Posts
A
year and a half ago, as this blog reached the 3,000 page-view mark, my hometown
weekly newspaper advised me that they “had done enuf on carbs and fat.” So, we
both moved on. Since then I have published over 100 more columns online, and
just passed the 30,000 page-view threshold, with a pace of 4,500 per month and
accelerating. I also increased my publication rate to two columns per week. The
newspaper is still published, but is delivered only sporadically and never
forwarded to our winter home in Florida.
In
a parallel universe, I think the world of the Alternative
Hypothesis of Nutrition, of eating Low-Carb High-Fat (LCHF), is also growing
steadily. It’s not exploding exactly, but it is “mushrooming,” that is, popping
up here and there and everywhere in unexpected places and in similar, easily
recognizable forms. This is very gratifying. I am, of course, encouraged and
buoyed by these mostly piecemeal advances. I see them everywhere, on the radio,
on TV, in print, and in the proliferation of web-based resources. I also see
them in my own rapidly growing readership. I am especially gladdened to see so
many “foreign” readers, thanks in part to Google Translate: China, the Ukraine,
Canada, Germany, the UK, Russia, France, Singapore, Australia, Sweden and the
Philippines
One of the basic premises of The Nutrition Debate is that we as
individuals are in charge of our own health because diet is a large part of
health. The conditions that we have always associated with aging are
increasingly being seen as instead being associated with diet. This old idea is
back - “Let food be thy medicine”― Hippocrates. No surprise then, that we are interested in
getting the best dietary advice. Unfortunately, the medical professions – and I
think they would be quick to agree – are not trained in nutrition. They are
trained in diagnosing and treating disease rather than prevention.
Equally
unfortunate, the dietetics profession and the diabetes educators, while trained
in nutrition, are misinformed, to be kind. They (in general) are the last
persons whose advice we should seek and follow, and I do not see this changing
soon. They follow the conventional wisdom of the AHA and the ADA. And large
organizations can be very slow to change. It is such a shame… and so illogical
that these two professions, medicine and dietetics, who should be interested in
science and who should be open minded about unproven, even disproven hypotheses
like the diet/heart hypothesis, are ignoring the increasing body of undeniable,
irrefutable evidence that eating a
low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet is what is making us sick. So you must seek your own dietary
advice.
If
you think this is a daunting prospect, just remind yourself that your doctor
monitors your health and is very results oriented. He is interested in health
outcomes: a good weigh-in and good lab tests – in other words, things that you are in charge of. You make these things happen. Will
he care about how you do it? If he is
surprised at your improved or even stellar results, he may ask you how you did
it. And don’t you be surprised if he is openly skeptical, or offers another
explanation when you tell him. And be pleased if he just quietly accepts your
explanation, even with a wry grin, and maybe an upturned corner of the mouth
and a glint in his eye. Mine was. He was always glad to see me because he knew
it was going to be a “happy” consultation, because with my treatment plan,
my diabetes is not a progressive disease.
If
your doctor is pleased with your health outcome, but not well disposed towards
your methods, consider that you don’t have to tell him how you did it. The fact
that he is stuck in his ways is not your problem. Your
health is your problem;
and hopefully a long term one. He’s gotta do what he’s gotta do. He needs to
follow the standards of practice of his specialty to protect his practice from
a liability lawsuit and to get paid
for his service from whatever insurance you have. There are other
factors at play besides the “best interests” of the patient. Such is the
current state of the health care business.
Big
Pharma, Agribusiness and the Public Health Establishment are all engaged in
this giant corrupt bargain. The media just trumpets their latest marketing
message. The “Alternative Hypothesis”
movement, to borrow a phrase from the iconic Gary Taubes, is made up of serious
health care researchers and practitioners who think “otherwise” so we should
all be grateful for the small but important changes we see. The trend and the
rate are accelerating, just as the readership of this blog is. The only dragon
we have yet to slay is the saturated fat/dietary cholesterol demon, and that one cannot be long for this earth.
We just need to keep hammering out the mantra: “Dietary Cholesterol has nothing
to do with Serum Cholesterol.”
And we need to get more doctors to test for “big fluffy” (Pattern ‘A’) vs.
“small dense” (Pattern ’B’) LDL, and to care more about how to get lower
triglycerides and higher
HDL by diet alone – low
carb dieting – than about lowering high Total Cholesterol
and LDL with statins and
other drugs.
Remember:
The TG/HDL
ratio is an important metric. TG:HDL <1.0 for optimum health and
minimum cardiovascular risk. So is A1c. Heart attack risk falls as the A1c
drops to 5.5 and below. You can set these targets as your goals and reach them
with a low carb approach. “Eating
Clean,” is the way to achieve a healthy heart disease risk (lipid)
profile. And lose weight. And improve blood pressure. And reduce inflammation…
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