Delicious breakfasts you won’t believe are low carb!

IT’S NOT just type 2 diabetes — going low carb could be good news for your liver, blood pressure and even sleep, as part 2 of our lifechanging series reveals. And today’s breakfast recipes, by food writer Katie Caldesi, are the perfect way to start.

MORE of us are living for longer than ever in the UK — great news, except that for many the extra years are being spent in poor health. This is miserable for those concerned as well as being a burden for an NHS already struggling with rising costs.

A low- carb diet to reverse type 2 diabetes can help. As I explained in Saturday’s Daily Mail, this has revolutionised the way that I, as an NHS GP, treat my patients. It’s helped them take back control of their health.

The traditional view was that type 2 was a progressive disease that could be controlled (but never cured) with ever-increasing amounts of drugs.

Yet now, thanks to a low- carb approach, I am seeing patients with dramatically improved blood sugar levels who have been able to come off their diabetes medication. Similar results are being seen by a growing THE band of other GPs.

good news is you won’t feel you’re missing out by going low carb — as you can see from the delicious recipes devised by chef Katie Caldesi for pull-outs in the Daily Mail all this week. And you won’t feel hungry, as a low-carb diet is packed with foods that help you feel full for longer.

But what really matters is that your health and quality of life could example, can cause diarrhoea). benefit from going low carb. Reduced blood sugar levels

I see this in our practice, are not the only benefit of where, an incredible 93 of 187 low carb. Another is weight type 2 diabetes patients trying loss — important given that a low-carb diet are in remission two-thirds of British adults and no longer need medication. are now classed as overweight As a result, our practice or obese, which is a risk factor spends £50,000 a year less for heart disease, stroke and than the local average on diabetes some cancers. drugs alone! To date, the average amount

That’s quite apart from the lost by my patients on a lowcarb huge personal benefits those diet is 11kg (24lb). A few people on the diet are seeing: weeks ago, our ‘greatest loser’ more energy, better sleep — the worked out he’d dropped 10st list goes on. For some there is in a year! also the bonus of banishing the As well as obesity and type 2 side - effects of diabetes diabetes, there is another medication (metformin, for related ‘ pandemic’: nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (or NAFLD). This is where the liver becomes packed with fat. About 20 per cent of the adult UK population has this condition — a terrible statistic.

Luckily, liver function quickly improves for those going low carb — 95 of our patients on the regimen saw an average 40 per cent improvement in liver function over 29 months.

We were able to reveal these results at the European and International Congress on Obesity last year.

But that’s not all — and this has helped me personally, too. I first went low carb in 2012, and soon noticed that as well as banishing my middle-aged spread and chronic tiredness , something else was improving: my own moderately raised blood pressure.

Many of my low-carb patients also found their blood pressure improved — and I was able to take 20 per cent of them off medication for it.

Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is the leading cause of cardiovascular disease and premature death worldwide, so anything that could be a remedy needs investigating. So what was going on? To

explain, I need to talk about the hormone insulin. Produced by the pancreas largely in response to a sugary or carbrich meal (protein causes a smaller reaction), insulin’s job is to reduce sugar levels in the blood by pushing it into muscle, fat and liver cells.

So if you eat more biscuits or bread than your muscles need for energy, the excess sugar is pushed into these cells and turned into fat. The result: a bigger belly and a liver full of fat.

It turns out that higher levels of insulin also prompt your kidneys to retain excess salt, instead of passing it in urine (I’ll tell you more about this in Wednesday’s Daily Mail). And, as you probably know, salt raises blood pressure.

The good news is that this process can go into reverse when you go low carb.

Weight loss can also cut the risk of developing some cancers and means arthritic joints hurt less. Pre-lockdown I’d sent patients with painful hips or knees for orthopaedic procedures they now don’t need due to losing pounds.

And finally, as our ‘greatest loser’ found, weight loss aids sleep. For years he’d suffered from sleep apnoea (where the tissues in the throat temporarily close during the night, causing you to stop breathing momentarily).

The condition is linked to excess weight. My patient was due to be referred to a specialist clinic, but now no longer needs to go — and in the last year, I have had three other sleep apnoea cures like this.

In these days of pandemic, we hear a lot about ‘protecting the vulnerable’ which is good — but if I were vulnerable, I’d like to know how to become less-so.

There is a lot of information on who is likely to end up in intensive care with Covid-19. Age is a big factor, of course. But three others are key: obesity, hypertension and type 2 diabetes — and in some cases, they seem more important than lung disease such as asthma (except in severe cases).

A study in the journal Cell Metabolism last year showed a clear link between better control of blood sugar levels and significantly reduced risk of death for type 2 diabetics with Covid-19 infection, with the best results for those whose blood sugars were near normal.

So, if you are worried about Covid-19 and haven’t yet had the jab, it’s a good idea to improve your diet to lose weight, lower your blood pressure and blood sugar levels. To get you started, take a look at the simple principles listed on the back page of this pullout.

Always consult your GP if you have any health concerns, and particularly if you are taking prescribed medications, before embarking on any change in diet or lifestyle.