Had a bowl of oatmeal less than one hour ago. Old-fashioned oats, artificial sweetener, cinnamon. Now I am wiped out. Tired, sleepy. I don't even need a glucose meter to tell me the oatmeal reeked havoc on my blood sugar.

I always feel this way after eating certain carbs. Used to think old-fashioned oatmeal was okay. But it's just not. Not for me anyway. By the way, I'm hypoglycemic.

Agreed Dr. Davis... wish all would "Read and Heed" this advice.

Question: you are referring to Type 2 Diabetes only, right?

All the best.

Steve

Most drug stores including Walmart and Target carry a small disposable meter that looks like a 35mm film bottle.  Very cheap and includes 50 test strips.  Next cheapest I've found is the Walmart ReliOn Ultima meter which is around $9 and you buy the strips at the Pharmacy (only since people steal them) for around $39 for 100.  When I first started Primal, my sugar readings were all over the place and then within 3-4 months of eating low-carb my reading became really stable all day long.  I think I had to burn through my over abundant glycogen stores first (it was mostly causing high waking pre-breakfast readings).

I'm going to try this with the BG meter we use for our diabetic cat. It measures in mmol/L and the recommended BG targets are 4.0-7.0 before meals/5.0-10.0 2hrs. after. (for humans)
Is this similar to your recommendation of100 mg/d,l Dr Davis?

Can it cure type I diabetes as well?

I am a diabetic and I find the inexpensive Wallmart brand ReliOn Micro is a great value.

@ $20 for meter and strips. Refill strips @ $12 per 20.

Just a "heads up" for others.  I ordered the Walmart Relion BG meter ($9) and a supply of strips and lancets online only to have Walmart CANCEL the BG meter (no reason available) and send me the strips and lancets (which I will have to return as they are useless to me without the Relion BG meter).  Walmart's website still says the BG meters are "in stock" when clearly they are not and customer service had no explanation for that either.

I'll visit your earlier post to find a comparable meter.

Dr. Davis: "This is why low-glycemic index is an absurd notion."

Does this mean the Dreamfields pasta claim of being low-carb is misleading, at best?

I've been contemplating trying it, but fear it really isn't low carb.

i am curious about the effect that the oatmeal that i sometimes eat would have on my blood glucose levels.

i take 3 cups of raw oats, soak them in warm water with 8 tablespoons of raw whey and add 2 heaping tablespoons of organic buckwheat flour and let them soak for 24 hours. drain and rinse thoroughly. pour the oats into a baking casserole dish and add some coconut oil, blueberries, pure vanilla, cinnamon, buttermilk. bake at 350 for 40 minutes.

the result is a very delicious and highly altered form of oats. the whey and buckwheat drastically reduce the phytic acid and 'ferment' or predigest the oats. when it's done, i just add a couple spoons of pasture butter and enjoy. i've noticed a significant change in texture as a result. the oats are no longer firm. they feel quite 'broken down' and they do not sit in my stomach like a brick.

why go through all that trouble? well... you should taste it. it is quite the treat.

I appreciate the information in your blog.  I started checking my blood sugar and was shocked at the results of some 'low glycemic index' foods.  Besides the basic health benefits of maintaining healthy blood glucose, I've also lost a few pounds.  Bonus!

Desia,

I'm diabetic and from the UK where we measure blood glucose in mmol/L - to convert from mg/dl to mmol/L just divide by 18 - so 100 is 5.5. Multiply by 18 to convert your mmol/L to mg/dl.

Oatmeal and other high-carb foods won't cause blood sugar spikes if you are lean, get regular exercise,  eat high-carb foods on a regular basis, and don't have health problems. All 4 of the above conditions must be met. In particular, you MUST exercise, though the exerciser doesn't have to be lengthy.

I find keeping my bodyfat under 15% (I'm a 50 year-old male, women would have a higher percentage) and doing 5 to 10 minutes of one-legged squats, which gets my blood pumping and is much more convenient than running, is enough to keep my insulin sensitivity high enough to avoid blood sugar surges.

Yesterday, for example, I had a single large meal in the late afternoon, due to being too busy to eat most of the day: a half can of salmon, a large salad, 300g (dry) of cooked oats mixed with about 6 grams of cinnamon all eaten within about 30 minutes. My blood sugar never exceeded 110 mg/dL during the subsequent 3 hours (I measured every 30 minutes) and eventually fell back to the normal level of about 85.

When I experimented with a paleo diet for a while, my insulin sensitivity plummeted, so that when I broke the paleo regime temporarily and ate a mere 100g (dry) of cooked oats, my blood sugar skyrocketed to 195 mg/dL 30 minutes later. And note that those oats were eaten together with 2 eggs and some veggies, which would normally tend to mute the glycemic index as opposed to eating oats by themselves. Evidently, what happened while eating paleo is that my body's cells had down-regulated their insulin sensitivity. This makes sense, since there is no need for high insulin sensitivity when eating paleo, and the greater danger under these conditions is low blood sugar rather than high blood sugar. Only when glucose is abundant (regularly eating a high carb diet) does the body upregulate insulin sensitivity. But the upregulation won't occur if the body is fat or doesn't get regular exercise. And, of course, it obviously won't occur for someone with a "burned out" pancreas, such as Type II diabetics supposedly have.

Anne, thanks for the info. (I'm from Canada)

Has there been any studies citing any differences in regular oats versus soaking/sprouted oats? I wonder if the neutralizing of the phytic acid that helps in digestions would also help the way the body breaks down the oats and, therefore, insulin response.

Jeff -

I have used Dreamfields for about 6 months now.  They claim the carbs are "locked up" and can't be digested.  I have found they do not affect blood glucose like regular pasta would.

However they are still wheat, which has it's own problems even if the special processing prevents blood glucose spikes. I still have it once or twice a month when the rest of my "non-low carb" family has pasta, but I know I have to quit wheat all together soon, just hard to do. For now it's the lesser of two evils.

"Oatmeal and other high-carb foods won't cause blood sugar spikes if you are lean, get regular exercise, eat high-carb foods on a regular basis, and don't have health problems."

Absolutely. But this is a blog about reversing heart disease...

It's dangerous to talk about "curing" diabetes with a low-carb diet. Someone with type 2 who goes on a LC diet may be able to maintain normal blood sugar levels as long as s/he stays on the diet. But the diabetes is not cured. Returning to a standard American diet would result in high blood sugar again.

A diabetes cure would mean you could eat cereal, skim milk, orange juice, toast, and jam and keep your blood sugar levels normal.

The danger of telling someone he/she is cured is that the person will believe it, will return to a regular diet, and will stop testing, not realizing how high blood sugars are and will end up in a worse situation than he/she started with.

That is it! I am buying a glucosameter! I sometimes get a little bit lethargic from any big meal, if I simple add cabbage soup to my usual stake + sauerkraut lunch.

To Gretchen:
It is very dangerous to be so stupid(or reluctant to think) as the individual you just described.

I enjoy this blog, but I do frequently agree with those who say that the grandiose effects of eating grains that you present are often times found more common place in people with metabolic problems. For example, while I was in college, I had a dorm mate who read some random article about gluten and suddenly believed herself to be suffering from Celiac Disease. My friends and I labeled her an hypochondriac, going so far as feeding her a deadly, lethal oatmeal cookie (gasp!) which we passed off as consisting of "a grain-like substance produced from the dried roots of a Japanese plant." My dorm mate ate the cookie and low and behold - nothing. Weeks prior she claimed to have taken a few bites of Frosted Mini Wheats in the cafeteria and subsequently suffered a debilitating pain in her stomach. Moral of the story is that her fear of gluten and the pain she felt from consuming Frosted Mini Wheats were purely psychosomatic.

I guess what I'm at getting at is you provide good information, but often times the entries you write are reminiscent of the blogs/journals/prose/essays written by individuals such as the Unibomber. In a half-serious, half-jocular manner, I always feel like one day I'll read/hear in the news, "Man opens [gun] fire within an oatmeal factory," and [to no one's surprise] it'll be you. I'm not accusing you of actually perpetuating such an act, but you write with such vigor about something like wheat/grains, and it gives off the "vibe" that you are harboring some hardcore resentment.

Once again, I enjoy your overall blog, but your hasty generalizations and confusing cause-and-effect can be misleading and overly exaggerated.

Hi, Steve--

Actually, the same advice applies to all forms of diabetes. Type 1 and "intermediate" types, i.e., slender people with diabetes, LADA, etc., can still follow a similar program with equally extravagant results.

However, the blood sugar tightrope is much more difficult to walk for these people and should be undertaken with the assistance of the (sadly, rare) assistance of a knowledgeable expert in doing so.

Hi, Amy Jo--

Ahh. Your comment alone made writing this post worth it. Thank you.

There is an odd sentiment that sometimes prevails: If it doesn't apply to me, it must not be true. As if everyone wore a size 13 shoe.

How about oatmeal (steel cut)if:
15 min blood sugar 127
30 min blood sugar 150s
45 min blood sugar 125
60 min blood sugar back to 95?

As much as this wheat-free idea kills me, I'm going to try to at least quit my sweetened cereal habit each morning. My fasting sugar is good - 81, but my triglycerides are still monstrous at 292 even with niacin and fish oil. On a semi-related matter, I confirmed for myself that dry Vitamin D doesn't work. I've been using Life Extension brand cholecalciferol 5,000 units a day for months, and my levels barely rose - from 33 to 36. Got a shipment of the carlson oil caps and I'm going to try 8,000 and see where that leads.

Hi,
Thank you for this great post!  
I was diagnosed borderline diabetic, glucose intolerant/insulin resistant over 10 years ago. I figured out that a glucose meter could really help improve my health so I used it faithfully for many years. Now the strips are very expensive so I have cut back. But I learned an incredible amount while  using the glucometer.
This is a fabulous method, and I highly recommend it.

My friend started feeding his diabetic cat low carb chow, and the cat went into shock when she got her insulin shot.
The vet said her blood sugar had returned to normal, should no longer get insulin.

Thanks Dr. Davis.  I have been following your advice to use the meter to lose weight and I find it really works!  I am finding the food that sends my blood sugar high and I am trying to avoid them.  
Char

Here's a way of using the glucose meter that I came across just this week: don't eat unless blood glucose has dropped to a normal level even if it means eating once a day.

http://shurie.com/lee/writing_defeat_diabetes.htm

Heart effect of Doc's recommendation is very important if you are not young. Human ageing is accompanied by histological (molecular and cellular) changes in the vascular smooth muscle cells of the artery wall. It means that over time formation of atheroscleroma (plaque) becomes easier to develop - even if it has not done so, yet.

Technically the molecules that are big players in the pro-inflammatory cycle are MCP-1 (monocyte chemo-attractant protein 1), MMP-2 (matrix metallo-proteinase type-II) and TGF-B1 (transforming growth factor beta-1). With age these are found circulating in elevated amounts; even in individuals without clinical problems. In other words genetic expression of them is upregulated, and it appears that age induces this epigenetic activation even if there is no diagnosable pathology.

Now, Doc's clinical instruction is to hold down the small LDL production and reign in circulating triglycerides. This is because those are what will provide the fodder for the pro-inflammatory molecules' loop of interaction to actually go on to "make" actual plaque.

Blood sugar spikes, according to Doc, are apparently the stalking horse for setting up our aged vascular system for pathological problems. We are accustomed to think of blood sugar as only a diabetics dilema; and so, many non-diabetics mistake Doc's insistance as not applicable to them.

And, to those readers who have their own method of carbohydrate consumption it would be instructive to learn if any have tested, and might share, your small LDL percentage (mine is unsatisfactory to me, based on Doc's recommended %). This can add some perspective to see if this blog's "glucomania" is somewhat overblown.

Ebay is also a good source of meters and test strips.  Some out of date, but less important for non diabetic purposes.

donny wrote: "But this is a blog about reversing heart disease..."

It's for Dr. Davis and not me to say what this blog is about, but my impression is that the goal is not just reversing but also preventing heart disease in the first place (and also the other ailments mentioned in the current post).

Many of the people on the blog are healthy and want to stay that way, as opposed to being sick and wanting to be cured. I think I am in the first category myself, though I'm still awaiting the results of blood tests to know for sure. Already, I have made the following changes in my life due to reading this blog:

1) taking 2000 IU/day of vitamin D3 in gel capsule.
2) vitamin D blood test after a few months of the D3 supplement regime.
3) using the glucose monitor to learn about my response to carbs.
4) getting a VAP test to learn if I have Lp(a) and also get my VLDL numbers.
5) Hb1Ac test.

I am quite grateful for Dr Davis for pushing me to making these changes, but I think the anti-grain/anti-oatmeal focus is misguided.

There is an epidemic of obsesity and type II diabetes in Pacific Islanders who eat junk food nowadays, but who were formerly lean on their traditional paleo low-carb diet of fish and coconuts. So why don't they go back to the fish and coconuts? BECAUSE CARBS ARE TASTY AND LOW-CA Neal is our record holder, but others are obtaining 10, 18, 24, 30% drops in scores all the time. Many have done it without l-arginine.

Now, how about the people who have failed to stop a rising score? Would they do better with l-arginine as part of the mix? I believe so, but sometimes we never quite know except in retrospect. It has been a great dilemma for us trying to predict from the starting gate who will or who won’t drop their heart scan score.

My view from the trenches is that l-arginine packs its greatest atherosclerosis-fighting punch in the first year or two of use, when “endothelial dysfunction” is likely to be present (abnormal artery constriction). But as all other strategies take hold—fish oil, correction of lipid and lipoprotein abnormalities, weight loss (big effect), vitamin D (another very big effect), etc.—endothelial behavior improves over time. Perhaps l-arginine becomes a less necessary component over time.

There’s no doubt that uncertainty still surrounds the use and science surrounding l-arginine. However, if you’re interested in stacking the odds in your favor, particularly during the first year or two of your plaque-reducing efforts, I think that l-arginine is worth considering. It is cumbersome, it can be expensive, some preparations may even be foul. But in the big picture of life, with hospitals trying every possible ploy to get your body on a table for a procedure, doctors perverting their mission by signing employment contracts with hospitals and agreeing to usher you into the hospital as a paying patient whenever possible, and drug companies viewing you and me as a market for medications which may or may not be helpful, l-arginine is surely not that big a burden.