Insulin resistance and Intermittent Carbs

Nutrition Q&A [Moderated]
1

I watched your talk from awhile back with Alan Thrall on diet and you talk about low carb and peripheral insulin resistance a little bit. One thing that has been curious to me in the dogmatic low carb community is that it seems to get brushed off with just saying, well THAT isn’t the same because its not happening in the presence of increasing insulin loads. (Something I see allot in respect to dawn phenomena discussions with low carb) I Also see several of the same folks say if you exercise that adding in more carbs to maintain sensitivity can be a good strategy. However, I find things like this study…

That, to me, makes it sound like the back and forth of low carb insulin resistance and intermittently adding more carbs could be a bad idea. I know you’ve said before compliance is key, carb ratio is personal preference if you hit the other diet requirements… but does this make it seem like there are long term issues that aren’t understood yet?

Do you see evidence that sticking to one side of the spectrum LCHF v HCLF is safer that mixing it up?
Are there considerations for this regarding diabetes that might be different than what that study is looking at given they use “healthy young males”?

2

I think there are many questions that we would like to be answered via better or more data when it comes to nutrition.

That said, I think the existing evidence is pretty clear that low carb and high carb diets- given similar calorie and protein intake- have nearly indistinguishable outcomes for the most part.

I think that there are a few potential problems with low carb diets with respect to the overall dietary pattern:

  1. Low fruit and veg intake
  2. Low whole grain intake
  3. Increased saturated fat intake

Of course, all of these things can be worked around and in that case, I see no issues with LCHF. I don’t think that variations in the diet are inherently harmful long-term, but rather we expect to see short-term adaptive changes that may appear to be harmful if taken at face value. Surrogate markers of health are tricky like that.