Re: Does an "Insulin Resistance" diet improve blood pressure?

"......Also, I was having problems with difficulty breathing, and with an erratic heartbeat, frequently made worse after consuming foods with carbs. My heart failure was getting worse and I was suffering daily with increased chest pains, fatigue, sweating, difficulty concentrating, racing heart, all of which got worse after consuming foods high in carbohydrates......."

You are describing some of the symptoms that I began to experience about thirty years ago.  My major problem then was the irregular heart beat where I thought it would jump out of my chest and I once rushed to the ER with these symptoms - expecting that I was having a heart attack.  By the time that I got there, the symptoms went away.  It has taken several years for me to understand what was happening but I was diagnosed Type II diabetic four years ago and atrial fibrillation three years ago.  Particularly when diagnosed with afib I recognized that I had been dealing with this condition for years and like you describe it happened after a high carb meal with desert and two or three drinks.  My Type II clinic told be to go on a high protein diet (15 carbs per meal - max) and when I did that I was able to control my Type II with diet alone - still do.  However, there are times that I cheat - like family gatherings, and that's how I learned I had afib.  I can't diagnose you - only an EKG can diagnose you, but with my BP monitor I learned that my BP went down and my heart rate went up - to 150 to 175 BPM.  When you speak of "racing heart" that could easily be afib.  If you have afib the biggest risk during the time your heart is acting up is the possibility of a blood clot which can cause heart failure.

For the past several years my BP has been borderline (130-150/55/75) but I have not found that the insulin resistance diet has brought it down.  I've also found that eating high fiber foods offers me no benefit whatsoever regarding my blood sugar levels.  I once ate steel cut oatmeal, which I love, and two hours later my BS was higher than after eating loads of ice cream.  It was a little over 200 when 120 or lower is what it normally is.  I love toasted cheese sandwiches and simply cannot eat even one.  All wheat products drive up my BS so I have eliminated even small portions of them.  You sound as if you are dealing with Syndrome X and what I would suggest is to get a BS monitor and check your levels two hours after your meals for a while to understand what (if anything) drives it up.  Many companies will send you a free meter, but where they make there money is in the test strips, just like printer companies sell you a cheap printer and make it up on the in refills.  Same difference.  While my BS goes to 200+ after eating oatmeal, I know other Type II people who's BS stays in the 80 - 100 range.  Each body is different, that's why you should test.  One other thing I would suggest is an a1c test which measures the amount of glucose your cells have absorbed in the past three months.

I learned to control my afib/heart arrhythmias by following my clinic's Type II diet and also by cutting out all caffeine.  Caffeine alone could put me into afib, but then I had been drinking 6 - 8 or more cups of strong coffee a day.  Another thing that added to it was alcohol - if I drank it with a high carb meal.  In the past few years I've limited my drinking to one double martini per week, but with the right (wrong) foods accompanying it I could (not always) go into afib.  Anyway once I understood what caused my afib I was able to pretty much eliminate just eating properly and listening to my body, which you are doing.  Within the past 8 or 9 months I began taking large amounts of Omega 3.  I take 10 capsules of fish oil a day (3,000 grams of Omega 3) and after a couple of months found that my afib was not affected when I fell off my Type II diet.  I even began drinking coffee again - 4 or 5 cups a day with no afib or heart palpitations of any kind.  (I had major surgery three months ago and am no dealing with atrial flutter, and am working on curing that.  Think the main thing is to just let my body heal from the surgery and it will be all right.)

Check out Syndrome X and see if anything applies.