Research Hooey

I found this interesting article today and I just had to have my say about it.

Low carb dieting affects sleep – Wenatex Media Release : Skipping carbohydrates from your diet can affect your ability to fall asleep and lead to binge eating.

So they ramble on about tryptophan and how you need it to relax.  They claim it can only be achieved by a combination of carbohydrates and protein.  As someone who suffered from insomnia often while eating more than my fair share of carbohydrates, I’d have to testify under oath that this is a load of pigswill.  Thankfully most of us know better than to stick our faces in this trough.  Every low-carber I’ve personally talked to about the issue of sleep has told the the same thing – they sleep better since changing to a low-carb lifestyle.  That doesn’t mean insomnia is cured or any other sleep issues are suddenly gone, but they all have reported improvements in sleeping habits. Is this scientific? Not really. I didn’t do a study. This is just experience from real people who are living the lifestyle.

This pathetic press release shares absolutely no research studies to back up their claims. I’d like to know what their methods were to come to such a conclusion. Was it really a TRUE low-carb diet used while studying sleep in test subjects? Did they eliminate other factors that cause disruptive sleep before determining it was the diets fault? Or was this just random info grabbed from some other website so they’d have something to tell potential customers? While on the surface it appears Wenatex has nothing to gain from handing out this kind of information, it does make me wonder why they’d go so far to push a theory they have no proof of. Most likely it’s just a case of the blind being led by the blind.

And notice they threw in binge eating for good measure. I also had binge eating issues when on a high carbohydrate diet. When I switched to a low-carb plan my binge eating tendencies were reduced dramatically.  The insulin spikes in my system, caused by carbohydrate abuse, made me ravenous and moody. Clean, low-carb living helped even out my blood sugar and avoid all the ups and downs that cause this kind of behavior. Am I cured from binge eating? No, but that is more a phycological issue for me and less a physical one.

Just a word of warning my friends, take this kind of info with a grain of salt. Ask for research (and the details… not just the abstract conclusions) when someone starts bashing your dietary choices. There are way too many media outlets regurgitating old, outdated information – or in some cases, just plain bad science. Be your own advocate and educate yourself so you’ll be able to spot the difference between junk science and the real mccoy.