It's the Sugar, Stupid
A Decades-long Dietary Exploration Finally Makes Tangible Headway
When I was in my mid-30s I didn’t pay much attention to my diet. It was the late 1990s and the general consensus among the health community in America was that fat was the primary cause of bad cholesterol which led to heart disease and worse. Like most Americans, I made eating choices based on the fat hypothesis and loaded up on “healthy” bagels and ate SnackWells Devil’s Food Cookies like they were going out of style. I mean, they were low fat.
Around the same time, my cholesterol levels slowly began to creep up, specifically my triglycerides (blood lipids) which at one point were so high they were immeasurable. My doctor at the time put my on a triglyceride lowering drug and a statin, and told me to cut back on carbs. Yes, she said carbs not fat. I didn’t listen.
The drugs moved my numbers down, but it was too late for me. In 2011 at age 45 I suffered a major heart attack caused by a mostly blocked left anterior descending artery (LAD) otherwise known as the widow-maker. I survived, obviously, but following the heart attack I began a journey into diet that has taken me on a roundabout route that has, surprisingly, led me all the way back to that first doctors plan. This time I’m listening.
Over the past 13 years I’ve researched many ways of eating, and tried them out on myself, reaching some basic conclusions about human health — there is so much bad information out there it’s nearly impossible for anyone to know what to eat to be healthy. I ate vegetarian (thanks to Dr. Esselstyn and the China Study), I ate Pegan after reading Dr. Mark Hyman, I read Michael Pollen and adopted the seven word diet. I did intermittent fasting. I tried eating the Mediterranean Diet, and the “Green” Mediterranean Diet. I tried calorie-restricted eating. All of these approaches made sense to me when I read them, but the more I read the more confused I got.
Over the years I’ve blogged about my eating journey, but after a while I gave up sharing because I had no fucking idea what I was doing. What I did know is that my cholesterol numbers remained acceptable based on the medical community’s definition of good. Frankly, my triglycerides settled in under 150 and while my HDLs were a tad low my LDLs weren’t too high (thanks statin) and my overall cholesterol was better than average. According to the mainstream medical community I was doing great, especially for a heart patient.
But over the last few years something started to change with my numbers, and it was not my cholesterol. It was my sugars. In my 30s and 40s my fasting glucose was usually in the high 90s, which was great according to my doctors and the medical establishment. But in my 50s that number started to creep up. For a few years my fasting glucose was typically in the 100-110 range. My father, a diabetic, would scoff saying it was fine. They moved the number, he’d say. Used to be anything under 110 was fine.
Then, more recently, my fasting glucose went up more and I was regularly testing in the 115-120 range, and even higher. My A1C crept up as well. 5.5 in 2019. 5.8 in 2020. 6.1 in 2021. Then in the summer of 2023 my A1C was at 6.1 and my fasting glucose hit 133. My doctor told me I was now considered diabetic. That pronouncement scared the shit out of me because after my heart attack I thought I was doing everything right, and my biggest fear was becoming diabetic as I knew that was a surefire path toward another cardiac issue. 13 years of thinking I was eating correctly for my individual health situation was not working.
I was not ready to simply give up though. The obvious next step in treatment would have been to add Metformin to my already full daily pill case. But that felt like a medical establishment solution — throw another drug at it. I asked my doctor to give me a few months to lower my A1C on my own, and she agreed. By November it was clear I couldn’t do it based on what I knew about diet and exercise, so I went back to see her with my spirits dejected and assuming I’d be adding Metformin to my daily routine. But that’s not what happened.
Over the last part of 2023 I started down another research path, this time dedicated to diabetes not strictly heart disease per se. That research led me to a couple of very interesting podcasts, including the one that lit a proverbial fire under my ass. A friend suggested I watch a podcast interview by Steven Bartlett with a woman called Jessie Inchauspé. I had seen Bartlett’s podcast before and enjoyed his interview style. His podcast is called Diary of a CEO and he dedicated a lot of time to each guest. His interview with Inchauspé was 90 minutes long, but it quite literally changed my life. The episode is called The Scary New Research On Sugar & How They Made You Addicted To It! and whether you are diabetic, pre-diabetic, or concerned about your own health at all, you should spend the 90 minutes to watch it.
What I learned from this podcast was fascinating, and it reinforced so much of what I’ve been concerned about in my own health journey and gave me a tool to make a difference. If I took one thing from this interview it was that I needed to get a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) and learn for myself how various foods impacted my blood glucose levels. I knew a little about the reasons to be concerned about glucose, but I didn’t understand the biological details until it was explained to me like I was an idiot by this young French biochemist.
So when I went to see my doctor in November I told her I was going to buy a CGM to try it out. I was going to buy one without a prescription from a company called Zoe, which (full transparency) Steven Bartlett now has an equity stake in. But my doctor told me she’d prescribe me one, and so a few days later I picked up a Freestyle Libre 3, downloaded the app, and popped it on my arm.
Fast forward to today. I’ve been wearing the CGM since early December. I now understand so much more about how my body reacts to various foods I eat, as well as how my blood glucose reacts when I exercise. And while I have not yet gone back to my doctor for another blood test, here’s what I can tell you. In the last 45 days:
My GMI (equivalent of A1C) is at 5.8
My fasting blood sugar each day when I wake up is around 100
I have lost 10 pounds
Suffice it to say, I am eating very differently than I was prior to starting this journey. I am eating plenty of food, not counting calories, and enjoying meals and snacks that are tasty and filling. I am also exercising more regularly, pretty much daily, but I’m simply walking for 45 minutes at a reasonable pace either outside or on the treadmill depending on the weather.
I am convinced that in the next few months I will be down to my target weight (a weight I have not been at since the days after my heart attack when I was afraid to eat anything). I am also 100 percent sure I will no longer be diabetic when I get my bloodwork back, nor will I be “pre-diabetic” as measured by an A1C of 5.7 to 6.4.
It’s not cholesterol folks. We know the high carb low fat diet adopted by the U.S. Government and health care community in the 1980s was based on bad science. There is ample evidence about that, led by great doctors and journalists including Gary Taubes, Nina Teicholz, and Dr. Steven Gundry, and Dr. Mark Hyman. I’m no fan of “celebrity” doctors but when they are right they are right. Taubes, Teicholz and others like them are great journalists who follow the science not the rhetoric. Not convinced — Google “Ancel Keys”.
Stay tuned to this space for more specific details about what, specifically, I have learned by wearing a CGM. If you can’t wait, hit me up at lengutman@gmail.com.