Sunday, July 9, 2017

Type 2 Diabetes, a Dietary Disease #388: “A Piece of Cake!”

Jason Fung’s recent post, “Towards a Cure©” must have garnered a lot of hits. Dr. Fung is a Toronto-based nephrologist with a busy clinical practice. In addition, his office operates in parallel an on-site and on-line clinic, Intensive Dietary Management (IDM), headed by Megan Ramos. Besides this, Dr. Fung blogs weekly under the aegis of the Institute of Kidney Life Science. He’s a busy guy. He is also a thinker whose hypotheses about the etiology and pathophysiology of type 2 diabetes are shaking things up a bit. It’s pretty exciting stuff.
In “Towards a Cure,” after a brief review of his hypothesis, he gets right to the point with these excerpts:
“The treatments that are known to lead to a cure – fasting, bariatric surgery and low carbohydrate diets – all share one feature in common. They are all treatments that lower insulin. Here’s comes the sudden, horrifying realization. The treatments we have been using for type 2 diabetes were EXACTLY wrong. Too much insulin causes this disease. Giving insulin or drugs that raise insulin will not make the disease better. It will only make it worse!
“This is precisely what happened. Type 2 diabetic patients are generally started on one medication at diagnosis. This only treats the symptoms, so over time the disease gets worse, and the dose is increased. Once the maximum dose is reached, a second, then a third drug is added. After that, insulin is prescribed in ever increasing doses in a desperate bid to control the blood sugar. But, if you require higher and higher doses of medications, your diabetes is not getter better, it is getting worse. The treatment was exactly wrong.
“In type 2 diabetes insulin levels are high, not low. Injecting more insulin is not going to help treat it. Yes, in the short-term, the symptom of high blood sugar is better, but the disease, the diabetes, was continually getting worse. How did we expect that giving more insulin to a patient with too much already would help? Our standard accepted treatments were precisely how NOT to treat type 2 diabetes.”
Of the 3 three treatments that “are known to lead to a cure,” bariatric surgery, which he is NOT advocating, is fraught with unnecessary risk. The other two, fasting (for which he is a strong proponent), and low or very low carbohydrate diets, are not risky…and they are patient controlled. You are in charge. You decide what to eat.
Jason Fung doesn’t have an editor (or a proof reader, apparently).  His posts frequently have typos. As my editor counseled me years ago, let a post percolate for a day and then edit it, and then edit it again the next day and the next. Jason Fung doesn’t have the luxury of time to do that. And neither does he have the benefit of an outside editor. For example, I would have counseled him to edit the penultimate sentence of the first paragraph above to read, “Giving insulin or eating foods that raise insulin will not make the disease better.”
I’m not nit-picking or carping really. Jason Fung is the most refreshing voice out there at the moment. And I think he has the best of all worlds. I’m jealous. He has his nephrology practice. He has a broad-reaching clinic focused on weight management and metabolic syndrome, including insulin resistance, pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes. And he has his Institute in which, as a 1-man think tank he morphs into a research PI (Principal Investigator) each week. What fun! I think his blog title this week, “Towards a Cure,” is less a hook to garner internet hits than a reflection of his own excitement that he may just be on to something.
Maybe his weekly exercise in researching and writing is a ritual that is getting him closer to understanding why “(o)ver 50% of American adults are estimated to have prediabetes or diabetes,” as the lede of this week’s column states. Maybe as more people incorporate low carb or very low carb eating, and fasting, either intermittent or all-day fasting and very low carb eating as I do, it will also enable others to lose weight easily and without hunger, and greatly improve their general health too, as I have. Just maybe…
But that’s up to you. You are in charge of what and when you eat. You decide if you want to try it. I’ll tell you this much: Full-day fasting is easy, when you are KETO-ADAPTED. No hunger. Easy weight loss. “Piece of cake!”

35 comments:

  1. It was a great challenge to treat diabetes few decades back. Although now a days we can easily control diabetes with medicines and diagnosis. Diabetes can also be controlled with the help With the help of therapies. Acupuncture at East West Health you can get the best therapies to control your diabetics. Not only this. Acupuncture therapy also helps you to overcome back pain, weight loss, infertility and many more.

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    1. Thanks, Alisha, but my message is to control type 2 diabetes by diet alone. I know it works. I have been a type 2 for 31 years, and until I changed my diet it was out of control. Since I changed my diet, my diabetes is in remission and I have lost 170 pounds.

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  5. In this diet, the main source of carbohydrates is to be non-starchy fruits and vegetables which will comprise essentially 35-45% of daily calories. It will also have a high fiber content but this is to be derived from the non-starchy vegetables and fruits not grains.DIETS

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  6. Really? Actually, people should be more conscious of arthritis & diabetes treatment. Extreme medicines can be harmful sometime but stem cells therapy is harmless & effective.

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  7. The picture can be depicted as a visual stun so it is smarter to reconsider before hitting the "I'm feeling fortunate" Blueberry Waffles Disease Picture

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  8. Fasting is working for me. to hell with the typos - write Doc write ! this guy knows his stuff - has real world folks to help.. he inspires my confidence.
    k

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    1. You're right, unknown. As I hope you can tell, I too am a great admirer of Dr. Fung's, typos aside. (His latest column is LOADED with them). I too have lost a lot of weight (62 pounds) since his IDF Director Megan Ramos suggested I try IF, and I've been writing about it ever since.

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  9. If your goal is to lose some weight quickly, then pick one and follow it. I guarantee you will lose some weight.800 Calorie HCG Diet Food List

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  11. It is true that they are going to help you in every way , but it is necessary to know whether you want or not to take on your heath. DiabetesLivre

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    1. Good point, Mona. You DO have to be motivated. Because type 2 diabetes is a "silent" and progressive disease, I think most people who are type 2s or pre-diabetic are motivated by how easy it is to lose weight when you are Low Carb or Very Low Carb. I've now lost 185 pounds!

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  12. Very efficiently written information. It will be beneficial to anybody who utilizes it, including me. Keep up the good work. For sure i will check out more posts. This site seems to get a good amount of visitors Diabetes

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  13. Thanks for the nice blog. It was very useful for me. I'm happy I found this blog. Thank you for sharing with us.I too always learn something new from your post. Diabetes Cure

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    1. Thanks, Mario. I'm happy too. That's why I write them.

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  15. Very rare to find such a marvelous blog, I feel lucky reading this.
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    1. You've already pushed your pills once on this site, Mona. That's enough! This site is about Type 2 NUTRITION.

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  19. A "fat burner" is a PERSON, not a pill. The blog does not advertise nor does it encourage others to advertise here. We are about how to eat to become a "fat burner."

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    1. Susan appears to have a belief that Herbal is the "only" cure for a host of diseases, including specifically type 2 diabetes. She is correct that doctor's who prescribe meds do not have the answer. But she is wrong to say 1) Herbs are a cure and 2) especially that they are the "only" cure. Obviously, she doesn't read my column regularly nor has she tried eating Very Low Carb (VLC). Eating VLC WILL put type 2 diabetes in complete remission and keep it there as long as you continue to eat VLC.

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  21. Almost half of all adults with diabetes are aged 40-59 years, the age range during which people are at their most productive phase in life.diabetes kit bag

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  22. This column has attracted a lot of indirect advertisers. I agree with your comment, of course, and have no interest in whatever you are selling. Type 2 diabetes is a dietary disease, and is best treated by changing what you eat. In that way, and that way alone, it can be put in complete remission. There is no "cure" for T2DM, but by clinical standards, my doctor, and any other who follows the Standard of Medical Care, would declare that I am no longer diabetic. They'd be wrong, but that is the way the medical establishment has set up their treatment standard.

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  23. Thank you for taking the time to publish this information very useful! Raul

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  24. Thanks mark/Raul. I just reread it, and it is a pretty good column. I publish every week. Keep reading!

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  25. When you consider it for some time you start to understand that, such as characterizing "life", it isn't at all simple to characterize wellbeing or disease. stroke among Americans

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