To avoid out-of-control blood sugars, don't eat foods which raise the blood sugar uncontrollably!

Please check out my blood chemistry. What you see is normal. Most diabetics have elevated fructosamine (a measure of the last few weeks' blood sugar control), along with high triglycerides, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, and high LDL (bad cholesterol) with low HDL (good cholesterol). The ratio of LDL to HDL is a measure of heart attack risk, and is usually high in diabetics. Interestingly, the ratio of triglycerides to HDL cholesterol predicts your insulin resistance: less over 1.8, watch out! My blood chemistry used to lean towards the diabetic profile but not any more.

My blood tests normalized with this food:

Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Day 1: eggs scrambled easy, avocado, tea with milk	½ roast chicken with a salad of carrot, endive cucumber and red pepper, blue cheese dressing	Salmon sashimi with Japanese horseradish, asparagus with butter, salad with lemon juice-olive oil dressing
Day 2: fried eggs, ham, cucumber spears, coffee with ½ and ½	Tuna salad (tuna drained of oil with red peppers, Maui onion, cauliflower florets, mayonnaise)	BBQ lamb chops, broccoli and zucchini stir-fried with mushrooms and garlic, home-made cole slaw
Typical blood sugars: fasting: 110 mg%; ketones: none	before lunch: 95 mg%, ketones: trace	before supper: 90 mg%; ketones: moderate
Typical insulin dose: Humalog: 7 units; Humulin U: 6 units	Humalog: 6 units	Humalog: 6 units; Humulin U: 15 units
Supplements:- 1000IU vitamin E, 1 gram buffered vitamin C, "B100" (100mg each of the Bs) Calcium, Magnesium, Zinc	5 mg biotin, 15 mg Vanadyl sulphate, lipoic acid, evening primrose oil	1 gram buffered vitamin C, Calcium, Magnesium, Zinc, melatonin, 5-hydroxy tryptophan (for sleep)
Exercise: Day 1: ½ hour walk Day 2: ½ hour walk	Day 1: Installed TV antenna Day 2: Pulled cable through attic - ugh

While your mileage may vary, my 14-day average blood sugar is 102 mg% (with several >150 and <60 mg% - heavy exercise lowers my insulin requirement a lot). Advantages of episodic ketosis (beyond a complication-free future) include stable mood, protection from hypoglycemic symptoms, absence of food cravings or out-of-control appetite, and consequently, easy weight control.

There’s much more on this way of eating in Dr Richard Bernstein’s The Diabetes Diet, highly recommended. After all, he’s not only a real insulin-dependent diabetic, he’s a real doctor with many years of experience treating real diabetics. By the way, he doesn’t believe supplements are necessary and he personally doesn’t use them – most of his diabetic complications cleared up without them once he got his blood sugar under control with this pattern of eating so who knows, maybe he’s right.

Surely you'll die young eating all that fat and cholesterol?

I hope not. My blood chemistry suggest a low risk of heart attack, and normal blood sugars protect against diabetic complications. Contrary to what one might expect, my risk factors are far lower than when I was eating a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. I believe that conventional wisdom lags way behind current nutrition research where I find a great deal of support for this pattern of eating.

Surely You'll Get Fat, Eating All That Fat!

I've lost ten pounds in the 9 months I've been eating this way. My experience is not unique: check out Dean Esmay’s World's Biggest Fad Diet page for the current research on diet and overweight. Here are a couple of teasers from this site:

"In Framingham, Massachusetts, the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate, the lower people's serum cholesterol...we found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories weighed the least and were the most physically active. (Dr. William Castelli, Director of the Framingham Study. Archives of Internal Medicine, 1992.)

"Call it the Big Fat Lie. Fat has, through no real fault of its own, become the great demon of the American dietary scene. It is no myth that one-third of Americans are overweight. It is, however, a myth that Americans are overweight due to excessive fat consumption. (Dr. Richard K. Bernstein, Type I Diabetic and noted diabetic researcher.)