4d ago

Question: Is "Cure diabetes with sugar & rice" credible?

From this panel discussion https://youtu.be/1cl2IX94GCI

A Dr. John McDougall posits that T2D is caused by fat clogging insulin receptors, and that white sugar and rice can reverse T2D.

A Dr. Michael Klaper Says that if your eating a whole food plant based diet nothing will shoot your blood sugar up

Dr. John McDougall references this paper https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM197103112841004 where sugar is increased in t2d to give greater glycemic control "Sugar makes insulin better and cures diabetes" !?!??!?!?!?!?

I can't find the full paper just the abstract.

Question: How on earth does any of this work and is this speaker credible?

As far as I understand it T2D is a syndrome of insulin resistance which has caused very poor glycemic control, so the patient is effectively carbohydrate intolerant.

This speaker suggests that increasing sugar intake when carbohydrate intolerant improves glycemic control, and reverses T2D... what? What?

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

3 comments

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_diet
Kempner admitted in statements before his death that he whipped patients who avoided his rice diet.
I think this was the original basis of this claim
- Okay, I think the mechanism of action for this wackadoodle diet is:
  Resistant starches are the only food source, they get into the gut, and produce short chain fatty acids. The glycemic impact is reduced versus other diet options. So insulin levels elevate, but not as high as with an ad libidum diet. This is sufficient for some patients to resolve their diabetic issues.
  I think that's it inna nutshell. The potato Diet, rice diet, I wasn't able to find any detailed papers about mechanisms, or even insulin levels over time. So I'm just speculating wildly on the few papers that exist

As we know, there is a lot of ridiculous pseudoscience out there. That 1971 paper seems to reference a downregulation of sensitivity, (which happens in many body systems), but notes that glucose tolerance tests are still similar. Type II diabetes is Genetic, (the genetic penetrance much more so than in Type I) Unfortunately diet modification can only help with Type II for so long. Conversely, all those people who are told that 'sweet food will give them diabetes', not the case if they dont have the type II gene.