- Why should you care?
- Self-testing, laboratory testing
Why should you care? After all, Mother told us that “if you’re too fat, eat less!” Shouldn’t that take care of it for all of us? As noted in the first article, that may be the case for the approximately two-thirds of us who don’t have the hyperactive insulin response to sugar and carbohydrate characteristic of “triple-fat-gainers,” who—as shown by Dr. Yudkin’s research—gain three times as much fat while eating exactly the same foods with exactly the same “high-carb” content!
If you’re a “triple-fat-gainer” you almost certainly will be (if you live long enough) diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and you’re at much greater risk for developing dementia, cancer, cardiovascular disease, loss of vision, and kidney failure. So is there a test to find out if you’re a “triple-fat-gainer’?
There are actually two tests. The first is a safe, do-it-yourself-at-home test—always one of my favorite types of test! The concept is easy, but the implementation can be less than easy for many of us. What is it? Get one or more of the Paleo Diet books written by Loren Cordain, PhD (with or without co-authors, depending on which one). The only other book you’ll need is The 12-Minute Fitness Revolution by Al Sears, MD, which describes “interval training” exercise and the research that supports its use.
Yes, it takes some effort, but if you follow the Paleo diet, eating as much as you want if it’s “in the book,” and do the interval training for twelve minutes three times weekly (it’s actually a total of thirty minutes thrice weekly as there is a “rest and recovery” time after each interval of intense exercise), and you lose an unexpectedly (for you) large amount of weight while co-incidentally feeling notably better, you’re very, very likely a “triple-fat-gainer”!
The other type of test is often favored by engineers, accountants, and others who want “hard data,” including researchers. As you might expect, it checks your insulin and blood sugar levels before and at several intervals after you swallow a measured amount of glucose. It can be done by drawing blood at these intervals, or by a “fingerstick” done at the same intervals to obtain a blood drop or drops from the finger, then pressed into filter paper, dried, and sent off for laboratory testing. (Further details are available at http://meridianvalleylab.com/?s=Kraft+prediabetes+test&submit=Search.)
And yes, I am the medical director for Meridian Valley Lab (MVL). After reading Dr. John Yudkin’s 1972 book Pure, White, and Deadly, and then Dr. Joseph R. Kraft’s 1975 publication about detecting type 2 diabetes decades before it’s usually diagnosed and then following his advice for forty years, I’m more than convinced (if that’s possible) about its precise diagnostic capabilities and its value in everyday health care.
So I encouraged MVL to further develop both versions of what is now called the Kraft Prediabetes Profile, pioneered by Dr. Joseph R. Kraft (www.diabetes-epidemic.com) and also explained in his book Diabetes Epidemic and You. If you’re “into” very precise data about your insulin response to sugar and carbohydrate, there’s no test better than this one.
However, either the self-test or the Kraft Prediabetes Profile will “do the job,” and help you to achieve better health (and lose considerable fat if you’re a “triple-fat-gainer”) in a safe, all-natural way.
Other Articles In This Edition of Green Medicine
