And here is another article to the contrary when it comes to consuming red meat.
http://chriskresser.com/does-red-me...cose-metabolism

Chris's argument seems to be that red meat will not lead to levels of iron which are unhealthy. But Chris also acknowledges that excess iron DOES contribute to glucose intolerance. And red meat is quite high in iron. I hope Chris is right, because I sure do love me some red-meat. But I find his argument that red meat does NOT contribute to high iron levels unconvincing.

But I really do hope he is right.

And he just might be...at least within the context of an LC diet.

I'll tell why in a separate post.

The late Dr Wolfgang Lutz, author of one of my favorite all-time low carb books, Life Without Bread, said that the "iron problem" (i.e. high blood levels of iron causing glucose intolerance or insulin insensitivity) does NOT occur on an LC diet. He stated that "excess" iron was ONLY unhealthy in presence of high insulin levels, and did NOT cause problems within context of the sort of low insulin levels one would have on an LC diet.

I'll see if I can dig that up online. And I hope I'm quoting his thoughts on this matter correctly. I'm 99% certain that I am.

Ok...in this long article by Lutz, ( http://www.scdiet.org/7archives/lutz/lutz7.html ) he discusses how an LC diet normalizes iron levels. Raising iron in people who suffer from low iron. Lowering iron levels in those who have too much of it.

Quoting....

"Too Much Iron in the Blood (Hyper-siderosis):

The same diet also has a beneficial effect on abnormally high iron levels (*62). Fig. 18 includes 38 cases in which an elevated iron level responded to restriction of carbohydrate intake. Cases of siderosis (too much iron in the blood) are even more common than sideropenia (too little iron) and are important since they may lead to deposition of iron in the tissue and thus to severe metabolic disturbances (haemochromatosis).

The Bantus use only iron vessels for cooking and their diet therefore contains adequate quantities of iron. Anyone, like the Bantus, eating food from iron pots, accompanied by large amounts of carbohydrate, may suffer from siderosis.

The Bantus could probably change this, either by giving up their iron pots or their carbohydrates.

Joking apart, the fact that one and the same measure, in this case a low-carbohydrate diet, can restore abnormal to normal from both directions strongly suggests a common causal effect. It appears that carbohydrates are cause of both disorders and, in a manner as yet unknown to us, rob us of our ability to keep our iron balance in order. As will be seen the same holds for calcium."

So if Lutz is right, iron may be a non-factor WITHIN CONTEXT OF LC DIET.

Hmmm, I'm hearing a little contradiction here. Not picking on you Jeff, but the topic does not seem quite settled.

Well exactly. That's because I had totally forgot until this evening that I'd read that Lutz's thoughts on this issue a long time ago. I have no idea if he was right, but I think perhaps he was. And that yep..."excess iron" MAY actually not be "excess" at all within context of LC diet.

But I still feel excess iron is a problem within context of higher carb diets. Irregardless of what Chris Kresser says.

So here's a question that surfaced for me today.....

Could flat glucose and insulin levels trigger IR? Dr Fung says that diabetes is a disease of high insulin, not high blood sugar and talks about restoring insulin delivery to its pormal pulsile rhythm in the case of those with high glucose/high insulin. Maybe it is not the level of glucose, but the flatness of the curve that causes insulin resistance.

Has anyone come across that thought before? Does Jaminet address it?

i wonder what dr. bernstein has to say on the subject of low carb raising blood sugar over time. he's the doc who treats diabetics with lowcarb diet. it's been a long time since i read any of his work.

re iron--dr. eades also recommends bloodletting/donating blood to get rid of excess iron.

I don't remember Bernstein mentioning PIR. He's prob been low carb longer than anyone else we "know". I may pose the question to Dr Fung via his blog.

Both Bernstein and Fung deal with diabetics, whose reactions to long term low carb diets may differ from non-diabetic dieters. I guess it is possible that a diabetic might stay very low carb and never see PIR. I would sure love to hear Bernstein and Fung's opinions on this topic.

My guess would be that Bernstein is more likely to have encountered PIR since he has been treating people for many years. It sounds as though Fung only changed his treatment methods very recently, since in his videos he's mentioned using the old, standardized methods for some 20 years.

For type II's, I don't think the physiological insulin resistance from low carb comes anywhere near the pathological insulin resistance which they experience. Also, if there is some sort of longer term adaptation/atrophy of carbohydrate metabolism, the tendency of type II's to make glucose whether they need it or not might actually be protective.


With type I's--the sort of "glucose resistance" that happens during extended fasting, where the insulin response to glucose is greatly reduced, isn't really a factor--because the person administering the dose decides how much insulin goes into the system, not the beta cell.

It's been observed here that zero carbers tend to fall prey to this more often than others... I'm not sure that's true, but I'd throw out that the people most likely to go so far as zero carb might be the people who needed it the most. People in the extremest need turning to the extremist form of the diet, perhaps due to some pre-existing problem of metabolism--the failure of low carb in a situation like that might be only a failure to keep the disease process from continuing, and carbohydrate tolerance worsening.

There's a similar problem looking at side effects of the ketogenic diet for kids with epilepsy. By definition, these kids have dysfunctional metabolisms, it's hard to be certain what's caused by diet, what by the underlying metabolism.

Going back to the topic of feeding the gut microbiome, and needing more soluable fiber than a VLC diet provides in order to improve blood glucose regulation, Franziska has a new post on the topic.

http://www.lowcarbdietitian.com/blo...loss-and-beyond

My main problem here wouldn't be that it's a mouse study, but that it's not a low carb or ketogenic diet study. An intervention that lowers blood glucose on a high carb diet could increase it on a lower carb approach.

I do think the baby sort of gets thrown out with the bathwater with the whole net/gross carb debate. Industrial food ruined net carbs for a lot of people... should the fiber in a brussel sprout be thrown under the bus just because Julian Bakery, Dreamfield Pasta and the Atkins chocolate bar company made false claims? That might be the real value of counting gross instead of net carbs--it protects from miscounting carbs when questionable claims are made by food companies.

That point about protecting LCers from processed foods was made in the comments. So if instead, you start from a "Paleo" perspective, don't eat processed foods nor artificial sweeteners, then fiber and counting real food net carbs is fine. And the defenders of Atkins 72 won't Agree, but that is how I read the NANY rules. Most of the "net carbs" foods had to be veggie, NANY allowed but did not give much room for processed LC crap.

In an experiment of one--following Jimmy Moore's example--I tested my blood sugars every half hour before and after low carb ketogenic meals. As a long time low carber, the switch to ketogenic wasn't really that hard. Although both my brothers were Type II diabetic's, I have had normal blood sugars for years on a low carb diet. My BS did not change when I tried ketogenic.

Ketogenic is so low on fiber, supplements are necessary Making sure my daily multivitamin does not contain iron, helps to keep iron levels stable. But if iron does increase, there is always the annual blood donor drive.

There are die-hards who look for all kinds of negatives about low carb simply because they refuse to admit, even to themselves, that they might be wrong. Of course, I might be wrong too, but I have a lot of hard research findings to back up my low-carb lifestyle.