Eating To Your Meter is one of the most under-rated and unused health optimizing tools out there.
If you have Type 2 diabetes, pre-diabetes or insulin resistance, mastering eating to your meter is the 1st step towards lowering your blood sugar and preventing wild blood sugar swings whenever you eat even if you are non-diabetic as well.
I will describe the ‘how to perform eating to your meter’ exercise shortly, but before then I’d like to make the case why I came to this conclusion.
If you really want to optimize your health, then you need to optimize blood glucose excursions when you eat. Blood glucose swings have a direct relationship to your metabolic health in the medium to long term…
…even if you are not diabetic, yet. Obviously, blood sugar swings matter a lot more if you already have pre-diabetes or Type 2 diabetes.
And the easiest way to know how food affects your blood sugar levels is through the eating to your meter technique. The principle of eating to your meter should be your guiding light.
The key phrase there is: “Your Blood Sugar“. Not mine, not your sisters or brothers, not your partners, not the general population but YOUR blood sugar. How we react to the food we eat varies from person to person. The gurus never ever emphasize that.
Indeed, eating to your meter should form the basis of how to lower your HbA1C or lower your blood sugar. You will understand why when I describe the technique later on this piece.
Background – Confusion Reigns
When you do research online about optimizing your health for whatever reason, you get bombarded with all sorts of advice. A lot of it conflicting information which will not only confuse the bleeding daylight out of you, but will drive you nuts.
And I mean it.
The more experienced and vocal experts don’t agree when they sit around the table to thrash issues out…even when they belong to the same camp.
An example is Dr Fuhrman and Dr McDougall both in the Carbohydrate side of the argument and they can’t even agree on how much carbs will be appropriate for optimum health.
As you can see from the video below, the gentleman asking the question must have come to that conference wanting to clarify some points and clear a path for himself. Succeed, he didn’t. Hence, he shared his frustration by asking a rather bulls-eye question. Watch video below to see what I mean.
As you can tell from that video, the argument is all about the calorie density prescription that would be considered appropriate. Both Dr Fuhrman and Dr McDougall can’t agree.
Add that to the Low Carb High Protein camp and the Low Carb High Fat camp and your mind gets even more twisted. Worse if you are new to all of these.
As a medical doctor, it took me a while to get my head around what kind of diet pathway would be appropriate for me when I made the decision to get rid of all the nastiness of metabolic syndrome.
I developed metabolic syndrome (insulin resistance syndrome) largely because I wasn’t paying attention to my health, even though my day job was to care for others.
Having said that, the care I was taught to provide wasn’t the one I wanted for myself on this occasion. Conventional medicine usually meant popping pills and popping yet more pills as one’s condition deteriorated. I had had enough of that and I wanted to go the simpler route of using diet to optimize my health.
Given the fact that doctors are not taught nutrition in medical school, that task of deploying the dietary ammunition proved to be quite a struggle for a while before I charted a cause after intense research.
The main struggle being the amount of conflicting information you get both online and offline when you attend conferences.
Eat this, don’t eat that. Eat 2 of those. No, eating 2 of those will harm you. Get Low Carb. No, go High Carb. Fat is bad. No, fat is great. Eat wholegrain. No wholegrain will make you a Grainatarian and will rocket your insulin level. It goes on and on and on forever. It’s just mind-boggling.
If it is mind-twisting for me as a doctor, how much more the ordinary folk who is just as well fed up with taking 4 pills a day and would like an alternative pathway through the medium of diet.
Someone who wants to claim the right to disease-free living using diet as his/her main driver.
This is one reason for this blog. A channel to disseminate my successes as I travel this path.
What I discovered.
With so much conflicting information flying around, I discovered something that I think represents the missing piece in the puzzle.
And I discovered it whilst researching dietary ways of dealing with type 2 diabetes. It is the ‘Eating To Your Meter’ principle.
This ‘Eating To Your Meter’ principle is so important and yet so basic that it solves a lot of the headache of choosing the right diet to halt at worst, and reverse at best, any of the chronic diseases that have their causative roots entrenched in the Western diet.
Why do I think this is the missing puzzle piece?
The reason and there is only one – Customization.
Even though we belong to the same species, yet we are so different as people that it makes sense to individualise everyone’s approach.
Each dietary approach claims a high level of success and indeed they are all correct in their claims.
Think:
Low Carb High Fat (LCHF) purists
Low Carb High Protein enthusiasts
Plant-based camp which can be split up into Calorie-Dense (Starch) sub-category and the Calorie-Light (Non-Starch) sub-category.
Each of those dietary groups have hundreds of success stories. When you look closely as well, they all have their own fair amount of failures too.
The point being there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach that’s going fix everyone in one fell swoop.
Some individuals are going to be outliers.
Hear Dr Sarah Hallberg talk about lipid profile failures in the Low Carb High Fat users below. I am glad Sarah admits that the Low Carb High Fat (LCHF) diet does not work for everybody.
Also, that when LCHF works it does carry some unintended consequences of increasing LDL (Bad Cholesterol) for a small proportion of its enthusiasts.
Very sporty and good of Sarah to admit that and to actually commence a 2-year study that will hopefully throw some answers to that question. Because as she rightly stated this puts those outliers at greater risk of cardiovascular disease.
If you go into forums of the different health optimisation groups, you will find people who complain of not having the same experience as the successes. Does that mean that health optimization strategy is bad?
No, far from it.
I believe the journey should begin with you as an individual and that’s where the ‘Eating To Your Meter’ comes in.
The Solution
Yes, the solution is ‘Eating To Your Meter’.
The operative word again here is ‘Your’.
Because we are so different, it becomes essential to have a plan that is personalised based on the fact that there are:
Inter-personal variations
Intra-personal variations
Our bodies have such confounding variables that not only do we have inter-personal variations, we also have intra-personal variations.
What do I mean by intra-personal differences?
How your body responds to a particular meal can actually vary from day to day. Factors like sleep, level of physical activity and type of physical activity can influence your body’s response to a particular meal.
When you alter your insulin resistance status, your body’s response also changes naturally.
Case in point.
When I started my journey to change my health for the better having been diagnosed with prediabetes (metabolic syndrome to be precise), I couldn’t tolerate one banana fruit. If I ate one ripe banana, my blood glucose will hit 8.1 mmol/l (145.8 mg/dl). Wow!
Having reversed my insulin resistance, I can now eat 4 bananas at once and my blood glucose reading will be at a maximum of 5.8 mmol/l. (104 mg/dl). This is the result of insulin resistance reversal confirmed by testing myself several times using the eating to your meter technique.
I don’t get the exact same blood glucose reading every time I eat 4 bananas but so far since re-introducing bananas into my diet, 5.8 mmol/l (104 mg/dl) has been my highest reading. Now that’s an intra-personal variation.
Oh, if you are wondering, does he actually eat 4 bananas in one sitting? Oh, Yes, I do. I eat more over the course of a day but that’s a story for another day.
How did I confidently abandon bananas and subsequently re-introduce them into my dietary plan? I used the Eating To Your Meter as my guiding tool.
What about inter-personal variation?
I will illustrate this with another example.
My wife and I will eat the same meal. When we test ourselves and our blood glucose readings couldn’t be more different.
Granted I have become more insulin sensitive than my wife because I embarked on reversing insulin resistance earlier than my wife, so it is to be expected that I should have lower readings comparatively on the same meal.
This difference in blood glucose readings has actually become a motivating factor for my wife to work harder reversing her insulin resistance, so she could catch up with me. Nice!
What are the objectives of the Eating To Your Meter?
The objectives are quite simple. It’s all about optimizing your health.
We will optimize our health by optimizing our blood glucose excursions when we eat. And we will use the eating to meter tool to achieve this. By doing this we aim to:
Develop a list of “Good For Me” foods
Develop a list of “Not Good For Me” foods
Develop a list of “Probably Good For Me” foods
The “Good For Me” and Not Good For Me” list are the most important and you will see what I mean when I describe the Eating To Your Meter technique.
The “Probably Good For Me” foods are the ones that a little adjustment of the recipe may bring the meal into the “Good For Me” food list.
For instance, starchy foods will fall into that category. When you reduce the servings portion of the wholegrain content of a recipe, you reduce the glycaemic load and that meal may become more blood glucose-friendly for you.
The whole idea is to avoid blood glucose spikes and the operative word in ‘Eating To Your Meter’ is “Your”. Because it is about you and how your body responds to a particular meal. It is all about you and not what any expert has told you to eat.
Yes, there are certain foods that are golden truth. Refined sugars and refined carbs are foods to be avoided because they are very likely going to spike you. If you doubt it, test them and you will realize that it isn’t all theory.
The beauty of ‘Eating To Your Meter is that it gives you absolute control over what you eat.
If you have insulin resistance, pre-diabetes or have type 2 diabetes, this eating to your meter exercise is more or less mandatory.
I believe that every adult over 45, certainly over 50, should carry out the eating to your meter exercise regardless of whether you are insulin resistant, prediabetic, type 2 diabetic or not.
If you think about it, how else are you going to know if a particular food you eat on a regular basis is good for your metabolic health or not. It just makes perfect sense to build the “Good For Me “ list of foods and you can enjoy your meals with confidence instead speculating about a meal’s suitability.
So how do you perform the Eat To Your Meter exercise?
The first thing to remember is that you are targeting a post meal blood glucose of 140 mg/dl (7.8mmol/l), okay. This blood sugar level should represent the worst blood sugar rise that is permissible after your meals.
Why is this?
Well, research has shown us 140 mg/dl (7.8 mmol/l) is the target safe blood glucose that is non-toxic to cells. Blood sugar rises beyond this level does lead to cell destruction inclusive of the cells in the pancreas that actually make and secrete insulin for you. You’d want to protect those cells, don’t you?
Besides, this research did show that high blood sugar excursions after eating, even in the absence of clinical diabetes, is associated with heart disease and all-cause mortality.
With that in mind, here are the blood sugar readings you should ideally be targeting:
1 hour after meals
Under 140 mg/dl (7.8 mmol/L)
2 hours after meals
Under 120 mg/dl (6.6 mmol/L)
To do this all-important exercise, you need a glucometer to read your blood glucose. The one I recommend is the Roche Accu Chek mobile . It’s very easy to use and the strips come pre-loaded in a small inserted drum.
Heck, the lancets for the Accu Chek mobile are even integrated to the rest of the glucometer unit as just one single unit. The finger prick of the lancet is so gentle, you would hardly feel it. This is very much unlike the others I have tried.
>> To do the eating to your meter you need to “draw a line in the sand” by setting target blood glucose of 140 mg/dl (7.8 mmol/l) which will act as a ceiling.
>> You have to dedicate your entire effort at staying under this upper limit target. It doesn’t end there. When you get better at doing this, you may need to lower this target by a couple of units. For instance, you would be doing an excellent job if you later on set a target of 126mg/dl (7.0mmol/l) at the 1-hour mark post-meal.
Remember, levels between 4.0 mmol/l (72 mg/dl) and 7.0 mmol/l (126 mg/dl) are where you want to be ideally 1 hour after eating. In making the 3 different lists of foods, you can use old reliable Pen & Paper, simple Notepad app on your computer or Spreadsheet if you like.
Here is the technique
**Very important. Before you test any food, make you haven’t eaten anything in the preceding 3 – 4 hours. Why…because we want to test all foods on a clean slate. No interference from a previous snack or food. That would be unfair on the index food being tested, if you ate say 2 hours ago.
Step 1
Make a note of what you are about to eat and the amount too.
Step 2
Test your blood glucose before you commence eating. This pre-meal test is optional though, if you are not insulin resistant, but it does help if you want to analyse your results later.
Step 3
Look at your watch or clock and note the time you had your first bite of food.
Step 4
Test your blood glucose 1 hour after your first bite.
The 1 hour reading is supposed to be the Peak reading – the spike, if you like from the meal.
Step 5
Test again 2 hours after your first bite. Your blood sugar should be heading back to the pre-meal level. If it is, you’re showing a good 2nd phase insulin response. If it is not, you should keep testing until your blood sugar begins to decline.
>> Do this for as long as possible – 1 month, 2 months depending on how elaborate your home menu is.
Include a variety of meals. Your popular meals, your favorite foods and even the ones you eat less often. You want to cover a broad range of foods.
Step 6
Analyze the foods and their corresponding results. You want to note the foods that are spiking you above the 7.8 mmol/l (140 mg/dl) and wouldn’t settle back down beyond the 2-hour mark. These are the “danger foods” that will go into your “Not Good For Me” list.
>> Conversely the foods that don’t produce any spikes are great and must go into your “Good For Me” list of foods.
>> It’s probably a good idea to give each meal a second and even a third chance, on the off chance that the high reading may be due some other factor. This is where the “Probably Good For Me” list comes in, especially those foods whose results are pretty close to the target 7.8 mmol/l (140 mg/dl) on either side of it.
You want to re-test those on different occasions to see if the results will get better. If the results don’t improve after two or three attempts, it is best to stay away from that food or alter the recipe foods to make it more blood glucose-friendly.
>> Following this steps for several weeks, you will have your own customized food list that suits you and your personal circumstances.
You will have your own “Good For Me” and your own “Not Good For Me” list of meals going forward.
Something to note here. Don’t snack before you test any food please.
You shouldn’t have eaten for the preceding 3 hours (preferably 4 hours) before testing any food. You don’t want to be unfair to any food you are testing by confounding it with some other food or snack you ate, say 1 hour earlier. Makes sense?
That’s it. You have now Eaten To Your Meter!
Wouldn’t it be great having a list like that? Meaning you can cook and eat those meals with confidence knowing that your eating habit isn’t ruining your metabolic health?
What are we trying to achieve here with the eating to your meter exercise?
We want to develop a portfolio of meals that will reduce insulin demand on our pancreas. High blood sugar levels place a heavy demand on the pancreas to secrete lots more insulin to drive down the sugar levels in the blood.
Eating foods that lead to modest rises in blood sugar ultimately provoke less insulin secretion from the pancreas. That way we keep our insulin levels low. Less insulin leads to less fat preservation.
Less fat preservation means we prevent the fat spill-over effect which produces fat toxicity on our muscle cells, the liver cells and indeed our pancreas too – the organ that makes the insulin in the first place.
Nearly all the metabolic problems that lead to insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome which of course includes high blood pressure and later on, strokes, heart attacks, alzheimers are traceable to hyperinsulinaemia (high insulin levels).
Hence, eating foods that are low insulin-demanding is the first step towards optimizing your health. I can verify that eating to your meter will set you on that path.
Of course, you also need to work on making yourself more insulin sensitive too. Improving your insulin sensitivity means you may re-introduce some healthy foods that had otherwise spiked you in the past.
For instance, if brown rice had spiked you initially, when you become insulin sensitive further down the line, you may re-introduce it in reduced amounts like one serving at first and see how your body responds to it. That’s what I did with my bananas.
You will become confident and emotionally satisfied about the fact that the food you are eating isn’t going to ruin your health in the years to come.
That’s how you take control of your health, folks.
It might seem tedious and challenging at first but I can confirm you will make some really cool and shocking discoveries when you do this ‘eating to your meter’ exercise. You will be surprised that some of the wholegrain foods your expert is advising you to eat are indeed not good for you, at least initially anyway.
The eating to your meter exercise is about the best way you can customizeall the generic advice you receive from your preferred expert. Then and only then will you confirm if the advice is right for you and your body.
Remember, this is all about you. This is one instance where you are allowed to be selfish.
Just how safe is a high protein diet?
If you are considering going on a high protein diet, you are probably pondering the question: how safe is a high protein diet or put in another way, what are the dangers of a high protein diet?
Well, generally speaking high protein diets are safe. High protein diets aren’t new. Diets based around proteins have been around for ages in different formats.
On the whole high protein diets are effective for weight loss if the outline of the plan is easy and less confusing. This is important because the success of any weight loss plan is built around ease of use and incorporation into our busy lifestyles.
If you follow a well laid-out high protein diet weight loss plan like this one here on Amazon.com (if in Europe here on Amazon.co.uk), then a few adjustments here and there will give you the results you want…
…and you shouldn’t have any problems with safety of the high protein diet if you do as advised in the book.
But I have noticed that people have questions regarding the risks of high protein diets. Indeed there is justification about concerns regarding the dangers of high protein diets. Hence I felt providing answers to some of the questions relating to the dangers of the high protein diet would be something worthwhile.
So here we go.
Can a high protein diet be bad for you?
I have talked about how high protein diets can assist you to lose weight. Just like high protein diet can be good for weight loss, so can you have risks consuming high protein diets.
Yes, high protein diet does have some dangers. Looking at those disadvantages or dangers, you may conclude that high protein diet is bad for you. But just like everything in life you have the pros and cons. There are very few health interventions that don’t carry any risks, not least high protein diet.
It’s how you manage the risks or dangers associated with the high protein diet that will make the difference.
Can you gain weight on high protein diet when trying to lose weight?
Research has shown that anything in excess of the recommended daily protein allowance can in actual fact lead to weight gain if your diet is not structured properly.
> If you do not balance your carbohydrates and fats properly in line with the increase in protein content, then you are going to store the excess unused calories as fat. This is the exact opposite of what you are trying to achieve, if losing weight was your objective.
Don’t forget that a high protein diet can also be used for weight gain in scrawny individuals who wish to bulk up a bit.
High protein diets are a double-edged sword. You can swing a high protein diet in two opposite directions depending on what you want to achieve.
Can you get kidney strain and kidney stones from a high protein diet
Eating excessive amount of proteins puts a lot of strain on your kidneys. After the extra work load placed on your liver which has to deal with the excess protein, detoxifying it and rendering it into a useable format, it’s the turn of the kidneys to filter, launder the by-products of protein metabolism.
There is a chance your kidney function may depreciate over time if high protein diet is a long-term commitment.
Also, given the fact that a lot more calcium and oxalate are excreted on a high protein diet, there’s a chance you may form kidney stones on a high protein diet.
This is particularly so when your diet plan is mainly from animal proteins coupled with the fact that dehydration is an issue with high protein diets. This makes the risk of kidney stone high on a high protein diet.
Do high protein diets cause osteoporosis, bone loss (fragile bones)?
Following on from that, if you continue to lose a lot of calcium over a long time, you will mobilize calcium from your skeletal framework depriving your body of the much needed calcium. This is the concept of “peeing your bones out”.
But is it true that high protein diets actually cause osteoporosis? Is the relationship between protein and calcium an inverse one?
Not really?
What has long been accepted in the medical community is that high protein diets lead to increased excretion of calcium in the urine. That is not in question.
If you then apply the “peeing your bones out” concept that has also been a long-accepted phenomenon, it becomes logical that a high protein diet will lead to osteoporosis over time. This will make you prone to fractures as you get older, the longer you continue with the high protein diet.
But it isn’t as straightforward as that.
As far as protein intake and calcium excretion is concerned, the relationship is direct. The higher your protein intake, the more calcium you excrete in your urine. But is the excess calcium been excreted in the urine coming from the bones?
Recent studies seem to question that “peeing your bones out” thought process, as being not exactly true.
In fact, this review seems to actually suggest that low protein diets are more likely to cause osteoporosis (fragile bones) than a high protein one.
Here’s one conclusion they reached:
> “The long-term consequences of these low-protein diet–induced changes in mineral metabolism are not known, but the diet could be detrimental to skeletal health. Of concern are several recent epidemiologic studies that demonstrate reduced bone density and increased rates of bone loss in individuals habitually consuming low-protein diets”
That review even suggested that protein consumption at and below 0.8 g/kg body weight was associated with secondary hyperparathyroidism.
Hmm, interesting.
Confused? Don’t be.
The current thinking seems to be that increased protein intake even though leads to increased excretion of calcium in the urine, is matched by increased absorption of calcium from the gastrointestinal tract when your high protein food is digested.
So, nothing is lost. It doesn’t seem to be true that extra calcium is being mobilized from your bones when you consume a high protein diet.
A different relationship between protein and calcium absorption exists and it’s also a direct relationship. A high protein diet leads to a high calcium absorption from the gut. High protein intake equates to increased calcium absorption.
> The commonly held view that a diet high in protein and low in calcium can lead to a condition called osteoporosis (soft bone) is arguably no longer correct at least going by recent research findings.
It seems as if calcium supplementation is probably not absolutely necessary on a high protein diet as some studies suggest the supply will come from the diet itself.
Can a high protein diet cause cholesterol problems?
Consuming huge amounts of animal proteins certainly puts you at risk of developing high cholesterol. This is because animal proteins from meat and dairy do contain a lot of saturated fats and even trans fats as part of the food package.
> Both saturated fats and trans fats have the potential to cause your blood lipids to become unhealthy. High level of saturated fat is associated with high cholesterol, high triglycerides, high low density cholesterol (the bad cholesterol).
This is not always the case I must add, but the risk is there especially if your animal protein consumption is high. Of course, this will predispose you to heart attack and strokes.
However, plant proteins behave differently. They do the inverse thing. If you want to protect yourself from high cholesterol, then my suggestion is to have more plant proteins like beans, nuts, seeds, lentils as a big part of your protein package.
This review says “results from the Nurses’ Health Study suggest that eating more protein from beans, nuts, seeds, and the like, while cutting back on easily digested carbohydrates reduces the risk of heart disease.
In that study, eating more animal protein while cutting back on carbohydrates did not reduce heart disease risk, possibly because of the fats and other nutrients that come along (or don’t come along) with protein from animals”
There you have it.
Can you develop High blood pressure on high protein diet?
This springs from the earlier point. Saturated fats are associated with an increase in blood pressure.
This is based on some studies but the evidence is conflicting.
What is certain is animal proteins like meat and eggs do contain high levels of sulphur-containing amino acids. These sulphur compounds have to be dealt with somehow by the kidneys because they get converted to sulphuric acid.
The sulphuric acid has to be buffered by something alkaline. One alkaline of choice is calcium.
Continuously processing these sulphur-containing amino acids (the break down products of proteins) can lead to direct kidney damage over time.
Kidney damage inevitably results in blood pressure issues through a complex interaction that is beyond the scope of this article. That’s one way.
Another mechanism of high protein diet leading to hypertension is an indirect one. This is the fat in the animal food being consumed as protein. As you know food comes as a package. Most foods with animal proteins also have saturated fat.
It says “”Saturated fats from red meat and dairy products increase harmful LDL, but also increase HDL. A moderate intake of saturated fat (under 8% of daily calories) is compatible with a healthy diet, whereas consumption of greater amounts has been associated with cardiovascular disease”
The cardiovascular disease being referred to here are high blood pressure, heart attack and strokes.
No one is saying don’t eat animal proteins but as you can tell if you are going to get all of your high protein diet from animal sources, then you are going exceed the 8% that is being recommended.
> A high protein diet sourced from animal proteins will provide exceedingly high sulphur-containing amino acids (4 times higher than plant proteins) and very high saturated fats predisposing you to high blood pressure. Not good.
What’s the solution? Get most of your protein from plant sources.
Does a high protein diet cause constipation?
People often ask if high protein diets cause constipation. The answer is, yes. High protein diets do have the side effect of constipation.
Why do high protein diets cause constipation? The reason why high protein diets cause constipation very is simple and covered by two words – dehydration and fiber.
Let explore how the side effect of constipation from high protein diet comes about?
3 explanations really.
The first is that high protein diet require a lot of work by the liver to process the amino acids absorbed from the gut. Processing nitrogenous substances which proteins have require a good dose of water to facilitate that metabolism.
Secondly, upon processing the amino acids, the waste products have to be filtered out by the kidneys. We have already established earlier on that the kidneys have to buffer sulphuric acid by-products of amino acid metabolism. That process also requires a good dose of water.
With so much water needed for those metabolic activities, dehydration is a high possibility.
Thirdly, a high protein diet that is sourced mainly from animal proteins has little or no fiber at all in it. Fiber aids regularity of bowel motions. With little fiber in your high protein diet, constipation is almost inevitable.
In this study from University of Connecticut, they found an inverse correlation between level of protein consumption and hydration. The more the protein content in your food, the more dehydrated you become.
The problem is people don’t realise this synergistic complication. They therefore do not drink more water to compensate, hence high protein dieters have constipation issues.
If you then add issue of exercise-induced dehydration to an already bad situation (because most dieters exercise which worsens dehydration), you can begin to see why constipation has a strong association with high protein use.
How do avoid constipation on a high protein diet?
The best way to avoid constipation when on a high protein diet is to drink more water. You will need to drink at least about 3 litres of water daily to avoid high protein diet constipation.
The second thing you do to get rid of constipation on a high protein diet is to increase your fiber intake. Adding high fiber vegetables will not ruin your high protein diet weight loss plan because those vegetables are very low in calories.
A third solution to avoiding or dealing with constipation problems on a high protein diet is to actually reduce the protein content of your weight loss plan. If you restructure the plan, you could still get the results you want without the headache of constipation issues.
It’s about time I examined why the Japanese live longer compared to most other countries and in particular dissect the Okinawa longevity secret.
I love longevity stories and I am instantly attracted to stories of centenarians who not only have achieved something spectacular, at least in my opinion anyway, but have done so gracefully. Longevity arouses the curious element in me.
I always want to explore why and how a centenarian got to where he/she is. You can do no wrong by visiting Okinawa in Japan when exploring the subject of longevity.
With it’s beautiful landscape and culture-rich offers, Japan stands tall in the Western Pacific. A population of 127 million, gorgeous national parks and shrines & temples spread all over the country are some of the features that Japan boasts of.
The Japanese are quiet, unassuming people.
Hence they do not shout loud enough about a vital statistic that they possess. A statistic that most Western countries look at with envy. What is this phenomenon?
…Longevity
An island lies southern to the rest of Japan with an equidistance of 400 miles from the main Japanese island and off the coast of China. The island is called Okinawa.
Okinawa hosts the longest living people in the world. In fact, there are 34 centenarians per 100,000 people, which is more than three times the rate of mainland Japan and it would be interesting to uncover Okinawa longevity secret. Hopefully we can all learn something from it to introduce into our lives.
People don’t live long by accident generally speaking. There’s usually a couple of reasons why longevity sticks with certain groups of people. The question then arises: why do Japanese live longer?
Why do Japanese live longer?
All sorts of reasons have been attributed to their Japanese’ longevity. Let’s hear from Professor Kenji Shibuya of Tokyo University who published a paper two years ago which suggested three reasons for Japanese longevity. Pofessor Shibuya told the express newspaper:
“First, Japanese people give attention to hygiene in all aspects of their daily life,” he wrote. “This attitude might partly be attributable to a complex interaction of culture, education, climate, environment and the Shinto tradition of purifying the body and mind before meeting others.
Second, they are health conscious.
In Japan regular check-ups are the norm. Mass screening is provided for everyone at school and work or in the community by local government authorities. Third, Japanese food has a balanced nutritional benefit and the diet of the population has improved in tandem with economic development.”
Naomi Moriyama who authors of the book, ‘Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat’ puts the main reason firmly in the court of nutrition and I agree. “But on balance and compared to the rest of the world an extraordinary number of Japanese live a very healthy lifestyle in large part because of what they eat,” says Moriyama
> What we eat is so important that it is difficult to ignore and indeed should be celebrated as the principal reason.
Then of course, there’s genetics. This brings me nicely to a specific subset of the Japanese population I mentioned earlier – The Okinawa tribe of Japan. The Okinawans have an even longer life expectancy. Book below available on Amazon.com and in Europe on Amazon.co.uk
So let’s talk Okinawa Longevity Secret.
Okinawans have a lifestyle that is just a tad different from mainland Japan inhabitants. This is a likely factor as to why life expectancy in Okinawa is relatively longer than the rest of the Japanese population. For the Okinawans their longevity secret comes down to 2 reasons:
Nutrition
Genetics
> Genetics play a small role whilst nutrition plays the more significant role for the Okinawans, probably 90%. When you look at the list of foods that constitute the Okinawan diet you will begin to appreciate why nutrition is the principal reason for longevity in the Okinawan tribe.
Here are the attributes of the Okinawa diet:
Okinawa diet is Nutrient-dense
Okinawa diet is very low calorie
Okinawa diet is full of anti-oxidants
Okinawa diet is full of flavonoids
Okinawa diet is largely anti-inflammatory
Okinawa diet is extremely high in fiber
Okinawa diet is quite low in saturated fat
Okinawa diet lacks refined sugar
When I first started looking at what the Japanese ate, I had varying results from my research which is not unexpected. There’s going to be individual variations.
Here’s a typical response from Ms Kirsch of Quora: “Traditional Japanese home cooked meal tends to center around a main protein dish with several additional vegetable dishes to accompany it and is usually eaten with steamed rice, miso soup and pickles. This is also true for breakfast.
The main course can be fish, chicken, beef or pork. The Japanese are not fond of lamb due to its strong taste but will eat venison, near, bore and other game, particularly in the countryside.
There is usually some sort of seaweed included in the meal.
Flavorings are often based around, soya sauce, sake, mirin, (a sweet rice wine), dashi (stock made from seaweed and fish), and miso”
But not for the Okinawans. Okinawans are very traditional.
The Okinawa diet books go into details about how Okinawans lived their lives through food. We now feel that their diet may actually represent the Okinawa longevity secret. The Japanese Okinawa longevity secret is not a secret any more. Anyone can access it and you can start by acquiring those 2 books regarding Okinawa diet plan and Okinawa program: Available here on Amazon.com and in Europe on Amazon.co.uk
The traditional diet is rooted (no pun intended) on root vegetables in particular sweet potato, green and yellow vegetables, soybean-based foods and medicinal plants.
What is the Okinawa diet pyramid?
The Okinawa diet pyramid is an illustration of how the different classes and types of food are represented on the consumption scale as eaten by traditional Okinawans.
If you look at the Okinawa diet food pyramid below, courtesy of Wlicox and his colleagues, it clearly shows that the bulk of Okinawa diet comes from vegetables, fruits, legumes and complex carbohydrates. The Okinawa diet is clearly more plant based than anything else you would probably come across.
Beyond the Okinawa diet pyramid is a more elaborate list of traditional Okinawan diet. It will be obvious to you when you look at the list that traditional Okinawans are hopelessly in love with their sweet potato, so much so that they consume 5 times more sweet potatoes than rice and nearly 10 times more potatoes than wheat, barley and other grains.
> You could accuse the Japanese Okinawans of having a sweet tooth by virtue of the fact they love their sweet potatoes. But that “sweet tooth” is not geared towards refined sugar. Paradoxically, that “sweet tooth” plays a big role in the Okinawa longevity secret.
Okinawans love their legumes in particular tofu and of course tofu is made from soybeans. A Japanese Okinawan would eat 2 servings of Tofu in one sitting. Tofu has been found in research to be cardio-protective. That means Tofu improves blood lipid profile reducing bad cholesterol and increasing good cholesterol with an overall effect of lowering heart attack risks.
The Okinawa diet is quite anti-inflammatory and by extension protects Okinawans against age-related chronic diseases that afflict us in the Western hemisphere.
Suzuki and his colleagues wanted to confirm The Free Radical Theory of Aging and who better to test it on than aged Okinawans. In a way it was one way of proving the Okinawa longevity secret lies with little oxidative stress. The less oxidative stress one has, the higher the likelihood of living longer.
Oxidative stress causes release of free oxygen radicals that cause DNA disruption, and damage to cells, tissues and organs all of which leads to ageing and death.
How do you measure oxidative stress? Well, you can measure lipid peroxide levels in blood for a start and that’s what Suzuki and his colleagues did. They found that lipid peroxide levels were considerably lower in the centenarians compared to their younger folks.
A similar result was found in centenarian Italians as well from a previous study. Anti-oxidants are the weapons that fight oxidative stress thereby promoting longevity through suppression of cell ageing.
> How do you get anti-oxidants for free? Well, Okinawans get their anti-oxidants from their nutrition. Not from pills. Not from supplements. Just food.
Foods rich in Vitamin C, Vitamin E, carotenoids and flavonoids. You will be glad to know that these anti-oxidants are obtainable from fruits and vegetables in your local grocery shop.
List of traditional Okinawa diet foods
Below is a list of traditional foods eaten by Okinawans. Some of these foods are accessible to us in the West and if you want to adopt this lifestyle, you could start by looking into how to incorporate these foods into yours starting today.
Tofu
Okinawans love tofu as stated earlier just like the British love their Fish and Chips. Tofu is good for the heart and blood vessels protecting Okinawans from heart attacks and strokes. Tofu can be stir fried to make Chanpuru. 100gm of Okinawa tofu will serve you 105 kcalories. Not bad!
Sweet Potatoes
Their brand of sweet potato is purplish. Sweet potato is a low glycaemic index food regardless of its sweetness because of it high fiber content. Sweet potatoes contain sporamin, an anti-oxidant that fights free radicals.
Oh and the sweet potato leaves are used as ingredients for the ever so popular Japanese miso soup. Nothing is wasted here, guys.
Rice
Okinawans eat both brown and white rice. The clever thing they do with brown rice is that they soak the rice in water before cooking it. Soaking the brown rice up to the point of germination (sprouting) makes it more flavoursome and improves the nutritional value of the rice as a bonus.
Shiitake Mushrooms
Found in decaying deciduous trees, shiitake mushrooms are used in traditional Japanese Okinawa miso soup, vegetarian dashi, in sauces and can be also steamed and sautéed.
Known to have an umami flavour which some people may not like very well, hence would prefer the sun-dried variety and of course the dried version has a longer shelf life.
Seaweeds
Okinawans love their seaweed. Mozuku, Wakame and Kombe are quite popular. The beauty of sea weeds is that they exemplify what high fber, low calorie vegetable can be.
For instance, Mozuku will yield a paltry 4 Calories per 100gm serving. How low can you get? Awesome. You can eat bucket loads of this stuff, be full to the brim and only get just a couple of calories.
In addition, consuming Mozuku, Wakame and Kombe seaweeds provides you with a carotenoid called fucoxanthin and minerals like magnesium, iodine, folic acid, calcium and iron. No wonder traditional Okinawans have BMIs in the low healthy range.
Goya
Goya is also known as bitter lemon. As the name suggests, goya has a bitter taste, so not usually eaten raw but it is used in stir fries especially dish known as goya-chanpuru. Goya has a rough exterior but the flesh does have a taste of a cross between an unripe avocado and courgette (zucchini).
Goya is also rich in micronutrients in the form of Vitamin B, Vitamin C, magnesium, folic acid, Iron and flavonoids. Goya is thought to have blood glucose lowering properties, so will be useful in people with type 2 diabetes, pre-diabetes and prevention of type 2 diabetes.
So there you have it folks. You now know why Japanese live longer and now have access to the Okinawa longevity secret.
Oh and one more longevity secret from Okinawa, you are only supposed to eat until you are 80% full. Apparently that is an age-old Okinawa tradition that is passed on from one generation to the next without fail. That’s a little tip for you and I to adopt in the West.
Are “non-diabetic blood sugar spikes” an actual phenomenon or not? Let’s talk about it, shall we. Something millions of people don’t realize is that non-diabetics do experience blood glucose spikes after meals.
Yes, non-diabetics get blood sugar highs, believe it or not. They just don’t know it and this phenomenon has implications for your health.
Your doctor won’t tell you how important your blood glucose control is as a non-diabetic. I will.
The reason your doctor fails to tell you this is mainly because it is generally thought that until a diagnosis of diabetes is made, you are assumed to be metabolically competent.
But that is not always the case.
In actual fact, this is the reason why a lot of prediabetes cases are missed. Prediabetes is the abnormal metabolic stage before type 2 diabetes actually bites.
And before the prediabetes stage, you also develop insulin resistance which is largely silent as well.
Doctors don’t pay enough attention to metabolic health in a run-of-the-mill consultation even if the consultation is for a wellness overview.
There are so many individuals with insulin resistance, prediabetes and frank type 2 diabetes walking around totally unaware they have any of those conditions.
If only we paid just a little attention to our metabolic health, we could prevent millions of cases of type 2 diabetes raging around the globe like a wild summer forest fire.
Do non-diabetics have blood sugar spikes?
I often get asked about whether non diabetics have blood sugar highs i.e blood sugar spikes. The short answer is,; Yes, they do. Blood sugar spike after eating in a non-diabetic is real, but there is a caveat here. Not every non diabetic does.
It all depends on what I call metabolic competence along with other variables.
Before I talk about the variables involved, let me draw your attention to this study carried in Ulm University in Germany.
They recruited 24 healthy volunteers into the study and made them eat similar meals in the first 3 days of the study and then allowed them free eating under daily real life conditions for the rest of the study.
The operative word there is healthy. The study participants were thoroughly examined to confirm they were truly non-diabetic by a variety of tests including blood insulin levels, c-peptide levels, HbA1C and oral glucose tolerance test.
You don’t have to know the ins and outs of those tests if you are not familiar with them. All you need to know is, if a combination of all those tests are normal, then you are definitely not diabetic.
They were young men and women, 24 in total (12 males and 12 females) with a mean Body Mass Index of 22.6. They were well within normal body weight by all accounts and young too. Mean age was 27 years.
Participants were fed 50gm carbohydrate meals for the first 3 days of the study and allowed home to eat freely for the rest of the study.
The participants had continuous glucose monitoring for 24 hours a day during the study period, so every tissue glucose fluctuation was registered and analysed to give a fuller, clearer picture.
What the study found.
They found glucose excursions (or glucose fluctuations if you will), to vary between 59mg/dl – 168mg/dl (3.3mmol/l – 9.3mmol/l) during the day. Night time glucose was fairly stable.
What does this tell you – How high can a non-diabetic’s blood sugar go?
This study clearly shows that even non diabetics do show fluctuating high blood sugar levels when they eat. If you take it one step further and would like to know how high can a non-diabetic blood sugar go, that study gives you an answer right there.
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In that cohort of healthy non diabetic individuals, their blood sugars were hitting a high of 168mg/dl (9.3mmol/l).
In answering the question of how high can a non diabetic’s blood sugar go, it will vary between individuals.
168mg/dl (9.3 mmol/l) was the peak blood sugar level in those non-diabetics in the study.
Don’t forget though that these were young men and women with an average age of 27 years.
In real life as we know it though, how high your blood sugar will go will depend on your metabolic competence and of course, the type of foods you eat.
In those non diabetic individuals in the study, they also found that breakfast was the worst culprit of the meals.
So, don’t be fooled into thinking your blood glucose levels are always normal after a meal just because you don’t have a diagnosis of diabetes. A lot of normal non diabetic people do swing their blood glucose levels.
The nearer you are to the diabetes door, the higher your blood glucose excursions when you eat.
What is normal blood sugar levels after eating for non-diabetics?
It would be remiss of me, if I left you hanging without letting you in on what normal blood sugars should be after eating if you are non-diabetic.
What’s the point of telling about blood sugar spikes in non-diabetics if I don’t reveal what normal blood sugars should be after eating.
The essential point here though is; the importance of non-diabetics having a control on their diet. What you eat has either a positive effect on your health or a negative one.
Let me repeat that.
Non-diabetics are obliged to take control of their food choices, if they are to avoid the health implications of blood sugar highs. This is the whole point of this exercise.
You may want to use the figures below as your non-diabetic blood sugar chart if you like. It works just the same way.
So, below is your non-diabetic blood sugar or glucose chart and this is what is recommended by the American College of Clinical Endocrinologists.
Of particular interes,t are the values there that represent what you, as a non-diabetic should be aiming for at 1 hour after eating and 2 hours post meal. They represent what should be normal blood sugar levels after eating your meal.
As you can see; it is anticipated that your blood sugar should peak 1 hour after you have eaten but some foods may swing either way.
For instance, an oatmeal may peak just beyond the 1-hour mark compared to a bagel, doughnut or potato fries which might peak much earlier.
In fact, in the study above, they actually found that blood glucose peaked around about 45 minutes after the subjects ate.
However, for standardisation purposes, the 1 hour after eating blood glucose value of 140mg/dl (7.8mmol/l) for non-diabetics has become a reference point that doctors would recommend you aim for.
Just as a non-diabetic is expected to have blood sugar levels of 100mg/dl (5.5mmol/l) after fasting overnight.
One very important point is that these set values for non-diabetics are target figures. They should represent your top value. Indeed, you should be aiming for less than the top value. The further away you are below the top set values, the better.
How long after eating does blood sugar return to normal?
I get asked often how long after eating should blood sugar return to normal. Well, the simple answer to that question is; blood sugar should return to normal within about 2 hours of eating.
Ideally, blood sugar should be back to normal values at 1 hour and half. That is if you are metabolically competent. Of course, if it’s taking longer, then your metabolic competence is being called to question.
To fully understand this, I have to explain how this whole blood sugar regulation shenanigan works when you eat. Brace yourself…
Here we go…
Your pancreas has some some cells scattered inside it called beta cells. These beta cells manufacture, store and release insulin when needed. You will always have some insulin in your blood circulation at any point in time in the 24 hours of the entire day.
You will never have zero insulin level at anytime. This is called Basal Insulin release.
When you eat, your pancreas is called into action straightaway. Eating causes a rise in blood sugar. A blood sugar rise is a clarion call for the beta cells of the pancreas to release insulin over and above the usual basal insulin release.
A blood sugar rise over 100 mg/dl, (5.5 mmol/L) would trigger a release of the stored insulin to bring back the blood glucose to normal levels. This is called First Phase Insulin Release.
The 1st Phase Insulin Release is triggered within a couple of minutes of commencing your meal.
And in normal metabolically competent individuals, this first phase insulin release is enough to prevent any significant blood sugar rise which should peak 45 minutes after you start eating.
If there is failure to return the blood sugar back down to below 100 mg/dl, (5.5 mmol/L), the beta cells will push another round of insulin into the circulation to get the glucose level down. This is called Second Phase Insulin Release.
It is expected that this second phase insulin release should complete the job of regulating the blood sugar to normal. And this should happen within an hour and half after eating. Certainly 2 hours max.
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Why is it important for non-diabetics to know about controlling their blood sugars after eating?
As you can see from those non-diabetic blood sugar chart values, the highest blood sugar you mustn’t exceed is 140mg/dl (7.8mmol/l).
That number or value wasn’t plucked from thin air. It was based on research. It is thought blood sugars above the 140mg/dl (7.8mmol/l) is the level at which cell damage by the excess blood sugar in circulation begins to occur.
There are 2 main reasons why controlling your blood sugar after meals is important:
Unrecognized type 2 diabetes
And the number 1 killer disease the world over – Heart disease
I do not want to scare you in any way but a lot of damage does occur beneath the surface, so to speak, in individuals with undiagnosed type 2 diabetes and those who are not frankly diabetic but fall into the category of impaired glucose tolerance.
More or less the impaired glucose tolerance individuals are the prediabetics.
The danger here is; a lot of people who are pre-diabetic or insulin resistant are totally unaware they are. For practical reasons, we consider these people as being “normal” or “non-diabetic” even though in truth they are not.
What’s your risk of death from undiagnosed high blood sugar?
This DECODE European Study old it may be, did demonstrate that the relative risk of death from heart disease and strokes increases by 1.5 times when your blood glucose after 2 hours post 75gms glucose test is between 140mg/dl (7.8mmol/l) – 200mg/dl (11.1mmol/l). See Red arrow in Chart below.
I want that figure to sink in for a moment. People who have a result between 140mg/dl (7.8mmol/l) – 200mg/dl (11.1mmol/l) are not considered diabetic but prediabetic. That piece of research is telling us the risk of death of prediabetics is already high.
The sad thing is that millions of people like you and I are walking around not knowing that we may have pre-diabetes simply because we have not been tested.
…and also because we do not show any symptoms.
Worse still is, that same research does tell us if you your blood sugar is above 200mg/dl (11.1mmol/l) your relative risk of death actually doubles.
John Fuller several years ago also did a classic piece of research where he gave 18,403 British men aged between 40 – 60 years of age 50gm of glucose load. John secured the results of the test and just simply followed the individuals up for 7.5 years to see what their mortality risk was over time.
He wanted to know if increases in blood glucose after 2 hours of the 50gm glucose load would be a risk factor for heart disease or death.
John and his colleagues found the men who had 2-hour blood glucose levels below 96mg/dl (5.3mmol/l) did not suffer any significant mortality.
However, mortality doubled in those whose 2-hour blood glucose were between 98mg/dl – 200mg/dl (5.4mmol/l – 11.1mmol/l) as the follow up years rolled by. See Red Arrow in chart below.
What do these 2 studies tell us?
I did not mean to scare you with those statistics but to make a point. The main conclusion from those 2 studies is that you can use the 2-hour glucose test to predict mortality from what I call metabolic incompetence.
Metabolic incompetence that you may not be aware of because you do not have any symptoms. So to all intents and purposes, you are disease-free. But in truth, you are not.
Shall we then agree that until you have had a rigorous test to check that you are not insulin resistant, pre-diabetic or actually have type 2 diabetes, you may well do your body serious favours by managing your diet.
Even if you have had tests that prove you are not diabetic, you still need to watch what you eat to avoid blood sugar spikes when you eat. Because non-diabetics do spike blood glucose after having regular everyday popular foods.
The kinds of foods you eat play a huge role as to whether you get blood sugar spikes after your meals or not.
For instance, that pasta, that rice, that pastry, that white potato, that high fructose corn syrup you had yesterday or this morning may have rocketed your blood sugar levels to those levels recognized in those researches I mentioned above.
That means you could be doing the same damage to your heart without realising you are…simply because you are not diabetic.
You would have noticed earlier that even in healthy non-diabetic young men and women with an average age of just 27, they experienced glucose excursions hitting 168mgdl (9.3mmol/l).
How much more do you think your blood glucose excursions will be after a meal if you are older, say over 40 and have other risk factors such as being overweight and sedentary. I will discuss the risk factors for diabetes in another article.
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Your Take Home Message
But for now, your take home message here is this.
Not being a diabetic does not mean you are immune from diabetes-like blood glucose levels after your meal especially when you eat high glycaemic index foods. This is more likely to occur as we get older.
You need to start taking precautions and how do we do that?
By simply watching what we eat and the portions we eat.
Your first victory when you avoid the blood sugar spiking foods and limiting your food portions is that you avoid the after meal glucose highs.
That in itself stops you from developing insulin resistance which in turn prevents type 2 diabetes. Ultimately by so doing, you automatically are lowering your heart attack risks by a mile.
My friend, Mike gives some guidance about some of the foods that may be spiking you and they are in your kitchen right now. His article is more like a follow up to what I have been talking about here. It’s a good read that bolts on to this piece. Read Full Story Here.
The contents of the site are for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website!
Dr. Joe