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In 2010, when I started to write about nutrition – specifically, nutrition for type 2 diabetics – I had no idea that I would write 1,000 columns. After all, my message was really quite simple: 1) take charge of your own type 2 diabetes health, 2) eat very low carb and 3) lose weight without hunger…and your type 2 diabetes will take care of itself. Your diabetes will quickly go into remission, and you will become healthier and happier with all your outcomes. The scale and your lab tests will testify to your success.
And that all proved
to be true.
But it was also true
that this Very Low Carb thing was a new paradigm. As such, at the time, it was
not sanctioned by the medical establishment. In fact, it went against
the Standard of Care. Clinicians were taught to treat a somewhat higher than
normal blood sugar as a precursor to a metabolic disease condition which they
named Pre-diabetes, to get a billing code. Then they established a new standard
for defining full-blown type 2 diabetes (a different billing code), and just to
be sure they were covered, they established that “obesity” was classified as a
disease so it too could get its own billing code.
To treat these
conditions, observable on any office scale and by simple laboratory tests, they
could prescribe existing and newly developing pharmaceuticals to “treat” these symptoms
of disease. And as the conditions worsened (because they had
designated type 2 diabetes as a “progressive” disease), they prescribed higher
doses and, with the passage of time, new classes of meds to treat the disease.
Of course, these
physicians also advised patients to “diet and exercise” (“eat less and
move more”), but when that didn’t work and the disease “progressed”, they
blamed the patient for not sticking to the prescribed diet. On
the patient’s chart it said “patient non-compliant.” It never occurred to the
physician that it was the “prescription,” the diet
recommended by USDA/HHS, Big Pharma, and the AMA, AHA, ADA, etc. that was the
underlying problem…in point of fact, the cause of these chronic
diseases.
So, in 2010, my storm-tossed
message was lost in this sea of conflicting messages. I had to repeat it over
and over, as it turned out, 1,000 times. But I did get some encouragement.
Among the first, the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) stopped
recommending that we eat no more than 300 grams of cholesterol a day. “Dietary
cholesterol” was, “no longer considered a nutrient of concern.”
Another, the 2020
DGA declared that dietary fat be no longer limited to 30% of daily input.
That was a tacit admission that eating fat didn’t make you fat. And, with
protein at 10-15%, and carbs already at 55-60% (and by implication the leading cause
of obesity and Insulin Resistance, this delimiting of fat allowed for fewer
carbs. Unfortunately, they then doubled down by pushing for more
“factory-made” fat (vegetable and seed oils), aka PUFA’s, instead of Saturated
Fat naturally present is animal protein
Finally, the ADA, after
years of opposing low carbohydrate diets as dangerous fads and hard to stick
to, with “not enough long-term randomized controlled trials,” etc., the ADA
relented and admitted that low carb diets were now an acceptable eating pattern
for blood sugar regulation and weight loss.
But, in this storm-tossed
sea, Big Pharma is fighting back. Recently, Oprah Winfrey had a primetime television
network special touting the latest craze in weight loss drugs: a new class of injectable
drug called a GLP-1. Two brands, Ozempic and Mounjaro, are among a passel in a
crowded field that is very expensive ($1,000/mo.) and not covered by medical insurance
(yet), and that’s why Oprah is schilling for them. She said, “don’t blame
yourself” for being fat. She pointedly added, obesity is a “disease.” The 1-hour
show was an infomercial for Big Pharma designed to get the taxpayer to “pay the
piper.”
