There is a search function on the blog. I, myself, use it all the time. What there isn’t at this point is a search function on the comments. I have never posted on iodoral, but have discussed it only in the comments, which is why you can’t find it if you search via the blog search function. I have a comment search function in my blog software – I just need to figure out how to make it available to everyone else.

I can’t really comment on your specific blood sugar situation since I know nothing about you. I typically give my own patients 300 mg of magnesium at bedtime and 300 mg of lipoic acid per day. There should be no problem combining iodoral with these, but I would check my patient’s iodine status before giving the supplement.

I am in the process of correcting a long term chronic magnesium deficiency that has only recently become blatantly obvious to me. So I have some observations on Dr. Eades comment.

For the past month or so I have been taking anywhere from 800 mg to 1500 mg of magnesium in various forms (mostly mgcl hexahydrate) a day in divided doses. One thing I noticed after about 10 days of high doses of magnesium was that my appetite suddenly began to increase. Before this my appetite had been well controlled and minimal. I seldom snacked and had adjusted to fairly small meals just as Dr Eades said. Some days I did not even feel inclined to eat. I rarely snacked. Now I found myself snacking frequently. I gained about 5 pounds over a short period. However, my appetite is now decreasing again and I am losing the weight I gained.

Dr. Eades recommends taking a dose of magnesium at bedtime. Like some others have reported I found that I initially could not sleep if I did this (although I now sleep very soundly). In terms of my energy levels, magnesium is like rocket fuel.

My symptom picture and the amount of magnesium I am able to ingest suggests that I have been severely deficient in magnesium for a very long time (I suspect about 40 years). The literature I have read on magnesium deficiency says that it can take anywhere from 3 months to 3 years of supplementation at high doses to correct a magnesium deficiency and that the results will vary greatly from one person to another.

In hindsight, I suspect that the reason for my increase in appetite might be that the supplemental magnesium is enhancing my insulin sensitivity and glucose transport into my cells causing my BG to drop lower than it has normally been dropping. If I had suspected this at the time I would have monitored my BG. It would be interesting to know if anyone has had a similar experience.

Many thanks for your food diary too ! My husband has downloaded each day to his ipod Touch (his new toy) and he says it looks wonderful on the little screen

all the best,
Anne

I’m glad I’ve eased your mind.

When I first got interested in low carb I made what I now consider to be a wrong turn by going down the glycemic index road. However, I soon became concerned in that GI test protocols cut off the testing BG levels at 2 hours. Then I came across an article on a study that found that low GI and high GI foods of the same carb load stimulate the same amount of insulin secretion. The difference is that low GI foods don’t raise BG levels as much initially as high GI foods. But BG and insulin levels stay elevated longer with low GI foods.

I suspect that if one were to test BG levels for up to 4 hours after consuming a low GI pasta it might not look as good as it would after only two hours of BG monitoring. In the end I have come to believe that a low GI carb is still a carb.

You are right. I’ve never bought in to the glycemic index idea. Carbs is carbs.

I think a lot of people can’t stick to LC because they assume it’s all or nothing – that if you are on a LC diet you’ll never eat cookies or bread or anything with sugar. I eat cookies and bread and sugar almost every day, but the key is that when you are on a LC diet you never eat enough of it to eat more than your carb allotment. A single small cookie like that probably only has 7 carbs max. That’s perfectly acceptable if you’re eating 70ish carbs in maintenance. Each meal is rarely more than 10 or 15 carbs so there is a lot of room for like, cookies and stuff if you want them.
This “all or nothing” attitude seriously contributes to failure in my opinion, because people feel like they’re not LCing the minute they take a taste of a cookie. They associate that first bite of a cookie, with eating crappy. That’s just self destructive thinking. It’s good that you’re showing people a more realistic way of maintaining a LC diet (that it actually does involve eating normal foods… just not eating them the way most people eat them, which is to eat them all the time thus being unhealthy).

I agree with you. But the cookies I ate one and half of weren’t small and contained, I’m sure, more than 7 gm carb. I would imagine that those were of the 20 gm apiece variety.

I do my own low-carb diet on a day-to-day basis. In other words, I don’t set a certain number of carbs to use to maintain and stick rigidly to that. Some days I step out and over do it a little, others (today, for instance), I’m pretty rigid. I’ve had a couple of shakes today and that’s it. I’ll have a low-carb supper tonight with maybe a glass of wine, and that’s it. So, I’m overcarbed a little one day and undercarbed the next. That’s what works for me, but it may not work for everyone. I know people for whom an over carbed day would be 500 gm, and that’s a little much.

If not please read about her.

The Beeb did a fascinating docu on her i saw a few years back when in Blightly

Know her very well on many fronts. Have a post planned with her as the star.

I always enjoy your blog – informative and entertaining.
Best wishes.

Thanks, Dr. Wendy.

Cheers

anyway, thanks vadim,

that’s just the general template I plan to use for shakes, I’ll vary the flavorings and fat sources as much as I can. I happened to have some sugarless jelly on hand, so I tried that out. When I get around to it , I’m gonna order some of the syrups, etc.

Here’s a list of 50 recipes that can be used as inspiration – just add more fat as needed, and less sugar:

http://www.straighttothebar.com/2008/01/fitness_and_food_50_protein_sh.html

don’t know if I’ll even try going to do just shakes… for one thing, the evil one, the one who stands to gain from my weight loss failure, has threatened to cook steaks, scrambled eggs, etc. not for herself, but just to leave around unattended!!

as for the pink slip, if I threatened that, I’m sure she’d respond along the lines of “good! the door’s that way! see ya!”

depraved and cruel and evil, she is, I tell ya!

Thanks for the heads up. It was a long Friday. In fact, it stretched over two days.

Yes, indeed, it’s best to use the pink slip ploy carefully. Unlike the workplace, at home the pink slips can go both ways.

So, if a person has a fasting glucose of 110, HA1c of 6.0, fasting insulin of 12 miU, would a medicine like metformin help any? Is there a role for any prescription drug in getting over the “hump”?

Thanks again

I’m not sure the metformin will help with willpower. But it may help a little with weight loss. I’ve never used metformin for weight loss, but I know some docs do. It is my go to drug for diabetes that can’t be controlled by diet.

You may want to consider some magnesium to help with cravings. Take it at bedtime. Many people swear by it. And if you need to lose weight, odds are, you’re magnesium deficient.