Tag: Quantified Self

Low-Carb Flour Replacements: Initial Blood Glucose Testing & Request for Suggestions

Get new posts by email or rss feed

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 low-carb flour replacements, but since I’m running the vinegar experiment in parallel, it’s going to take a while to get through all of them.

In the meantime, I wanted to share my preliminary results and see if anyone has suggestions for additional low-carb flours to add to the study.

If you have any low-carb flour replacements you like or would like to see tested, please post it in the comments or send me a PM (contact form on the right).

Next week I’ll have an update on the vinegar experiments.

Testing Queue:

Flour Replacements

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, it’s ~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).

So far, I’ve found 11 flours to test:

  • Baseline:
    • Wheat flour
  • Modified starches
    • Carbalose flour
    • Carbquick
    • Freekeh flour
  • Nuts:
    • Almond flour
    • Hazelnut flour
  • Beans:
    • Lupin flour
    • Okara flour (from soybeans)
  • Other seeds:
    • Coconut flour
    • Hemp protein powder
    • Flaxseed meal
    • Psyllium husk powder

I’ve gotten through 7 so far and all have been pretty good, with peak ∆BG of 16-29% of wheat flour by weight and 9-23% by volume (see chart below).

As mentioned above, since I’m running the vinegar experiment in parallel, it’s going to take a while to get through the remaining flours. Once I do, I’ll post a full update with more detail on taste, texture, and the full blood glucose analysis.

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

If you have any low-carb flour replacements you like or would like to see tested, please post it in the comments or send me a PM (contact form on the right).

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


– QD

Get new posts by email or rss feed

Welcome Diabetes Daily Readers

Get new posts by email or rss feed

My testing of low-carb breads was just published on Diabetes Daily. If you got here from that article, here’s a few other studies you might be interested in:

I also post self-experiments on other topics, including sleep, exercise, and other health interventions.

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.


– QD

Get new posts by email or rss feed

Weekly Update & Health Statistics: 10/17/21

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 posted the first phase of the vinegar study this week. Thanks  /u/genetastic and /u/kabong for all the work you put in figuring out the protocol, running the experiments, and analyzing the data! We successfully replicated the literature, seeing a statistically significant ~20% reduction in peak blood glucose and larger slowing of BG rise. The protocol I used, though, was extremely unpleasant (soak the bread in 30g ACV), so the next step will be to see if a more practical protocol gives similar results.

Experiments this week focused on flour replacements. So far I’ve tested almond, lupin, carbquick, carbalose, okara, and hemp. I’ll post a quick preview of the data next week after I’ve worked it up.

Next week will focus on more vinegar experiments, continuing the flour tests, and possibly starting alternate dietary fibers.

Active & Planned Experiments

  • Blood Glucose Impact of Low-Carb Foods & Ingredients
    • Goal: Determine blood glucose impact of low-carb foods and ingredients
    • Approach: Protocol
    • Status:
      • This week: 4 commenter requests (Two Good yogurt, Julian Bakery bread, and “control” tortillas & ice cream (non-low carb, for comparison)) and 3 chocolates.
      • Reported:
      • Up next:
        • Flour replacements
        • Vegetables
        • Meats
        • Low-carb fruits
        • Miscellaneous low-carb prepared foods
        • Dietary fibers
  • Blood Glucose Impact of Supplements
    • Goal: Determine blood glucose impact and mechanism of promising supplements
  • Methods of Sleeping Longer

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: 10/17/21” →

Does Vinegar Really Lower Blood Glucose? – 20% Lower Blood Glucose in an N=3, Pre-Registered, Community Experiment

Get new posts by email or rss feed

Thanks to the team for all the work they put in figuring out the protocol, running the experiments, and analyzing the data: /u/genetastic and /u/kabong!

Summary

A reader, /u/genetastic, reached out about collaborating on experiments to determine the effect of vinegar on blood glucose after meal consumption.

Like most of you, I had heard all the nigh-magical, pseudoscience claims about using apple cider vinegar to treat diabetes. However, when you dig into the literature, there’s a sizable number of peer-reviewed studies, including several decent meta-analyses, showing that consumption of vinegar with a meal can reduce the blood glucose impact in both diabetic and non-diabetic subjects (see background below for details). There’s also a lot of open questions, including:

  • Is the effect large enough to matter for practical meals?
  • What types of meals does vinegar affect?
  • What is the best protocol to get a large effect without unpleasant side effects?
  • What’s the underlying mechanism?
  • Is the effect specific to vinegar or do other acids work?

/u/genetastic, a third collaborator /u/kabong, and I decided to answer these questions with community self-experiment.

For the first phase of this experiment, we wanted to check that we could observe the reported impact of vinegar on blood sugar and that the effect size was large enough to be worth further study.

Towards this end, all three experimenters tested consuming regular white bread with and without apple cider vinegar (the most commonly tested meal and vinegar source in the literature).

Here’s a summary of the results & next steps (full details below):

  • We observed a similar effect of vinegar on blood glucose as that reported in the literature.
  • The effect was both statistically significant and meaningful in magnitude, justifying further study of the scope, mechanism, and optimal protocol.
    • Peak change in blood glucose & iAuC were reduced by 20% and time to peak blood glucose & initial rise were slowed by 15-20 min. (30-50%).
    • P-values were all <0.05, with the exception of the drop in iAuC, which was 0.12
  • Next, we will be looking at the following:
    • Diluting vinegar to make it more palatable
    • Alternate macronutrients (simple sugars, proteins) to determine scope of the effect
    • Alternate acid sources to test the amylase-inhibition hypothesis

All-in-all, a good start to the study. The effect seems to be real and likely caused by a slowing of the initial rise/rate of metabolism.

We’re also see a lot of value to running the experiment as a team rather than my more typical N=1 study. With most of my experiments, there’s always a concern that the results are specific to my body chemistry and won’t generalize to others. Having data from multiple people significantly reduces that risk.

That said, having data from multiple participants significantly complicates the analysis. Luckily, /u/genetastic is much better at statistics than I am and was able to handle it.

It would significantly improve the study to have a larger number of participants. If you’re interested in collaborating on this or other 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.


– QD

Details

Continue reading “Does Vinegar Really Lower Blood Glucose? – 20% Lower Blood Glucose in an N=3, Pre-Registered, Community Experiment” →

Weekly Update & Health Statistics: 10/10/21

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 posted the results for low-carb chocolates this week. Found quite a few good ones, most notably the high cocoa stone ground chocolate from Taza and allulose-sweetened dark chocolate from Trendz. On the scientific side, I got even more evidence that there’s a large variation in the impact of different fibers, even ones with the same name listed on the nutrition label. I’m going to see whether I can source a decent variety to test.

Experiments this week focused on the last chocolates and samples of a low-carb chip under development by a food start-up (details and review to be provided when I’m allowed to post). Next week will focus on collecting more data for the vinegar study and starting to look at flour replacements and high-fiber fruits and vegetables.

Active & Planned Experiments

  • Blood Glucose Impact of Low-Carb Foods & Ingredients
    • Goal: Determine blood glucose impact of low-carb foods and ingredients
    • Approach: Protocol
    • Status:
      • This week: 4 commenter requests (Two Good yogurt, Julian Bakery bread, and “control” tortillas & ice cream (non-low carb, for comparison)) and 3 chocolates.
      • Reported:
      • Up next:
        • Flour replacements
        • Vegetables
        • Meats
        • Low-carb fruits
        • Miscellaneous low-carb prepared foods
        • Dietary fibers
  • Blood Glucose Impact of Supplements
    • Goal: Determine blood glucose impact and mechanism of promising supplements
  • Methods of Sleeping Longer

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: 10/10/21” →