Tag: Diabetes

Weekly Update & Health Statistics: 12/04/21

This week, I posted interim results from blood glucose testing of whole foods. So far, all were relatively consistent with the available nutrition info, indicating no surprise digestible fibers. I’ll be continuing testing of whole foods for the next few weeks, so if you have any you’d like to try, let me know in the comments.

I’ve just about finished up the first blood pressure experiments: meter repeatability & reproducibility testing, deep breathing effect, and data-mining of my daily testing. I’m part way through the data analysis and will be posting the results of these over the next few weeks.

Experiments this week:

  • Whole foods: lupini beans, white mushrooms, fennel
  • Blood pressure:

Next week:

  • Food effect:
    • continued testing of whole foods
  • Blood pressure:
    • Continuing the deep breathing study; 2 more weeks to finish and analyze.


– QD

Active & Planned Experiments

Let me know in the comments if there’s any other experiments you’d like to see.


– QD

Observations & Data

Continue reading “Weekly Update & Health Statistics: 12/04/21” →

Blood Glucose Testing of Whole Foods: Initial Results & Request for Suggestions

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This post is an update on my experiments measuring the effect of low-carb foods and dietary supplements on blood sugar.

I’m still working my way through whole foods, but it’s going to take a while to get through them all.

In the meantime, I wanted to share my preliminary results and see if anyone has suggestions/requests for what I should include.

If you have any whole foods you like or would like to see tested, please post it in the comments or send me a PM.

Testing Queue:

Whole Foods

For the last several months I’ve been testing the blood glucose impact of tons of different low-carb prepared foods and ingredients. While those tests have been very informative and uncovered a number of surprises (especially around what fibers do/don’t impact my blood glucose), most of what I eat is food I prepare myself using regular meats, vegetables, nuts, and seeds.

Given that I wanted to test the blood glucose impact of regular foods and see how it compares to the macronutrients (total carbs, net carbs, protein, etc.). Towards that end, I’m going to test as many low-carb foods as I can, then see if I can determine any consistent trends.

So far, I’ve tested 15 foods from 4 categories:

The initial results have been pretty interesting. Here are the key insights:

  • All foods tested so far we very low BG impact, so the nutrition labels must be accurate and all of the fibers must be relatively indigestible.
  • The vegetables were the lowest impact per gram, largely due to being such a high percentage water. I was really shocked by how much I could eat (250g mushrooms, 434g celery).
    • If you look at BG impact per calorie, of course, then trend flips around with meat, fish, and nuts having much lower impact than vegetables.
  • I was also pleasantly surprised by how much I could eat of the lowest carb fruits. Raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries were pretty similar to meats on a per gram basis (though not per calorie). I think I’ll start trying adding some in to recipes in small quantities.
  • The zero carb foods (lupini, sacha inchi, salmon, tuna, pork cracklings) still had a noticeable BG impact, presumably coming from the protein content. Once I have more data, I’ll try to fit a model for BG impact as a function of carbs, protein, and fat. It will be interesting to see if there are any interaction effects.

As mentioned above, there’s some many different foods to test, it’s going to take me a while to get a comprehensive set tested. Once I do, I’ll post a full update with a more detail analysis.

In the meantime, since I’ve gotten such great recommendations from the readers, I wanted to solicit suggestions for additional foods to add to this study.

If you have any whole foods you like or would like to see tested, please post it in the comments or send me a PM.

I’ll test all the requests over the next couple weeks and post the results.


– QD

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Weekly Update & Health Statistics: 11/21/21

I’m always looking for collaborators for future experiments. If you’re interested in collaborating on scientifically rigorous self-experiments with low-carb foods, supplements, or other health interventions, please let me know in the comments or via the contact form on the right.

I finally finished and posted my flour replacement tests. This was a really fun experiment. I found a number of alternate flours with low BG impact that I hadn’t heard of before (e.g. ground chia seed and King Arthur Keto blend) and learned a lot about the behavior and exact BG impact of the flours I had been using. This has got me interested in doing some low-carb baking experiments again. I’m going to try making pizza first and will report back if anything works well.

Experiments this week:

  • Whole foods: Palmini low-carb linguine, almonds, salmon, tuna, pork rinds, tomatoes
  • Blood pressure:
  • Exercise-induced Rhinitis:

Next week:

  • Food effect: next week is Thanksgiving here in the US, so I’ll be doing less food effect tests, but I should be able to fit in a few more whole foods.
  • Blood pressure:
    • I’ll be continuing the deep breathing study, but it will take another 3 weeks to finish and analyze.
    • I’m going to take advantage of the holiday to do try tracking my BP over the course of a day to see how it varies. I’ll post that data sometime in the next couple weeks.
  • On the allergy study, I’ll be finishing the last antihistamine run, unblinding, and analyzing the data, so I should get that posted next weekend.


– QD

Active & Planned Experiments

Let me know in the comments if there’s any other experiments you’d like to see.


– QD

Observations & Data

Continue reading “Weekly Update & Health Statistics: 11/21/21” →

Low-Carb Flour Replacements: Blood Glucose Testing of 18 Varieties with Some Surprising Results

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This post is an update on my experiments measuring the effect of low-carb foods and dietary supplements on blood sugar.

This week, I have the results from low-carb flour replacements. Next up will be whole foods (meats, vegetables, seeds & nuts, etc.).

Testing Queue:

Flour Replacements

Summary

When making low-carb baked goods, I find that the most difficult ingredient to replace is flour. Flour provides bulk, absorbs water, and binds ingredients together, creating the structure of most baked goods. Unfortunately, flour is ~75% starch by weight with a glycemic index of 70, resulting in an extremely high impact on blood sugar.

Historically, there hasn’t been a lot of low-carb replacements for flour available, mostly almond flour, coconut flour, and resistant starches. Similar to other low-carb products, a ton of new flour replacements have hit the market in the last few years. As always, the net carb counts look good, but I wanted to test them to see if they really hold up (see evidence of blood glucose impact of dietary fibers here & here).

Between my own searching and reader recommendations (1, 2, 3), Foods. I tested 18 flours from 6 different categories (grouped by main ingredient). Here’s my overall conclusions:

  • Most Similar to Wheat Flour: Carbalose
    • <30% BG impact of wheat flour, <20% of white bread
    • texture & water uptake very similar to wheat flour
  • Lowest BG impact: Ground chia seeds
    • 12% of wheat flour, 8% of white bread
  • Best Binders: Gluten, chia seeds, flaxseed, and psyllium husk
    • These work great to tune the texture of other flour replacements
    • Which one is best to use probably depends on the specific recipe/desired texture
  • Best Pre-made Blends: King Arthur Keto Flour & Carbquik
    • King Arthur is a flour substitute, though more elastic/chewy
    • Carbquik is like Bisquik and great for biscuits, pancakes, muffins, and other airy baked goods.

Details

Continue reading “Low-Carb Flour Replacements: Blood Glucose Testing of 18 Varieties with Some Surprising Results” →

Weekly Update & Health Statistics: 11/14/21

I’m always looking for collaborators for future experiments. If you’re interested in collaborating on scientifically rigorous self-experiments with low-carb foods, supplements, or other health interventions, please let me know in the comments or via the contact form on the right.

Two posts this week, both pre-registering my next studies: Determining causes & interventions for my elevated blood pressure & exercise-induced rhinitis (runny nose).

For the blood pressure and rhinitis, I’m excited to branch out to experiments other than blood glucose effects. Experiments for both will start Monday and I should have results to report in 3-4 weeks.

Experiments the past two weeks were focused finishing up the flour replacement tests. I’ve finally got that done and will be posting the results next week. In the meantime, I’ve gotten started on the whole food testing with almonds, salmon, and tuna. I’ve also done a few rounds of the vinegar tests with my standard breakfast, though that will take a decent size dataset before I’ll be able to draw any conclusions (BG on morning meals is noisy due to the dawn phenomenon).

Next week, I’ll be continuing the whole food testing and starting the blood-pressure and rhinitis experiments.


– QD

Active & Planned Experiments

Let me know in the comments if there’s any other experiments you’d like to see.


– QD

Observations & Data

Continue reading “Weekly Update & Health Statistics: 11/14/21” →