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Ivor Cummins in keto debate

Watching this debate is a good exercise in learning what we're up against as we work to educate our health care providers. It's tough going. We need bridge builders like Phinney and Cummins to accomplish this goal, also the examples of patients who clearly benefit from the diet over time. I'm 20 minutes in. It's painful to listen to. Going to try to push through...

[Edited to correct spelling errors.]
 
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Okay, I pushed through. It got easier.

Nice to see Dr. Eric Westman joining Phinney and Cummins in responding to one of the doctors on the panel from his seat in the audience. All three did an excellent job of responding to all concerns discussed. They genuinely strived to respectively educate the doctors in the room which I really appreciated.

Most of the discussion was focused on initially increasing LDL levels when starting the diet and losing weight. Also on assumed cardiovascular risk, with some focus on the transient increase in uric acid levels when starting the keto diet, gout, and finally on whether the diet is appropriate for those who have had their gall bladder removed.

What's nice about these type of debates is picking up on details here and there that are new to me.

Thanks for posting this HSSS.
 
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Very little about keto and gallbladder, most of them refused to respond!
Some people are fine after but I was seriously fat intolerant when I had my gallbladder removed, and it only settled a little. Yet my GP didn't even blink about that when I said I wanted to try low carb, or the fact that I had a fatty liver and raised liver markers at the time I was diagnosed with T2.

I found that I could eat more fat after a few weeks on low carb, as my liver lost fat and my triglycerides went down, but I doubt I could do full keto yet.

(The staff at the surgery still insist on calling my diet high fat but it isn't, yes more fat than I ate for years but not that high.)
 
There was certainly one anti <cough, cough, the male> who had a really hard time following the rules of civilized debate

All the other speakers were very respectful with each other and the nephrology dietician made some very good points about personalised diets, IMO. I'm even more impressed with Ivor after watching this.
 
Amazing video. Thanks you for sharing.

That guy is an obnoxious, loathsome idiot. Absolutely shocking. Not there to debate anything at all. Just the typical pill-vending-machine, know-it-all, uninformed loud mouthed fool. Resorted to doing the mic-drop on the table after each attempted retort when he was getting schooled. Comedy
 
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Indy51 said:
I'm even more impressed with Ivor after watching this.
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Me too especially as apparently he was only asked to participate an hour before it started...

As for the Doc who kept going on about LDL being the only hard data.. If it is so important how come in 99% of cases it is "calculated" and rarely actually measured.. I'm surprised no-one brought this up..
We know that in certain situations the calculations can be misleading.. and there are at least 2 different equations to calculate it..odd that.
 
bulkbiker said:
If it is so important how come in 99% of cases it is "calculated" and rarely actually measured.. I'm surprised no-one brought this up..
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In fairness I think it was briefly mentioned. Might have been Phinney. Not that it mattered - the guy was clearly there solely as a staunch defender of all pharmaceutical solutions. Everything else was just mumbo jumbo from his point of view. He was never going to be swayed an inch by anything that didn't support statin prescriptions. He all but admitted that he would rather lower LDL than remove the diabetes! A cast iron plonker of the highest order.

Fortunately, the majority of the audience seemed to see straight through him.
 
Someone in the comments made mention of Jason Fung. He would indeed have been a great addition to the panel and would doubtless have dismantled the argument about pharmaceuticals being the best line of treatment for T2.

FYI: just in point of fact, it’s Ivor Cummins, without a G. Perhaps worth making efforts to have the title edited. Forum search engines are typically not the most sophisticated, and it would be doing the thread a disservice if someone missed this gem when searching for Cummins content
 
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Done. Tagging @HSSS as they are the OP, so they know how this came about.
 

Ivor's talk from the same event.. quite eye opening.. It was the day after the discussion.

Wonder if the dismissive doctor was in the audience?
 
Dr Angry Pants seemed to be the straw man constantly referring back to lack of hard data (true but the evidence is emerging and is consistent in improving cardio metabolic health) and factually incorrect (stating that keto diets are risky for ketoacidosis) and also that diabetes is well controlled by drugs rather than lifestyle (does not get the idea of insulin toxicity then). Then put out the theoretical threat of a gout attack caused by a rise in uric acid due to high protein even though keto is not high protein.
Some mention of the genetic factors was made early on but nobody mentioned LDL particle size.
A bit of a patsy (not a research doctor) and Stephen Phinney and Ivor Cummins made mincemeat of him.
Just bought Deep Medicine on Audio as that sounded interesting!
bulkbiker said:

Ivor's talk from the same event.. quite eye opening.. It was the day after the discussion.

Wonder if the dismissive doctor was in the audience?
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thanks for the link! Did you see Zoe Harcombe who was referenced in the previous discussion (google did not locate her for me) I imagine Dr Angry was being lunching on healthy wholegrains with big pharma.
 
These are the published videos from the conference Zoe is there...
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjVt3l67O7SxJDK6KfwpIXQ/videos
 
An oldie but a goodie that showed up in my YouTube feed this morning. A presentation by professor and researcher Jeff Volek, Ph.D., R.D. in 2015: "The Art and Science of Low Carb Living: Cardio-Metabolic Benefits and Beyond"...

At minute 26:27, he shows the results of one of my favorite research studies that their team did in 2008 - (it shows the dramatic improvements in quite a few cardiovascular risk markers)...


And here's Volek's bio...

https://u.osu.edu/caffre/people/volek/

I think it's a mistake to attack this doctor. He's out of his depth and he doesn't know it because he hasn't dug into the research on the ketogenic diet yet. The views he expressed are representative of where most health care providers are right now.

When I had my first health crisis in 1990, I was like this doctor. I spent the next 5 years teaching my peers the pharmaceutical approach to managing our health condition at the time. At the same time, I began networking with patients and health care providers throughout the US. It was actually a friend, the wife of an orthopedic surgeon, who helped me to understand that there were other, non-pharmacological approaches to address our shared health condition. It was a huge shift in thinking for me, and changed the course of my life's work.

Thankfully, the shift in thinking about how to treat diabetes is finally happening, thanks to researchers such as Volek and Phinney, also Westman, and so many others now. My hope is that the panelists and Westman were able to connect with and continue the conversation with this doctor afterward.
 
Actually he was doing the world a favour. The more his views (not the man) are held up to scrutiny and fail, the more entrenched and lacking in forward thinking it appears, the lack of the very same evidence demonstrated he himself calls for, and the more a robust case for lifestyle and diet being a powerful and safe tool is argued and demonstrated in front of all those other unaware HCP’s the more they will question their own views as a result.
 
Listening to Ivor Cummins presentation now - (linked above by bulkbiker).

At minute 5:47, Ivor quotes information from an American Heart Association report: "Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics - 2013 Update".

The first quote regarding the result of reducing saturated fat intake on cardiovascular risk from the WHI-RCT - ("The Women's Health Initiative (WHI), sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), is a long-term national health study that focuses on strategies for preventing heart disease, breast and colorectal cancer, and osteoporosis in postmenopausal women.).

The second from "a pooled analysis of individual-level data from 11 prospective cohort studies in the United States, Europe, and Israel that included 344,696 participants" on the effect of increasing carbohydrate consumption in place of saturated fat on coronary heart disease.

Stunning, just stunning. And for me further confirmation of what Nina Teicholz has said all along, that it's very difficult to report results contrary to current beliefs by researchers.

Definitely worth a listen.
 
bulkbiker said:

Ivor's talk from the same event.. quite eye opening.. It was the day after the discussion.

Wonder if the dismissive doctor was in the audience?
Click to expand...

Interesting video. The end part was interesting on the gene for Alzheimers and the role keto might play in helping the body with those genes function.

He also mentions the guy from the panel the day before
 
HSSS said:
https://thefatemperor.com/the-ultim...lesterol-at-metabolix-conference-2019-israel/

this is a longish one but quite entertaining. Also features Dr Stephen Phinney.
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Glad I searched the forum before re-posting this link. This type of video is an education piece in its own right. Imagine if this was a 3 minute interview on the BBC, ITV etc where the gentleman 2nd from the left (Mr Statin I will call him) was the counter balance to Ivor or Stephen or Eric (in the audience); Mr Statin would and could have appeared very credible. It took skilled debate from Ivor, Stephen and Eric to make their points well. This is the problem "we" have collectively, we don't have time in the real world to take apart the commonly held belief, and if a skilled debater on the other side makes a few outdated points that resonate, an opportunity is lost to provide open minded persons an opportunity to know both sides.

Mr Statin would rather I be on a deserted island with a bunch of statins than in the same scenario a low carb / keto diet - just WOW (when asked a paraphrased hypothetical question from Eric Westman). These intelligent advocates on the other side are the same who would keep the status quo and have me eat "food like" substances. Mr Statin is no diffferent to Joey Carbstrong who says words to the effect that "we can choose our protein". Obviously this is factually true, but it misses the crucial aspects of blood sugar and insulin rise and well as volumetric requirements, which are important detail, but are hidden / overlooked in quick discussion.
 
Mbaker, I too watched the debate with mixed emotions.

Perhaps you'll find this bit of information encouraging. I just learned this morning that the new CEO of the American Diabetes Association has type 2 diabetes, is now on the low carbohydrate high fat diet, and is now off insulin and has eliminated three of her four medications - (reported by Brett Scher on Diet Doctor).

And when I came across this presentation over the weekend, which was uploaded three weeks ago, I had to watch it over and over again. I'm so excited by this news!


I'm assuming you all already know about this. Where was it shared here on the forum? Would love to read that thread.
 
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