How to Prevent Blood Sugar and Triglyceride Spikes after Meals

[Gordo]

New Dr. Greger video showing how meat & dairy combined with carbs causes a compounding insulin spike effect, but plant based whole foods blunt the insulin response.

https://youtu.be/AoHvkrcr6EM

[Burak]

Thank you Gordo. I wonder when people will realize that excess dietary protein (but probably only from animal protein due to no fiber high bioavailability and high AA concentration) is one of the most important factor for increasing chronic diseases and decreasing longevity and life quality.

 

To me, one of the most interesting studies in the literature which I encountered about 2 years ago is this one:

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24606898

http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(14)00062-X

 

Yes, it doesn't have the gold standards but I think it is consistent within itself: Even cancer mortality switches after age 65-70, but not diabetes mortality (confidence intervals are too large but still significant). Maybe you can be diabetes free if you eat less than 10% protein and mostly from plant derived.

[Gordo]

Yea, good link.  "Respondents aged 50-65 reporting high protein intake had a 75% increase in overall mortality and a 4-fold increase in cancer death risk during the following 18 years. These associations were either abolished or attenuated if the proteins were plant derived."

 

I guess after age 65 you should steadily increase your protein, but it seems to me you would (still) want the protein to come from plant based whole foods (not meat or dairy) but perhaps a different variety of plant food that does spike IGF-1 (soy for example).  

[mccoy]

Conceptually, I'm in favour of eating few protein (protein moderation), but there are too many variabilities and uncertainties in this issue.

 

First and foremost, protein minimum requirement (zero nitrogen balance) is a random variable with conspicuos uncertainty. It can really vary wildly across individual, like the classic Randd et al., 2003 metanalysis, shows. So the 'low protein' and 'high protein' deterministic classifications can be considered basically wrong. In the high protein group there may be individuals whose protein ingestion is not high relative to their needs and viceversa.

 

Also, in the now very popular linked Levine et al., 2014 study, the 'low protein' group includes too few data (persons). It may be made up of the people who naturally need few protein, hence their ingestion is not low relative to their bodily needs, rather it should be considered moderate or medium.

 

Also, the study does not include a mechanistic explanation of the alleged higher protein need of individuals with age > 66 yrs. Higher IGF-1 and higher protein activate mTOR which is a proliferation signal, which should increase the occurrance of cancer. Whereas the article toutes the opposite. Do we have two contrasting mechanisms where the health balance is in favour of higher IGF-1 and why?

 

My hunch is that the interactions are extremely complex, the Levine et al., 2014 epidemiological study has pros and cons but it is really objectively too imprecise to jump to conclusions.

 

Personally, I'm progressively decreasing animal protein and including more plant based ones, mainly to keep low the PCa hazards. the total amounts tend to keep relatively high though. I'm practically always above the RDA = 0.8 g kg^-1 d^-1

[Gordo]

Here is the follow up video, I'm intrigued by these study results showing the impact of meat (and alcohol) on insulin and triglyceride levels:

 

https://youtu.be/dvDHX9jNw3Y

 

And by contrast the effects of whole plant foods like avocado or even strawberry jam.

[mccoy]

It's very interesting to observe the effects of combinations of foods. So far we had tables of the effects on serum glucose and insulin of quite a few foods, but the combinations, which is to say real life situations, are not well known (besides being infinite in number)