Yes! Eat These Healthy Carbs With Diabetes | Cyrus Khambatta, PhD Live Q&A

think you can't eat carbs if you have diabetes think again my friend welcome to the exam room live brought to you by the physicians committee hi i am the weight loss champion chuck carroll thank you so very much for helping us make the world a healthier place and it is in fact carb day here on the exam room we are going to be putting them under the microscope taking a close look at what they mean for people with diabetes are they these big villains that they're made out to be or is nutrition one big cast of characters where you've got some good guys there as well and that means that not every carb is out to get you we're going to be exploring that idea today with the master of diabetes from mastering diabetes cyrus camboda p h d if there's a question that you would like to ask cyrus go ahead and post that in the comments or in the chat we're going to be opening up the mailbag in just a little bit you can also send them to me on twitter or instagram i'm at chuck carroll wlc in both places already some good questions coming in for the mailbag we have a question about blood sugar spikes and how they might compare say if you ate oatmeal to a breakfast cereal right that's an interesting one what's the healthiest bread that someone with diabetes can eat and can you prevent a blood sugar spike if you eat a donut and then follow that up with a fiber supplement gaming the system we're gonna find out and the man with the answers is in fact our good friend from mastering diabetes cyrus kombata my friend thank you so very much for being here what's up how you doing today chuck it's good to see you as always it's great to see you uh before we dive into everything i wanted to let you know that uh one of our previous episodes is now one of i believe the 10 most viewed in the history of the exam room and even of all videos on the physicians committee's youtube page so thanks so much for being here again man you're you're really doing some great work wow i love that it's actually really good to hear i did i mean you learn something new every day and uh who knew when i woke up this morning i wasn't like i had no idea that we were that good or that that episode was that um popular but the truth is that uh there's a lot of misconceptions about diabetes in general there's a lot of misconceptions about carbs or carbohydrates in general and i'd love to clear up as much of that stuff today as possible because the stuff that you find on the internet sometimes is just mind-bogglingly complex and a lot of it is just biologically inaccurate so we can get into detail for sure absolutely man so let's go ahead and start firing off these questions and raising those health iqs carly's wondering what carbs are safe for people with diabetes okay so whenever you think of the term carb let's let's do a little bit of like reworking here because i don't actually like to use the word carb okay carb is just basically a shortened version of carbohydrate and carbohydrate itself is not a food okay so when people refer to carbs they can kind of confuse themselves because they don't really know what is a carb right the truth is that there are things called carbohydrate-rich foods which are foods that contain a significant carbohydrate content and we're going to be talking about those so you're going to hear me literally use the word carbohydrate-rich foods because that's a more technically accurate description now carbohydrates are found in the natural world they're all over the place that you can find if you go to a tree a tree is predominantly made up of carbohydrate the bark and the wood is carbohydrate this piece of paper right here this is carbohydrate believe it or not a tissue is carbohydrate um foods that come from the natural world that human beings can eat are things like fruits and starchy vegetables and legumes like beans and peas and lentils as well as whole grains those are carbohydrate-rich foods that come from whole sources and those are the types of foods that we strongly recommend increasing your intake of refined carbohydrate-rich foods are things like cookies crackers chips sodas pastas sugar sweetened beverages bear claws pastries things that you find in the grocery store that come inside of a package or a bottle or a can that had to go through a manufacturing process in order to become edible those are refined carbohydrate-rich foods and those have been documented time and time and time again in the scientific literature to not only increase your blood glucose but significantly increase your risk for many chronic diseases as well as cardiovascular disease and obesity and as a result of that you want to try and minimize your consumption of those foods while maximizing your consumption of whole carbohydrate foods again from fruits starchy vegetables legumes and whole grains perfect follow-up then from nyman uh wants to get a little bit nerdy man you ready to get nerdy i love getting nerdy let's be as nerdy as possible all right here we go man what is the mechanism behind refined sugar and diabetes that's a good okay we got it we got some super nerds in there okay so here's the thing what is the mechanism between but behind uh refined carbohydrate metabolism is that right yes what is the mechanism behind refined sugar and diabetes okay here we go okay when you consume food you put food into your mouth food travels down your esophagus it goes inside of your stomach inside of your stomach is where food starts to get sort of ripped apart and partially digested mainly through the presence of hydrochloric acid which is basically a very acidic enzyme now hydrochloric acid then i'm sorry the food is partially digested it turns into chyme that's just the scientific name it then goes into your small intestine inside of your small intestine is where the bulk of digestion occurs inside of your small intestine you have enzymes that are secreted by your liver and your pancreas and your small intestine itself and those enzymes are are designed to do a couple of things number one they want to take complex structures whether they're fatty acids or carbohydrates or protein and start to what's called denature them or basically linearize them once they are linearized you can then have another set of enzymes that come in and start to cut those complex three-dimensional structures into individual units those individual units are then absorbed through the walls of your small intestine they're put in your blood and then they can go to their destination tissue now in the case of glucose and carbohydrates because that's the focus of our conversation today carbohydrates are molecules that can be anywhere from a few hundred units long all the way upwards of tens of thousands of units long and they have a very complex three-dimensional three-dimensional structure now these carbohydrates are acted upon by digestive enzymes inside of your small intestine and they are basically linearized and then cut into individual glucose and fructose units mainly there are many other units that come along there are the other monosaccharides that usually end in the letters ose so it could be galactose ribose mannose uh again fructose glucose xyulose and beyond okay the bulk of the carbohydrate energy that you will derive that you will actually convert into atp comes from glucose and from fructose so you take carbohydrate structures you break them into individual units you then absorb those units through the walls of your blood they get inside i'm sorry through the walls of your small intestine and they get inside of your blood once those are inside of your blood the glucose and fructose are trying to get transported into their final destination which is tissues like your liver or your kidney or your brain or your thyroid gland or your muscle tissue okay now this is where things get just a little bit fun in my opinion glucose wants to get inside of your liver and muscle and brain because those are the three most glucose dependent tissues in your body glucose can get inside of your brain with zero insulin required glucose can basically get shuttled into the into sorry it can cross the blood brain barrier get inside of neurons inside of your brain and they don't require any insulin to make that process happen and that's a good thing in order to get inside of your liver and muscle insulin has to be secreted by your pancreas so insulin goes knock knock there's some glucose in the blood would you like to take it up and liver and muscle cells can either respond by saying sure i'll take that glucose or no thanks i don't need that glucose right now you can go away so when you eat a refined carbohydrate-rich food the refined carbohydrate-rich food is again high in carbohydrate energy oftentimes high in glucose high in fructose and the kicker is that most refined carbohydrate-rich foods have a very small amount of fiber in them okay so you get a lot of glucose you get a lot of fructose but you get a small amount of fiber you get a small amount of micronutrients and as a result of that that glucose and the fructose when it comes in is unprotected it's not being protected by a sufficient amount of fiber it's not being protected by sufficient amount of micronutrients and as a result of that the amount of glucose and fructose from that food can get inside of your blood and can cause rapid elevations in your blood glucose concentration and your blood fructose concentration in that scenario when there's a lot of glucose and a lot of fructose the first thing that happens is they hit your liver your liver is overwhelmed by the total amount of glucose and fructose that comes in from those refined foods and as a result of that your liver does whatever it possibly can to absorb as much of that as possible to protect other tissues from having to absorb excess glucose because it's very dangerous so as a result of that the glucose and fructose can come inside of your liver using small amounts of insulin and then when they're inside of your liver your liver says okay let me do whatever i can to try and uh keep this glucose and fructose and then put it through a whole bunch of biochemical pathways that are going to prevent other tissues from getting assaulted so that's when your liver is basically acting as like the savior for many other tissues in your body and your your liver can actually start to become very dysfunctional over the course of time there's a process by which your liver can convert glucose into fatty acids over the course of time it's it's not really used that much but when the amount of glucose that comes in again is very large in a short period of time then that pathway gets turned on and it can become problematic the last thing i'll say to this is that when you're consuming whole carbohydrate-rich foods the whole carbohydrate-rich foods are protected they're protected by fiber they're protected by micronutrients and antioxidants and vitamins and minerals and water and phytochemicals that come only from plant material the presence of those micronutrients in addition to fiber slows down the digestive process and that is a good thing and that means that when the glucose and fructose gets liberated from those foods and put into the blood they don't overwhelm your liver and they don't overwhelm these these alternative pathways inside of your liver that have to get turned on when there's too much available so in this scenario slowing the digestive process is beneficial it's something that actually significantly improves the health of your liver in the long term and it can prevent against rapid blood glucose elevations and can protect the health of your liver and your blood vessels in the long term all right so if that makes sense it that's that's great man so we've got glucose we've got fructose and i want to add one more to that and that is mannose as a man knows some good answers that you were just giving man that's a whole lot of nutrition knowledge that you just dropped and that is fantastic thank you um great follow-up question here from tracy okay so we're talking about can uh refined carbohydrates versus whole carbohydrates but now tracy's kind of like splitting the difference a little bit here she's wondering how a blood sugar spike might compare if you eat a bowl of oatmeal versus an oatmeal based breakfast cereal like cheerios okay so the question is if i were to eat oatmeal or i were to eat some oatmeal based breakfast cereal like cheerios which one is better is that the right question right and how might the the spike in the blood sugar compare between the two okay the simple the simple answer to that question is i want you to think whenever you're trying to answer a question of like hey is this carbohydrate-rich food good for me or bad for me there's a very simple way to think about it all you have to do is take a look at the food and try and answer a very simple question which is how much manufacturing had to go into making this thing edible if you can answer that question and you can take a stab at it and give it your best answer most of the time that's going to tell you whether or not you're consuming a carbohydrate that's actually beneficial and more healthful or carbohydrate-rich food that's actually going to increase your chronic disease risk so in this situation we're contrasting oatmeal versus a cereal that's made from oats with maybe some other things okay oatmeal is how the question is how much processing is required in order to turn oatmeal into oatmeal okay well it turns out that there's actually many different types of oatmeal there's the most unrefined version of oatmeal which is called oat groats and that is the type of oatmeal that i would recommend eating because that still contains the bran the husk it's got all the micronutrients on the in the casing and that's a good thing because it slows the digestive process down and it's got a lot of fiber so oat groats is at the top next you have steel cut oats that's the second in the hierarchy steel cut oats is a little bit more processed than the oat groats but that's okay and it'll still be a healthful choice underneath that you have rolled oats which are the types of votes that you get at the grocery store that you know look like little sort of flat pancakes that you get from like the the quaker box and then underneath that you're gonna have uh instant oats and then you're gonna have puffed oats as you go down that hierarchy you go from less processed oat groats all the way down to puffed oats which are the most processed of the oat you know varieties now when you're creating a cereal okay cereals look good they got fancy marketing they got this fancy box on the outside they got all these words they got protein yada yada but you got to think about again how much processing was required in order to make this cereal possible and i can guarantee you that in most situations most cereals require a significant amount of processing in order to make the uh the end product have the right crunch the right size the right texture the right appearance the right flavor and so if you're eating a cereal that has some oats in it but also probably has other things in it chances are it's gone through more of a refining process and more of a manufacturing process to get to a point where it's a it's a it's less nutrient dense and as a result of that when you consume it not only are you getting less nutrients but there's more refining which means that there's less fiber and having less fiber is actually a problematic scenario and therefore in this situation personally i would definitely opt for the oatmeal rather than the oatmeal based cereal and again i'm not going to go for the puff dots i'm not going to go for the instant oats i'm going to go up to the steel cut oats or the oat groats and try and find the most unrefined version of oatmeal and when i do that i can protect my blood vessels my liver my kidney my muscle tissue my heart and my brain simultaneously you are only going to get answers like that here on the exam room live so if you're one of the hundreds who are joining us right now around the world please go ahead and like this video and subscribe to the uh physicians committee's channel here on youtube as well i mean just a phenomenal breakdown bro this is why people absolutely love you matter of fact joanna says i don't have diabetes but i'm addicted to the mastering diabetes videos that my friend is when you know that you're given some good nutrition science man i love it she's like i don't have diabetes but i want diabetes just so i can pay attention to this i don't think she's going that far man let's pump the brakes a little bit on that one uh i also want to say hi to uh joanne uh finally making it to a live show for the very first time that's very cool uh cherry is joining us in california we've got dana and saint augustine teresa tuning in from hawaii that's very cool colleen is here and tofu tuesday joining us on a wednesday very cool as well go ahead keep posting your questions for cyrus in the comments and in the chat we got plenty of time here so we're going to get to as many as we can uh all right so we're talking about whole carbohydrates we just had the breakdown between refined and whole and why that matters in terms of oatmeal but let's focus just specifically on the hole here uh vanessa is wondering if all varieties of sweet potatoes are safe to eat if you have diabetes oh the potato the mighty mighty mighty potato i'm so glad we're talking about potatoes potatoes are one of the greatest foods in the world for so many different reasons okay potatoes there's so many different varieties there's sweet potatoes there's white potatoes there's potatoes there's red potatoes there's yellow potatoes there's black potatoes you name it are different colors of different shapes different sizes some are small some are large some are really heavy some are light you name it okay we could do probably an eight hour course or more in trying to figure out the biochemistry and how a purple potato slightly differs from a white potato and have a white potato slightly different than a yukon potato and a yukon potato slightly different than red potato and so on and so forth but we don't have the time for that and it's not that important what is important to understand is that potatoes get a bad rap potatoes get a bad rap for many reasons number one because potatoes are a carbohydrate-rich food and the general world is terrified of eating anything that contains carbohydrate because again they've been told and they've been brainwashed if you will into believing that carbohydrates are bad for you or carbs are bad for you but you guys know better okay so potatoes in general are carbohydrate rich but you should not be scared of them in fact you should eat more of them because they're carbohydrate rich number two potatoes are fiber rich fiber again is very important because it acts as a break and it slows down the digestive process and that's a good thing because it lowers the speed at which glucose gets inside of your blood and gives you a much more favorable blood glucose response when you eat a meal now sweet potatoes there's many different varieties even within the sweet potato family you got ones that have yellow flesh ones that have purple flesh ones that have uh orange flesh on the inside some that have darker fresh flesh some that have white flesh on the inside so the question is are all sweet potato varieties good good to eat and a smart healthful decision and my answer is absolutely all sweet potatoes regardless of what color they are on the outside what color they are on the inside you have cyrus kombata's green light to eat sweet potatoes but my the one thing that i will uh put a little asterisk or a caveat in is whenever consuming carbohydrate-rich foods and whenever consuming a diet that contains a significant amount of carbohydrate content in particular the most effective thing that you can do is to eat carbohydrate-rich foods in a low-fat setting and dr neil barnard has worked for years on this chuck carroll knows this inside and out dr barnard has written multiple books on it we wrote the mastering diabetes book on it and there's ample scientific evidence to demonstrate that when you consume carbohydrates in an environment in which you are also eating a significant amount of fat okay the fat can come from things like olive oil or processed meats it can come from dairy products it can come from nuts and seeds and avocados you name it if you're eating a lot of those fat rich foods and then in addition to those fat rich foods you try and eat a sweet potato or any other type of carbohydrate-rich food your glucose will likely go high so in order to enable you to tolerate carbohydrate more in order for your carbohydrate tolerance to actually increase which is a scientific term carbohydrate tolerance the way to increase your carbohydrates is to lower your total fat content so you lower your fat content by minimizing your intake of nuts and seeds and avocados and coconuts eliminating oil to the best of your ability minimizing or eliminating all dairy products minimizing or eliminating all cheese minimizing or eliminating all animal products and when you do that then your carbohydrate tolerance increases significantly which means that when you go and eat a sweet potato you can metabolize the sweet potato without your blood glucose doing anything strange and that's the most important thing so carbohydrates are awesome but you got to keep that lo that fat content nice and low and by doing that you can lower the amount of insulin resistance inside of your liver and muscle and that's going to keep your blood glucose within the normal range 99.99 of the time and that's exactly where you want to be all right so all sweet potatoes get the green light but and if you just had your druthers right and you could eat any sweet potatoes simply for flavor are you a purple guy you an orange guy uh you go with the white japanese sweet potato like which which one are you going with okay you wanna you wanna know the truth absolutely i would actually prefer to eat white potatoes and red potatoes over sweet potatoes and i know most people would not say that i know most people would not say that but for me the the flavor of like a like a russet potato that's been baked or like a yukon gold potato or even a red potato i would take that any day over a sweet potato don't get me wrong so potatoes are good but the other varieties to me are much tastier i've got some baby red potatoes i'm going to roast this afternoon right up there in the kitchen about 20 feet away man i'll send some to you there you go i'll take them i'll make it uh pat i love your program chuck so happy to finally have made it live awesome glad you're here uh pat also says love you cyrus kombata so uh yeah pat i love you too man that's pretty dope uh all right uh so we've talked potatoes let's talk fruit here are there any fruits sam is wondering this are there any fruits that someone with diabetes should not eat oh this is another good question okay just like potatoes potatoes of again have been sort of like painted as the boogeyman of the like fruit and vegetable world because there's too many carbs and carbs are bad for you and they're going to make you fat and they're going to make you more diabetic fruits fall into the same category people will tell you all across the internet you'll see this left and right on instagram on youtube on facebook you name it people will say don't eat bananas because bananas are all sugar don't eat mangoes mangoes are all sugar okay don't eat melons because melons are all sugar and what they want you to believe or what they honestly believe themselves is that a fruit if you were to just sort of like grind a fruit up it would just literally turn into like a pile of white table sugar which is from a from a biological perspective as far from the truth as possible again fruit contains a significant quantity of carbohydrates fruits are carbohydrate-rich foods and that's a good thing but in addition to the carbohydrate energy that you get from eating fruit you also are getting protein energy okay which are amino acids that are locked up in these things called proteins you are also getting fatty acids which are locked up in a thing called triglyceride okay you are also getting vitamins minerals fiber water antioxidants and phytochemicals so if you really think about what a fruit is a fruit is a combination of multiple macronutrients and micronutrients and the combination of all of that together is actually a very complex three-dimensional package a complex three-dimensional matrix if you will and when you eat that food and it gets inside of your small intestine to be fully broken apart and digested it takes time and time is your friend again if we contrast that against a soda or a a pastry or a cookie that you get from the grocery store those have gone through a manufacturing process they contain less micronutrient density less fiber if any and as a result of that they can be metabolized very quickly and speed is not your friend in this scenario so to go back to the original question are there any fruits that i should avoid my answer is absolutely not all fruit literally all fruit i don't care what color it is what shape it is what size it is how carbohydrate dense it is how much water there is how much water there isn't it doesn't matter all fruits are technically speaking green light foods as far as the mastering diabetes program is concerned as far as we classify them all of them contain vitamins minerals fiber water antioxidants micronutrients triglyceride protein and carbohydrate simultaneously and that is a very good thing and that's why when you're consuming fruits i don't want you to think oh well this is going to turn into sugar because that is not a true statement all those other protective macro and micronutrients that come along for the ride are there to help you in the digestive process slow down the metabolism of glucose and fructose into your blood and that right there protects you against chronic diseases like diabetes and many others into the future all right mauna kiki is taking it then to the next level with the fruit wondering what your opinion is on if a fruit exclusive diet oh okay um real quick before i get there there's a comment from richard that i just saw it says hey cyrus and robbie i reverse my pre-diabetes and hypertension by switching to a whole food plant-based diet and losing 100 150 pounds yeah [Applause] that's what i'm talking about richard that's unbelievable work i'm really proud of you actually and the truth is that the way that we describe to eat which is again low-fat plant-based whole food diet which is very similar to exactly how dr neil barnard and the pcrm entire ecosystem functions is that when you consume these foods you can maximize the opportunity of number one losing weight number two lowering your blood glucose number three lowering your a1c number four lowering your blood pressure number five lowering your cholesterol levels and number six as doctor will bolsois will tell you over and over and over again significantly improving the mic the the the diversity of your microbiome which is going to have untold benefits for all tissues within your body so you can never go wrong by increasing your whole food intake right on man right that's the i love stories like that man i yeah it just makes my day makes my day absolutely fruit exclusive diet where do you weigh in okay food exclusive diet truth be told when i first became a raw food sorry when i first became a vegan back in 2003 i actually ate a raw food diet and then the raw food diet is very high in fruits with some vegetables to come along for the ride so i was never eating a 100 fruit only diet i was eating a predominantly fruit diet with some raw vegetables to come along for a ride now i'll tell you one thing i freaking loved it i loved every second of it because there's a lot of like very delicious foods that you can eat keeps you extremely high energy you're able to work out and if you enjoy exercise you have a lot of energy to be able to you know use for physical activity and that's always a good thing a fruit exclusive diet takes it to one uh one more extreme if you i'd like to use that word but a little bit more restrictive in the sense that you're eliminating all vegetables and you're literally eating nothing but fruit personally i would not recommend that approach i would not recommend that approach for many reasons number one vegetables have i mean there are there's a whole wide there are thousands of vegetables and there is plenty of evidence-based research that demonstrates that consuming vegetables actually has a very powerful effect at boosting overall function boosting overall immune function and lowering your risk for many chronic diseases so because it's such a beneficial food category i would not eliminate that from my diet personally speaking number two when you eat a fruit only diet you are also not consuming legumes beans lentils and peas the blue zones have taught us dr will bolsoewitz has taught us and many other experts on gut health have taught us that legumes are some of the most micronutrient dense foods that we know of and they have very very powerful effects at improving your overall gut function and that is a very good thing number number two legumes also are very effective at helping to keep your blood glucose values nice and stable over the course of many hours so if you eat a legume right now or you eat a legume you know collection of legumes for a little for lunch over the course of the next six to 12 hours your blood glucose is likely to be more stable than if you were eating a meal that had less legumes in it and dr joel fuhrman has also talked about the fact that there's this thing called the second meal effect which means that if you eat legumes at this meal at your second meal you actually have a carryover effect and a lot of the benefits that you got from that first meal are still present inside of your microbiome and that can be very beneficial at helping control your short chain fatty acid production your glucose production and beyond so my point is this if you can eat a diet that includes fruits i'm all about it but i would personally not recommend eliminating either vegetables or legumes we didn't even get into whole grains but i would not eliminate them either the combination of fruits plus vegetables plus legumes plus whole grains is a winning combination and to the best of my knowledge there's no reason to necessarily eliminate three out of those four categories people just want to talk about fruit today uh nadia at 12 30. what's the best way to eat fruit is it raw and is it okay to combine a number of different fruits while you're eating them can you eat them together yeah well that's a great question okay so yes eat fruits as raw as possible otherwise known as a wrap okay but secondarily if you really get into the like fruit world there's actually some food combining rules if you will that basically say you know they take fruit and they classify them into one of four categories you either have your your sweet fruits your sub acid fruits your acid fruits and then there's actually a fourth category called melons just pure melons right and so what you want to do is basically like only combine fruits from any two categories that are adjacent to each other but try not to skip a category now that's a whole uh the the reason for this fruit combining rules is based off of digestive biochemistry and the truth is that it works most of the time but there are for some people they're like ah it doesn't matter i can have some melons and i can eat with bananas i can have some bananas and eat them with oranges it doesn't really matter and so the answer is for the most part combining any and all fruits together should do you just fine but if you are finding that when you combine certain combinations of fruits together it can be a little bit more problematic and it might cause you some digestive distress then i would recommend looking up these food fruit combining rules and then being a little bit more adherent to them and then that might help you out in the long term joanne 1235 is blending fruit into a smoothie going to speed up digestion too quickly okay so blending fruit into a smoothie will definitely increase the rate at which glucose enters your blood there's no question about that does that mean that you should never have a smoothie absolutely not if you're gonna have a smoothie here's what i would recommend doing don't drink your smoothie with a straw don't drink it with a cup eat it with a spoon so let's say you make a blender full and you got this giant smoothie and you poured it into a cup or you poured it into a bowl what i would do is i would take a spoon and i would put the spoon inside of the cup and i would take one spoonful at a time what that does is it forces me to slow down the rate at which i'm actually putting that into my mouth and that's going to go a long way in trying to prevent your blood glucose from doing funny things in the next couple of hours i personally make a smoothie bowl almost every single day but i'm also pretty strategic and that i will only really consume a smoothie bowl if i am in the post-workout state meaning i've gone and i've done my workout and i've gotten my you know my heart to be beating significantly so my cardiovascular metabolism has already been turned on my muscles are extremely hungry in that situation consuming smoothies and or smoothie bowls is going to be a much safer option simply because your muscles are extremely hungry and they can start to absorb a significant amount of that glucose energy for free without using very much insulin so if you can sort of time it after exercise that would be smarter than just having it at any moment of the day but again the pace at which you eat it really matters so that's my recommendation plant-based 60s is showing us some love right now love the exam room this show is awesome love you too that's awesome thank you so very much for sharing that uh question from ayla here 12 28. we haven't talked about corn yet uh ayla says i've heard that corn should be avoided because of its sugar content where does that rank here in terms of foods that are green light yellow light red light where is corn on that scale okay corn is 100 in the green light category um again people have been sort of told that corn is bad for you because corn is going to metabolize to sugar it's the same thing as fruits the same thing as potatoes is bad for you the truth is from a biochemical perspective corn is a complex food it contains again vitamins minerals fiber water antioxidants phytochemicals plus triglyceride plus protein and the combination of all of that is going to help slow down the digestive process so don't if you're gonna not eat corn don't not eat corn because it's carbohydrate rich some people choose not to eat corn because the majority of corn that you find in the grocery store today is either gm owed or it has been it's a it's a hybrid version of corn that's been bred and bread and bread and bread and bread many many times and as a result of that its micronutrient value has decreased so uh if you if you choose to avoid corn do it for those reasons but i personally consume corn we recommend eating corn for all of our all of our people and if you can find corn uh in in an organic state that i would i would recommend doing that rather than trying to take on some gmo corn that may or may not have uh deleterious effects in the long term all right i want to go back and do some housekeeping on something you and i were talking about a little bit earlier you're talking about eating a really fatty meal but then having this whole carbohydrate on the side but then boom you still see that big spike but now big ant is like all right cool i got you but what if that fat source is in fact whole food plant based like an avocado will you still see that that spike there okay so the answer is it will be better right i would prefer that you eat an avocado rather than having a couple of tablespoons of olive oil i'd prefer that you eat an avocado rather than chicken i prefer that you have an avocado rather than ice cream no question about it but there comes a point at which any fat rich food even if it's from a whole food plant-based source like an avocado or a coconut or nuts and seeds can overwhelm your ability to metabolize carbohydrate it's just a flat old it is a uh it is a mammalian biochemical problem for some reason mammals you know human beings cats dogs monkeys mice sheep all of us that are in the mammal category suffer from the same problem if you will which is that carbohydrate metabolism and fat metabolism do not play nice with each other when you operate in the carbohydrate economy and you are consuming a significant amount of carbohydrate energy it is very important to keep your fat content low so you want carbohydrate high fat low that's the only way to make carbohydrate metabolism work for you in the long term there's literally no other way to do it if you consume to eat a fat rich diet instead then i would highly recommend lowering your fat your carbohydrate content so that way fat is high and carbohydrate is low because again the two of them do not play nice with each other so my suggestion to you would be even if you are eating plant-rich fatty acid foods limit your intake of them because number one a little bit goes a long way but number two if you're trying to eat too much of that then your carbohydrate metabolism is going to get adversely effective and your blood glucose is likely to do some very weird things so then like what is the balance there because obviously there are certain fats that we need like omega-3s right so you add flax to something like that that's going to jack up the content there you still need those so like how does one find that balance i'm sure that that's something that a lot of people struggle with yeah for sure for sure it's a great question and so we've done the math on this and we've worked with thousands of people and you know i've done it you know for the past 20 years myself living with type 1 diabetes and i can tell you this the simplest way to think about it is just to like make this dirt simple on a daily basis we recommend eating no more than 30 grams of total fat period of store okay so you can just remember that number 30 grams of total fat from your diet from all foods within a 24 hour period if you can contain your total fat intake to being less than 30 you're doing the right thing number two within a 24 hour period if you want to ensure that you're getting a significant amount of omega-3 fatty acids which are anti-inflammatory which are very beneficial for brain health and eye health and nervous system nervous tissue health then a simple way to do that is to take two tablespoons of ground chia seeds or two tablespoons of ground flax seeds and try and freshly grind them as much as possible and then add that to your foods over the course 24 hour and then eat it boom micro sorry omega-3 micronutrients already taken care of okay so the truth is that this game is not that complicated it really does not have to be that complicated it's just that it can become very complicated when there's too much information and too many different people saying too many different things so again 30 grams or less per day and have two tablespoons of freshly ground chia seeds or freshly ground flax seeds per day you're covered you got your entire fatty acid profile completely uh you know it's it's adequate it's actually beyond adequate and you don't necessarily have to worry about developing an omega-3 deficiency over the course of time and uh then you know you can also be as insulin sensitive as possible and keep your carbohydrates in check all right let's see if we can grab a few more from the exam roomies here uh we talked uh well we haven't talked about meal time i mean we've all heard about meal timing but let's talk about fruit timing the kitchen which at 12 40 is there a time of day that is better for fruit um [Music] yes when you're awake is what i would say you can have fruit at any time of the day don't any time of the day don't worry about it don't overthink it all right a question from tamina okay oh boy i've been waiting for this one if i take a fiber supplement yeah while i eat a donut can that prevent the sugar spike okay this is a great question actually uh one of my favorite comedians of all time his name is mitch hedberg uh mitch hedberg basically has this joke where he goes he goes man i wish you could eat a good food and a bad food and the good food would cover for the bad food on the way down like you could eat an onion with a carrot i'm sorry an onion ring with a carrot and the carrot would be like oh man it's all good he's with me don't worry about it he's safe right i wish that that was the case i wish that you could eat a good food and bad food and the good food would literally cover for the bad food and everything be fine but the truth is that uh you can't really negate the effects of a a fried food you can't negate the effects of a nutrient-rich food by simply covering it up with a nutrient i'm sorry a nutrient-poor food by covering up with a nutrient-rich food so in this scenario you're saying if i eat something that has no fiber in it or very little fiber then i just take a fiber supplement well shouldn't that just like mathematically work out to my advantage and the answer is no it doesn't for one main reason the fiber that you get from food is different than the fiber you get from a bottle or a supplement the fiber you get from a bottle or a supplement whether it's metamucil or whether it's something that you found at the grocery store that fiber is far less functional in your digestive system in your microbiome than if the fiber were already fully integrated into a food and you just ate the whole food okay in order to get the fiber inside of a bottle the fiber had to be processed in the same way that we were talking about oatmeal earlier having multiple levels of processing okay so fiber is even though it's technically fiber fiber can be processed when taken in supplement form and as a result of that when you consume that fiber it doesn't nearly have the protective effect that the fiber in whole food does it doesn't slow down absorption to the way in the way that i suggested number two it doesn't bulk your poo in the way that it would coming from uh whole food sources and number three it doesn't serve as a sufficient fuel source for trillions of bacteria inside of your microbiome which is very necessary for them because that's literally a fuel that they use in order to make these things called short chain fatty acids so i don't want you to fool yourself into thinking that just by taking a fiber supplement that all of a sudden you have this insurance policy and everything is going to be just fine i would much prefer that you get fiber from food and when you do that trust me when i say glucose metabolism will be better fatty acid metabolism will be better cholesterol will be lower microbiome function will be better brain function will be better cardiovascular function will be better liver function will be better and kidney function will be better no questions asked so much great information there and what stuck with me is bulk your poo i don't know what that says about me but i mean you are just a wealth of knowledge on so many different levels man um all right let's grab two more here um let's start with uh plantbaseby30 sent this one to me on instagram at chuck carroll wlc they are wondering what is the healthiest bread they specifically asked about sourdough bread ezekiel bread no bread at all what's the healthiest option here for someone with diabetes okay cool so if you again if you're going to want to consume if you're going to want to have some bread i'm not going to say no to having bread because there are more healthful varieties of bread than there are is bread a processed uh food the answer is yes bread is absolutely a processed food but just because it has some processing uh required does not necessarily mean that it's something that you should completely avoid so if you choose to have bread in your diet absolutely the ezekiel products are phenomenal the ezekiel products come with sprouted grains and sprouted nuts and sprouted seeds and that's always a tip-top option because they do their best to limit the amount of processing in order to turn it into a in order to turn it into something edible there's also another brand called i think it's called dave's killer bread and that's also very micronutrient rich as well so if you want to get some of that in your diet you can do that as well sourdough bread actually is partially fermented and that's a good thing because the fermentation by-products are actually food for your microbiome as well so if you choose to have some sourdough bread then try and you know get maybe as organic of a sourdough bread as you possibly can and have small amounts of that and that's also a perfectly good option so um yeah don't don't necessarily avoid bread but if you choose to have it just try and make sure that you're getting the the smallest amount of processing and then that right there can help out multiple tissues at the same time right and the last question is going to be kind of a combination of a couple of people who have been asking in the chat room uh the concepts that we've been talking about today um do they apply to everyone kind of regardless of age we have emily who has a six-year-old child who has type 1 diabetes and then somebody else was talking about their elderly parents and whether they should be exploring eating this way as well the concepts that you and i have been discussing here today are they universal regardless of age it's a great question it's a phenomenal question um i'm trying to remember where i learned this from i believe i learned this from there was a joe rogan podcast in which james lightning wilkes was debating versus chris kresser and it was a three-hour long like unbelievable debate and there was one moment in that debate where they were talking about the specific issue about whether or not a predominantly plant strong diet is good for you know people of all ages and all shapes and all sizes and what some of the research demonstrates is that there is no time in the human life cycle for which a plant-based diet is not beneficial i'll say that again there is no time in the human life cycle for which a plant-based diet is not beneficial okay a plant-based diet can not only meet your nutritional requirements but exceed your nutritional requirements at all stages of the life cycle literally from the time that you are three days old and you are receiving breast milk from your mother all the way upwards of being 97 years old and you know thinking that you're too old for plant-based nutrition to work for you we personally have worked with people all the way upwards of 85 90 years old and we've gotten some of our best results from people who thought that they were too old and that they could they couldn't change their health by changing the food they ate completely wrong argument okay we've also seen we also have a program for kids that are living with type 1 diabetes because they benefit from making very strategic nutritional changes at a very young age because it's it's important for them to not only control their blood glucose and to make their parents life easier but it's also very very important for optimal cognitive development and cardiovascular development from a young age so the answer is yes absolutely at any point whether you're three days old or you're 160 years old it doesn't matter eating a plant-based diet can always benefit you and unless i'm presented with information that shows me otherwise there's no reason to believe that there's any age that should be excluded and you know what i love is that someone for example today would could have diabetes for years and years and years and decades but it doesn't take decades to get back on that healthier track you can see significant improvement a lot sooner than you would expect and i think that that's kind of at the heart of your six week blood sugar transformation challenge isn't it yeah absolutely yeah i'm so glad you brought this up actually because we regularly host online events and um we have in-person events and we also have a coaching program and um when we first created this program i'm gonna be the first person to tell you that i saw rapid changes in my health when i had transitioned to a plant-based diet so i'm a guy who's been living with type 1 diabetes for one year and i was like okay cool let me switch over to eating a plant-based diet and i did and within 24 hours my glucose fell so sharply that i had to back off on giving myself insulin very very quickly within the first week i was down by like 35 to 40 on my insulin use which is bonkers for somebody living with type 1. now i didn't necessarily know if my experience would translate to other people would it translate to other people living with type 1 or pre-diabetes or type 2 or gestational diabetes you name it i didn't know the answer to that question but what what we have found over the course of time anecdotally from working with now more than 10 000 people is that your the human body is an exquisite machine unbelievably exquisite machine that can handle and tolerate and put up with inflammatory conditions and really sub-optimal behavior for many many years okay you can be eating a micronutrient poor high fat high processed food diet for 20 years 30 years 40 years 50 years and then at that point you switch your diet and then all of a sudden boom you start switching your diet putting in micronutrient rich foods more fiber-rich foods more carbohydrate-rich foods lower your total fat content and just eat more naturally and within weeks okay again 50 years of damage and within weeks you can start to see significant improvements in blood glucose significant measurable improvements in blood glucose significant reductions in a1c value and if you fast forward to like the two to three month marker that's when you start to see significant improvements in lipid metabolism aka less cholesterol in the blood less ldl and that's always a good thing so we constructed a thing called a six week blood sugar transformation challenge and we've been putting people through this program and people's people are losing their minds because they're like you telling me that i've been living with pre-diabetes for the last 15 years and all i had to do was this six week long thing and all of a sudden my a1c fell for the first time in 15 years why did my doctor never tell me that you're telling me that i've been living with type 2 diabetes for 40 years and i've been using metformin and a couple of other oral diabetes medications and all i had to do was this six week long experience and now a sudden my a1c fell by two percent i didn't think that was possible right so we see this over and over and over again and i'm the first person to tell you that it is it's a phenomenal process i love helping other people and just like you you know we feel compelled to just share this information with as many people as possible because there's so many positive benefits that can come along with eating a plant-based diet that you just can't ignore it dude no you you want to put it out there man and any and it is that compulsion to help people it's the healthiest compulsion that i think a person could possibly have you know it's like i feel so privileged to be in the position that i'm in and to have had the transformation that i have that i absolutely want to pay that forward i use that phrase all the time on the podcast pay it forward and i feel like every time we do an episode of the exam room that's exactly what we're doing right because everybody deserves to feel this good you know what i mean there's no question about it there's no question about it everybody deserves to feel this good and there's just a lot of programming and there's a lot of like societal pressure and societal misinformation that a plant-based diet is is bad for you and a plant-based diet is going to feed you a bunch of anti-nutrients and it's going to make you it's going to worsen your health but trust me when i say that could not be farther from the truth amen farther from the truth no question about it and look there's no doubt about it school was in session today but coming up august 18th through the 20th we're talking like all kinds of master classes 30 speakers over the course of three days cyrus i know you and robbie will be presenting at the international conference of on nutrition and medicine as well that's in washington d.c august 18th through the 20th don't think you're going to be there in person but your presentation is going to be extraordinary nonetheless i think you're teaming up with uh dr brian carlson who was just on the show right that's exactly right we're going to be with dr brian carlson and then uh robbie barbaro and myself we're going to be talking about everything you want to know about type 1 diabetes or insulin dependent diabetes and we're going to hit it from sort of three different angles and have a really good time and share personal stories and also a lot of the biochemistry so that people can really understand the benefit of a plant-based diet when trying to maximize insulin sensitivity now dr carlson will be there in person you're going to be remote but nonetheless an extraordinary experience 30 people over the course of three days and we're going to be recording episodes of the exam room live all three days as well there's going to be so much to do come join us in washington dc watch us do the show live it'll be great and then soak up all of that information that's going to be talked about really take that health iq to the next level you can book your seat right now limited seats are still available pcrm.org icnm is the place to go pcrm.org icnm a couple of names that will also be speaking there uh neil dr neil barnard he's gonna be there dr alan desmond coming all the way uh across the pond to join us as will dr gemma newman dr rob and chucking both of whom will be on the show very soon uh dr hana kaliova um dr kim william i mean just so many people the list goes on and on and on so pcrm.org icnm is the place to go to save your seat come join us in washington dc august 18th through the 20th hang out we're going to be recording episodes would love to meet you say hi meet all the exam roomies it would be phenomenal uh but uh mr cyrus cambodia sir this is all the time that we have today man thank you so very much for being here and really schooling us up when it comes to diabetes bud hey anytime chuck i mean it's always a pleasure to be here with you and the the names that you just listed i mean that is that is literally the dream team right there i'm like maybe i should just get my butt over there you know like i'll do whatever i can to be there but the point is that there's just so much valuable information to be learned and regardless of whatever tissue you're interested in whether it's your brain whether it's your thyroid health whether it's your cardiovascular health your diabetes health you name it plant-based nutrition is literally the gift that keeps on giving and i thank you so much for being able to share this information with people every single day you are relentless and i love you for it i love you too buddy you are the gift that keeps on giving all right that is all the time that we have today i want to say thanks to the crew behind the scenes for making the magic happen and to you exam roomies thank you so very much for being here hanging out asking such great questions and raising your health iq right alongside of us for everyone here at the physicians committee i am the weight loss champion chuck carroll we'll talk to you again soon but until then keep it plant-based

Channel: Physicians Committee

Views: 259,294

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Id: mnXyJ4HOo-8

Length: 56min 24sec (3384 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 27 2022