Savvy Eating, 3/20/19: Mushrooms, Skinny Noodles, High Carb Diet=Impossible Mission

Are Mushrooms Really a Miracle Food? was reported by Markham Heid for Medium | Health, 13 March 2019.

The mushroom business is booming. Worldwide production is up 30-fold since the late 1970s, and the average person now eats about 11 pounds of mushrooms per year, according to a 2017 analysis of the global mushroom industry.

One of the factors driving this mushroom mania is the belief that they possess unusual and profound health attributes. A 2018 report from the Royal Botanic Gardens points out that mushrooms and other fungi have been used as medicine for nearly 6,000 years. Whole Foods even named “medicinal mushrooms” as one of its top food trends for 2018.

All this hype is not unfounded. “Mushrooms are fungus, and some famous medicinal items—including penicillin and statin drugs—were derived from fungus,” says Dr. Mark Moyad, the Jenkins/Pomkempner Director of Preventive and Alternative Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical Center. He says it’s reasonable to think that one of the very few fungi humans eat could provide some benefits not associated with the consumption of fruits, vegetables, or other types of foods. Based on what we already know about mushrooms, he calls them “a winner for almost all people and all diets.”

For starters, all mushrooms—even standard white ones—are low in calories and contain healthy nutrients like potassium, selenium, and vitamin B12, Moyad says. Mushrooms are also among the very few natural and vegan sources of dietary vitamin D, he says, and they contain a type of soluble fiber called beta glucan, which seems to have heart and cholesterol benefits.

But the research really gets interesting when it comes to mushrooms’ antioxidant compounds. Mushrooms contain glutathione, an antioxidant molecule found in almost every cell in your body. It seems to have important signaling and detoxifying properties, says John Richie, a mushroom researcher and professor of public health sciences at Penn State University.

Along with glutathione, mushrooms contain a second antioxidant called ergothioneine, which Richie says is much less abundant in other foods. But while ergothioneine is rare, it turns out that the human body contains a specific transport protein for it. “This suggests it’s got to be important for human health,” he says. Important how? Richie says there’s preliminary evidence that ergothioneine could block the kind of oxidative damage that contributes to cancer and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. There are also studies linking the consumption of ergothioneine to a longer, healthier life.

How to Make Low-Carb Pasta in Under 7 Minutes was presented by Adam Brown for diaTribe.org, 13 March 2019.

“About a year ago, a few friends told me about “shirataki noodles” – a remarkable low-carb noodle that actually does taste like pasta and takes less than seven minutes to make. They have now become a near-once-weekly staple in my diet.”

Shirataki noodles are made from the root of an Asian plant (konjac), and each single-person serving has about 5-6 grams of carbs. Importantly, 100% of the carbs are from soluble fiber, translating to little impact on blood sugar.

I’ve tried two brands – Skinny Noodles and Miracle Noodles – and I buy the former in a 12-pack case from Amazon. Many natural and Asian grocery stores also stock shirataki noodles. At about $2.50 per serving, shirataki noodles are more expensive than normal pasta. Still, relative to cutting out pasta and noodles entirely, these are a welcome addition to the low-carb toolbox. (For those with celiac, they are also gluten free.)

10 Reasons You Can’t Achieve Normal Blood Sugar on a High Carb Diet was discussed by Ahmed Afifi from his new book, From 10 to 5, My Journey with Diabetes, on ASweetLife.org, March 2019. I haven’t read the book but this is purely for your own learning.

“Generally speaking, I followed the ADA guidelines of 45 to 60 grams of carbs a meal for about seven years. While living the high carbs life, I tried every possible way to get the required BS control. I mastered MDI techniques, learned all the factors (IC ratio, correction factor, insulin on board calculations), understood glycemic index and glycemic load, mastered correct timing of injections, close prediction of different foods’ digestion patterns, and I became a professional in carb counting. Unfortunately, none of these efforts got me closer to normal blood sugar. It was futile.”

One gram of carbohydrate raises the blood sugar of 150 lb non-obese T1 diabetic around 5 to 6 mg/dl. If he follows the ADA guidelines and eats around 180 grams of carbs daily, i.e. 60 grams of carbs per meal. These 60 grams of carbohydrates will rapidly raise his BS 300 to 360 mg/dl, which is a flood of glucose in his bloodstream. No insulin will catch or match such high and quickly elevated blood sugar.
Any mistake in carbohydrates counting will lead to extra or less insulin injected. This mistake could be due to less experience, hidden carbohydrates in the meal or wrong labeling.
With such amount of carbohydrates, any miscalculation in IC ratio (Insulin to carbs ratio) makes a huge mistake that will show itself via highs or lows of BS measurements after food.
If fast-acting insulin is injected a long time prior to eating and food digested was delayed, your BS will drop then will rise again.
If you inject fast-acting insulin closer to eating time and food was digested faster than expected, then BS will rise first then perhaps hypoglycemia will occur later.
The higher the dose of insulin, the higher the uncertainty and the higher the loss in injected insulin units. This happens due to the immune system attack against big doses of insulin as per the law of insulin absorption by Dr. Richard Bernstein.
Uncontrolled diabetes causes gastroparesis as one of the complications. It means unpredictable digestion pattern.
If IOB (Insulin On Board) is miscalculated, you will see problems with BS after eating, either higher or lower than expected. This is a big problem, especially if the injected dose is high.
According to Dr. Bernstein law of small numbers: “Big inputs make big mistakes, small inputs make small mistakes”.
The higher the BS will reach, the harder it is to bring it down, as insulin behaves differently when blood sugar is high.

Should you NEVER eat higher carb meals? No, of course not. But Afifi puts out this challenge: If you are T1, T2 or even non-diabetic eating high carbohydrate diet and doubting what I mentioned above, I invite you to do the following experiment. Forget about measuring your BS two hours after a meal. Instead, for the next couple of days, measure your BS 30, 45, 60 and 75 minutes after eating high fast-acting carbohydrate meals and use your insulin maneuverability skills to match these meals, and then see for yourself what your BS numbers will be. The following couple of days, do the same thing but with low carb food. You are the judge.

Buy the Book: From 10 To 5 My Journey With Diabetes