"Oatmeal Diet Put to the Test for Diabetes Treatment"
Thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt, diabetes was described
as a “too great emptying of urine” or, more poetically,
as being “like the River Nile between the thighs.”
The recommended remedy, ironically, was a diet
consisting of wheat grains, grapes, honey, and berries.
The guy who coined the term “diabetes” about 500 years later
also prescribed a high-carbohydrate diet.
Then, right up until we had insulin,
doctors were saving the lives of diabetics with an oatmeal diet.
This wouldn’t make any sense until Sir Harold Himsworth arrived
on the scene, the first to separate out type 1 diabetes
from type 2 diabetes and define this concept of insulin resistance.
After just a few days on a high-fat diet,
you can get twice the blood sugar spike in response
to drinking sugar water,
compared to after eating a high-carb diet.
Now that type 2 diabetes is like the Black Death of the 21st century
in terms of devastating health impacts,
what about revisiting the almost forgotten,
short-term dietary oatmeal intervention as an economical,
yet—spoiler alert— highly effective tool to achieve
better blood sugar control in patients with type 2 diabetes?
Basically, patients are offered up to about
two and a half cups of oatmeal three times a day
as their meals with nothing but some herbs
and maybe small amounts of raw vegetables just to mix things up.
For how long? Just a couple of days.
Note that’s only like a thousand calories;
so, the result is a hypocaloric, plant-based dietary intervention
that is low in fat—in fact, no added fat—no salt,
and excludes animal protein.
Is a few days of oatmeal really going
to make much of a difference?
Check out this case report of an oatmeal intervention
for severe insulin resistance in the ICU.
Within 48 hours of admission, the patient developed
such severe insulin resistance she required
more than 200 units of insulin per day.
Up until then, the patient received standard diabetic tube feeds,
which obviously were not working.
So instead, they dropped oatmeal and vegetables down the tube instead,
presumably using a really good blender.
And lo and behold, it worked.
But you've got to see the numbers.
Yeah, her first blood sugars of the day dropped
from up around 250 down to about 100 five days later.
But that near-normal blood sugar was on 160 fewer units of insulin,
down from over 200 units a day.
Lower blood sugars on 160 fewer units of insulin!
Okay, I can see how if you’re trying to save a life in the ICU,
an oatmeal diet can be near-miraculous.
But just in regular diabetics,
what good is eating oatmeal for a few days
if you just go back to your regular diet?
Several studies have suggested that the beneficial effects
could last like a month after the few days of oatmeal.
For example, in this randomized controlled crossover trial
not only did insulin needs drop about 40 percent in just two days
compared to just restricting calories alone
with a hypocaloric diabetic diet,
but also a measure long-term blood sugar control
taken four weeks later reflected the benefit.
So, we’re talking a highly significant reduction
of required daily insulin doses
with beneficial effects shown weeks later.
Who cares if you have to take huge doses of insulin though?
Because insulin causes weight gain,
which just makes the underlying insulin resistance worse.
So, it’s like this vicious cycle.
But instead, with the oatmeal you’re actually treating the cause,
not to mention the incidence of cancer and overall mortality
associated with having such high levels of insulin
in your body all the time.
Other new studies have shown the same thing.
Two days of oatmeal significantly reducing the required amount
of insulin and improved blood sugar levels
with beneficial effects noted for up to four weeks.
For example, here.
Patients with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes,
with the two-day oatmeal diet
leading to a 40 percent reduction of insulin dose,
accompanied with almost normalization of average blood sugars.
Although the intervention only lasted for two days,
they observed a lasting significant reduction of insulin dosage
and ameliorated mean blood sugars for weeks
after they were dismissed from the study.
And this was after they resumed their regular diets.
Look at this. A massive drop in insulin needs
after the oatmeal for two days, but look, a month later
they were still needing like 40 percent less insulin.
Wait a second. How could this short intervention lead
to such dramatic results that somehow continue on for weeks?
Although short-term dietary oatmeal interventions
cannot be compared to whole food, plant-based diets
in terms of maximizing the intake of protective foods—
I mean that’s ideally what people should try to eat
to reverse their type 2 diabetes completely—
but they both strictly exclude the animal-based foods
that seem to increase the risk of developing diabetes.
So, even cutting out saturated fat for like two days
may so reduce insulin resistance you can free ride
on that for at least a few weeks, even if you go back to eating crap.
WARNING, though. If you try this oatmeal diet,
your physician has to be ready to rapidly deprescribe
your blood sugar drugs else you become dangerously overmedicated.
Imagine if this woman was still getting 200 units of insulin.
Her sugars would crash so low she’d be dead.
So, oatmeal interventions should not be performed
in patients that might have difficulties
in reporting symptoms of low blood sugars,
who you can’t closely monitor.
So, the downside of trying oatmeal days
is that it may work a little too well;
so, it must be done under close medical supervision.