Genes and Health

One thing that we see a lot on the internet is the person who lost a ton of weight with some diet and saw their blood glucose levels revert to normal. Then they write about their diet and imply that it will work for everyone.

But it won't. We need to find the diet that works for us.

I remember long ago, when I thought I was fat because I weighed 110 pounds (I'm small, and in college I weighed between 100 and 105), so I went on the Weight Watchers diet, which at that time was low-carb. A Hungarian colleague who saw that I was dieting said to me, "I hate to tell you this, but you don't have to diet to lose weight." I asked what you had to do. "Just give up sour cream," she said. I told her I didn't eat sour cream. She was aghast, as she put sour cream on almost everything she ate.

But that's typical of the "It works for me, so it must work for you" attitude. But we can have different genes that affect how we react to different diets.

Here is an article about a population in a remote part of Greece who eat a very high animal fat diet but have low levels of triglycerides and LDL. Now, low-carb diets reduce triglyceride levels, but they don't usually reduce LDL and sometimes make it go up. And as this wasn't a diet study, they didn't describe the participants' diets, but most Greeks don't follow low-carb diets.

So people from this area of Greece could tell others that their diet (whatever it is) reduced LDL so it should work for everyone. But it's apparently their genes, not their diet, that is important. Anyone who wishes to read the full text of the article can see it here.

Another recent article, this one in the New York Times, describes a similar situation, but in an American woman: very low levels of LDL and triglycerides. Both the woman and some of her siblings were found to have a rare gene that caused a lack of plaque in their arteries. One sibling with the gene had been a heavy smoker and had high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes but still lacked plaque in his arteries.

Again, it was no particular lifestyle that resulted in low levels of some lipids. It was their genes.

So if some diet or some exercise program or some drug makes your blood glucose return to normal, of course that's wonderful. But before proselytizing on the internet, remember that our genes may affect how we respond to any regimen. By all means, let people know the wonderful results that you got. But don't expect the same regimen to work for everyone.

Nutrition Label Errors

Nutrition labels are good for knowing how much carbohydrate is in the processed food you eat, if you eat any. Unfortunately whole foods don't come with nutritional labels.

But I've always considered the labels as approximations rather than exact numbers. They'll tell you, for example, that there's more protein than fat or whatever in some food, but they won't really tell you the exact amounts.

There are several reasons for this. First, they round the numbers off. So 3.49 grams would be listed as 3 grams and 3.5 grams would be listed as 4.

Second, they don't have to include anything with less than 5 calories or 0.5 grams. And this pertains to the serving size. So if you ate 4 servings, you could have a lot more of something than you thought.

Third, the manufacturers don't analyze every package they sell. One estimate was $750 per analysis in 1997, a lot for a loaf of bread, although they can also us nutritional tables to estimate the totals.

Finally, the nutritional content of the ingredients used to make the product can change from batch to batch and the manufacturer can't control that.

So overall, the labels are useful but not exact.

I recently came across a label that was just plain wrong. It was a sausage product and listed the ingredients as pork, water, wheat rusk, and salt and spices. So pork was the first ingredient (manufacturers are required to list ingredients according to amounts) but the label said it had no protein, as well as no carbohydrate. Huh? Pork is mostly protein and fat and rusk is mostly carbohydrate.

I telephoned the company and asked if maybe they just used pork fat and was told yes. Then I went back to the label and saw that it said one link had 150 calories, of which 50 calories were from fat. So what were the other 100 calories from. The water?

I called the company back, and now they admitted that the label was wrong. The sausage contained 4 g of carbohydrate and 19 g of protein. That totaled 146 calories, or 150 rounded up.

But what if someone used the carbohydrate and protein content to calculate bolus insulin. The calculated insulin would be incorrect, and they'd go higher than expected.

So that's yet-another reason it's so difficult for people who inject bolus insulin to keep their blood glucose levels level. I wonder how many other labels contain similar errors.

What this means is if you see a label that seems odd, don't assume it's correct. First check the numbers. Multiply grams of carbohydrate and protein by 4 and grams of fat by 9 to get calories. If they don't add up, call the company to find out. In someone without diabetes, thinking you were eating a little less carbohydrate and protein would not cause much harm. But when you're injecting bolus insulin, it could.

And because of rounding off, always take labels with a grain of salt.

Furthermore, remember that you can't always believe what someone who answers the telephone tells you. They could know about the issue, or they might not. In a large company, it sometimes pays to call twice to see if two different people have the same response.

Good control requires constant vigilance, but it's worth it in the long run.

Honoring David Mendosa

Diabetes writer David Mendosa died on May 8, only about a month after he was diagnosed with angiosarcoma in the liver. The diabetes community is mourning, with tributes at all the major diabetes sites in the United States and Europe as well as personal blogs.

David didn't want any kind of services. I was thinking of a fitting memorial for him, and I thought of this. He told me that he hoped his legacy would be his promotion of low-carbohydrate diets. He had been following one since 2007, with excellent results.

So one way to honor David would be to follow a low-carb diet for a month, or a couple of weeks, or just a week, if you haven't already been doing so. If you're already on a low-carb diet, you could make sure you're strict with the diet for a period of time to honor David. Let's face it, most of us do fall off the wagon from time to time.

Then, if you find the low-carb diet works for you, if you have better blood glucose levels and you discover that a low-carb diet doesn't mean deprivation, tell your diabetic friends. Ask them to tell their friends. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could see an explosion in the number of diabetic people following low-carb diets in honor of David Mendosa?

A couple of caveats: if  you go suddenly from a high-carb to a low-carb diet, a period of adaptation is needed as your body builds up the enzymes needed to metabolize fat, and some people lack energy for a week or two. It's called the low-carb flu. If that happens to you, don't despair. It's temporary. Also, low-carb diets act like diuretics, so make sure you eat enough salt to retain some water.

Of course not everyone may be able to honor David in this way. For those who would prefer some other kind of donation, Caring Bridge, on which David, and then his friends and relatives, posted about his final journey is accepting donations in his memory, as is Tru Hospice Care Center, the hospice where he spent his final days.

David Mendosa

Many have heard already, but for those who haven't, David Mendosa, diabetes journalist, blogger, hiker, photographer, and so much more, has incurable cancer, angioscarcoma in the liver. He has recently been moved to a respite place with 24-hour care but may be able to return to his apartment if he can gain back some strength.

David wrote a chapter on Searching the Internet for my book, and it was a needed addition, as it wasn't something I had a lot of expertise with. David has been using computers since the early days and has a lot more experience with them than I do.

He was also one of the first people to have a diabetes webpage on the internet, and it has grown into a gigantic site. A friend will continue to maintain that.

He also has a blog describing various hikes, illustrated with photographs of birds and other wildlife. Many of his wildlife photos can also be found here.

David is a Buddhist and is very accepting of his situation. He has medication to control his pain. Some of his many friends in Boulder, and a niece, are supervising his care. He has become too weak to type, and telephone calls tire him out, but any who wish can follow his final journey on Caring Bridge. He has already received thousands of messages of thanks and love from all over the world.

David has said that he hopes his legacy will be his promotion of low-carb diets for people with diabetes. Even at the end, he is thinking of the well-being of fellow patients with diabetes.