Piousbox

It took several months (less than a year) but I'm noticeably bringing down my blood sugar level. It seems diet plays a more important role here than does exercise, although I can't imagine improving one and not the other.

My hero Ivor Cummins is the guy providing amazingly useful information on this subject. He says even good food, processed poorly, will cripple a person. He says processed foods make sugar and carbs highly available, preventing the latter 80% of our digestive tract from being used, resulting in metabolic deregulation which is diabetes. He says heart desease, the number one killer, is linked directly to this.

He says interesting, yet screaming generalities:

• all food digestion is inflamatory

not only is fasting good, but if someone snacks throughout the day, for decades on end, his blood vessels are always inflamed, making them more rigid, the heart has to pump harder, and over the years that's hypertension and heart problems, from food. Eating once a day like buddhists should increase lifespan.

• The people who aren't diagnosed diabetics are just undiagnosed

Pre-diabetes, diabetes, hyberglycemia, metabolic desease, insulin resistance are all the same thing, 2/3 of older people are diabetic but probably everyone is.

Curiously, Irov mentions that carbohydrates even cripples birds. If we feed regular bread to pigeons, they develop angelwing, a crippling condition. Humans cripple themselves with modern food, for decades on end.

tl; dr and the solution: cut off the intake of (1) sugar, (2) vegetable oils, and (3) refined grains.

(1) Sugar is unnatural and should not be a part of the diet at all. This is very sad actually. For example, BBQ sause is mostly sugar. Now I can't eat BBQ sause. Sad. But ketchup is mostly tomato paste, so it can be used. In fact, my typical sause now is olive oil and vinegar, so I can have *some* sause. Butter is still available, and salt is not a particularly bad thing.

It took me an effort to stop drinking sweetened coffee, but I have noticed an improvement almost right away. I thought, well if I drink coffee with cream, it's not sugar so it's good, right? Wrong. If it tastes sweet, it's got sugar in it. So sadly and reluctantly I switched from coffee with cream, to black coffee. And noticed a metabolic improvement right away! In fact, I think it was the cream in coffee that kept my sugar levels elevated throughout the day, for decades on end. I used to drink coffee continuously, even when "fasting", and my glucose readings were around 110. But as soon as I stopped with the sweet coffee, the glucose readings dropped to below 100. And I think I actually felt the difference. So I'm not a diabetic per se, but to remain healthy I must not drink sugary coffee non-stop, even if the sugar comes from cream.

A quick note on sweeteners: they aren't as bad as high fructose corn syrup, but they are bad nonetheless. You see, you don't command your body to start or stop digesting. If your body thinks that you ate something sweet (be it diet coke), your body will still release insulin that will float around, resulting in insulin resistance down the line. So artificial sweeteners do not solve the problem. They are still an unnatural chemical that ruins your metabolism.

(2) No vegetable oils! The only good oils are natural butter, pure olive oil, avocado oil and coconut oil. This one is relatively easy - I have no problem only using avocado and extra virgin olive oil. However, you can't control for this when you eat out. So the difficulty here is that when you don't eat at home, when you don't cook your own meals, everyone else uses vegetable oils. A possible solution is, when you do go to a restaurant, to tell the staff that you are allergic to vegetable oils. This way they may be careful and cook your dish in butter or olive oil.

(3) No carbs! This one is difficult, but possible. In Latin America, every person eats rice every day. In Asia probably too. In USA, bread is on every burger. I find it hard to avoid carbs, I used to like pasta, and besides, if not for staple foods, what can we eat?! But that's the way it is: in my pursuit of a better health, I have made more and more strict decisions around my diet.

Nowadays I actually don't eat carbs. I eat a salad: that's only above-ground vegetables, plenty of fiber and no carbs. Then I eat meat: maybe half a chicken. Maybe I make an omelette. Maybe I eat a whole bag of cooked shrimp for lunch. Three fish fillets are filling, without bread. So, while it is difficult and unusual to actually quit carbs: rice, pasta, bread, potatoes... It is possible.

No processed meat! I used to think that okay, I don't eat sausages or hot dogs so I'm fine. But as I'm making stricter and stricter decisions, even ham has to be removed from the diet. Firstly, ham is suspiciously cheap, and secondly, it is a sweet-tasting, already-prepared, highly processed food. Now, eventually, I may even stop eating bacon? According to Ivor, a problem with processed meats is that they are like already pre-digested, and so the digestive tract doesn't get to digest them, thus crippling the person. As a solution, the meats that I do eat are: steak, pork chops, and chicken.

So to reiterate: a good diet consists of only unprocessed meat, fish and eggs, diary products, healthy oils, and non-starchy above-ground vegetables.

And I think I actually feel the improvement in my metabolism, from this diet. My glucose readings seem to agree.

@TODO: The next step is to try to use hunger as a stimulant of cognitive function.