Another diet question

[PatKelley]

It's not that diet soda contains sugar, but a sugar-analog...and it may be this that triggers the islets in the pancreas to dump insulin into the system. Some sugar analogs might have the same effect on this pathway regardless of whether they metabolize into sugar or not, and therefore could contribute to insulan resistance.

I gave up diet sodas (the only kind I ever drank) for water and juice, and lost twenty pounds in a couple of months.

 

[MRC_Hans]

The metabolizing of certain sweeteners into glucose may only be relevant for diabetics. I agree that the amounts are probably too small to have any effect on weight.

Probably, the best bet for a relevance in diet is that drinking soft drinks, even sugar-free ones, is part of an unhealthy dietary habit of repeated snacking. To change that, a clean slate could be good start.

Hans

 

[Ashles]

While we're on the subject of diet I have heard several times that you shouldn't drink fluid with your meal as it slows digestion.
But I have also heard that you should drink fluid with a meal to aid digestion.

I get very thirsty with meals and it would seem really strange if not acytually uncomforatbel to not drink with a meal (I'm talking about water - not juice or anything like that).

Anyone know the answer?

 

[Kumar]

It's not that diet soda contains sugar, but a sugar-analog...and it may be this that triggers the islets in the pancreas to dump insulin into the system. Some sugar analogs might have the same effect on this pathway regardless of whether they metabolize into sugar or not, and therefore could contribute to insulan resistance.

I gave up diet sodas (the only kind I ever drank) for water and juice, and lost twenty pounds in a couple of months.

Will it not benefit to diabetic patients to encourage more insulin secretion in this way?

I read/heard somewhere that keeping dry date piece in mouth help in diabetes.

 

[PatKelley]

Will it not benefit to diabetic patients to encourage more insulin secretion in this way?

I read/heard somewhere that keeping dry date piece in mouth help in diabetes.

Not necessarily; the reason people are having problems is the body's own resistance to the effects of insulin, possibly brought about by frequent surges (as in a diet high in sugary foods plus obesity). More surges at the levels secretion can muster will have no benefit, as by the time symptoms develop the resistance has exceeded secretion capacity. More of this will serve to increase the insulin resistance further, as it causes the dump of insulin but without any sugar.

My father is type II currently, and he's been on sacharrine(sp) and aspartame all his life. Avoided real sugar like the plague.

 

[Kumar]

Not necessarily; the reason people are having problems is the body's own resistance to the effects of insulin, possibly brought about by frequent surges (as in a diet high in sugary foods plus obesity). More surges at the levels secretion can muster will have no benefit, as by the time symptoms develop the resistance has exceeded secretion capacity. More of this will serve to increase the insulin resistance further, as it causes the dump of insulin but without any sugar.

My father is type II currently, and he's been on sacharrine(sp) and aspartame all his life. Avoided real sugar like the plague.

Many people here & there are of the view that increase in insulin secretion or more insulin is not related to insulin resistance but just linked to hypoglycemia.

Anyway, a diabetic patient takes hypoglycemic medicines or insulin to increase insulin in system. Will artificial sweetner's oriented cepalic phase effect on insulin secretion not be somewhat of taking hypoglycemic medicines? Whether this insulin effects or cause IR is a different issue.

 

[El Greco]

drinking soft drinks, even sugar-free ones, is part of an unhealthy dietary habit of repeated snacking.

This is probably true for most people, but the truth is that if there are "unhealthy" substances in some foods, then what deems them unhealthy is the quantity. Nothing is unhealthy in moderation. Soft drinks -sugar or sweeteners- can very well be part of a perfectly healthy and balanced diet. So does red meat with saturated fat, so do french fries and anything fried, so does alcohol. Even trans fatty acids once in a while won't hurt. On the other hand, everything will be harmful if taken in excess. Even water.

The "healthy lifestyle" promotes "natural", "light" and "unprocessed", yet one will face great difficulty in deciding what is "natural" and what is not. The "healthy food" industry has unfortunately made many people to believe that they would better eat 500 kcals of fruit rather than 100 kcals of chocolate. This is a tragic misunderstanding; most obese people would benefit a lot if they would substitute the 500 kcals of fruit for 100 kcals of chocolate. Because they usually don't need the vitamins and the fiber of fruit as much as they need the negative caloric balance.

Basically if you get daily 1) quality protein 2) suggested amounts of vitamins and minerals 3) adequate fiber and 4) EFAs, then you can fill the rest of your recommended caloric intake with pretty much everything.

 

[PatKelley]

There is a difference between Type I (autoimmune or chemical destruction of islet cells leading to insufficent or nonexistant blood glucose mediation) and Type II (insulin resistance developing over time). There is little or no endemic insulin secretion in Type I, so there is none to modulate. In Type II, the system functioned normally until the point at which resistance exceeded production and secretion.

Drugs like glipizide (trade name Glucotrol) and glyburide (trade name Micronase or Diabea) can sometimes be used to control hyperglycemia.

...The first phase of insulin release is brisk, of short duration and occurs within minutes of ingesting food. It is this first phase of insulin release that is abnormal in early [Type II] diabetes & can often be found in patients with impaired glucose tolerance prior to the onset of diabetes....

METFORMIN – Metformin has been used in Europe for over thirty years, and has been available in the United States since March 1995. It is effective only in the presence of insulin but, in contrast to sulfonylureas, it does not directly stimulate insulin secretion. Its major effect is to increase insulin action.

How metformin increases insulin action is not known but it is known to affect many tissues. One important effect appears to be suppression of glucose output from the liver.

One of the more commonly used drugs for Type II does not cause insulin secretion at all.

 

[Kumar]

There is a difference between Type I (autoimmune or chemical destruction of islet cells leading to insufficent or nonexistant blood glucose mediation) and Type II (insulin resistance developing over time). There is little or no endemic insulin secretion in Type I, so there is none to modulate. In Type II, the system functioned normally until the point at which resistance exceeded production and secretion.

Drugs like glipizide (trade name Glucotrol) and glyburide (trade name Micronase or Diabea) can sometimes be used to control hyperglycemia.



One of the more commonly used drugs for Type II does not cause insulin secretion at all.

Your quote indicate that palatability or sense of food is effected in type2 with IR patients, may be due to presence of hyperlycemia.
Metformin is not considered as hypoglycemic medicine but I think considered as insulin senstiser. I usually think about its lactic acidosis causing side effect in some cases, whether this effect is linked to its effect?

 

[PatKelley]

Even the medications that are insulin promotors are a) affecting long-term insulin reactions, not the spike that one gets when sugar/aspartame is ingested, and b) they affect insulin sensitivity as well as increasing insulin production. This is why they also cause weight gain. The spike of insulin is apparently linked to the prevalence of Diabetes Type II, and as sugar might be implicated (a taste-mediated digestive response, perhaps?) it would be worthwhile to investigate the cause of this initial fast spike in insulin release.

 

[Kumar]

Even the medications that are insulin promotors are a) affecting long-term insulin reactions, not the spike that one gets when sugar/aspartame is ingested, and b) they affect insulin sensitivity as well as increasing insulin production. This is why they also cause weight gain. The spike of insulin is apparently linked to the prevalence of Diabetes Type II, and as sugar might be implicated (a taste-mediated digestive response, perhaps?) it would be worthwhile to investigate the cause of this initial fast spike in insulin release.

Yes it may be possible in early stages of diabetes. Weight gain, weight stay constant & lose weght are important consideration in understanding insulin levels. Probably, a person with no weight loss(if not taking excess fats) still with hyperglycemia may not be having deficient natural insulin secretion. But opposite may be thought.

 

[alfaniner]

Here's a link to the CBS news article on diet soda drinkers' weight gain.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/13/health/webmd/main701408.shtml

 

[El Greco]

Here's a link to the CBS news article on diet soda drinkers' weight gain.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/13/health/webmd/main701408.shtml

This is not surprising, but says nothing about diet sodas. Rather, it says a lot about people who drink them. The same happens with smokers of "light" cigarettes: they end up smoking more. In your local supermarket, watch who's buying the more "light" cheeses and yogurts: it will be the obese ones. This doesn't mean that "light" products contain more calories than "full" ones, or that they somehow make you eat more. It just means that they are prefered by people who are weight-conscious since they've been advertised as "diet" products. It's only natural for an obese person who has a tendency to overeat to choose something that is marketed as "light" or "diet".

 

[Jorghnassen]

All sodas are rat poison. You need to add the antidote (aka rum) to make them drinkable.

(Really just drink water instead, it's cheaper and contains no calories).

 

[PatKelley]

This is not surprising, but says nothing about diet sodas. Rather, it says a lot about people who drink them. The same happens with smokers of "light" cigarettes: they end up smoking more. In your local supermarket, watch who's buying the more "light" cheeses and yogurts: it will be the obese ones. This doesn't mean that "light" products contain more calories than "full" ones, or that they somehow make you eat more. It just means that they are prefered by people who are weight-conscious since they've been advertised as "diet" products. It's only natural for an obese person who has a tendency to overeat to choose something that is marketed as "light" or "diet".

I'll just take umbrage at that really quick, if you don't mind.

 

[PatKelley]

All sodas are rat poison. You need to add the antidote (aka rum) to make them drinkable.

(Really just drink water instead, it's cheaper and contains no calories).

Precisely. I had one or two diet sodas a day. All I did was cut those out, and I lost twenty pounds in two months. That was all I did. I went to water instead.

 

[Ririon]

It's not that diet soda contains sugar, but a sugar-analog...and it may be this that triggers the islets in the pancreas to dump insulin into the system. Some sugar analogs might have the same effect on this pathway regardless of whether they metabolize into sugar or not, and therefore could contribute to insulan resistance.

...

Doesn't this mean that drinking diet soda would make me hungrier than I would be if I drank the same amount of water? I'm not a MD, but wouldn't an excess of insulin in my bloodstream make me crave something sweet? This doesn't sound like a good idea for people wanting to lose weight!

 

[alfaniner]

Precisely. I had one or two diet sodas a day. All I did was cut those out, and I lost twenty pounds in two months. That was all I did. I went to water instead.

Well, we'll see how it works for me in the next couple months. Still keeping it at one 20-oz bottle a day. It may take a while before getting off of it completely (if I ever do...).

The bag of leftover candy I finished last week probably didn't help though.

 

[PatKelley]

Doesn't this mean that drinking diet soda would make me hungrier than I would be if I drank the same amount of water? I'm not a MD, but wouldn't an excess of insulin in my bloodstream make me crave something sweet? This doesn't sound like a good idea for people wanting to lose weight!

Aspartame by itself does not cause long term drops in blood glucose (the classic sugar-crash), however it appears in the standard glucose-tolerance model of blood draws once an hour for three hours to show less drop in serum insulin than fasting patients who took unsweetened drinks or sacharrine, and starts at a higher baseline. The spike in insulin is not long-term, the effect is not pronounced for long-term tests, and studies so far have gone a total of three weeks for "long-term" follow-ups.

It would be a hard link to establish, between aspartame and weight-gain/type II diabetes, presuming one could get a representative population that ate the same, but only varied in aspartame versus glucose/sucrose ingestion.

 

[gethane]

As a recently diagnosed gestational diabetic, I can tell you from my awesomely huge sample size of 1, that splenda, does not seem to increase my blood sugar at all. One time I thought it did, when I used it in my coffee, but I think it was actually the milk I used because after drinking some Diet Rite, made with Splenda, I didn't see an increase.