It would have been more accurate to say "sugar". All carbs lead to ATP energy generation, so you need some. Carbs in vegetables is negligible, and some fruits have less sugar than others. I think what they mean is sugar (especially refined) and white flour. The docs KNOW that sugar feeds the cancer. I was in a "cancer center" with my dad. In the waiting room was an Icee machine, a soda machine, sweet tea urns, pastries (the crappy kind from the super market), bowls of candy, brownies, cookies, etc. It was a nice set up, but everything was sugar. They said it was to make the patients comfortable. I almost blew a circuit. I haven't felt that level of anger since then, thank goodness.
Yeah.... Just that “carbs are evil” gets tossed around so much, ykwim. HFCS is a the worst sweetener.
Your liver stores a small amount of glucose (IIRC, ~2500 cal) for “burst activity” and can manufacture it from protein and fat.
It’s for this reason that you can actually live without carbohydrates, but not fats or proteins. The lower amounts you take in, the overall better off you are. As the body is based on a relatively low glucose balance overall it has to have a way to manage excesses because excess glucose is bad for overall physiological conditions. It uses Insulin to balance this, and the byproduct of it’s action is the conversion of excess glucose into fat.
Interesting thought, in paleolithic times there could have been a greater number of humans that were what we would consider type 1 diabetics. The hunter-gather lifestyle probably was fine for these people and they could have survived to reproductive age and passage of their genetic type without serious metabolic complications. Once the rise of city states occurred with it’s commensurate facilitation of agriculture the peoples with genetic propensity for low/no insulin production were probably seriously thinned out, leaving the genetic trait of type one diabetes to be a recessive curiosity that cropped up only occasionally.
Looks like the future for me.