High Blood Sugar: Death in a Donut!

Diet and Nutrition
21

[quote]eengrms76 wrote:
These bullshit one-sided stories piss me off. The word “attributable” doesn’t mean anything. Everything is attributable if looked at in the right way.

As for the number of deaths- how many of those 2.4 million obesity deaths were double counted in the high blood sugar category (I’m going to take a wild stab and say 2.4 million).

Also the phrase “higher than optimum” is worthless. Consider the BMI scale and how it relates to your typical T-Nation reader.

If they can’t actually prove that having higher than optimum blood sugar levels are a direct cause of death- why bother with the study at all just to tell us something we already know and to cause panic?

I’m not in a good mood today.[/quote]

You’re right. But they can’t ever prove anything in human beings that they suspect does harm. Technically, the scientific standard for ‘proof’ is taking one experimental group and one control group and manipulating the testing variable and holding everything else constant such that everything else is as close to identical as possible between the groups. It is unethical to do this in human beings. Since there’s good evidence that high blood sugar is harmful, it’s unethical to take two groups and feed one a diet that induces high blood sugar while having all other variables such as exercise, etc… the same. The best we can do is observational studies where we try and pick people that are similar in all other ways.

22

[quote]jsbrook wrote:
You’re right. But they can’t ever prove anything in human beings that they suspect does harm. Technically, the scientific standard for ‘proof’ is taking one experimental group and one control group and manipulating the testing variable and holding everything else constant such that everything else is as close to identical as possible between the groups. It is unethical to do this in human beings. Since there’s good evidence that high blood sugar is harmful, it’s unethical to take two groups and feed one a diet that induces high blood sugar while having all other variables such as exercise, etc… the same. The best we can do is observational studies where we try and pick people that are similar in all other ways.[/quote]

There’s nothing wrong with what you’ve said, but it still misses the point. Or maybe reinforces it. If there’s no way to conclusively prove that “higher than optimum”, whatever that still means, blood sugar is a direct leading cause of worldwide mortality then why publish a report that says that?

23

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
If there’s no way to conclusively prove that “higher than optimum”, whatever that still means, blood sugar is a direct leading cause of worldwide mortality then why publish a report that says that?[/quote]

Sensationalism. To reinforce why they needed their research grants. Who knows?

Nobody is saying having “higher than optimum” blood sugar is a [b]good[/b] thing though, so if it gets some people to change their tunes maybe it’s not all bad.

24

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
pwilliams wrote:
When we see Iraqi civilians on humanitarian missions, nearly everyone over 40 is a diabetic, hypertensive smoker. They subsist largely on white bread and cigarettes.

This report doesn’t surprise me at all.

I’m not disputing what you said, but how does that translate into the conclusions of this study? Diabetes is undeniably a very major health issue especially in the western world. One with debilitating and sometimes fatal consequences.

This, however is still not the same as saying that “higher than optimum” blood sugar is a leading cause of death. Maybe there’s more in the full text of the study, but the way the news reports are phrased the information is meaningless and possibly plain false.[/quote]

Good points, Trib.

I just read the abstract of the article in The Lancet, it was in their 11 Nov issue.

They used an incredible amount of data interpolation to arrive at this conclusion, including trying to factor out the cases that would have been double counted, such as diabetes.

To me, the findings don’t support saying that these deaths were “attributable” to higher than normal glucose, just that there is increase relative risk associated with it.

The abstract also doesn’t state what they considered “higher than normal”, but the typical reference range for fasting serum glucose is 60-115 and the threshold for the diagnosis of diabetes is 126, so I assume they considered 116-125 to be “higher than normal”.

The findings were poorly written, which is too bad, since in my opinion, there is important information here. Specifically, that “pre-diabetes” or “glucose intolerance” may be pathogenic before full-blown diabetes can be diagnosed.

25

There are some inaccuracies in a few above posts about diabetes.

As a practicing Physician Assistant, my understanding of the unproven-but-primary suspect for Type I is the presence of certain marker proteins on the Islet of Langerhans cells (the cells which produce insulin) which are very similar to certain viruses. We (the collective medical community) do not know which viruses they are.

When person with these marker proteins is infected with this virus, the antibodies the person’s immune system produces kills the virus, but also kill the Islet cells. This renders that patient incapable of producing insulin.

Type II is largely genetic, but also dietary in nature. The insulin receptors on the surfaces of most cells are down-regulated (read “turned off” or reduced in number). Adequate circulating insulin is typically not a problem for them. Actually, they will have much higher than normal insulin levels as the body reacts to higher glucose levels in poorly controlled patients.

However, a Type II can “become” a Type I in a sense. With Islet cells making so much insulin, they can eventually fail. Think of it as “burning out”. This leaves them in the same physiological boat as the Type I, which is not producing insulin.

Also, there is more insulin resistant diabetes in children.

“The increased incidence of type 2 diabetes in youth is a “first consequence” of the obesity epidemic among young people, a significant and growing public health problem.2 Overweight children are at increased risk for developing type 2 diabetes during childhood, adolescence, and later in life.”

This is a good discussion. My father is and father-in-law was Type II diabetic, so this is a huge concern for me and for my family.

26

The original article was written for general media publication. Knowledgeable people would therefore find flaws in the argument. I don’t know if the science is unsound or massaging the results to make it suitable for general publication is the problem.

27

[quote]pwilliams wrote:

…This is a good discussion. My father is and father-in-law was Type II diabetic, so this is a huge concern for me and for my family…

[/quote]

The good news in all this is that type 2 can be controlled to a superlative degree in at least some cases because I am doing it and am pretty sure eengrms76 is too.

My glucose was routinely north of 500 and on at least 2 occasions I know of for sure over 600. It was 224 after a 12 hour water fast.

In six months of aggressive “self remedial therapy” I coerced it back into the normal range where stays as I type this. The only time it started to drift was during a short stint with ephedrine that I started another thread about.

I originally thought it was the carb loads from the anabolic diet, but I’ve had 2 since ditching the ephedrine and 164 90 minutes after a monstrous high quality carb dense breakfast was the highest it ever got.

28

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
The good news in all this is that type 2 can be controlled to a superlative degree in at least some cases because I am doing it and am pretty sure eengrms76 is too.

My glucose was routinely north of 500 and on at least 2 occasions I know of for sure over 600. It was 224 after a 12 hour water fast.

In six months of aggressive “self remedial therapy” I coerced it back into the normal range where stays as I type this. The only time it started to drift was during a short stint with ephedrine that I started another thread about.

I originally thought it was the carb loads from the anabolic diet, but I’ve had 2 since ditching the ephedrine and 164 90 minutes after a monstrous high quality carb dense breakfast was the highest it ever got.[/quote]

Thanks for the info and congrats on taking charge of your health.

I wish more Americans would do that. My diabetic-father’s, diabetic-father was scared shitless after seeing HIS diabetic-mother lose a foot to diabetes. He watched his diet perfectly and lived to be 82 with only dietary control. He only spent the last 6 months in a nursing home after a stroke, so they were fairly good/functional years.

I’m doing a 3 week stint on the Velocity Diet right now, then was planning on starting either Anabolic or T-dawg when I get home (next week). Probably will do T-Dawg, but I haven’t decided yet.

29

I commonly see blood sugars in the 450-1200 range. Noncompliance/Diabetes Poorly controlled is a huge problem, leading to secondary comorbidities and mortality. The Obesity/Sedendtary epidemic has compounded the problem.

30

[quote]pwilliams wrote:
Thanks for the info and congrats on taking charge of your health.

I wish more Americans would do that. My diabetic-father’s, diabetic-father was scared shitless after seeing HIS diabetic-mother lose a foot to diabetes. He watched his diet perfectly and lived to be 82 with only dietary control. He only spent the last 6 months in a nursing home after a stroke, so they were fairly good/functional years.

I’m doing a 3 week stint on the Velocity Diet right now, then was planning on starting either Anabolic or T-dawg when I get home (next week). Probably will do T-Dawg, but I haven’t decided yet.

[/quote]

I’m pretty sure I wasn’t telling you anything you didn’t already know, but this is one of the most mystifying phenomena of our day to me. I just thank God, literally, that my eyes were opened before it was too late.

You could take some dimpled, waddling fatass who looks like a coupla kids fighting under a blanket when they walk by, put a gun to their head and watch them proceed to beg for their life. IT WOULD BE QUICKER THIS WAY RETARD compared to the future of very expensive suffering you’re building for yourself.

[quote]Chinadoll wrote:
I commonly see blood sugars in the 450-1200 range. Noncompliance/Diabetes Poorly controlled is a huge problem, leading to secondary comorbidities and mortality. The Obesity/Sedendtary epidemic has compounded the problem.[/quote]

My above comments apply here as well. People have to be faced with death in the next few seconds before they will do anything to help themselves.

At different times in my life I’ve been in superb health and I spent a long time fat, sickly and miserable. Healthy’s better.