In the late 18th century, as recounted in Gary Taubes’s book Rethinking Diabetes: What Science Reveals About Diet, Insulin and Successful Treatments, a Scottish doctor by the name of John Rollo helped two patients with diabetes (a rarer condition those days) return to health by restricting their carbohydrate intake.
I have a feeling that “rarer in those days” was because those who did have diabetes were dead. So the incidence of the disease was the same, but the ongoing populsation of those with was lower. Combine that with hte number already dead from lurgy, plague or teeth and we’ve a pretty comprehensive explanation.
As I’m not an expert in health I’d not insist upon that explanation – but I’d want to see that refuted before I believed other explanations. Espeically since people are using the grifter Taube as their source here.
It depends if you’re talking type 1 or type 2. Type 2 is definitely reversible. Either change your diet or do a lot more exercise.
I doubt that there was, historically, that maybe people with Type 2 back in the late 18th century. It’s mostly a sitting in cars and eating cakes thing.
I am certain that the push towards low fat diets (meaning pumping loads of sugar – carbs into everything to make them palatable) has nothing to do with the increase in diabetes and obesity.
I doubt many people in the 18th century could afford to get type 2 diabetes. Even the wealthy had active lives compared with most of us.
The portly, late-middle aged gentry might be at risk, if the drink didn’t get them first….
It’s fairly well known that a reduction in carbs/ high fructose/ Murkan style fast food consumption sees a reduction in the incidence of type 2 diabetes.
To be fair the quote from Taube above admits ” rarer in those days”
Kendrick and loads of others have gone against the narrative on this as well, so the grifter epithet thats flung at those who challenge the prevailing orthodoxy on diabetes, statins, safe and effective quackcines, anychess, eevil carbon etc etc shows all the signs of being a standard deflection technique.
Got me wondering how they diagnosed diabetes in the 18th century and I’m guessing it involved the doctor dipping a finger in the patient’s piss.
Noel C
Drinking it, I think, to see if it was sweet.
Sounds like Capt Rum in Blackadder
@Nessie: what has poor old fructose done to earn all the scorn?
BiP
Someone like Grikath will know this better. But I think the problem is that fructose doesn’t need insulin. It bypasses the pancreas and goes straight into the bloodstream. As a result the body can’t tell you when it has had enough.
It is like Schroedingers Sugar – it is “good” and “bad” at the same time.
Thanks. I’d like to hear Grikath on the subject. Sucrose – table sugar – is effectively 50% glucose, 50% fructose, joined by a “bridge” that dissolves rapidly in your stomach (enzyme & acid do the trick).
“High Fructose Corn Syrup” averages out at ca. 50% fructose too so I don’t see why fructose is such a menace.
Could the bridge-destroying delay in the stomach explain it?
Or is it just another of those dietary quasi-religious beliefs that are so prevalent?
A decent test is, I suggest, whether the sort of people who urge on you the benefits of honey also warn you against the scourge of fructose.
BIP
https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/36/1/150/38265/Moderate-Amounts-of-Fructose-Consumption-Impair
Now of course it may be a total coinkydink that Murka is full of fat gits now, seems to have more diabetics than anywhere else & has seen a large increase on consumption of things like HFCS, I think its probably more of a clue about general direction of the problem rather than an exact cause.
BIP/Ness, That one is pretty easy:
The body only measures/regulates glucose, because [lotsoftechnicalstuff].
For most purposes, all the stuff we can actually digest and use comes as either glucose chains or in the form of [glucose]+[other sugar].
Where the other sugars are mostly turned into glucose in the liver as long as you don’t tempt Paracelsus.
When it comes to sucrose, it’s glucose + fructose in a 50/50 mix. Something our body actually expects and can deal with just fine as long as your liver isn’t shot. ( insert alcoholism and diabetes here.)
When it comes to natural “high fructose” substances, like honey or fruit, or “artificial” ones like table sirups made from hydrolised molasses, that ratio of 50/50 stays the same.
Except that it is experienced as much sweeter, because our palate detects fructose much better. ( this is a possible evolutionary trait preventing sugar rush/sugar crash. Which is…. ill-advised.. in an environment where a lot of stuff is out to get you, possibly for dinner…)
So you tend to use/want less of these “high fructose” substances, because there’s only so much sweet you can take…
Of course, the Usual Subjects like to cheat and use purely artificial high fructose “artificial sweetener” mixes that do very much not have that balanced ratio, or even pure fructose syrups to make things Sweet.
Which tickles our tastebuds, but does not give the rest of the body, especially the liver, the signal that there’s Work To Do…
Which is basically daring Paracelsus to do his worst.
Oh, note that quite a lot of our cells can utilise fructose “directly”.
It’s just that they’ve got to turn it into fatty acids first, before tossing it into the Furnace or do other useful stuff with it.
Which means that if you flood your system with fructose, it will be used just fine. You just get fat very quickly, everywhere. Especially in places where it’s not supposed to be, and is ill-equipped to get rid of the excess.
Normally not a problem, because the liver scrubs 90% of it before it gets Around, and the other 10% is there quite deliberately to provide quick-access building blocks for some other very specific stuff, like RNA and some co-enzymes we need to keep existing.
And to build up cellular building/fuel reserves in moderation.
Too much , though…. wellll…