Bwa ha. yay, another skeptic for my club that no one knows I'm in!

This stuff has a very emotional resonance for me. For years I tried to get my diabetic-father and family-history-of-heart-disease stepmother to follow Dr. Bernstein's advice. My father was dependent on my stepmother, who is a gourmet cook and believes "statins will keep me from dying from heart disease like my father" and will do "whatever the doctors say, who are you to contradict them."

Years.

Fast forward to summer of 2013, when my dad has passed on from diabetes-related dementia and heart problems and my stepmother finally stopped the useless drugs that kept him alive and a test subject, despite my & my family's wishes. (Religious reasons.) Now that it's all over, I hear she is terribly overweight, has mobility issues, still on statins, and miserable. I tried.

Now I have a brother who has been diagnosed with diabetes as of last year, won't listen to me and my mother's urgings to "eat to your meter" and has a wife and kid in grade school.

Yes. It's personal.

I don't know. I doubt it. Take this list for example: http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=456041

If we accept that this list has all the high-quality experiments on LC to date, then it's unlikely we'll find experiments of at least equal quality that shows LC is bad. We're talking replication of results in that list above. If it was just one or two experiments, then we could argue otherwise. I'm curious too, honestly.

I did get a return email from the Y health coach in charge of our local program (there are already 100s of Ys across the country doing this, 6 in NC) asking me to phone. The program is based on the CDC's Best Practices guidelines, aka an "evidence-based" Diet. CDC must be right up there with Social Security as one of the least user friendly government websites, but found it: http://www.cdc.gov/DIABETES/prevention/index.htm

From an instructors manual:



More of the manuals and handouts here: http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/prevent.../curriculum.htm

To save you from delving into that mess, she explained how Participants learn portion control through using My Plate, learn to reduce fat in their diet, and lose up to 7% of their weight. Then I explained that I lost 20 %, have maintained that loss without calorie counting or My Plate, and eat 70% fat. No response to that, so I suggested she consider offering a LC as an Option for those who need to control blood sugar and lose more weight than 7%. Then she asked me to promote the program to those who need it, told I would do no such thing as there are better ways to prevent diabetes than reducing fat (referred her to Time cover) or eating a plate half filled with grains.
No wonder people on the diabetes message boards aren't successful. If it isn't the ADA diet, this is what our government gives as guidelines to prevent diabetes!

I was just reading a diabetes blog by an woman who is a college professor, and she was once so proud she could manage the disease without medications by exercising and testing and "only taking 1 or 2 servings of carbs instead of 3 or 4."

By the time I bailed in despair, she was back on medications and feeling too lousy to exercise. But this is what the doctors tell them. Most doctors, anyway. So they aren't going to listen to anyone else.

It just breaks my heart.

I had to attend a VA diabetes class taught by a nutritionist to be "compliant" and be able to get test strips for free. I didn't argue with the instructor, but I felt so bad about my fellow diabetics. Several were newly diagnosed and all seemed to be taking in the "moderate" carb/low fat advice. They want to do the right thing, but it's hard when you don't have the correct information.

Sometimes the urge to get up on a chair and scream "Are you all insane!? Does this make ANY SENSE!? PLEASE come talk to me and I can actually HELP!!" is overwhelming. Sigh. But nobody would listen. So it's kind of pointless. Not saying I have all the answers, or could solve everybody's problems. But I do at least know in which direction to point them!

Kind of pisses me off how loud and assured of themselves the "Just eat less and exercise more, cut that nasty fat out of your diet and eat whole grains!" people can be. Sometimes I'll thrown in a "well if it's that easy, how come you can't gain weight without insulin?" or "How do you get in your essential fatty acids or metabolize fat soluble vitamins if you don't eat fat?" But again, about as pointless as talking to a brick wall. Or watching professional soccer. Always it seems as if the "expert" is either an overweight middle aged woman, or a 20-something guy who HAS been successful, because, well... he's a 20-something guy. Imagining we are all so lucky as to be young and hormone issue free I guess?

I have to keep thinking some people like the constant fight. The extra attention of the doctor's visits, the "oh-woe-is-me, another medication" stuff. I just can't imagine why.

A little OT, but I just got laughed out of our office break room by people like this. Two middle aged, overweight men. They lulled me into a false sense of security by mentioning they'd just discovered half n'half has less sugar than whole milk for their coffee. Foolishly I said that the more fat that is taken out of milk, the more sugar is put in. They were skeptical to say the least. And then, I dunno, my mouth started moving before I could stop it and I told them I blend butter into my morning coffee at home. The derisive laughter is still ringing in my ears. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand how strange it sounds because it took me a year to work up to trying it. What pisses me off are the utterly closed minds that don't even want to ask "why?". Okay, crawling back under my safe rock from where I continue to watch know-it-all fat people struggling.

You could put a copy of this week's Time in the break room

It is "insert expletive of your choice" madness that the doctors who are trying to help people regulate sugars in there body do so little to stop them putting sugar in their body.

I do not understand it. I also do not understand why the believe it. In the UK there is absolutely no benefit for the majority of the doctors to be pushing this line of thinking. There might be higher up in the guideline groups and then the mindless monkeys on the shop floor just follow it.

That also drives me crazy.

I was in the acute medical ward, and a T2D was admitted he was on 60 units morning and 50 units dinner, on his bed side table was a bottle of lucozade original (17.5% sugar) which he used incase he felt he had low blood sugar.

The teachings basically follow keep insulin load as constant as possible and eat to that!

Since my OH has been taking in a salad for her lunch she has been being questioned about my diet, and mentioned how much I lost, She is hoping that she can arrange for me to go in and talk to the partners at her practice about it. I want to do it as one of her partners is a leading diabetic researcher, that way I could pick his brain as to the thinking behind the advice.

It is wonderful that a practicing doctor reads this forum.
There are a number of good talks and interviews posted on the diabetes forum that may help when you talk that practice. Dr. Westman listed study results in his recent lecture on diabetes (though the video quality is terrible, it was a good speech EDIT Drat, appears that one has been removed from YouTube) Dr Jay Wortman's interview is good, http://www.dietdoctor.com/how-to-cure-type-2-diabetes-2. and Dr Troy Stapleton for T1.

The circular thinking on the advice is that by the time a patient gets to a diabetes specialist, he has already proved that he cannot control his blood sugars through diet and lifestyle modification. He was likely told after becoming fat or having pre-diabetic numbers to cut back at least on refined sugar and carbs, and now the higher numbers proved he won't change. So he "has to be treated" with medications, and only after starting the meds, is the patient sent to a diabetes nutritionist. The nutritionist then has to prescribe a diet with enough carbs to match up with the insulin to protect the patient from adverse reactions.

Yes, except what the patient was told to do, in order to control those blood sugars, was wrong! Talk about a set-up.

You didn't do the impossible thing we told you to do...

Jaywood. The Nutritonal and Metabolism Society is the best resource for any low carb studies, they have a section on diabetes and one for health professionals. The website isn't updated often, but they have an active Facebook page too.

http://www.nmsociety.org
https://www.facebook.com/groups/276354325431/

One new study http://caloriesproper.com/?p=4697

I don't wonder. I'm convinced of it. They will even tell you that the goal of the American Diabetes Association is to help you manage your food with your meds. You can't tell me they are not in bed with the pharmaceutical companies. The old protocol was to help diabetics stay off of medication and certainly off insulin.

Its good to be here .

Well I say good, but my reading list has massively increased since starting to read on this site!!

But keep the links coming, they are very good.