Diabetes--->Optifast diet and Ketosis

_AVALANCHE_

I'm looking for opinions on this...

Small Study from last year...

Diet reverses Type 2 Diabetes


A Newcastle University team has discovered that Type 2 diabetes can be reversed by an extreme low calorie diet alone.
Affecting two and half million people in the UK – and on the increase – Type 2 diabetes is a long-term condition caused by too much glucose, a type of sugar, in the blood.

In an early stage clinical trial of 11 people, funded by Diabetes UK, all reversed their diabetes by drastically cutting their food intake to just 600 calories a day for two months. And three months later, seven remained free of diabetes.

Professor Roy Taylor of Newcastle University who led the study and also works for The Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said: “To have people free of diabetes after years with the condition is remarkable - and all because of an eight week diet.

“This is a radical change in understanding Type 2 diabetes. It will change how we can explain it to people newly diagnosed with the condition. While it has long been believed that someone with Type 2 diabetes will always have the disease, and that it will steadily get worse, we have shown that we can reverse the condition.”

Research revealed today at the American Diabetes Association conference and published in Diabetologia transforms thinking on diabetes. It demonstrates that people who go on a very low calorie diet can remove fat which is clogging up the pancreas allowing normal insulin secretion to be restored.

Traditionally, it has been thought that as a progressive condition, Type 2 diabetes can be controlled by diet initially then tablets, but may eventually require insulin injections.

Type 2 diabetes, which was once known as adult-onset diabetes, is now found in young adults and children. It is caused by too much glucose in the blood due to the pancreas not producing enough insulin - a hormone which breaks down glucose into energy in the cells – or due to the body not reacting to it, known as insulin sensitivity.

The results of the diet

Under close supervision of a medical team, 11 people who had developed diabetes later in life were put on an extreme diet of just 600 calories a day consisting of liquid diet drinks and non-starchy vegetables. They were matched to a control group of people without diabetes and then monitored over eight weeks. Insulin production from their pancreas and fat content in the liver and pancreas were studied.

After just one week, the Newcastle University team found that their pre-breakfast blood sugar levels had returned to normal.

A special MRI scan of their pancreas revealed that the fat levels in the pancreas had returned from an elevated level to normal (from around 8% to 6%). In step with this, the pancreas regained the normal ability to make insulin and as a result, blood sugar after meals steadily improved.

The volunteers were then followed-up three months later. During this time they had returned to eating normally but had received advice on portion size and healthy eating. Of the ten people re-tested, seven remained free of diabetes.

“We believe this shows that Type 2 diabetes is all about energy balance in the body,” explained Professor Taylor, “if you are eating more than you burn, then the excess is stored in the liver and pancreas as fat which can lead to Type 2 diabetes in some people. What we need to examine further is why some people are more susceptible to developing diabetes than others.”

This is the really strict 8 week diet in PDF Form.

In it, the Participants consume 3 Optifast shakes a day, these shakes have 22.5g of Calories (18.5g of sugar) in them and the "diet" has people drinking 3 shakes a day.

55.5g of Sugar a day has to be doing some harm?


The diet works by forcing the body in to a state of Ketosis,

The Swiss Novartis Medical Nutrition Corporation, best known for its Gerber baby products, developed the Optifast diet program in 1974. The Optifast diet is a low-calorie, low-carb diet regimen that consists mainly of liquid meals. The diet’s severe restriction of the daily intake of carbohydrates and calories forces the body to enter a fat-burning mode known as ketosis.

The Optifast Diet Program

The Optifast diet program provides a weight loss plan, liquid replacement meals and nutritional counseling for the duration of the program. The standard program lasts 26 weeks. Every meal is replaced with an Optifast product during 12 of those weeks. The remaining weeks are intended to help individuals transition to a normal diet. The diet is intended for obese individuals and individuals, including people who need to lose weight before undergoing gastric bypass surgery or gastric banding. According to June 2006 issue of “Obesity Surgery,” the Optifast diet can reduce the size and fat content of the liver, making surgery easier.

Calorie and Carbohydrate Content

There are two lines of Optifast products: Optifast 70 and Optifast 800. Optifast 70 meals contain about 80 calories and 5 g to 10 g of carbohydrate. Optifast 800 meals contain from 160 to 200 calories and from 10 g to 23 g of carbohydrates. On a five meals a day program, the calories from the Optifast 400 meals come to 400 calories a day and 50 g of carbohydrates, whereas optifast 800 meals add up to 800 calories and 100 g of carbohydrates.

Ketosis

Glucose, or blood sugar, is the body's favored source of energy. It quickly converts to cell energy in the cell engines, or mitochondria. When carbohydrates, the main source of glucose, are restricted, the body breaks down its stores of glycogen, a stored form of sugar. Once it has depleted these stores, it must burn protein or fat. Except in cases of starvation, the body has a preference for using protein for maintenance. So when glucose is limited, the body turns to fat. Brain cells cannot use fat, but they can use a byproduct from fat metabolism in the liver called ketone bodies. Ketosis sets in when the brain switches from using glucose to using ketone bodies.

Ketosis and Optifast

Though this carbohydrate content is not as low as it is during the induction phase of the popular Atkins diet, it is low enough to induce ketosis. The Atkins diet provides 20 g of carbohydrates during the initial phases and up to 100 g during later phases. However, an average person needs around 2,000 calories a day to maintain body weight. On Optifast 800, the calorie intake is 800. This leaves 1,200 calories that need to come from the body’s own stores of energy. Once the body’s glycogen stores are depleted, the only sources of energy that are readily available are fat and ketone bodies.

this is where I'm abit lost, I thought Ketosis meant the body was acidic, muscle wasting and that the Liver was under pressure looking for alternative energy sources, amoung many other things, or am I wrong?

I'm not Diabetic, just curious as to how it all works and what people make of it. I've alot more reading to do about how sugar is utilised and how Ketosis actually works.

Reversing Type 2 Diabetes


(Understanding that responses are opinion only and not views of boards.ie and confirm that my query does not relate to medical advice)

El_Dangeroso

If your eating less than 600 calories a day you will be in ketosis regardless of macronutrient composition of the diet.

It's an interesting study in the fact that it permanently reversed diabetes (though it has to be said that these people were not diabetic for very long, which mean the beta-cells in the pancreas were probably not completely fecked) and it would be worth trying in a newly diagnosed type II but ONLY under close medical supervision, because although ketosis is benign, ketoacidosis is not and you since both conditions cause ketones to spill into urine you need a doc at hand to differentiate.

Dotcomdolly

They are doing this on operation transformation with one volunteer. I think it was the episode 2 weeks ago if you have a look on the rte player.

fuzzy1

There is a lot of misinforamtion out there about ketosis e.g that its bad for health etc.
It is basically the body running on fats rather than carbohydrates. In evolutionary terms we would have spent an awful lot of time in ketosis when food was in short supply. Ketogenic diet has been shown to be beneficial for those with epilepsy and I think we are only beginning to understand its benefits for various types of cancer especially brain tumours, as apparently tumours need glucose to grow, when the body is in ketosis the tumour ....if you google it there is a ton of very interesting inforamtion/studies done on ketogenic diet...but it is not big news because this is a diet drug companies can't make big money from it..call me a cynic but......