein is very insulogenic when taken alone.

Yeah I was drinking that stuff every day after going for a run, I wasn't even lifting weights, I think it definitely contributed to my hair loss last year.

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/82/1/69

Background:Whey proteins have insulinotropic effects and reduce the postprandial glycemia in healthy subjects. The mechanism is not known, but insulinogenic amino acids and the incretin hormones seem to be involved.

Objective:The aim was to evaluate whether supplementation of meals with a high glycemic index (GI) with whey proteins may increase insulin secretion and improve blood glucose control in type 2 diabetic subjects.

Design:Fourteen diet-treated subjects with type 2 diabetes were served a high-GI breakfast (white bread) and subsequent high-GI lunch (mashed potatoes with meatballs). The breakfast and lunch meals were supplemented with whey on one day; whey was exchanged for lean ham and lactose on another day. Venous blood samples were drawn before and during 4 h after breakfast and 3 h after lunch for the measurement of blood glucose, serum insulin, glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP), and glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1).

Results:The insulin responses were higher after both breakfast (31%) and lunch (57%) when whey was included in the meal than when whey was not included. After lunch, the blood glucose response was significantly reduced [–21%; 120 min area under the curve (AUC)] after whey ingestion. Postprandial GIP responses were higher after whey ingestion, whereas no differences were found in GLP-1 between the reference and test meals.

Conclusions:It can be concluded that the addition of whey to meals with rapidly digested and absorbed carbohydrates stimulates insulin release and reduces postprandial blood glucose excursion after a lunch meal consisting of mashed potatoes and meatballs in type 2 diabetic subjects.

So what protein would be the best for supplementation for weight training or otherwise? Whey is usually used right after weight training because of it's quick absorption, and I know some people use casein protein before bed because it is slowly absorbed.

Also,

Considering that gluconeogenisis takes place after depletion of carbs for a long enough period of time, why is the candida diet completely devoid of carbs? I'm concerned now because I have been eating nothing but fish, meat, eggs, and green vegetables to starve this candida, but it never occurred to me that when gluconeogenesis kicks in, I will end up with glucose anyway. Is there a flaw in this complete restriction of carbs in the typical candida diet? Is gluconeogenesis not a concern because you are not directly feeding the yeast through the digestive system? The only carbs I'm allowing myself is plain rolled oatmeal for breakfast which has 27g of carbs. I'm doing this because the fiber should help flush out dead candida and I don't want to be constipated from all the protein. There is fiber in vegetables but I don't eat that many, I just drink a comprehensive green food drink.

Fiber isn't necessary, it's a myth perpetuated by old science and marketing.

Constipation is either a lack of stomach acid, lack of antioxidants, lack of minerals (like Magnesium).

Are you currently on a probiotic?

Espio wrote:Thanks for the great replies!

Concerning the natural diet for a human, we could look at gorillas and other primates. They eat mostly fruit (~70%), and the rest being plants/leaves/tubers, followed by a little bit of insects. But yeah you're right we can't find that much fruit because we don't live in the jungles in Africa.

I suppose the best way to find out what is natural for a human to eat is to go out into a national forest and eat what you can without using fire to cook, weapons to catch, or tools to acquire. Only use fire so you don't freeze at night. That would give us an idea of what our ancestors ate. My guess it would look something like this:

Mostly insects (Easy to catch them with our bare hands, termites and large ants are everywhere, it's hard to find a campsite without having them crawl over you at night, almost all insects are edible raw)

some raw plants (cat-tails, leaves, and I'm not sure about this but I think we can chew on grass and pine needles to get the nutrients and spit out the remains)

No mammals or fish (without projectile weapons or traps, it is almost impossible to catch small, quick animals, and ontop of that we would have to have the ability to produce fire to cook them to aid digestion and avoid parasites)

I think this is an intuitive conclusion that is does not pan out under closer scrutiny. There is good reason to believe that gorillas and primates adapted to such a plant-based diet based on necessity, but that the relatively advanced human development is due to the inclusion of animal foods (particularly seafood). Check this out for more info:

http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_diets/gorilla.html

Keep in mind also that all food--no matter the type--is composed of the same basic substances. Virtually every carb, when broken down, will yield glucose. Virtually every protein, when broken down, will yield amino acids. The key, then, is what foods man can and cannot breakdown. Interestingly, man has virtually every enzyme except cellulase, the enzyme for breaking cellulose (fiber in plant cell walls) down into glucose. On the other hand, traditional cultures took great pains to prepare foods in a way that would break them down before consumption. Sourdough fermentation is one example. In the islands, cultures would bury tubers (fermentation), grind them, and cook them all before eating them. As my friend and researcher Matt Stone has said, "They didn't go through all that effort to kill time."

JHarsh80 wrote:
Also,

Considering that gluconeogenisis takes place after depletion of carbs for a long enough period of time, why is the candida diet completely devoid of carbs? I'm concerned now because I have been eating nothing but fish, meat, eggs, and green vegetables to starve this candida, but it never occurred to me that when gluconeogenesis kicks in, I will end up with glucose anyway. Is there a flaw in this complete restriction of carbs in the typical candida diet? Is gluconeogenesis not a concern because you are not directly feeding the yeast through the digestive system? The only carbs I'm allowing myself is plain rolled oatmeal for breakfast which has 27g of carbs. I'm doing this because the fiber should help flush out dead candida and I don't want to be constipated from all the protein. There is fiber in vegetables but I don't eat that many, I just drink a comprehensive green food drink.

I agree 100% with IH; fiber is not necessary for a human bowel movement. That concept is a flawed one and is persistent in the medical community. If you look at other nations, one of the interesting things is that they often refine their grains. In Asia, you see primarily white rice. In Europe, you often seen refined wheat (croissants, french bread). The chief goal of that process is to remove the difficult-to-digest fiberous parts of the grain. I'm not necessarily advocating this, but it is interesting to note that trend. And, considering that many in Asia live in poverty, it is telling that they take time and money to refine grains before eating them.

Regarding glucose and candida, I think you are confusing the issue a little. Yeast primarily breaks complex carbs/starch (polysaccharides) into smaller sugars. That is fermentation. What happens is that in those with compromised digestion, the body is unable to breakdown starch completely and yeast proliferate on the undigested starch. This, of course, is one benefit of sourdough bread. The slow rise with starter allows yeast (a different type than candida) to break the starch down OUTSIDE the body so there is less work for the body (and thus the pathogenic yeast) to do once it is eaten. It is a bit like a spider whose venom pre-digests an insect before the spider consumes it.

But monosaccharides like fructose and glucose need no digestion. They are absorbed immediately and will very rarely be consumed by yeast. Indeed, diets which are designed to combat yeast--like the Specific Carbohydrate Diet--advocate the strict avoidance of starch in favor of monosaccharides like fruit and honey. But make no mistake: that diet is a diet for sick people who cannot eat foods without incident. Those with good digestion (i.e., those who do not suffer from dysbiosis) should eat moderate starch instead of the sugars.

CausticSymmetry wrote:Fiber isn't necessary, it's a myth perpetuated by old science and marketing.

Constipation is either a lack of stomach acid, lack of antioxidants, lack of minerals (like Magnesium).

Are you currently on a probiotic?

IH,

Yes I'm still in the first bottle of Primal Defense. That is good to know about fiber. I was reading that rolled oats are prohibited on an candida diet so I dropped them (at least from everyday). I read that berries and apples were ok fruits to eat. I believe that the pectin in the apples is good for killing candida, but I have no idea why berries would be ok and not other fruits; do you?

EIC wrote:

JHarsh80 wrote:
Also,

Considering that gluconeogenisis takes place after depletion of carbs for a long enough period of time, why is the candida diet completely devoid of carbs? I'm concerned now because I have been eating nothing but fish, meat, eggs, and green vegetables to starve this candida, but it never occurred to me that when gluconeogenesis kicks in, I will end up with glucose anyway. Is there a flaw in this complete restriction of carbs in the typical candida diet? Is gluconeogenesis not a concern because you are not directly feeding the yeast through the digestive system? The only carbs I'm allowing myself is plain rolled oatmeal for breakfast which has 27g of carbs. I'm doing this because the fiber should help flush out dead candida and I don't want to be constipated from all the protein. There is fiber in vegetables but I don't eat that many, I just drink a comprehensive green food drink.

Regarding glucose and candida, I think you are confusing the issue a little. Yeast primarily breaks complex carbs/starch (polysaccharides) into smaller sugars. That is fermentation. What happens is that in those with compromised digestion, the body is unable to breakdown starch completely and yeast proliferate on the undigested starch. This, of course, is one benefit of sourdough bread. The slow rise with starter allows yeast (a different type than candida) to break the starch down OUTSIDE the body so there is less work for the body (and thus the pathogenic yeast) to do once it is eaten. It is a bit like a spider whose venom pre-digests an insect before the spider consumes it.

But monosaccharides like fructose and glucose need no digestion. They are absorbed immediately and will very rarely be consumed by yeast. Indeed, diets which are designed to combat yeast--like the Specific Carbohydrate Diet--advocate the strict avoidance of starch in favor of monosaccharides like fruit and honey. But make no mistake: that diet is a diet for sick people who cannot eat foods without incident. Those with good digestion (i.e., those who do not suffer from dysbiosis) should eat moderate starch instead of the sugars.

Thanks EIC, This is completely logical based on your premise that candida yeast feed on and convert the complex carbs and not the simple sugars. What I don't understand is why so many candida diets say to avoid ALL forms of sugar. I've only just yesterday come across on that says you can eat apples and berries but not any other fruits. If your premise is correct then I don't understand the complete carb restriction (is it ignorance?), or the apples and berries only diet. Apples have pectin if I remember correctly that kills candida, but why berries and no melons or other fruits?

Also if candida only thrive on the complex carbs then why no candy bars or soda? Is it because it is HF corn syrup and table sugar added and the yeast is still required to break that down? I'm just confused on the limitation of simple sugars.

Berries are relatively safe in moderation, apples are a definite no-go against Candida. Candida doesn't care what sort of sugar you provide it, it eats it all, and Apples are loaded with it.