A couple of blogs ago I asked, why our basic metabolic, hormonal response to food (fat storage v. fat burning) is not more widely known and accepted as basic human physiology in the nutrition world, let alone from our doctors?
2500 years ago Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine proclaimed that it was incumbent upon physicians to 1.) Prevent disease 2.) Cure disease & 3.) Relieve pain in their patients. We have spent little to no time on #1, and our current paradigm with #2 & #3 is to be best friends with our pharmacists. But the overarching theme for doctors is to ‘do no harm.’ It is on this point that while good intentioned, many doctors simply spend their days writing prescriptions to allay patient’s maladies with little thought to any of the root causes of their patient’s illnesses.
A short time ago two doctors wrote editorials in the WSJ (June 29, 2019) responding to a feature article, “Heart Disease Roars Back” (page one, June 22, 2019). Their commentary fairly succinctly summarizes the current dietary mess, metabolic dysfunction and ill health our country is in:
“Only when we accept as a society that it isn’t obesity or diabetes, but carbohydrates-sugar – and starch – that are killing us are we truly going to be able to address the problem. Until then, we will remain trapped in an eat-less-do-more, calories-in, calories-out and exercise, ‘statins and metformin in our muesli’ environment that will result in billions more people world-wide suffering and dying.” – Rob Cywes, M.D., Ph.D.
And this…
“Perhaps the medical establishment needs to reconsider its war on animal fat. Humans evolved for a fatty diet; only recently have sugars and starches become widely available. Most adults won’t restrict fats without increasing carbohydrates – we have to get our calories somewhere. A diet without either animal fat or sweeteners is very boring, so we’ve gotten millions of Americans off meat and onto a high-carb diet. I would like to see more research on low-glycemic-load diets in our population of overweight adults, especially diabetics.” – John M. Rathbun, M.D.
Heads up…there are many, many studies that have accomplished this, and are hiding in plain sight. For example, the RCTs (random control trials – the gold standard for research studies) that researchers at Virta Health employ are available for all to see (including a long list of previous trials related to low carb diets for diabetics prior to Virta’s work) and clearly demonstrates that diabetes is a completely reversible disease. Hundreds and hundreds of people have reclaimed their lives by following their simple, healthy, savory low carbohydrate menus back to health.
Like the doctors at Virta Health, slowly but surely, there are more and more practitioners who are becoming acutely aware of our counterproductive dietary guidelines (based on epidemiological studies, not real science & headed by committee members who have significant conflicts of interest) and standard of care causing a myriad of problems – and who are able and willing to do something about it. But they are the exceptions, not the rule at this point. And who can blame them really when there is so much conflicting and weak science undermining them by none other than the AHA, ACC, & National Academy of Science? But similar to any political leanings you may have, this is one hot topic area where these groups continue to use weak science (and in some cases outright fake news) rather than evidence based science to substantiate their claims – and to bolster the status quo and big pharma.
Meanwhile, could the root cause for the myriad of illnesses and maladies we experience be from nothing more than what we’re putting in our mouths? Could it really be that simple? I contend that indeed it is.