Three common arguments against low-carb
When I first asked my endocrinologist for regular insulin, she wondered if it wouldn’t be inconvenient for me to pre-bolus before meals. We’re obsessed with the idea that diabetics should eat a standard diet. There’s a race to come up with faster-acting insulin to make this possible. Few people address the elephant in the room, which is that if you have type 1 diabetes you are completely carb-intolerant. Large doses of insulin don’t work in a predictable way, which most health care professionals ignore. Instead, they engage in the fantasy that carb counting is an exact science. Patients can take masses of insulin with accurate results. It doesn’t work and leaves most diabetics flustered.
Rather than working on faster insulin, why don’t we educate people on how to eat your way towards normal blood sugar? Because diabetics need to have normal blood sugar to avoid complications. You can’t get away from the fact that having type 1 diabetes is an inconvenience. It is still far better than the situation a hundred years ago when it was a death sentence. And eating a restricted diet is preferable to losing a foot or going blind after years of high blood sugar.
Proponents of a standard carb diet for diabetics often make three arguments. The first is that the low-carb diet doesn’t work. They claim it’s not a realistic way of eating, and people can’t stay on it long term. I beg to differ. Humanity evolved from eating meat, so it is not untested. I’ve been on a low-carb diet for more than two years, and I know many people who have been on it for decades. There is nothing unsustainable about a low-carb diet, and I can see myself still eating this way in ten years.
The second argument is that people with diabetes deserve to eat normally and enjoy food. What diabetics deserve is to have normal blood sugar. It’s far more desirable to keep your vision than to have pasta or pizza for dinner. The internet is exploding with delicious low-carb recipes, so following a ketogenic diet doesn’t deprive you of anything foodwise. Sure, there might be times when you’d like to tuck into a tub of ice cream, but if you take the time to look, there’s pretty much always a low-carb alternative.
Finally, proponents of diabetics eating a normal diet like to point out that the carb question is a quality versus quantity issue. We have too much added sugar and should instead eat healthier carbs like fruits or whole grains. If you chew a piece of whole grain bread, the starch will turn to glucose. All carbs get converted to glucose. That doesn’t mean that you have to abandon carbs completely. A diet of animal products with moderate amounts of non-starchy vegetables is a healthy diet. When most vegetables are reasonably low in carbs, you can eat them without blood sugar spikes with small insulin doses. And small insulin doses are the key to diabetes control.
To sum it up, carbs are in no way essential for a healthy diet. There’s no reason why you can’t live your life on a low-carb diet for a long time. And if the reward is normal blood sugar, the question is: why wouldn’t you?