Diabetes Should Have It's Guidelines Changed
April 27, 2015Diabetes Turned Upside Down
Reference: Feinman Nutrition 2015
This is it! We have been doing it backwards for 50 years and now is the time to challenge the old treatment method for diabetes and turn to what works. If you or anyone you know has diabetes, send them this article. This review is a challenge to the status quo. It is time to turn our national guidelines on their head. Our health care systems should hear the clarion call and change their education, their dieticians teaching, their handouts, their clinical pathways. Here is the evidence, as presented in this article.
There are 12 points of evidence, as summarized here.
Point 1. Hyperglycemia is the most salient feature of diabetes. Dietary carbohydrate restriction has the greatest effect on decreasing blood glucose levels
Point 2. During the epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes, caloric increases have been due almost entirely to increased carbohydrates
Point 3. Benefits of dietary carbohydrate restriction do not require weight loss
Point 4. Although weight loss is not required for benefit, no dietary intervention is better than carbohydrate restriction for weight loss
Point 5. Adherence to low-carbohydrate diets in people with type 2 diabetes is at least as good as adherence to any other dietary interventions and is frequently significantly better.
Point 6. Replacement of carbohydrate with protein is generally beneficial
Point 7. Dietary total and saturated fat do not correlate with risk for cardiovascular disease Point 8. Plasma saturated fatty acids are controlled by dietary carbohydrate more than by dietary lipids
Point 9. The best predictor of microvascular and, to a lesser extent, macrovascular complications in patients with type 2 diabetes, is glycemic control (HbA1c)
Point 10. Dietary carbohydrate restriction is the most effective method (other than starvation) of reducing serum TGs and increasing high-density lipoprotein
Point 11. Patients with type 2 diabetes on carbohydrate-restricted diets reduce and frequently eliminate medication. People with type 1 usually require lower insulin
Point 12. Intensive glucose-lowering by dietary carbohydrate restriction has no side effects comparable to the effects of intensive pharmacologic treatment “The need for a reappraisal of dietary recommendations stems from the following:
- General failure to halt the epidemic of diabetes under current guidelines.
- The specific failure of low-fat diets to improve obesity, cardiovascular risk, or general health (points 1 and 4).
- Constant reports of side effects of commonly prescribed diabetic medications, some quite serious (points 12
- Most importantly, the continued success of low-carbohydrate diets to meet the challenges of improvement in the features of diabetes and metabolic syndrome in the absence of side effects.”
WWW. What will work for me? I’ve followed a high fat, low carb diet for four months and lowered my own borderline high sugar from 102 to 73. I lost 25 pounds. I raised my HDLs to 61 from 28. It was so simple. And I didn’t feel hungry. If your doctor tells you to follow a low fat diet, leave him/her and follow your own common sense. Read this article, word for word and save your own life. It’s going to take 10 years for health care to get its act together and change.
Pop Quiz
- Current guidelines from the American Heart Association and American Diabetes Association advocate control of diabetes through the use of a low fat diet. T or F. Answer: True
- This has resulted in good control of Americans’ diabetes. T or F Answer: Patently false
- We, as a nation, have made an enormous health care blunder. T or F Answer: True
- It’s time to make a radical shift and change our approach. T or F Answer: As fast as possible
- If you have a blood sugar above 90, you will serve yourself and your health better by eating eggs and bacon for breakfast instead of oatmeal? T or F Answer: True.