Image Source Dr. Jonathan Gordon.

Health Impact News Editor Comments

Diabetes is the great failure of the medical system. A generation of following the high-carb low-fat USDA approved food pyramid, along with Big Food’s highly processed carbohydrate-rich products, have produced a national epidemic of obesity and diabetes.

The medical system’s answer to type 2 diabetes is drugs. These drugs, however, are highly toxic with serious side effects, and they don’t work. As Dr. Brownstein reported in a recent blog:

A recent article titled, “14-Year Risk of All-Cause Mortality According to Hypoglycemic Drug Exposure in a General Population” assessed the safety data of diabetic drugs over a 14-year time period.  The authors studied 3336 participants and 248 deaths over a 14-year time period.

The scientists compared the all-cause mortality risk in non-diabetic versus diabetic subjects.   The found that untreated diabetics had a 222% increase risk of all-cause mortality.  Diabetics treated with Metformin had 128% increase risk of death.  Diabetics treated with sulfonylureas (e.g., Glyburide, Amaryl, Glucotrol, Glynase, DiaBeta) had a 70% increase in all-cause mortality.  Diabetics treated with insulin had 329% increase in all-cause mortality.

Diabetes, however, is not a condition that is caused by a lack of drugs. Research clearly links type 2 diabetes (and now type 3 diabetes) to insulin resistance caused by excessive carbohydrates in the diet. This issue is finally starting to get more attention in the mainstream media, fortunately.

In a recent article published in the journal Nutrition, the authors showed that there is continued success in using low-carbohydrate diets in the treatment of diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

Dietary Carbohydrate restriction as the first approach in diabetes management. Critical review and evidence base

Richard David Feinman, PhD, et. al.
Nutrition Journal

Abstract

The inability of current recommendations to control the epidemic of diabetes, the specific failure of the prevailing low-fat diets to improve obesity, cardiovascular risk or general health and the persistent reports of some serious side effects of commonly prescribed diabetic medications, in combination with the continued success of low-carbohydrate diets in the treatment of diabetes and metabolic syndrome without significant side effects, point to the need for a reappraisal of dietary guidelines.

Excerpts:

The benefits of carbohydrate restriction in diabetes are immediate and well-documented. Concerns about the efficacy and safety are long-term and conjectural rather than data-driven. Dietary carbohydrate restriction reliably reduces high blood glucose, does not require weight loss (although is still best for weight loss) and leads to the reduction or elimination of medication and has never shown side effects comparable to those seen in many drugs.

Here we present 12 points of evidence supporting the use of low-carbohydrate diets as the first approach to treating type 2 diabetes and as the most effective adjunct to pharmacology in type 1. They represent the best-documented, least controversial results. The insistence on long-term random-controlled trials as the only kind of data that will be accepted is without precedent in science. The seriousness of diabetes requires that we evaluate all of the evidence that is available. The 12 points are sufficiently compelling that we feel that the burden of proof rests with those who are opposed.

“At the end of our clinic day, we go home thinking, ‘The clinical improvements are so large and obvious, why don’t other doctors understand?’ Carbohydrate restriction is easily grasped by patients: because carbohydrates in the diet raise the blood glucose, and as diabetes is defined by high blood glucose, it makes sense to lower the carbohydrate in the diet. By reducing the carbohydrate in the diet, we have been able to taper patients off as much as 150 units of insulin per day in eight days, with marked improvement in glycemic control – even normalization of glycemic parameters.”

— Eric Westman, MD, MHS

Read the Full Study.