Comments on: The sugar hypothesis

By: Todd

Todd — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:20:45 +0000

Hi, I�ve been reading your site for a few months now and have also been trying to follow the same style of eating living, which is more natural to me anyways. Wasn’t quite sure where to post this, but I figured this would be ok. I am an 18 year old male 6′ 2″ and now ~182 pounds. Sorry if this story is a bit long, but a few months ago when I first started college I decided I wanted to get big and strong, so I worked out multiple times a week and ate everything in sight. I have always been a big believer in explosive workouts, so my workouts were always good and usually in line with the same style of stuff you do. The problem, obviously, was diet. I gained weight up to about 195-200 pounds and thought I was doing great, but I got really sick and slowly figured out that was a very bad approach. Now since mid December I have almost completely cut out bread and eat mostly meat. I came back down to my longtime weight of 180. I don�t eat any cured meat, but admittedly I eat a fair amount of non grass fed beef. I include veggies whenever I can, and I do have dessert every couple of days, so not perfect. I intermittently fast a few times a week, usually for about 18 hours from an early dinner to lunch. My body fat was recently tested at 4.9% using a 3 caliper test, which I know is probably inaccurate, but I don�t have much fat.

I just recently got a blood test done to check for cholesterol, DHEA, Insulin, Progesterone, and Testosterone, and I am a bit perplexed by the results. They are as follows�

Total Cholesterol – 369
Triglycerides – 73
HDL – 96
LDL – 258
DHEA Sulfate – 182
Insulin – <2
Progesterone – .7
Total Testosterone – 264

I was encouraged by the low insulin, but the cholesterol is a bit worriesome, even though I understand that cholesterol is not the devil it is made out to be and would not have worried if my LDL wasn�t so high. I think my testosterone should be higher considering my age, so that is troublesome too.

To recap I eat the following in order of consumption – Meat, Nuts, Veggies, Fruit, Dessert (Ice cream and brownie usually) and workout a few times a week in a way to build explosive strength, i.e sprinting, squats, deadlifts, chin-ups, dips, pushups

Do you have any thoughts on the matter or suggestions as to how to improve myself?

Looks to me like you’re doing fine. Your HDL being as high as it is and combined with a low triglyceride level indicates that you have a large fluffy LDL pattern, which is not the worrisome kind. The testosterone number doesn’t provide a lot of information because I don’t know what kind of lab test it was. I can’t really make medical recommendations online to patients I have never treated. Hope you understand.

By: Michael R. Eades, MD

Michael R. Eades, MD — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 21:30:06 +0000

I would start at about 50 grams per day and fine tune from there. Other things that help are a good magnesium supplement and 200 mg of lipoic acid.

By: John

John — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 22:15:11 +0000

What would you consider to be the upper limit (daily carb intake, male over 50) to maintaining a low-carbohydrate diets that reduces blood sugar levels into the 75-85 mg/dl range.

By: Michael R. Eades, MD

Michael R. Eades, MD — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 14:31:33 +0000

That’s strange. I was able to log right on to it without going through my university affiliation site.

By: Mike Dodge

Mike Dodge — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 13:40:48 +0000

Access to the Diabetes Care article is $12.00. Just the abstract is free.

By: Michael Sayre

Michael Sayre — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 07:15:27 +0000

I definitely agree. Diabetes runs in my family a lot (grandparents, great grandparents, aunt) and so does some high cholesterol and blood pressure. I’m only 21 and somewhat overweight. Well, last year I went on low carb and lost around 20 lbs. on that and when I went to my doctor (who was my new doctor at the time) was (and still is, rightly so) worried about my blood pressure. She automatically sent me in for testing of my cholesterol and fasting glucose. Much to HER surprise, my cholesterol was, in her words, “great” (128 total, 72 tri, 57 each for H/LDL) and my glucose was 93 mg/dL. The way I tie this into what you say is that even though I’m young so (hopefully) more healthy, just being on low carb, I feel (as I have no earlier tests to compare) helped these numbers become better, while she was worried about them.

I still need to exercise more and become healthier that way. I’m glad she looked at my blood glucose because of my family history, but I suspect she did so simply because of that. The cholesterol, though, she wanted to look at because of the blood pressure, so I think to her that was more the “factor” in my possible health problems. Guess she was surprised to see someone that could still manage to keep those numbers low. Go Low Carb!!