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SO DISAPPOINTING

Consider it them covering their asses from morons. They prescribe insulin. They have to. Now imagine that they tell someone not to eat any carbohydrates. This person is maybe not the smartest. They have a hypo - one of those debilitating, coma-inducing ones that each and every diabetic has heard horror stories of.

Oh, but the doctor said not to take carbohydrate!

This happens all of two or three times; said doctors are stripped of their medical licenses, possibly sent to jail for malpractice and we have a few morons in comas with brain damage from low blood sugar.

Low blood sugar will kill or damage us faster than high blood sugar will. For that reason alone, there has to be an institutionalised biased towards encouraging us to eat carbohydrate. So people can't sue them for everything they're worth. Maybe it wouldn't happen to you, but can you be sure it wouldn't happen to anybody?

And lymes disease (if this is what it is - the doctor thought it unlikely) is destroyed by antibiotics. That's a cure. Millions of people are alive because of antibiotics. But if you prefer a holistic approach... well... that is your choice. The one time I went encountered a holistic view of diabetes, I was told I definitely got it because I was depressed, and that the mind/body connection... well, I zoned out after that. The cause quoted to me (I kid you not here) was that a holistic study had found an increased rate of depression in newly diagnosed diabetics compared to the general population. But had interpreted this as a sure sign that depression causes diabetes.

And I'm sure obesity in men is caused by their wives cheating on them.
 

I never thought about it like that. Excellent point.
 
They tell you that antibiotics kills Lyme Disease (Borrelia) but in reality it rarely does. I post on another forum where there is a thread for people with ongoing Lyme Disease who have not recovered through antibiotic use are still and continuously looking for a remedy for their often debilitating health issues.

But then there aren't that many Doctors who know all that much about Coeliac Disease or Gluten Intolerance. Most of them do not keep up to date with current understanding and still think that it only applies to children who show signs of malnutrition and 'failure to thrive'.

My Doctor knew very little about it (they get about 5 minutes training on it in Medical School) and I actually lent her a book on it! There were no leaflets or information in the surgery and not even in the local Hospital could I find any information!

You may be right about 'morons' (your description) not understanding and getting themselves in a mess, but I have actually found that it is when I have carbs that I am more likely to have hypos. Hypos are carb-driven. If I have plenty of fats during the day I don't crave chocolate any more, I don't need to eat anything after my dinner, I don't have the urge to snack in the evenings in front of the TV, I go to bed with normal BS readings, I don't have any hypos in the night and I wake up with normal BS readings.

If I don't have enough fats, I then eat carbs, can't stop nibbling all evening, go to bed with raised BS, have hypos in the night and wake up with elevated BS in the morning.

If you eat carbs, the liver uses the carbs for short-term energy. It puts the fats into storage for later use. Any extra carbs are also converted to fats. It only stores a small amount of glucose.

If it has been 'forced' into carb-burning cycles for energy due to the constant ingestion of carbs, it is not programmed to burn fat. The body is going through a constant yo-yo of spikes and subsequent plummets of BS as the body tries desperately to balance everything - I've been there - years of yo-yoing and constant hypos - all carb-driven.

We have a friend who is like you describe. BS all over the place. Can't get his insulin levels right. Gets no warning of hypos and just passes out. Of course he is a good boy and faithfully toes the Diabetic 'Specialists' party line of plenty of carbs. That advice is not actually achieving anything except make it all a heap worse than it needs to be.

If he dropped the carbs and upped the fats, his BS would level out, he would need less insulin and he wouldn't get hypos any more, let alone 'brittle' ones.

As far as the Holistic thing is concerned, there are those and there are those. Some of them talk a whole heap of sense, others talk a whole heap of twaddle. Personally I only go with what makes sense.

PS. If you feel that carbs are necessary, why are you posting on the low-carb section??? :?
 
Communicate??? They don't have time to communicate. You're fortunate if you get five minutes then it's 'next please'.

When my digestion was really bad and food was going in one end and straight out of the other, I ended up in Hospital. Although they had been advised I was coming they didn't know what to do with me when I got there. I was dumped in an examination room and left there all night, having to hobble about 20 yards to the toilet every 10 to 20 minutes for several hours.

The bed was rock hard, barely 2 feet wide and I was given no blanket or anything. There was constant noise of people going up and down the corridor, banging, whistling, shouting, talking. At one point I got off the bed and laid on the floor as it was more comfortable and that is where the nurse found me in the morning. Frightened the life out of her!

I didn't actually get any sleep at all, all night. After she had gone I got dressed and went to the machine to get a drink. I sat there reading the paper when the consultant came round. Yes, I looked ok by then. This arrogant, nasty little man virtually accused me of wasting their time and taking up a bed (ha, ha - not that there was anyone else in there all night!). I pointed out to him that I wasn't in pain at that moment and nor did I have any more diarrhoea because my guts were empty and I hadn't eaten anything yet. Two minutes was all I got. He didn't listen - he wasn't interested. I didn't appear to be dying.

He begrudgingly 'allowed' me to have an Ultrasound (which of course found nothing) and as good as told me to get lost.

And that is just one of the horrible experiences I have had from the Medical Profession.
 
The best you can expect from the HPs is, "Low carb may work for you, but we cannot recommend it."
 
I feel quite unusual then, that my consultant when I last saw him (who may well be ahead of the curve) was saying they are beginning to take low carb more seriously and quoted an israeli study (someone on here may know what it is) where they'd put diabetics on different types of diet (low fat/mediterranean/low carb) and been surprised that the low carb group improved bg's and lost weight the best of the three.

I was more surprised that he was surprised, but it's a step in the right direction.

He said if it works for me, to keep with it.

Maybe cos he's a consultant he feels he can challenge the dogma more than, say a Diabetes Specialist Nurse can? At least he didn't come out with the old 'but you need carbs for energy' line
 

Wow. Thanks. I didn't know there was that view. I mention that my fiancee might possibly have Lyme's Disease and your immediate inclination is to tell me that she'll never be cured of it. Aren't you a little ray of sunshine? Sigh.

As for why I post in the low carb section, well, I read fergus's explanation of low-carbing, and I noted that the amount of carb I eat per day falls in either the 'typical' or 'liberal' low carb band. So naturally I assumed I might be able to participate here. Little did I realise that I would be lambasted for saying that it seems ok for me to eat a bowl of porridge or a small portion of wholewheat pasta.

And waht is a doctor supposed to do if you've spent all night in an a and e and are fine in the morning? Patients will lie more often than symptoms will disappear overnight, regardless of how you felt you were treated. When I was in a and e a couple of evenings ago, there were two drunk men wanting to spend the night in the warm with people looking out for them. They get all sorts of homeless people, drug seekers and hypochondriac time wasters. You're angry that they didn't believe you. Oddly enough, I bet the liars are angry that they weren't believed as well.

It's too easy, too popular to be critical of doctors. They're expected to be absolute experts in everything. We only care about what we have. They have to care about it all. If they don't appear to care about our single problem above all else, we seem to despise them.

Too many people have a moderistic view of the world. "There's one way and one way only - my way." Unfortunately, that's just not the way the world is.
 
:mrgreen: I think there's a responsibility on us to read up on things, try them out, then go with what works best for us as individuals. I think personally it's lazy & stupid to follow the herd on anything without questioning - I can't do that :twisted: Whatever "they" say and whoever "they are- they are not us ! If it's our health, then we decide how to deal with it. :mrgreen:
 
Hear, hear Ming. I know that I wouldn't be half as well as I am if I just sat back and waited for the Doctors to sort me out - in fact I might not even be here at all!

UPB - all I am saying is don't believe everything Doctors tell you. Find out for yourself. I spent years believing Doctors and all they did was make things heaps worse for me. By far the majority of experiences I, and mine have had at their hands has been detrimental to me in some way or another. I could relate them all but it would only depress you.

As far as Lyme's is concerned, again I am only relating from experience. If all it took to cure it was a dose of Antibiotics then there wouldn't be thousands of people out there still searching for a cure, or groups dedicated to it! But don't take my word for it, find out yourself. Your friend might well be one of the fortunate ones who are ok, especially as it seems it was caught early. Who knows. I'm not being a doom-mongerer, I'm being honest.

The Medical Establishment has been very guilty of misleading people over the years - antibiotics were a case in point. They were hailed as a breakthrough in medicine - a cure all. They were the future of medicine. We now have reached a point where they have finally realised the dangers of them - that bugs can become so resistant that we now have reached a point where antibiotics will no longer kill some of them.
 
That's actually very true. The fact that there are people who are able to deal with carbohydrates, in whatever amount, and keep their blood sugar levels in line while doing so implies that in itself, the system isn't faulty. What makes it healthy or dangerous is our individual ability to manage those carbs, count them properly and keep track of things such as differing conversion levels throughout the day. If you can, then the sky is the limit, if you can't, then you either have to try harder and pay more attention, or find a different way.

Unfortunately, I get the feeling that many people who low carb do so because they are unable to properly manage their blood sugars (and bear in mind, I am in no way saying this is everyone who low carbs, but probably a significant percentage) and so go on the internet and find an alternative that does one or more of three things; it requires less effort, it shifts responsibility for their inability to keep control from themselves to the people giving them 'bad advice' and it allows them to feel maligned and, in a way, discriminated against for greater control than they are capable of being asked of them (is it cynical of me to think that most people actively seek out some way in order to be discriminated against in that they might feel a vindication of 'resistance' and individual identity? Maybe, but there you go).

Reducing carbs takes the edge of the pressure off, that's why I do it. Apparently that isn't strict enough for some, but that's not my problem. I happen to think that complete elimination is both risky and ill-advised... that is unless the fact that Dr Atkins died due to a heart attack brought on by hardened arteries and weighed 18stone at the time of his death was completely co-incidental to the fact that his diet was about 80% fat for the majority of his life. Go figure.

As for antibiotics, well yes, after 80 years, some infections have become resistant to some antibiotics. The fact that they have saved millions upon millions of peoples lives throughout the years is just a happy coincidence. I guess all those people who contracted things like staff infections and syphillis... y'know, bugs that without antibiotics are a death sentence, actually should have been left to die horrible painful deaths.

Bacterial resistance is a marker of the dangers of bacteria, not of antibiotics. Maybe we're at a point now where they become less effective. But hey, we had nothing to fight them before. If all it means is that for 80 years, we could cure people, that seems fair to me. Cause they'd all be dead without it.

20/20 hindsight, combined with self-righteousness is, unfortunately, an increasingly common disease.
 
I don't condemn antibiotics per se, just how they are used. I think like a lot of things they can be useful, but are also capable of doing damage if not used properly.

When I was a child AB's were given out like sweeties for everything, whether they were needed or not. The Medical Establishment has finally shut the door on that practice - even putting up posters in the surgeries to say that they won't be giving AB's for certain conditions any more, because they know they won't work on those bacteria.

We had decades of people going to their Doctor for colds and sniffles and coming away with antibiotics. I was given them as a child for normal childhood things like ear infections, coughs and colds, things which researchers have found usually recover just as well and as quickly on their own.

If they get worse and an individual does not appear to be recovering when they should, or in the case of something like Meningitis then ok they should perhaps be given, but just dished out willy-nilly was tempting fate. Many times they were given to people for viral infections for which they would be absolutely useless and actually do more harm than good.

The problem with them is that the very first time you are given them, they knock out the good bacteria as well as the bad - Doctors have never deemed it necessary, until now, to recommend yoghurt or give you any probiotics, even though Fleming maintained that should be an integral part of the treatment when he created Penicillin 80 years ago. Once the gut flora is decimated, the immune system is then also decimated (probiotic bacteria make up a major part of the immune structure), with the result that we are then far more vulnerable to further infections (and further need for AB's) and so it goes on.

Yes, we have this weapon against unwanted bacteria, but the paradox is that they have created within us a cycle of reliance upon them. Interestingly, we have a friend who just is never sick. She is in her late 60's, looks and acts at least 10 years younger. She has never had any antibiotics - oh, and she eats raw garlic by the bucketload.

The key has to be in building a strong immune system. A strong system would have the strength to fight any unwanted intruders and deal with them. That is now also being recognised. Hospitals in my area are now giving pre-op patients probiotics to strengthen their immune systems against MRSA and C.Diff, etc.

Bacteria have always had the ability to modify - that is why Fleming underscored the necessity of not dishing ABs out indiscriminately or unnecessarily.

It is interesting though, that now there is research being done on the ability of natural substances to deal with rogue bacteria. The fatty acids in Coconut oil have been found to be extremely effective against lipid-coated bacteria and viruses, which includes the staphs, streps, herpes, influenzas, and many more including, amazingly, HIV.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-Das ... iv&f=false

The advantage of substances like monolaurin is that because they destroy the bacteria and virii by destroying their lipid-coated membranes they cannot become resistant.

Not only that, but in destroying the pathogenic microbes they allow the good bacteria to repopulate which boosts the immune system. MCTs are building-blocks for the Immune system.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=IAZ2 ... em&f=false

Perhaps the tools for successfully dealing with pathogens and boosting our immune systems has actually been under our noses all along but things like anti-biotics have taken Medical Science off on a tangent endlessly searching for the most commercially lucrative drug treatments they can find. Natural substances are generally ignored as you can't patent them and money can't be made from them.

Certainly food for thought though (and undoubtedly further debate, too!)

On the subject of Robert Atkins - being killed by his diet was yet another of those 'chinese whisper' urban myths.

http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/atkins ... sdeath.htm
 
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