It's an interesting perspective,
@Winnie53 , and I'm grateful for your reply.
I, too, spent the last 5 years volunteering in a non-profit (though, luckily, fundraising was but a fraction of our time - annual monitoring was a far bigger bugbear) and the thing I learned from the people we worked for - families with disabled children - is that if you give people the right information, they'll generally follow it. And the more authority that information has when it's delivered, the faster that process will be.
I sort of want to quote the Guardian article from an earlier post verbatim here, but it's a long read (
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy-robert-lustig-john-yudkin) and basically posits that our high-and-climbing incidents of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and various other health-service-destroying nasties are a result of bad information that was taken up by those in authority and handed out to the masses.
There is a particularly interesting (and relevant) paragraph:
Look at a graph of postwar obesity rates and it becomes clear that something changed after 1980. In the US, the line rises very gradually until, in the early 1980s, it takes off like an aeroplane. Just 12% of Americans were obese in 1950, 15% in 1980, 35% by 2000. In the UK, the line is flat for decades until the mid-1980s, at which point it also turns towards the sky. Only 6% of Britons were obese in 1980. In the next 20 years that figure more than trebled. Today, two thirds of
Britons are either obese or overweight, making this the fattest country in the EU. Type 2 diabetes, closely related to obesity, has risen in tandem in both countries.
The article goes on to demonstrate how the "Low fat, more carbs!" lobby gained control and, as a direct result of that powerfully-delivered advice, people followed it.
I have no doubt at all that if the advice changed suddenly to reflect actual nutritional science, people would manage it. And even if all people didn't (and of course they won't), at least the burden on our essential services would diminish.
You can penalize diabetics for not making appropriate lifestyle changes, but you can't force them to do so. The majority of diabetics don't want to give up their sugary and starchy foods.
I would say that the majority of diabetics (reading about the experiences of so many people when it comes to engaging with health services on this site alone) don't understand why they need to. And if they do, they're not then given the (relatively cheap compared to amputation, dialysis and transplant alternatives) tools to see the effect giving that stuff up has upon them.
I swear, if every T2 upon diagnosis was given a meter and the suggestion that they cut out carbs for 2 weeks - even without the tricky scientific information - we'd not even be having this conversation. Honestly, direct them to this website, prepare and care for them through any ketoflu they experience and, boom, you've got a lifer.
It's not about punishing lifestyles, or even statutory services who followed advice given them by "nutritional experts" (again, the article clearly demonstrates the bias and fashionability of nutritional "science" and how much of what we're told isn't based upon any science at all.), but giving people half a chance to stop poisoning themselves and their families and choose a lifestyle based upon honestly-gained information. If they're given the facts and still choose to eat carbs, that's their affair, and we live in a country that allows personal choice, whether good or bad. But as it is, LCHF is dismissed as a faddy or crash diet by the NHS and the information that people really need to heal themselves isn't getting out there. They/we have no choice at all.
I think this forum very clearly demonstrates that people, when given the correct information in a format they can understand, will try to do the "right" thing. And, sure, there's personal choice and the dopamine feedback loop and decades of imprinted nutritional advice to take into account, but everyone here has overcome that and reduced their personal risk of complication, so why shouldn't we expect that anyone can? Are we saying people on this site are super-special? No. We're all just people.
But currently, it's not even being talked about. There is absolutely zero discussion of another way to manage diabetes. Not in the press, not on TV, not on the NHS website, nowhere. And yet the answer to the imminent NHS crisis is carb reduction! The impact that carbs have on your body - from birth - has been and continues to be carefully hidden until some maverick like Dr Unwin or John Ludkin come along and risk their careers and reputations trying to drag that truth into the light.
That's not science. And that's not supply-and-demand. That's an industrial drug ring, working hard and paying good money to ensure we get addicted as infants and stay addicted to what they're peddling. We've been raised to be addicts, and that's not a clear and unbaised choice that anyone got to make. While I generally don't believe in "evil", I genuinely don't believe these companies have the interests of their consumers at heart. And I'm not saying "Sue them out of spite!" but "Sue them because they've been culpable for 40 years for a conspiracy that is still causing millions of deaths and money is the only language they speak".
I really admire your support group endeavour, Winnie. I wish you every luck (and whatever assistance I can offer from a distance). But you're swimming against the tide in a pool filled with people who just don't understand how the information they've been given all their lives is wrong. The authority of the message is too great to easily overcome; by the time you're facing life-changing complications, I guess you figure you've got not much else to lose, so why not think about low carbing?
But until this very simple, highly effective, drug-free solution is given the time of day,
nothing is going to change. And yes, I think we should
all be angry about that.
@Oldvatr : That sugar report absolutely blows my mind, too. It even acknowledges that, though carbs are made of sugar (excepting dietary fibre) it's only going to focus on "free sugars":
SACN has now published a comprehensive review of the scientific evidence concerning carbohydrates and health. A feature of this report is its focus on sugars.
So it's not actually concentrating on - or even looking at - carbs at all, but sliding past the starches (which it acknowledges are also made of sugars, but they're not "free" sugars and so, for the purpose of this particular review, don't count) and looking only at the refined white stuff.
Also, they don't actually list the research papers and studies they included in the literature they have based their review upon. So you can't tell whether they selected their source material with or without bias, though one paragraph ion particular sort of gives the game away:
While the evidence considered by SACN did not indicate an association between sugars intake and incidence of type 2 diabetes, evidence from prospective cohort studies did show that greater consumption of sugars-sweetened drinks is associated with increased risk type 2 diabetes.
Sorry. Went on a bit of a rant at this. Looks like my son is going to get a diagnosis of T2 soon, too. And all because I followed nutritional advice. People should be angry about this. We've been lied to and literally poisoned for years - even after the people who came up with the advice in the first place admitted that it was probably incorrect (also in the Guardian article).
