On a high-carb diet, people with diabetes need less insulin

The more car­bo­hy­drate you eat, the more respon­sive your body becomes to the hor­mone insulin. That is why high-car­bo­hy­drate diets cure type 2 dia­betes. They also reduce insulin require­ments in peo­ple with type 1 dia­betes. If you are tak­ing insulin, talk to your doc­tor before you switch to a high-car­bo­hy­drate diet. Oth­er­wise, you could end up with a dan­ger­ous bout of low blood sug­ar.

As I explain in my book Thin Dia­betes, Fat Dia­betes: Pre­vent Type 1, Cure Type 2, There are two main type of sug­ar dia­betes (dia­betes mel­li­tus). If you have thin dia­betes (type 1 dia­betes mel­li­tus), your pan­creas can­not make enough insulin to keep you alive. If you have fat dia­betes (type 2 dia­betes mel­li­tus), your body is resist­ing the effects of insulin, to keep you from stor­ing more fat in your fat cells. You can have both prob­lems at once. In oth­er words, even peo­ple with insulin short­age can have some degree of insulin resis­tance.

The solu­tion to insulin resis­tance has been known since the 1930s: eat a high-carb, low-fat diet. The more carbs you eat, the more sen­si­tive your body becomes to insulin. The more fat you eat, the more resis­tant your body becomes to insulin. When peo­ple with type 1 dia­betes start a high-carb diet (>75% of calo­ries in the form of car­bo­hy­drate), they often have to decrease their insulin dosage by about 30%.