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High-Calcium Diets Probably Cause Osteoporosis

At least every 5 years, the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture and the U.S. Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices are required by fed­er­al law to issue Dietary Guide­lines for Amer­i­cans. Accord­ing to the law, these guide­lines are sup­posed to be based on the best avail­able sci­ence. Yet some of their rec­om­men­da­tions don’t seem to have any basis in sci­ence at all. In par­tic­u­lar, I think that their rec­om­men­da­tions about cal­ci­um intake will make the prob­lem of osteo­poro­sis worse, not bet­ter.
Con­tin­ue read­ing “High-Cal­ci­um Diets Prob­a­bly Cause Osteo­poro­sis”

Can You Get Too Much Omega 3 Fatty Acid?

Late­ly, many peo­ple have been claim­ing that fish is health food. The Amer­i­can Heart Asso­ci­a­tion and the Amer­i­can Dia­betes Asso­ci­a­tion urge peo­ple to eat fish. Yet if peo­ple fol­low that advice, they’ll still be at risk for heart dis­ease and dia­betes and they might increase their risk for can­cer. The omega 3 fat­ty acids in fish oil can end up in the fat­ty deposits that clog people’s arter­ies. Like oth­er fats, they pro­mote insulin resis­tance. Also, eat­ing too much omega 3 fat­ty acid could pro­mote can­cer by sup­press­ing the immune sys­tem.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Can You Get Too Much Omega 3 Fat­ty Acid?”

The USDA’s “My Plate” Makes No Sense

If you’ve ever watched Sesame Street, you may remem­ber the song about cat­e­gories: “One of these things is not like the oth­ers. One of these things just doesn’t belong.” That song ran through my head when I looked at the USDA’s My Plate food group sys­tem, which fea­tures veg­eta­bles, fruits, grains, dairy, and pro­tein. One of the foods groups isn’t like the oth­ers and just doesn’t belong. Can you guess which one?

Con­tin­ue read­ing “The USDA’s “My Plate” Makes No Sense”

The Cholesterol Wars: the Skeptics vs. the Preponderance of Evidence

Most of our major caus­es of death and dis­abil­i­ty in the Unit­ed States today are a direct result of the stan­dard Amer­i­can diet. It would be bad enough if peo­ple knew that their eat­ing habits were endan­ger­ing their health. What’s worse is that peo­ple are harm­ing them­selves unknow­ing­ly, by eat­ing foods that they have been told are good for them and even essen­tial to good health. This tragedy goes on part­ly because peo­ple don’t want to hear bad news about their bad habits. How­ev­er, I think that a major part of the prob­lem is that most Amer­i­cans have had a poor sci­ence edu­ca­tion and most of their doc­tors have had poor train­ing in nutri­tion. As a result, they don’t know how to make sense of the sci­en­tif­ic research that is now so eas­i­ly avail­able to them through the Inter­net. As a result, they are eas­i­ly fooled by peo­ple who call them­selves skep­tics but real­ly should be clas­si­fied as deniers.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “The Cho­les­terol Wars: the Skep­tics vs. the Pre­pon­der­ance of Evi­dence”

Dyslexia Is Not a Brain Disease!

In school, I learned some impor­tant lessons about sci­ence. Two of the most impor­tant are these:

  • If you don’t want to get con­fused about what some­thing real­ly is, think care­ful­ly about what you call it
  • If you want to know why some­thing hap­pens, look at where and when it hap­pens.

Recent­ly, I read some­thing that rein­forced both of those lessons. It was an arti­cle by Samuel Orton, AM, MD, pub­lished in 1929 in the Jour­nal of Edu­ca­tion­al Psy­chol­o­gy about a prob­lem that was being called “con­gen­i­tal word blind­ness.” It referred to chil­dren who were hav­ing trou­ble learn­ing to read.

The term “con­gen­i­tal word blind­ness” imme­di­ate­ly caught my atten­tion. It made no sense. The word “con­gen­i­tal” means present from birth. How could an inabil­i­ty to read be con­sid­ered a con­gen­i­tal prob­lem? Aren’t all babies born illit­er­ate? It’s illog­i­cal to use the word “con­gen­i­tal” to describe a prob­lem that nobody can detect until the child is six years old.

Dr. Orton explained that the term “con­gen­i­tal word blind­ness” was being used to refer to a com­plete inabil­i­ty to learn to read. Physi­cians had been study­ing the prob­lem for sev­er­al years. Teach­ers and psy­chol­o­gists were also aware that many chil­dren were hav­ing much greater dif­fi­cul­ty in learn­ing to read than would be expect­ed from their abil­i­ty to learn arith­metic, their abil­i­ty to learn from lis­ten­ing, and their gen­er­al alert­ness. Orton want­ed to know what was going wrong in cas­es where oth­er­wise seem­ing­ly nor­mal chil­dren were hav­ing so much trou­ble learn­ing to read.

In his ini­tial stud­ies, he found that many chil­dren with read­ing dif­fi­cul­ties seemed to have the same prob­lems. They tend­ed to reverse let­ters and words. For exam­ple, they’d mis­take the let­ter “d” for the let­ter “b” or mis­take “p” for “q.” They also tend­ed to get con­fused between short palin­dromic words, such as mis­read­ing “was” for “saw.” They also tend­ed to reverse parts of words, such as read­ing “twor­rom” instead of “tomor­row.” Today, this prob­lem is called dyslex­ia.

Under a grant from the Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion, Orton car­ried out an extend­ed field study of this prob­lem in com­mu­ni­ties in Iowa in 1926 and 1927. What he found was dis­turb­ing. The prob­lem wasn’t equal­ly com­mon every­where, and the prob­lem seemed to result from the way the chil­dren were being taught to read.

All of the chil­dren were being taught to read by the “whole-word” or “look-say” method. This meant that they were taught to rec­og­nize whole words, as if Eng­lish words were like Egypt­ian hiero­glyphs or Chi­nese char­ac­ters. In the town where read­ing dis­abil­i­ties were more com­mon, the chil­dren were giv­en no oth­er kind of read­ing instruc­tion, such as help in sound­ing out the let­ters of a word, until they had mem­o­rized about 90 words. In the oth­er town, where read­ing dis­abil­i­ties were only half as com­mon, chil­dren were ini­tial­ly taught with the look-say method but were giv­en spe­cial instruc­tion in how to sound out the words if they start­ed falling behind.

Orton con­clud­ed that the children’s learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties were prob­a­bly the result of using the look-say method to teach chil­dren to read. He also con­clud­ed that the prob­lem could be reme­died by giv­ing chil­dren spe­cial help to elim­i­nate their con­fu­sion about the direc­tion and ori­en­ta­tion of let­ters and words. Thus, Orton revealed that the cause of the prob­lem was not a defect in the child’s brain but a defect in the edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem.

In gen­er­al, if a dis­ease is tru­ly genet­ic, the inci­dence of that dis­ease stays steady from one gen­er­a­tion to anoth­er. It does not sud­den­ly flare up with­in a pop­u­la­tion. The fact that dyslex­ia broke out when the schools stopped using phon­ics tells us that it is not a genet­ic dis­or­der. There is no no excuse for using a teach­ing method that pre­dictably caus­es learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties. The dam­age done to a child in his or her first few years of school­ing caus­es a great deal of suf­fer­ing and can have life­long effects.

Orton wrote that many chil­dren had been referred to his clin­ic because they were hav­ing trou­ble learn­ing to read. In many cas­es, the child’s teacher had thought that the child was fee­ble-mind­ed or had com­plained that the child was mis­be­hav­ing. In Orton’s expe­ri­ence, the chil­dren could be taught to read if prop­er meth­ods were used. He also found that the children’s behav­ior prob­lems typ­i­cal­ly result­ed from the read­ing prob­lem. The children’s behav­ior improved dra­mat­i­cal­ly after they learned to read.

Orton’s warn­ing that dif­fi­cul­ty in learn­ing to read is the pre­dictable result of bad edu­ca­tion­al approach­es fell on deaf ears. The peo­ple at the Rock­e­feller Fund pro­vid­ed the fund­ing for Orton’s research, but then they ignored its results. Instead of advo­cat­ing effec­tive meth­ods for teach­ing read­ing, they went on to pro­vide sub­stan­tial sup­port for advo­cates of the “look-say” method, despite the evi­dence that it was caus­ing learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties. The look-say method became even more pop­u­lar in the 1930s. It was part of the “whole lan­guage” approach applied sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly in the pub­lic schools in Cal­i­for­nia in 1987, with dis­as­trous results. With­in a few years, California’s fourth-grade read­ing scores fell to prac­ti­cal­ly the low­est in the Unit­ed States, ahead of only Louisiana and Guam.

Today, we no longer hear the term “con­gen­i­tal word blind­ness,” but we hear a lot about dyslex­ia. We also have lots of oth­er labels that are applied to chil­dren. I won­der how many of the chil­dren who are giv­en labels such as ADD, ADHD, and oppo­si­tion­al defi­ant dis­or­der are sim­ply express­ing frus­tra­tion and anger at how bad­ly they are being treat­ed, and how bad­ly they are being taught? If that’s the real prob­lem in a par­tic­u­lar case, I can’t see how drug­ging the child would solve it.

I decid­ed to dis­cuss Orton’s study in my nutri­tion blog, even though his study has noth­ing to do with food, because his study illus­trates an impor­tant point about how peo­ple fail to use sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge. Orton pro­vid­ed evi­dence of the obvi­ous cause and sim­ple cure for a seri­ous prob­lem. He pro­vid­ed this infor­ma­tion to peo­ple who had enor­mous influ­ence on pub­lic pol­i­cy, and yet they ignored what he had to say and went on pro­mot­ing harm­ful poli­cies. We see sim­i­lar prob­lems in the field of nutri­tion. We are told that dis­eases like coro­nary artery dis­ease and type 2 dia­betes are genet­ic, even though they seem to cause prob­lems only where peo­ple are eat­ing the wrong kind of food. Although those dis­eases can eas­i­ly be cured if the obvi­ous cause is removed, the dis­eases are treat­ed chron­i­cal­ly with pills. Even though the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence pro­vides clear lessons, these lessons are not being used to guide pol­i­cy deci­sions or even being com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the gen­er­al pub­lic.


not-trivial-front-coverNote: To learn more about why bad teach­ing meth­ods have been used in our pub­lic schools, read my Web page on the Read­ing Wars. You can read more about this prob­lem in my book Not Triv­ial: How Study­ing the Tra­di­tion­al Lib­er­al Arts Can Set You Free.

 

What is Diverticulitis?

A friend of mine recent­ly had a brush with death. She was unknow­ing­ly car­ry­ing a time bomb in her large intes­tine, and when it went off, it near­ly took her with it. She had a diver­tic­u­lar abscess, which burst and thus allowed the bac­te­ria to get into her abdom­i­nal cav­i­ty. That caused a prob­lem called peri­toni­tis.

All things con­sid­ered, she got off easy. She had to have emer­gency surgery to remove the dam­aged por­tion of her large intes­tine and clean up the mess in her abdomen. She may have a fierce-look­ing scar, but she’s alive, and she can still go to the bath­room nor­mal­ly, instead of into a colosto­my bag on her side.

The prob­lem start­ed when part of the wall of her large intes­tine “bal­looned out” to form a lit­tle pouch called a diver­tic­u­lum. When you have these diver­tic­u­la, the con­di­tion is called diver­tic­u­lo­sis. Here’s what diver­tic­u­lo­sis looks like, from inside the large intes­tine:

About half of Amer­i­cans over 50 years of age have diver­tic­u­lo­sis and don’t even know it. Diver­tic­u­lo­sis may cause mild, inter­mit­tent symp­toms of pain and bloat­ing in the low­er left side of the bel­ly. It may cause bouts of diar­rhea and con­sti­pa­tion. It is a com­mon cause of rec­tal bleed­ing in peo­ple over 40 years of age. Or it may cause no symp­toms at all. If one of the diver­tic­u­la gets infect­ed, the con­di­tion is called diver­ti­c­uli­tis. It’s just like appen­dici­tis, except that the symp­toms are worse on the low­er left, rather than the low­er right, side of the bel­ly. If the inflamed diver­tic­u­lum bursts, you can end up with life-threat­en­ing peri­toni­tis.

Diver­tic­u­lar dis­ease is com­mon in the Unit­ed States. How­ev­er, it’s rare in places like Africa and Asia, where peo­ple eat a high-fiber, plant-based diet. Accord­ing to the Nation­al Insti­tute of Dia­betes and Diges­tive and Kid­ney Dis­eases (NIDDK), the best treat­ment for most cas­es of diver­tic­u­lo­sis is a high-fiber diet. Both sol­u­ble and insol­u­ble fiber are help­ful, because they retain water and make the stool soft­er and eas­i­er to pass. If the mus­cles of the large intes­tine don’t have to strain so hard, they won’t gen­er­ate the high pres­sure that can cause a diver­tic­u­lum to form.

Some doc­tors say that peo­ple with diver­tic­u­lo­sis should avoid eat­ing small seeds, such as those in toma­toes or rasp­ber­ries. How­ev­er, the NIDDK says that there is no sci­en­tif­ic infor­ma­tion to sup­port that rec­om­men­da­tion.

Dairy prod­ucts increase the risk for diver­tic­u­lo­sis by caus­ing con­sti­pa­tion. When dairy pro­tein is digest­ed, it can pro­duce mor­phine-like com­pounds that slow down the mus­cles that are sup­posed to push food through the intestines.

To pre­vent diver­tic­u­lo­sis, pre­vent con­sti­pa­tion. Eat lots and lots of unre­fined starch­es and veg­eta­bles. Avoid dairy prod­ucts. A diet like that is also good for main­tain­ing a healthy weight, con­trol­ling your cho­les­terol and blood sug­ar, and pre­vent­ing osteo­poro­sis.

How to Cure Vitamin D Deficiency

Accord­ing to my cal­en­dar, win­ter began just a few days ago. But as far as my abil­i­ty to make vit­a­min D is con­cerned, win­ter actu­al­ly began in Octo­ber and will last until the mid­dle of March. If I run short of vit­a­min D before March, I have three options for get­ting more vit­a­min D: take a trop­i­cal vaca­tion, go to a tan­ning salon, or take vit­a­min D pills.

Vit­a­min D isn’t real­ly a vit­a­min. It’s a hor­mone that is made when the ultra­vi­o­let light from sun­light hits your skin. Some of the sun’s ultra­vi­o­let light gets fil­tered out by the atmos­phere, espe­cial­ly by the ozone lay­er. Where I live, the sun­light is at such a low angle from Octo­ber through March that prac­ti­cal­ly all of the ultra­vi­o­let light gets fil­tered out. Thus, we have a tan­ning index of zero even if there isn’t a cloud in the sky.

A light-skinned per­son in Boston can get enough vit­a­min D from get­ting only a few min­utes’ worth of sun expo­sure on his or her face, arms, and hands at mid­day two to three times a week dur­ing the spring, sum­mer, and fall. A per­son of African ances­try might need ten times as much sun expo­sure to make the same amount of vit­a­min D.

Nat­ur­al sum­mer sun­shine is the best way to get vit­a­min D. Sun­shine may have oth­er impor­tant effects on the body besides pro­duc­ing vit­a­min D. Of course, too much sun expo­sure can cause skin dam­age and increase the risk of skin can­cer.

Sun­lamps or a tan­ning bed can also help restore nor­mal vit­a­min D lev­els in the win­ter­time, espe­cial­ly in peo­ple who have an intesti­nal dis­ease that makes it hard for them to absorb fat-sol­u­ble vit­a­mins from their food. Tan­ning beds should be used cau­tious­ly because the ultra­vi­o­let light they pro­duce is so intense.

You can also buy vit­a­min D sup­ple­ments, but one nutri­tion expert warns that vit­a­min pills should be used as a last resort. Although low vit­a­min D lev­els have been asso­ci­at­ed with var­i­ous dis­eases, such as mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis, treat­ment with vit­a­min D sup­ple­ments has not nec­es­sar­i­ly been shown to be use­ful in treat­ing those con­di­tions. 

Peace on Earth, Even Though War Sometimes Cures Diabetes

Dur­ing the Siege of Paris in 1870, a French phar­ma­cist named Bauchar­dat noticed that the health of dia­bet­ics was improv­ing while every­one else was suf­fer­ing as a result of food short­ages. That’s because the most com­mon form of dia­betes is type 2 dia­betes, which the French call dia­bète gras, or fat dia­betes. Type 2 dia­betes rep­re­sents the body’s attempts to resist gain­ing too much weight on a fat­ten­ing diet. If the weight gain is solved by eat­ing few­er calo­ries, then the type 2 dia­betes improves.

World War I pro­vid­ed insight into anoth­er way to deal with type 2 dia­betes. Even though Den­mark was neu­tral dur­ing the war, its grain sup­ply had been cut in half by the Atlantic Block­ade. To pre­vent the grain short­ages from caus­ing wide­spread star­va­tion in Den­mark, the Dan­ish gov­ern­ment devel­oped a rationing plan. Instead of peo­ple feed­ing the avail­able grain to ani­mals and then eat­ing the ani­mals, the gov­ern­ment decreed that most of the food ani­mals should be slaugh­tered imme­di­ate­ly and the grain be fed direct­ly to the peo­ple. It also decreed that grain should not be used to make alco­hol. The Danes could eat as much bread and pota­toes and cab­bage as they want­ed; but their intake of meats, fats, and alco­hol was severe­ly restrict­ed. Not only did this rationing plan pre­vent star­va­tion, it improved the over­all health of the Dan­ish pop­u­la­tion so much that Den­mark enjoyed the low­est record­ed death rate in its his­to­ry.

I don’t know how much of the low­er mor­tal­i­ty in Den­mark dur­ing the war was due to a decrease in the rate of dia­betes specif­i­cal­ly and how much to a low­er risk of heart attack or stroke among non­di­a­bet­ics. All of those dis­eases result from the same cause, which is a rich, fat­ty diet. For­tu­nate­ly, I do have data on how wartime rationing affect­ed the risk of death from dia­betes in Eng­land and Wales dur­ing the first half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.

war-and-diabetes

Notice that the risk of dia­betes went up dur­ing times of peace and pros­per­i­ty and dropped like a stone dur­ing wartime rationing. It stayed low dur­ing the Great Depres­sion, when many peo­ple sim­ply couldn’t afford to overeat. The effect of dietary changes was so pow­er­ful that it com­plete­ly obscured the impact of the intro­duc­tion of insulin ther­a­py in the ear­ly 1920s. That’s because the most com­mon form of dia­betes is type 2 dia­betes, which results from eat­ing a fat­ten­ing diet. Less than 10% of dia­betes cas­es result from fail­ure of the pan­creas to pro­duce insulin.

Low-carb gurus keep telling me that a diet based on grains caus­es obe­si­ty and dia­betes. It’s true that the low-carb diets seem to pro­vide some short-term ben­e­fit for dia­bet­ics. Depriv­ing a per­son of car­bo­hy­drates does make high blood sug­ar go down imme­di­ate­ly, even if makes the dia­betes worse in the long run. If the low-carb diet sup­press­es the person’s appetite enough to cause weight loss, the dia­betes could improve. How­ev­er, this improve­ment would be due to weight loss, not to eat­ing fat and pro­tein instead of car­bo­hy­drates. At the same time, the low-carb diets pro­vide an over­load of fat and pro­tein, which is par­tic­u­lar­ly bad for peo­ple with dia­betes because they are so prone to heart and kid­ney prob­lems. The heavy load of ani­mal pro­tein in low-carb diets would also pro­mote osteo­poro­sis and can­cer, but those prob­lems might not show up imme­di­ate­ly.

The low-carb gurus ignore an obvi­ous fact: dia­betes and many oth­er chron­ic dis­eases are rare in pop­u­la­tions that eat a diet that’s heav­i­ly based on grains or oth­er starchy sta­ples, such as pota­toes. Dia­betes is com­mon only in soci­eties that base their diet heav­i­ly on ani­mal prod­ucts. When a pop­u­la­tion shifts from an ani­mal-based diet to a diet based on grains and oth­er starchy sta­ples, such as pota­toes, the rates of obe­si­ty and dia­betes come tum­bling down. For­tu­nate­ly, there doesn’t have to be a war for peo­ple to make this change in diet. It only takes aware­ness and a new set of recipes.

The good news is that we don’t need to starve our­selves or suf­fer the hor­rors of war to cure type 2 dia­betes. All we need to do is go ape, go wild, and eat plants. Peace on earth!

Pho­to by Kylie_Jaxxon


Note: In my book Thin Dia­betes, Fat Dia­betes: Pre­vent Type 1, Cure Type 2, I explain why a high-car­bo­hy­drate diet is good for peo­ple with any kind of dia­betes.

Behind Barbed Wire_Print

 

Scientists Rediscover That Starvation Cures Type 2 Diabetes

Yes, you can reverse type 2 dia­betes if you starve your­self. In fact, a med­ical­ly super­vised water-only fast can be a use­ful way to man­age many dif­fer­ent kinds of diet-relat­ed dis­eases. For­tu­nate­ly, you do not have to starve your­self to reverse your type 2 dia­betes. Instead, you could sim­ply eat a low-fat, plant-based diet—like the pop­u­la­tions that don’t get type 2 dia­betes to begin with.

In June of 2011, some researchers from Britain pub­lished the results of a tri­al in which peo­ple with type 2 dia­betes who went on a star­va­tion diet (600 calo­ries per day) end­ed up with nor­mal fast­ing blood sug­ar lev­els. To me, that is not news. By 1841, a French phar­ma­cist named Apol­li­naire Bauchar­dat was rec­om­mend­ing that patients with what we now call type 2 dia­betes should eat as lit­tle as pos­si­ble and that they should fast occa­sion­al­ly to bring down their blood sug­ar. Since then, how­ev­er, dia­betes researchers have learned that it’s pos­si­ble to reverse type 2 dia­betes with­out such severe calo­rie restric­tion. In fact, I think that it’s bet­ter to teach peo­ple the diet that will enable them to cure their type 2 dia­betes with­in a cou­ple of weeks with­out lim­it­ing their food intake than to set them on a course of yo-yo diet­ing and pos­si­ble eat­ing dis­or­ders.

Bouchar­dat was one of the first clin­i­cians to put patients in charge of mon­i­tor­ing their own dia­betes. At first, his patients did this by keep­ing track of what they ate and tast­ing their urine to see how sweet it became. Lat­er, Bauchar­dat worked out a chem­i­cal test to detect sug­ar in urine. From mon­i­tor­ing the sug­ar con­tent of the urine, Bauchar­dat showed that when peo­ple with dia­betes ate sug­ars or starch­es, large amounts of sug­ar passed into their urine. The sug­ar in the urine reflect­ed high blood glu­cose lev­els. How­ev­er, the prob­lem in type 2 dia­betes is not that the per­son is eat­ing car­bo­hy­drates, it’s that the body has become resis­tant to the hor­mone insulin.

Start­ing in the 1930s, sci­en­tists start­ed to real­ize that fat­ty diets made the body less sen­si­tive to insulin, and that this insulin insen­si­tiv­i­ty was the under­ly­ing cause of the high blood sug­ar lev­els in peo­ple with type 2 dia­betes. Peo­ple who went on a low-fat, high-car­bo­hy­drate diet rapid­ly became more respon­sive to insulin.

Start­ing in the 1940s, Dr. Wal­ter Kemp­n­er at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty report­ed aston­ish­ing suc­cess in revers­ing type 2 dia­betes and dia­bet­ic com­pli­ca­tions with a diet based entire­ly on rice and fruit. Patients who found that they were los­ing too much weight on that low-fat diet were encour­aged to add pure white sug­ar to get more calo­ries. In Kempner’s report of 100 patients with dia­betes who were fed his high-car­bo­hy­drate, low-fat, low-pro­tein diet, most of the patients decreased their insulin dos­es and many dis­con­tin­ued tak­ing insulin. (It’s like­ly that some of the patients had type 1 dia­betes and there­fore would need to keep tak­ing insulin for the rest of their lives.)

The Amer­i­can Dia­betes Asso­ci­a­tion cur­rent­ly rec­om­mends that peo­ple with type 2 dia­betes eat lim­it­ed por­tions of foods from all of the four food groups. In 2006, how­ev­er, a clin­i­cal tri­al showed that the peo­ple who were ran­dom­ly assigned to eat as much as they liked of low-fat, unre­fined plant foods (75% car­bo­hy­drate by calo­rie) found it eas­i­er to stick to their diet, lost more weight, and made faster progress in revers­ing their dia­betes than did the peo­ple who were ran­dom­ly assigned to fol­low the ADA’s rec­om­men­da­tions.


Behind Barbed Wire_PrintNote: In my book Thin Dia­betes, Fat Dia­betes: Pre­vent Type 1, Cure Type 2, I explain the rela­tion­ship between body weight and blood sug­ar. French doc­tors have always used the term fat dia­betes (dia­bètes mai­gre) to refer to the rel­a­tive mild form of dia­betes that occurs in peo­ple who are at least a lit­tle bit over­weight and that goes away if they lose weight. Fat dia­betes is the body’s way to avoid stor­ing too much of the fat from a fat­ty diet. If you have fat dia­betes, it means that you are a nat­u­ral­ly thin per­son. It means that your body is will­ing to sac­ri­fice everything—your feet, your eye­sight, your kid­neys, and even your life—to keep you from gain­ing any more weight. The solu­tion to this prob­lem is to switch to a low-fat, high-car­bo­hy­drate, high-fiber diet. This diet revers­es type 2 dia­betes and is also good for peo­ple with thin dia­betes (type 1 dia­betes).

Scientists Know that Fatty Diets Cause Blood Sugar Problems

There’s a huge dis­con­nect between what sci­en­tists know about diet and what ordi­nary peo­ple are being taught about diet. Most peo­ple seem to think that peo­ple get dia­betes from eat­ing too much sug­ar or starch. How­ev­er, the sci­en­tists who wrote this arti­cle seem to think that it’s com­mon knowl­edge, at least among sci­en­tists, that peo­ple get type 2 dia­betes from eat­ing too much fat.


Behind Barbed Wire_PrintNote: To learn how fat­ty diets cause blood sug­ar prob­lems, read my book Thin Dia­betes, Fat Dia­betes: Pre­vent Type 1, Cure Type 2.