DUK's new position statement on Low carbing.

[catherinecherub]

Hi viv,

Woo is used by scientific skeptics for pseudoscience, alternative medicine and new age beliefs according to Wikipedia. We have learned something today.

There is more than one way to skin a cat and there is no one way to control diabetes. I am equally satisfied with my way of eating, it is not the wrong way, it is my way. My results are also good, lost my excess weight within 6 months, am healthy,(touch wood), have been medication free since diagnosis February 2003 and include all food groups. Some extremists think that low carb/high fat is the only way to go and it gets tedious. We can mange our diabetes but not other peoples and we have choices as to how we do it. It does not make us enemies, we are fighting diabetes and not each other.

 

[noblehead]

Fruit isn't safer for us diabetics simply because our ability to process it is already impaired.

Sorry AliB but I to stop reading your post after the above sentence! You'll find most members on this forum include fruit in their daily diet, its a rich source of fibre and essential nutrients all of which are beneficial to the body.

Nigel

 

[AlcalaBob]

Hi Viv,

I too eat almost no processed food as I live in Andalucia and there are loads of good fresh vegetables and meat so we don't need to. I too dislike the additives and flavourings that get put into processed food but there really is a lot of hype associated with it. Some folks decry anything with an E number yet the vast majority of E numbers refer to "natural" substances. Even gold has an E number. Additives are not automatically to be considered harmful. The point is that we have to have some understanding of the metabolism of these substances before we can make a judgement. For me, fresh food tastes so much better and many of the additives put into processed food are there to stop it going off, and to add flavour after the processing has taken a lot of it away.

But for many people on limited incomes, processed food is much cheaper but still has nutritional value. You have to look at the contents to make the judgement. Unfortunately, people who gravitate towards fanciful theories of how the human body works often mislead and confuse people into thinking that there are harmful toxins around which necessitate typically two things: some process of detoxification; and some dietary supplements. It's a successful marketing strategy but one based on a confused understanding of human biology. In fact, with a balanced diet you don't need any supplements. And toxins do not accumulate in the body.

The bottom line is that whether you eat unprocessed or processed food, all diabetics have to be aware of the contents and what it will do to your blood sugar level. A balanced diet is important covering the requirements of nutrition including vitamins, essential elements and essential fatty acids but you do not need supplements to get those, just an ordinary balanced diet. If we keep an eye on the carbohydrates and maintain good BG control, it doesn't matter whether we are eating processed or unprocessed food. I prefer fresh food but not everyone has the option.

I do have a science background and researched the area of Woo for a book a couple of years ago. A free download of the PDF is available at:

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=11071&p=188797#p188797

Given that this is not marketing because it's free, hopefully the link can be left in. There's a chapter on Food Woo which should clear up a number of common confusions and misinformation.

 

[viviennem]

I concur wholeheartedly and will have a look at your Woo link later - I've never heard of that expression! I did know about E numbers not all being bad, though I'm glad you mentioned it because it's a useful thing to bring out into the public domain occasionally. It's reading labels again, isn't it?

The only real footnote I would add is that a limited income does not stop a person eating good fresh food. I live on my State Pension, but I prioritise - once my bills are paid, most of my income goes on food! Now I've got a reasonable garden, I shall be growing some of my own veg this year - though of course I now have time to do that. I am sparing on clothes (that doesn't mean I run round half-naked - just scruffy! :lol: ) and I don't have holidays - but then, where I live, I don't need hols.

As usual, "we are all different". Or, as Mr Spock would have it, "Infinite diversity in infinite combination" - IDIC.

Now that dates me! :lol:

Viv 8)

 

[AliB]

I only made the reference to the fruit because Bob mentioned pineapple. Many people can't cope with fruit very well - I know it sends my BG into orbit.

The link was to an article on sugar - 'Sugar the sweetest poison of all'. It is widely copied across the net - that particular site was picked for no particular reason. I think I would be hard-pressed to find ANY site that doesn't carry some kind of advertising......

Whilst I do believe that low-carb can be very beneficial for a lot of diabetics - and for non-diabetics too, my main thrust is to eat food as natural as possible and as nutritional as possible. Even today, the Daily Mail has run an article about carcinogenic substances found in a lot of common foods, and the advice of the scientists in the study is to eat fresh natural food. I won't add the link because of the advertising.

As far as toxins are concerned, just today I picked up a post on another forum by a lady who was a toxicology lab technician. She said she regularly had to check for toxins in breast tissue - and regularly found it. So please don't tell me that toxins aren't stored in the body. Those who diet are told not to lose weight too fast because the rapid release of toxins into the body can make them ill - that happened to me when I lost weight rapidly - it is very true. I got very sick.

I do not have any letters after my name. I do not have any scientific 'qualifications'. But I do have a very enquiring mind. I am an analyst. I do not take anything at face value. I do not believe everything I am told. I question and research. I am not so arrogant to dictate that what I believe is the truth and the whole truth. But I will not let go of a point until I have crossed the T's. The fact that I do not have any letters after my name does not make me any less intelligent or have any smaller a brain...... In fact, not having the constraints of the letters actually gives me more freedom to question and think outside the box.

We are too quick to accept what we are told. To believe the received wisdom whether it is right or not. For over 60 years we have been told that saturated fat is bad. But there are studies starting to come out ofthe woodwork now that are gradually disproving this and pulling it apart. We cannot assume anything. Not even that the germ theory is true. Germs have never been proved to be the cause of disease (see the blog by Prof Tara C Smith - Aetiology).

Many of the studies that received wisdom is based on are proving to be flawed (The Economist - Prof. John Ioannides). I cannot, nor do I attempt to change that received wisdom, but perhaps I can just make people think.

I won't go any further with this thread. I don't have to defend myself, or patronise anyone else in order to get my view across. I only hope that those who have open minds might just take some time to think and do their own research.

I don't post on here very often. Because I think ouside the box I invariably get jumped on by those who believe themselves to be more clever/knowlegeable/qualified/etc., than I. Who will only believe in something that has a scientific study attached to it. Who may consider me to be an ignorant and misguided idiot. But I can see my body healing on this diet and although all I wish is for others to be able to share those benefits, and that is my only reason for posting, I don't think reversing degenerative health is anything to laugh about or ridicule at all.

 

[AlcalaBob]

AliB, no-one is ridiculing you or making out that you are not intelligent. What is happening is that the ideas you have presented are being challenged because they are demonstrably incorrect.

Many people with the best of intentions are mislead by what is presented on websites and in the press. The Daily Mail for example, has an amazing record of writing articles which link almost everything on the planet with cancer, so much so that there is even a website which tracks these claims, checks them and debunks them.

I completely agree with you that science doesn't know everything but that is not the same thing as knowing nothing. We know a great deal about the metabolism of carbohydrates and these are not simply opinions on a par with other contrary opinions. To be taken seriously in science and medicine, they have to be evidenced. It is the scientific knowledge we have that allowed diabetes to be diagnosed and treated and without that knowledge very many people would have needlessly died. We owe a great deal to that scientific work.

We should be wary of dropping that scientific understanding and giving too much credence to ideas that don't have the support of evidence. Arguments against germ theory, for example, undermine the very basis of treating many diseases - those who oppose germ theory have to propose some ineffective methods of treating bacterial infections. That's seriously misinforming people in need of effective treatment.

I think you'll find that scientists are very open to new ideas but they insist on evidence. They are incredibly open-minded but have strict criteria before they take something seriously, and that's a really good thing. Sometimes, new evidence comes to light to overturn accepted ideas and scientists welcome that. But just claiming something is untrue isn't enough - it needs evidence.

Please don't think anyone is trying to ridicule you because I don't think that's anyone's intention. But the ideas you have proposed go very much against scientific knowledge which has shown itself to be accurate and effective, and it's the potential to mislead that was the main concern.

All the best with the low-carbing. It's benefiting me enormously and I'm sure loads of other too.

 

[primmers]

The problem with scientific research is funding. What research is commissioned depends on who holds the purse strings and how they prioritise funding the various research proposals put to them. Funding from pharmaceutical companies is unlikely to look at ways of ameliorating problems that don't include a pharmaceutical profit generating possibility. Universities are more driven by the need to generate income than was once the case so they also look to pharmaceutical outcomes. Goverment are largely funded by businesses that profit under the status quo (it's no coincidence that the move to introduce snack vending machines into schools and the abolition of nutritional standards for school meals happened under a Government that had huge amounts of funding from United Biscuits), this impacts on them making funding decisions that endanger the profitability of the funders. Research demonstrating a conclusive link between low consumption of carbs and meddled-with food stuffs and improved health outcomes is highly unlikely to get funded, unless someone like one of us wins the Euro Millions and decides to spend it on such research.

So, although the absence of research means that we can't say that the quality of food and it's impact on health hypothesis is correct or incorrect, it doesn't mean there isn't a valid research question to be answered. It means that we have to argue with politicians for funding for research that answers the questions we want answered, not the questions Glaxosmithkline or United Biscuits want answered.

 

[AlcalaBob]

Here's a link to just the document about food Woo rather than the site hosting the free pdf download. You can simply read it online without going anywhere near the blog. This is just a direct link to the information: (Google-Land of Woo or check out 'Other Forum's and Blogs' here)

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=11071&p=188797#p188797

I hope that doesn't violate any forum policy necessitating the removal of the link.

 

[primmers]

I'm not anti science or anti medicine, I'm on statins and will happily concede the part they played, alongside dietary changes and Benecol, in getting my blood lipids back in a normal range. I'm delighted that the science existed to cut my risk of premature death from cardiac event. Having said that I am prepared to concede that it looks like some folk have bad side effects from statins. To me that indicates not that they should no longer be prescribed at all, nor they should be prescribed willy nilly and hang (deny) the consequences, but that we should be looking at the folk with side effects to see whether there are common factors that might facilitate more appropriate targetted prescribing.

Scepticism about the politics and mechanics of funding research is not synonymous with being a Woo-head. Ben Goldacre's Bad Science column has plenty to say about the way 'Big Pharma' misuse science to protect their profit margins, taking that on board doesn't make me a flat earther. And just because Gillian McKeith spouts nonsense, the proposition that an item of food that would be unfit for human consumption after a week might actually be better for you/ easier for your body to metabolise than one that has a shelf life of 6 months because it has been 'improved' is not automatically nutty.

We don't have enough robust research to convince the powers that be that our anecdotally based belief that lowering carbs is an effective strategy is correct. We need research that looks at that in comparison with the modern diet currently advocated instead of blindly accepting the status quo as benign. We need research that looks at whether different strategies are effective for different groups of diabetics, that stops treating human bodies as identical and interchangeable. We're slowly starting to see a recognition that there are significant differences between different groups of humans - for instance the heart medication licensed in the US for use with African Americans but not caucasian Americans, pointing to recognition that inate physiological differences can have an impact on biochemistry. Lets look for the patterns and check out which of them are significant.

I have recent experience of working with obese women in a healthcare research environment. Some of them were obese because of pathological eating behaviour stemming from mental health problems, low self esteem and horrific histories, some of them made very poor dietary and exercise choices and didn't give a monkeys about the immediate or long term effect of this and some of them had ostensibly healthy diets in line with DoH recommendations (possibly questions about portion control but generally eating ok stuff) and could give a very good account of how the various machines in the gyms they visited worked but nonetheless did not lose weight. Just suppose that it's possible those women were not all lying about what they ate and how much they exercised but were actually pathologically reacting to the recommended diet. It's too easy, and frankly unscientific, to say that that simply isn't possible, that they are obese solely because of a simple mismatch between calories in and calories out.

My own experience over the past ten or so years is that even on carefully counted calories and increased exercise regimen I have found it very slow and difficult to lose weight. I have records showing, for example, over a four month period, that I was cycling 20 minutes each way to and from work five days a week (a hilly route), eating a low fat, low glycaemic load, low calorie diet. During that time I lost a grand total of four pounds - less than four ounces a week compared with the 1-2 lb that is apparently a sensible expectation. Since lowering my carbs, even the low GL ones, I have lost in excess of a stone in about 14 weeks. I'm not limiting the fat I use in cooking like I used to and have increased the amount and variety of dairy stuff I eat. I'm aiming for (though not always reaching) 10 000 steps a day and my weight loss has been much more in line with the recommended targets. Some of it might be due to a reduction in caories (I don't know for sure what my intake now is, I gave up counting and am concentrating on eating to hunger) but from my years of calorie counting, which has left me with a good feel for relative values I just don't believe I am eating significantly fewer calories than I was when I was seeing such pitiful weight losses. I know that (because I did it a couple of weekends ago during a family crisis) I could eat starchy carbs all this weekend, get nowhere near the 7000 excess calories needed to achieve a weight gain of 2 lb but still see a weight gain of 2+lb when I stepped on the scales on Monday morning and have it go back down again by Wednesday by cutting right back on starchy carbs - I know it's more than calories in minus calories out. I just don't know exactly what, because the science to work that out isn't being funded.

 

[Unbeliever]

Fantastic post Primmers. Couldn't agree more with your analysis. I am sure that all the posts in this discussion will stimulate readers to think more about these matters.

I find everyone's opinion useful - It doesn't matter whether people agree or not - the discussion is very valuable in mny ways.

Thanks to all who have contributed and given the rest of us the benefit of their thoughts or experience.

 

[betic]

i find alib,s posts quite refreshing and as he says "out of the box". my healthcare nurse was that busy telling me about the dangers of low carbing when i was diagnosed with type 2 that even i was concerned that the professionals in all their ultimate wisdom with backed up medical evidence couldnt be that wrong ? As i was a big built fellow who uses the gym and weights regularly, i was refferrred to a dietician who gave me a diet sheet with potatoes, fruit and believe it or not 10 rounds of bread per day!! whilst they happily prescribed me metformin whilst on this diet things continued to go wrong and they insisted that i should add further medication.
I am like alib in that i dont take anything at face value and looked into my options, which included low carb and natural food products. i now dont take any medication, and , for the last eight months only eat fresh salad and grilled chicken as my mainstay meals, and anything else i eat i insist is as close as nature intended as possible, my health has improved so much in that time as a result of this, including quite bad deramatitus, which surfaced after the diabetes, and has also nearly cleared now as a result of this natural diet.
Lets be a little fair here in that without out of the box contributions like alibs, low carbing would still be frowned upon by the so called specialists and medical superiors of todays nhs.
whilst drugs do have a position in modern medicine, i feel that today far too much is dispensed, without studying the underlying causes. As has been pointed out, the body is incredible at healing itself given the right substances, and certainly in my case i was going on a downhill spiral following the "correct" advice of my gp and his subordinates.
we really dont have to look very far for information about substances in our foods that really are not good for us, it is everywhere, msgs, carceniogenic substances , we could go on for hours,
and yes, the body can easily remove it, but there must come a point where the amount becomes harmful?
so i am going to join alibs throne on this one and just say it has worked for me for the better, and, as it may help another diabetic live a longer and fuller life, then lets give the guy airtime, and not gun him down, as in the future there might be a lot more studies that prove him right!