diabetes

Please see below for some very good corrections and clarifications to this post from a respected diabetes blogger & author.  Then don’t forget to check out the comments for more great input!

Thanks to Ronda & Diana from the comments at the recent rotten hospital food post for telling me about this clinic in Kansas where they are CURING diabetes.  Yep, you read it right.  The article is so unbelievably fantastic that I’m not even going to add excerpts here.  If you or someone you love has diabetes, you’ve got to go read this article, and then FORWARD IT TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW WHO HAS DIABETES – we all know someone, it’s an absolute epidemic!  As it said in the article, diabetes is not an infectious disease, but it’s spreading like one.  Together, we can stop it!

(Also, please forward this to anyone you know who works in the medical field!)

photo by Christine

When you read the article you’ll also find out about all the bad advice most doctors (not all) and the American Diabetic Association (ADA) are giving to diabetics, and why it isn’t working.  Advice like this:

• You have to eat enough carbs so your blood sugars don’t drop when you take your insulin (instead of advising to watch the BS and lower the insulin accordingly!)
  
• Avoid saturated fats because you have a higher risk of heart disease
• Try getting your blood sugar under control with your diet, but in the meantime, here, take this medicine…
• Follow the dietary guidelines on the USDA Food Pyramid (Yikes!)
• Exercise will help your blood sugars come down (this one is true, but it won’t help as much as really limiting the carbs, but they often don’t tell you that)

READ ABOUT HOW DIABETICS ARE BEING CURED!

***Jenny from Blood Sugar 101 has given me permission to share her thoughts on this post and the above article, which I’m very thankful for since she knows more about this than I do:

Kelly,

Dr. Vernon is well known in the low carb diabetes community, but what she is describing is NOT a cure, nor does it work for all people with Type 2 diabetes. It works for people whose diabetes is entirely attributable to insulin resistance, but many of us have more going on than that. A significant number have an autoimmune attack going on against the beta cells. Some have genetic flaws which limit their ability to secrete insulin. Some have disruptions in the timing mechanism that produces basal insulin. I could go on and on. That is why quite a few high profile low carbing people with diabetes still need insulin even though they have been eating a low carb diet for many years.

That is why Bernstein’s book has so much information in it on how to use insulin for Type 2 when his very low carb diet doesn’t control it.

I hear from people all the time who have been eating low carb and getting extremely high blood sugars. Typically they also have low thyroid. Some have symptoms suggestive of Cushings. Some have things going on that science does not understand, like the man who was able to drop from using 200 units of insulin a day to 10 after taking Byetta for several months. Another friend is currently using the equivalent of 270 units a day while eating 20 grams a day.

Articles like this are useful in countering the dreadfully bad ADA advice, but overstating the case will defeat our purposes. I recently saw some published research where people with long-standing diabetes who were eating an Atkins very LC diet still ended up on average with blood sugars higher than  is ideal, and I am pretty sure it was published in the journal Vernon is associated with, Nutrition & Metabolism.

–Jenny
http://www.bloodsugar101.com

My reply for more clarifications:

Jenny,

But wouldn’t you say that eating very low carbs could be a cure for MANY, especially those whose diabetes began with weight issues, which accounts for the huge jump in diabetic cases in recent years?”

Thanks so much Jenny!!

Kelly

Her reply:

I think that the “weight issues” that have emerged recently are more likely due to exposures to air and water pollution, Bisphenol-A and other plastics that have hormonal effects, flame retardants that soak our homes, etc. etc.  There is a lot of evidence pointing to this. These chemicals may change how genes express so weight loss alone does not reverse the damage.

As I said, I think the LC diet “reverses” not “cures” diabetes when it is caused primarily by insulin resistance. All the genetic research into diabetes genes, however, is finding that 98% of them cause insufficient insulin secretion, not insulin resistance.

–Jenny

My comments:

As I said, Jenny knows more about this than I do, so you should probably give more weight to what she says than what I do.  I’m very thankful for her input.

That being said, I’m still going to add a little more of my own thoughts on this.  While I totally agree that we can’t say anything cures everyone, there is no doubt that there has been a huge jump in obesity and diabetes in recent years, even in young children.  If I had diabetes, I would certainly be giving a very low-carb diet a good go.  (As a matter of fact, I don’t have diabetes, and I’m still doing low-carb because I think it’s healthier overall.  I’m having varying degrees of success, it depends on the day!  But as I said in my other low-carb post, I want this to be a life-long way of eating for me now, so when I mess up, I try to say “oh well”, and just keep on.)

I have to say that I disagree with Jenny’s comments on where the weight problems in our society have originated from.  I think pollution, plastic dangers and other environmental issues definitely play a role, but mostly people are getting fat and unhealthy because of the crap we are eating and our sedentary lifestyles.

UPDATE:

Jenny just sent me one more comment that I thought was worth adding:

The word “cure” should never be used in connection with Diabetes. If a person develops diabetes it means they have an underlying metabolic flaw–one that occurs in something like 15% of the population, which is not curable. It can be controlled. People with diabetes can have normal blood sugars and normal health. But to me a  “cure” for diabetes would be a treatment that allowed me to eat the same foods as my 92 year old mom who has a fasting blood sugar of 83 while eating a diet that is almost all starch.

COMMENT BELOW AND SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON ALL THIS!

Coming soon: what to do when your sick loved ones eating the SAD (Standard American Diet) don’t get it, and don’t want to get it – when to back off!  (This post is from the above-quoted author, Jenny, and it sure seems like it was written just for me!)  Don’t miss any new posts – get a free Kelly the Kitchen Kop subscription to your email box or your feed reader.

• Read more about low-carb diets – lots of meal ideas here
• DOES FAT MAKE YOU FAT? Part 2 – how dietary fat affects weight loss
• Does Fat Make You Fat? Part 1 – saturated fat, cholesterol, and heart disease issues
• More posts about healthy dieting
  

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