The science of carbohydrate metabolism, not that I know much about it

An old thread on a book about the low-carb diet by someone named Taubes got revived at EvC and I've been following it more or less. Molbiogirl keeps arguing that insulin isn't the problem but nobody else has said it is, so I lose track of the argument and tend not to read her stuff very carefully.

PD and Percy explain that for them it's all about what helps you lose weight and that the underlying chemistry involved is of secondary interest if at all. That's my concern too. But also, if diabetes is in the picture, as it is for me, you pretty much HAVE to restrict carbs because they raise blood sugar -- and that has been borne out over and over in my own experience with using the blood sugar monitor to check. Carbs raise the blood sugar, not protein and not fat, at least not to any comparable degree.

Part of the argument from Atkins -- and probably Taubes -- is that insulin is normally produced in response to raised blood sugar, its job is to keep blood sugar on an even keel, and that weight gain occurs when it begins to malfunction. As I got it from Atkins, when more carbs are taken in over a long period of time than get burned off through normal activity and exercise, insulin first begins to be overproduced in reaction, which can bring the blood sugar down even to the level of hypoglycemia, then begins to be insufficiently produced, as if it's wearing out, eventually to the point of diabetes, but on the way there something happens to the metabolism such that you start gaining weight.

The usual idea is something called "insulin resistance" at the cellular level which prevents insulin from doing its job of controlling the blood sugar, which then gets stored as fat. I hope I have this right but it's part of the Atkins system I didn't spend much time on and may have it wrong. Apparently this is the part of the science that molbiogirl disagrees with, but it does seem irrelevant to the purpose of the thread -- which is about the role of too much carbohydrate in causing obesity and that is pretty well documented, not to mention supported in countless testimonies, including my own and some other contributors to that thread.

Diabetes is a condition of hard-to-control high blood sugar due to malfunctioning or nonexistent insulin production. If you still have some insulin function you can possibly manage the diabetes with diet and that's preferable to drugs, but uncontrollable blood sugar due to lack of insulin production leads to death by starvation unless insulin is administered, because insulin is necessary to deliver the sugar to the cells. When sugar is consistently at high levels in your blood that means it's not getting into your cells, and high blood sugar itself leads to all kinds of organ damage and damage to blood vessels.

Right now I apparently still have some insulin function but its activity isn't always predictable. As long as I keep carbs low, getting carbs mostly from nonstarchy vegetables and keeping starchy carbs and refined carbs to an extreme minimum, I don't get scary blood sugar spikes. But my blood sugar still isn't down in the normal range consistently and maybe never will be. I'm continuing to lose weight, however, and still hope to get blood sugar even better controlled.