The paper version of our article was only published today which possible explains the preponderance of non-doctor interest so far. Another reason is the huge number of intelligent folk internationally who feel let down by conventional medical advice around diets for people with diabetes, This explains the large number of published responses to the article (32 so far, from all over the world) -many of which are very moving and can be found here:
http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h4023/rapid-responses
I thought I would reproduce just one response that shows at least one other doctor agrees with what we are doing- though I notice this response has already had 42 likes!
Re: A patient request for some “deprescribing”
As an obesity medicine physician who uses low carb high fats diets in all of my patients I cheer the publication of this article. Nowhere in medical school or after is the concept of taking someone OFF medications discussed. Why should we? Patients are supposed to just get sicker, right? This attitude is not only pervasive but more important WRONG. They get sicker only when they are taught to eat a diet that makes them sicker. Unfortunately, this is the low fat diet pushed by all so called "patient advocacy groups" such as the American Diabetes Association. When taught to eat a whole foods low carb high fat diet patients do get better and "deprescribing" is a daily occurrence in our clinic. We need to stop using medicine to treat food! Doing this requires teaching the patients why and not just telling them what to do. The idea that patients don't want to or are not capable of change is not true if you teach them to do something where they can actually see change.
01 September 2015
Sarah J Hallberg
Physician
IU Health
1500 Salem Street Lafayette, Indiana 47904