Straight from the horses mouth; Dr Bernstein interview

John aka Wallycorker

Well-Known Member
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121
I did re-read his book in January exactly twelve months after reading it the first time. It meant much more to me the second time because of what I had learnt in the meantime. In my opinion the book seems very much more applicable to a Type 1 who needs to improve control of their blood glucose levels than it does to a non-insulin dependent Type 2 such as myself. Despite saying that, I have learnt a great deal from Dr Bernstein's approach.

Personally, I still do not apply all the things that Dr Bernstein advocates - e.g. I eat a lot of fruit and tomatoes. Because of that - and perhaps because I am a non-insulin dependent Type 2 - I am able to maintain a significantly higher carbohydrate intake than the very low levels that he recommends.

However, I must say that of all the stuff I have read on diabetes the Dr Bernstein is the one who seems to understand what is happening best of all - perhaps because he has had diabetes himself for such a long time. Certainly, I think that his principle of what I seem to remember him calling 'the law of small numbers' is the way to deal with our situations - i.e. taking in small amounts of carbohydrate at any one time and then making small adjustments to cater for the changes in blood glucose levels that arise.

In my opinion, the book is certainly worth reading by any person who has diabetes and - very importantly - who wants to try to improve their situation.
 

hanadr

Expert
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8,157
Dislikes
soaps on telly and people talking about the characters as if they were real.
If you have a little knowledge of metabolism, Bernstein makes sense and DUK type diets don't. I still need to get my numbrs down a bit if as he says danger lurks above 5.5%( I'm currently at 5.1%
Hana
 

jopar

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,222
When I read this article last week it did nothing to endear me to him at all... It did how ever leave me with some more questions though...

Even though brief, the questions involving how he arrived at his dietary theories and ideology actually lead me to question his methods even more... concerning foods that mainly extreme low carb diets consider to be freebies and personal choice to how much one decides to eat! i.e salad with permitted ingredients! Bernstein restricts to the max of 2 cups his reasoning on this is based on his/a theory that the stomach expansion upon eating also plays a part in how food impacts on your sugar levels.. If your stomach expands with food (doesn’t matter what type carb or not) this effects not only the adsorption rate but also have greater impact on the blood glucose rate! Remember that any food that you eat, will only have a total of 12g’s of carbs total so he’s suggesting that take two different meals that contains a total of 12g’s of carbs but one is larger than the other, that because the larger meal will stretch your stomach a lot more than the other one, that this will then impact on your blood glucose causing it to raise higher...
Hmmm, How come those that chose a extreme low carb diet different to Bernstein’s regime can chose to eat as much freebie salad but don’t suffer this effect?

If his theory is correct, then surely if I am smaller in height and stature, this would mean I have in ratio a smaller stomach! So 2 cups of his salad wouldn’t stretch his stomach to create his suggested effect, and then my stomach being smaller in ratio would suffer a larger degree of stretching creating his effect?? So shouldn’t I be looking into at what amounts I can tolerate before his suggested affect kicks in?

I found his comments on his personal dislike of insulin pump therapy to be surprising and to an extent lacking in substance.
I am surprised that he’s discouraging the use and doesn’t research there benefit for the users... Has it can negate a lot of problems those that follow his regime experience... From having to use a 3 way multiply insulin’s and how these multiply insulin are used throughout the day to maintain control... negating the need to dilute insulin strengths to match regime, as pumps can deliver as little as 0.05 of a unit of insulin and delivered at varying rates over a specified time... But he ignores this by saying

That he visited a pump manufacturing company... Now bear in mind the insulin pump manufacturing company will be a company that is commissioned to manufacturer a insulin pump, to a designated specification supplied by another company, who’s designed it, selling and promoting it... But by this visit he can find out data of diabetic pump user, note he uses a vulnerable aspect of the female gender (self image) that females get winged hips, a statement that is below the belt! And something I haven’t heard female pumper to complain about, and I certainly don’t have this problem.. As to problems with scar tissues affecting adsorption many pumpers would have gone to the pump from injecting for this very problem due to effects of multiply injections as the other problem he mentions...

The cynical in me would say, this interview was more about ‘selling his book’ as throughout the interview replies were ‘you find it in the book’ and embedded with a lot of reminders of probable outcomes, which as he’s being interviewed on the behalf of fellow diabetics, who are already know the probable affects of bad control, don’t need constant reminding...
Just a note here, isn’t it about time that he up-dated his publicity photo, that one has been around for years now!