Can Atkins change your Metabolism?

[NoMorePumpkin]

I have been debating posting this question for days, but here it is:

Can Atkins change your Metabolism?? Or more pointedly, can it be BLAMED for causing diabetes?? Everything I've read on Atkins would suggest the answer is no...but please continue to read on.

I ask this BECAUSE my friend's MIL was recently diagnosed with diabetes AND said MIL previously followed Atkins, lost about 35 lbs, then fell off the wagon (this was about 18 months ago). While she was following Atkins, her blood sugar was fine (I don't know the defintion of "fine") and supposedly she didn't start Atkins because she was pre-diabetic or diabetic. My friend and her hubby are now blaming Atkins for changing MIL's metabolism saying that her body "got used to such low amounts of sugar", that when she went back to "traditional" eating, her body was shocked and NOW she has diabetes FROM Atkins!! It sounds crazy to me, but I wanted to know what some seasoned Atkineers thought of it.

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts with me.

Hugs ,
Punkin-kid

[Bugaboo]

Well, that's a new one. No...Atkins would not do that. It's easier for people to blame anything but themselves. It sounds like she was on the verge of diabetes as it was and that's why with Atkins she had no problems and when she went back to "traditional" high carb high sugar her body just took it's natural path that she had already been on. I'm sorry to hear she has diabetes, if she went back on Atkins for diabetics she could control it without meds most likely. I'm sure someone with more knowledge will be able to answer this better than me.

[ipopup]

I believe that before Atkins she was on her way to being pre-diabetic. The condition 'pre-diabetic' took a pause while she was on Atkins. After Atkins she went back to her old way of eating and the pre-diabetic state continued. A person can be pre-diabetic with NO symptoms in the early stage.
http://www.diabetes.org/pre-diabetes/faq.jsp
http://www.diabetes.org/pre-diabetes...s-symptoms.jsp


Atkins Nutritionals says: http://atkins.com/Archive/2001/11/30-765072.html

The Path to Diabetes

This insidious disease usually takes a fairly predictable journey. Here is a road map to help you take a detour before you get too far along the route to diabetes.

The modern American diet is grossly tipped toward refined carbohydrates such as sugar and white flour, both of which rank high on the glycemic index. When you eat such junk foods, your body overreacts: So much glucose pours into your bloodstream that your pancreas goes into emergency mode and pumps out excessive insulin.

In your youth, your body was functioning efficiently and you may not noticed any symptoms resulting from this flood of blood sugar and the resultant insulin overload. Later in life the symptoms pile on, often along with pounds. (Take the Blood-Sugar Symptom Questionnaire to be aware of any blood-sugar-related symptoms you may already have.) The vast majority of overweight people on a high-carbohydrate diet display an extensive range of symptoms, the by-products of unstable blood-sugar levels.

A significant number of people who are overweight are also insulin resistant. It may be that in most people, insulin resistance precedes hyperinsulinism. Either way, because insulin in not effective in doing its work, the pancreas reacts by pouring forth ever-increasing quantities of insulin. People who are both obese and pre-diabetic often have insulin levels some 20 times higher than the norm. The massive amounts of insulin cause blood sugar to drop to an inappropriately low level. The adrenaline the body releases to correct the blood-sugar level when it has fallen too low also produces many of those symptoms.

Ralph deFronzo, M.D., one of the nation’s leading diabetic specialists, has clarified the confusion that leads to a delayed diagnosis by pointing out that there are five stages of diabetes1. The first three stages precede the actual diagnosis of the illness. That's because conventional medicine does not routinely recommend the GTT with insulin levels, so people at risk are rarely found in the early stages of the disease.

The Five Stages of Diabetes

• Stage 1 - insulin resistance (IR) only
• Stage 2 - IR, plus hyperinsulinism (HI)
• Stage 3 - IR, HI, plus abnormalities in a GTT
• Stage 4 - Type II diabetes, with high insulin levels
• Stage 5 - Type II diabetes, with low insulin levels

The road to diabetes is a clear. If you take the high-carbohydrate trail you may—after many years of unstable blood sugar and excessive insulin release that you may not even be aware of—finally arrive at that unpleasant destination. Since insulin is the body’s premier fat creator, most of us will have picked up significant extra pounds along the journey.

Then, after you actually become diabetic, your blood-sugar level ceases to oscillate; it is now consistently high. Massive insulin resistance has been preventing insulin from effectively doing its job (stage 4) or your pancreas will have exhausted itself after years of overproduction, and will not be able to make enough insulin (stage 5). Either way, you’ve waited a little too long to make the diabetes go away, but not too long to achieve a useful level of control.

This means that that if you have not dealt with pre-diabetes, you now have full-blown diabetes. You’re in trouble. Blood sugar that cannot be transported by insulin into your cells and liver now spills over into your urine, wasting vital energy (stage 4). Once your insulin has been reduced to very low levels (stage 5) you start losing weight inexplicably. Heavy urination leads to constant thirst. Your body burns anything it can find to fuel its daily operations. You now know that something is very wrong.

But if you attend to the early warnings long before you hit this juncture, you can head off diabetes at the pass.

Formerly Borntolose
A Thriving Type II Diabetic

[ttdriver]

My friend and her hubby are now blaming Atkins for changing MIL's metabolism saying that her body "got used to such low amounts of sugar", that when she went back to "traditional" eating, her body was shocked and NOW she has diabetes FROM Atkins!!

That's right; when you do Atkins correctly, your body TOTALLY changes and it does get used to the elimination of sugar and other nutritionless processed garbage. That's why you feel so great. You've been DETOXED from the most potent disease causing poison on the planet: SUGAR. It is the ULTIMATE ENEMY TO YOUR HEALTH.

And when you do Atkins correctly, its FOR LIFE; there is no going back to eating "traditional" foods .. Traditional?? What's traditional about refined carbs packed with processed foods, sugar and starch?

She expedited her diabetes by eating the SUGAR again..... To blame it on Atkins is totally ludicrous (not to mention stupid).

Betty

[Effie]

This is my second time on Atkins. The first time I did Atkins, I only followed it for about 3 months (and not correctly, I might add). I was 166 pounds when I stopped doing Atkins, and then I ballooned up to 200 pounds in the next 6 months. I totally blamed Atkins. I knew that it had worked when I was following it, but I thought that it was so effective that it did permanently screw up my metabolism. Yes, I went back to my old eating habits, but those old eating habits NEVER made me gain 40 pounds in 6 months. I even tried Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, and other diets during that time. Yes, I know diets don't work in the long term, but as I had previously lost weight using them, I didn't see how they could possibly be giving me NO results this time.

I was extremely anti-Atkins after that happened. I got down to 145 once upon a time on Weight Watchers (before my first time on Atkins), and yes, the weight slowly crept back on when I got lazy, but I never felt my body change so dramatically as it did when I stopped doing Atkins. I found myself arguing with people doing Atkins saying, "The problem with Atkins is that you can NEVER go off of it!", which ironically, was their same argument back to me, and is my same pro-Atkins argument today.

I don't know if her diabetes was caused by this or not. Here's my metaphor: If you're a coke addict or a crack head or some other seasoned drug user, you're going to be able to take a lot more per hit than someone trying it for the first time. If I did 5 lines of coke, I'd probably OD and die. But, someone who's been doing it for years already has a tolerance built up-- which will likely kill them in the long run, but not immediately. I would imagine it's the same with going off Atkins and eating sugar. I thought that going back to my old eating habits meant that I wasn't eating any more than before, but the difference is I didn't have that tolerance built up. During Atkins, I essentially reset my body back to its natural state of using whole, unprocessed foods for fuel. When I suddenly added back all that crap filled with sugar and flour, my body OD'd and I got terribly fat as a result.

As a final thought, I would say that even though the entire act of going on Atkins, then stopping Atkins and eating processed, high-carb foods, might be the cause of the diabetes, I think it's unfair to point the finger at Atkins. It's the second part of that equation that is really to blame. If anything, Atkins is what saved her from getting it sooner.

[not2late]

Originally Posted by NoMorePumpkin

I have been debating posting this question for days, but here it is:

Can Atkins change your Metabolism?? Or more pointedly, can it be BLAMED for causing diabetes?? Everything I've read on Atkins would suggest the answer is no...but please continue to read on.

I ask this BECAUSE my friend's MIL was recently diagnosed with diabetes AND said MIL previously followed Atkins, lost about 35 lbs, then fell off the wagon (this was about 18 months ago). While she was following Atkins, her blood sugar was fine (I don't know the defintion of "fine") and supposedly she didn't start Atkins because she was pre-diabetic or diabetic. My friend and her hubby are now blaming Atkins for changing MIL's metabolism saying that her body "got used to such low amounts of sugar", that when she went back to "traditional" eating, her body was shocked and NOW she has diabetes FROM Atkins!! It sounds crazy to me, but I wanted to know what some seasoned Atkineers thought of it.

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts with me.

Hugs ,
Punkin-kid

Your family needs something to blame, so it's natural they pick her foray into Atkins, ignoring the years prior to Atkins when she indulged in "traditional" high carb eating.

Secondly, they need to understand that there are 2 broad causes for diabetes: 1. the body isn't making insulin or 2. the body isn't responding to the insulin it makes. The first cause is usually picked up in childhood or during the teen-years. The second cause is due to years and years of overexposure of insulin or "hyperinsulinemia", which is due to years and years of overexposure to glucose (ie, the "traditional" high carb diet).

By the way, diabetes has a nasty habit of running in families, so you might advise your friend to closely examine his/her diet and lifestyle.

[G-Mom]

There is also a scientific reason that going off Atkins expedited her diabetes, and why it makes most people gain significant fat when they immediately return to extremely high carb eating.

You see, when we are insulin resistant (pre-Atkins), our insulin receptors (the gatekeepers providing glucose to the cells using insulin), stop working AND reduce their numbers, which causes the pancreas to squirt out even more insulin until the receptors finally get their butts in action and do something with the influx of glucose. Since the receptors are slow to action, now there's way too much insulin and that means hyperinsulinism and weight gain due to all that insulin and glucose promoting fat storage.

When we do low-carb, we don't flood our overworked systems with glucose, which means that our insulin receptors become more sensitive and they increase in numbers, so when we do up our glucose in the latter stages of Atkins, we are able physically, to deal with it and not store it as fat.

However, if after re-making our bodies into these efficient machines, we return to loads of sugar and white flour, our bodies will revert to hyperinsulinism, and if we were heading toward diabetes before, we will head there again, because our insulin receptors will become insensitive and fewer in numbers. The ugly process happens again.

So, stating that Atkins made her become diabetic is totally ludicrous! It was the one thing (dietwise) she was doing in her life that was preventing her from becoming diabetic. Had she increased her carbs slowly and completely ommitted sugar and white flour, and stuck with mostly natural foods, even if she increased her carbs considerably, she would not have flooded her system with glucose and forced her insulin receptors to be insensitive.

[NoMorePumpkin]

Thanks for all the replies, guys!!

Mucho appreciated.

Punkin-kid