A recent research article (see reference below) touts the benefits of reducing carbohydrate intake for the treatment of Type 2 Diabetes. Type 2 Diabetes is sometimes known as acquired diabetes, meaning it is not a disease that you are born with, but rather it is a condition that is acquired during a person’s lifetime, usually due to their lifestyle/eating habits. It is strongly associated with obesity and chronic high blood sugar.
The article lists some truly spectacular results achieved by a large group of diabetic patients by way of the mere reduction of carbohydrate intake: 94% reduction in insulin use, a 100% reduction in the use of these patient’s diabetes medications and a 12% reduction in body weight ! The overlooked, but most important, point: But the most important lesson of the study, by my point of view, is not the wonderful results achieved by these diabetic patients. The most important lesson, from a cautionary-tale perspective, becomes clear when you compare these wonderful results with the results of a second group of diabetic patients who were provided instead with the "usual" medical care. This second group saw NO reduction in medication use, NO reduction in blood sugar levels and NO reduction in body weight! This was after a full 12 months of the “usual” medical care. You have to wonder what kind of care is being provided to the millions of patients across the country with Type 2 Diabetes. If they are being provided with the “usual” care (as, by definition, they most certainly are) then they are clearly being provided with care that is wholly inadequate and ineffective. In fact, I would take it even further to say that it is possible that a significant percentage of Type 2 Diabetics are actually being worsened by the “usual” medical care, since it is reasonable to expect at least some patients with Type 2 Diabetes to actually improve on their own, if they were provided no formal medical treatment. However, since the patients in this research study that were in the group that were provided with “usual” did not improve at all, it appears that the “usual” care is harming more people than it is helping. I have personally treated a great many patients with Type 2 Diabetes who were attempting to follow the dietary advice of their physician and using the nutritional supplement drinks recommended or prescribed by their physician. In most cases, the advice of their physician and these dietary supplements (pushed by their physicians) appeared to be, at best, perpetuating the eating habits and lifestyles that led to their diabetic condition in the first place. At worst, these “usual care” therapies, appeared to me to be making these patients worse, at an accelerated pace. Just one more addition to the long list of spectacular failures presided over by the entrenched medical establishment. Diabetes Therapy (2018) 9:583-612 Effectiveness and Safety of a Novel Care Model for the Management of Type 2 Diabetes at 1 Year: An Open-Label, Non-Randomized, Controlled Study Comments are closed.
|
Peter Guske PT
Archives
February 2019
Categories
|