Keeping myself up to date (just a little), I recently attended a presentation entitled Food Quality Matters: Using Therapeutic Nutrition to Improve Health. It was most encouraging. The speaker’s opening comment sums it up beautifully.
“There is hope! We are entering the era of diabetes reversal.”
Oh yes there is hope not only for individuals with type 2 diabetes, but the obese and the overweight, the stressed and the sleepless, the depressed and the anxious and I like to believe, hope for the prevention of dementia. Eating a low carb diet works. I have proven it for myself (my weight loss journey is documented elsewhere.) And the medical community, slow as it tends to be, is starting to change its longstanding but incorrect, low fat diet recommendations.
The speaker started with the utter lack of evidence to support the low fat dietary recommendations currently accepted as irrefutable dogma. Yes – the LACK of evidence. There was minimal evidence available to support the sweeping low fat diet recommendations adopted for the US Food Pyramid, and the evidence that was available was deeply flawed.
Unfortunately, instead of conducting its own review of the available evidence and reaching its own conclusions, the Canadian Government aligned the Canadian Food Guide recommendations with those of the US. So, most residents of North America excluding Mexico and the far North, were, unbeknownst to themselves, participants in a huge food based experiment supposing that high fat diets are a major factor contributing to death from heart disease.
Some 50 years later, the experiment has some astounding results. Results, that despite being replicated many times, are largely ignored. Low fat diets are slowly killing us. Obedient citizens that we are, we ate low fat. And we got hungry, moody, irritable and fat.
Since the low fat dietary recommendation was introduced in the late 1970s, rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes and other metabolic disorders have reached epidemic proportions. Following along in parallel, rapidly rising rates of Alzheimer’s dementia are equally alarming. “No, no, no” we are told, “it’s not low fat. Rates are rising because we are living longer.” Perhaps, but if living longer were the predominant cause of Alzheimer’s dementia those populations world-wide that tout the most centenarians per capita would also have the highest number of Alzheimer’s dementia.
Hmmm.
As a society we are a stubborn lot and the message ‘dietary fat bad’ has been heard loud and clear. The result? Paradoxically an unwell, fat fearing, fat society.
Secondly the speaker outlined mounting evidence that supports a low carbohydrate diet as an intervention for disorders known to be secondary to insulin resistance – most notably type two diabetes.
“We are entering the era of type 2 diabetes reversal.” Astounding statement. We are trained in medicine that type 2 diabetes is an irreversible, progressive and fatal disease. Irreversible and progressive. And now to claim type 2 diabetes is reversible by altering what we eat? Absurd right?
Nope. Not at all.
It is possible. It’s just not easy. And your doctor keeps telling to eat your carbs and take your insulin enhancing medications. With careful and close monitoring of your blood sugars, you can delay the inevitable… diabetic nephropathy (loss of kidney function requiring dialysis three times per week), diabetic retinopathy (loss of eyesight), peripheral neuropathy (loss of sensation in your feet), foot ulcers from poor circulation and perhaps ultimately an amputation.
“There is hope.” You could try eating a low carb, high fat, real food (unprocessed) diet and stop the progression of this debilitating fatal disease in its tracks.
I for one, reversed my pre-diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure) and obesity by eating mostly low carb despite my inconsistency. And true or not, I am willing to believe choosing a low carb, real food diet, will at best prevent, or at the very least, slow the early onset non-Alzheimer’s dementia that affects the elderly women in my family.
To believe otherwise is pointless.
There is hope. We can end this fattening, low fat diet experiment, that is making us miserable, and slowly killing us. Eat two – three low carb, high fat, minimally processed meals, 4 – 5 hours apart with no snacking. It is possible. Change your health.
It’s your choice. And, as I have written before – choice, is a beautiful thing.
Buff it up my friends,
Dr Karen
