A basic principle of management is that you can’t manage what you can’t measure. But the trap is that when we have a simple, cheap and easy measure we often use that as a proxy for the measure we would like but don’t have. This is the root of many problems.
The body has many autonomous biochemical responses that are intended to keep us healthy and well. Functions that we are largely unaware of like the regulation of the amount of glucose in the blood, that you don’t control, and don’t know about, and functions like your breathing rate, that you do know about, and can control to some small extent. This is part of a process of keeping your metabolism stable we call homeostasis.
Much of what goes wrong in the body when your metabolism becomes sick, is caused by your lifestyle, and particularly what you choose to eat and drink.
Glucose Spikes
Many years ago, the Japanese were especially interested in Glucose Spikes after eating food. They tested the blood glucose of young women in many normal situations and found that even in these “very healthy” young women there was a considerable variation, for the same food, in the measured change in peak glucose (Glucose Spike) and how long the glucose remained high in the blood.
They understood that a higher spike and a longer duration of excess blood glucose was an early sign of poor health.
HbA1c and Glucose Tests
Fasting Blood Glucose is easy to measure with a pin prick and the use of a test strip or a meter. Diabetic patients are trained to do this several times a day. They use the test to inform them about the level of glucose in the blood, and to change what they are eating or the medication they are using. Cheap and easy, but it’s the wrong test.
HbA1c is a measure of the attachment of glucose to the red corpuscles in the blood. This is an approximation of the amount of glucose in the blood over a longer time frame, three months for instance. This measure is used to make a medical decision about the development of pre-diabetes or type II diabetes. Once again, it’s an easily available measure, but the wrong measure.
Insulin
A better but more expensive way to find out why you are getting fatter, or developing diabetes, or at greater risk for a heart attack, is to test for insulin levels in the blood. High insulin and high blood glucose over extended periods of time damage to all your blood vessels. Using glucose measure alone, allows your metabolism to disguise developing problems for perhaps 10 years, because insulin rises, as it should to control glucose spikes, and for a long time, the measure of fasting glucose remains stable
Since we now understand the process, if you are developing symptoms of metabolic disease, you know that by cutting out the sugar in your diet, and by restricting starchy carbohydrates you have an excellent chance of restoring your health.
Dietary Control
While it’s necessary to learn what carbohydrates, sugars and starches look like, measuring them need not be your focus. Just eat as few as possible. It’s like counting calories. In theory you can, but even in a laboratory it’s difficult to do well, and as a practical matter in the process of living your life it can’t be done. You can try, but it’s the wrong target, and you can’t do it accurately in any case.
Focus on feeding yourself with the best quality proteins available. That means eating animal protein as often as possible, together with all the animal fat that comes with it. Protein is expensive, but if you do this, you’ll be surprised that you no longer need to eat all the time. Most people quickly fall into a pattern of eating only once or twice a day.
I made a mistake tonight. For lunch at 3pm I had a small steak, black sausage, and an egg. That was intended to be my main meal. My wife Carolyn was going out this evening. I was to prepare a smaller evening meal about 7pm. I saw a tin of mushroom soup in the back of the pantry. So, I decided to heat that, and I enjoyed it. But a few hours later I’m “hungry”. I’m sure you’ve heard me say that I’m never hungry. What was in that can of soup? .
Now I’m curious, let me read the label. I ate 21g of carbohydrate (50% of that was sugar), 14g of protein, and 11g of fat, most of the rest was salt and water. Not the best choice, although most people would consider it “healthy”.
It’s possible to be a vegetarian and eat a sugar free low carbohydrate diet. I don’t recommend that. It’s difficult and you should really speak to someone who is a specialist in vegetarian diets. Vegetable protein is of poor quality. Vegetable fats lack some of the essential raw materials your body, and particularly your brain needs to build hormones. They claim that supplements can supply the necessary substrates, but that’s above my pay scale.
EDIT: a day later. I found an interesting interview with Dr Steven Gundry, who’s a vegetarian but not vegan. He eats dairy food from goats and sheep. He uses MCT oil as a substrate to help the liver make ketones. He seems to have the secret to doing Keto as a vegetarian. This is the link. https://youtu.be/u8aMiRa8HnE