Do we really understand how Carbohydrates affect our health?

When I was 10 years old my father was affected by Diabetes. He was 40 years old at that time and this was in 1990. I remember him taking medications ritually for the next 10 years. Not sure if he got any advice to change his diet but he never did. I did not realize how dangerous Diabetes is. He had pain in his left arm in 2001 a few times and Doctor gave pain balm to get rid of the pain. Little did we know that these are precursors of heart disease. On 1st October 2001, my Dad had the final heart attack and he passed away at the age of 51.

I was just 20 and I could not easily cope with the loss of my Dad. I became very conscious of the importance of taking care of my health. Internet and WWW were very prominent by then and I also subscribed to WebMD newsletters and mails. Also I read a lot of articles from various websites. From the information I gleaned I started eating vegetables, Fruits and food made from Whole grains. Avoided Oils and fat as much as possible. I also did Cardio exercises and Yoga pretty regularly. I was able to maintain my weight of 65 kg from 2002 to 2011. I was pretty slim and was very happy about it thinking that maintaining weight automatically means that the health is maintained. When I went to US for couple of weeks, I just loved the Waffles, Honey and sweet syrups. Within a month I gained 10 kg and I was 75 kg. I was not happy and increased my exercises and tried reducing the Rice as there were many articles mentioning that you need to reduce Carbohydrates to some extent. Nothing in my weight changed though. I thought there is nothing much I could do or I should increase my exercises.

2 or 3 years back I had read an article on Facebook with the title "Heart surgeon speaks out on what really causes heart disease". What registered in my mind was that the inflammation causes heart disease and not cholesterol. However,  I did not think that there was enough research done on this and left it at that. Come December 2015 and I searched for books on Amazon talking about inflammation. There were a lot of books on the market. I generally go to the 1-star comments to see if there are real negative comments. All the books had strong negative comments and I left the idea of reading any. It was however ricocheting on my mind the whole month and I decided to filter out all books but one and try reading it. It was "Art and science of low carbohydrate living" by Jeff Volek and Stephen Phinney.

Little did I know that that book was going to change my life forever. I did not realize much in the first 3 days of reading the book. But I got excited after understanding what they are coming to. I had heard about paleo diets, but did not think of getting to know about them. After reading this book, I got to know about Carbohydrates and how Insulin damages our body after every meal. Back to back I read many books on this, Some of them are, "New Atkins for a New You", "Why we Get Fat"-GaryTaubes, "Grain Brain". 

I understood how Carbohydrates is probably the major cause of Diabetes, Heart diseases, Stroke, Cancer, Alzheimer's, Metabolic Syndrome and may be other diseases. I understood how our body was never designed to accommodate eating lots of Carbohydrates regularly throughout life. Yeah, I understand that given another 70,000 years, our body design may evolve to accommodate this, But do we want to do that. How ridiculous it is on our part to make Carbohydrates a major part of our diet without understanding the design of our body.

I started following Atkins diet from 9th Jan when my weight was 76.3 kg. Being vegatarian, it was a little bit difficuly initially. But I eat all dairy products. So I started taking Butter, Cheese, Paneer(Cottage Cheese?) and also Coconut oil, Olive oil for fat. I got the Low-Carb Flu as expected in a week. It was difficult in the first few days, as I did not have anybody to consult with. I did not take enough salt, and got Muscle cramps. Slowly I fixed the issues, and these problems went away. My weight now is 67 kg(20th March). And I still see some more fat in my belly and I may be able to go down till 60 kg. And that is only about weight which is not my main goal. I have more energy now. Feel like running and doing a lot of exercises. But holding them off to see what effect the diet change alone has on my health. I also did Lipid profile tests in January and in March. Everything seems normal. Triglycerides have gone down a lot. Glucose level was under 100 even after the meal. Planning to do it again in July and every 6 months thereafter. Inflammation markers were high in Jan. This needs to be monitored in the coming months.

I do not really know if this diet has negatives, but this is the kind of diet we have been following for 2.6 million years and I do now think that this is probably the right time to consider the theory behind this diet. By looking at the websites, articles and videos on Youtube, I believe that there are millions of  people who are following this diet now.

People who recommend eating "low carbohydrate, low fat" don't seem to even consider Ketogenic diets. But the people who follow Ketogenic diets really do consider both types of diets and what they really mean. Sweden as a country has already adopted this diet. Amazing isn't it? It may take another couple decades before it becomes widespread. Do you want to wait till then and damage your health? Want to give it a try now? First read and get to know about this diet. Convince yourself that this is really worth trying out. All the best from the bottom of my heart.