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the same old same old (rant)

NicoleC1971

BANNED
Messages
3,450
Location
Epsom
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Pump
Advice being trotted out by a registered UK dietician to a bunch of diabetics (mainly type 2) on a DuK Zoom meeting.
Be careful about carb portions but still eat a meal based upon 'healthy wholegrains', red meat gives you cancer and minimise unhealthy saturated fat in case it leads to heart disease.
Having de bunked some daft diets e.g. celery joice, detox and alkaline that hardly anyone follows anyway, she hadn't heard of the DuK's own 800 kcal diet (Newcastle) and then announced it was low carb rather than low cal, only to be done under supervision.
Low carb may work apparently but there is no solid evidence behind it (she refused to answer my question about evidence around the Eatwell plate working well for anyone let alone diabetics ) and then told me I could not do low carb as a type 1 because I might go hypo!
I honestly did not want to catch her out but feel she was not up to date on the evidence yet also saying that she and the other state registered dieticians were the only people qualified to advise. She has a web site and offers consultations obviously.
 
I'm sure people think she is an "expert" and are following advice like this, but what hope do they have being dished ignorance on this level.

I got the same advice from a registered dietician 6 months ago. I produce little insulin so I obviously use insulin. I was advised to eat toast and sweet potatoes and that was healthy and that keto is only for weight loss. Also told I didn't need fast acting insulin with meals, which is absurd. Talk about a recipe for DKA.... I ignored everything she said. And have asked not to seen by this person again.
 

What was the DUK meeting @NicoleC1971 ? Was it a public forum, or by invitation? (Just curious.)
 

Oh boy! No wonder you feel the need to rant!
 
It is so frustrating and annoying and unfair to people who don't know any better when the so called "professionals" tell us a lot of rubbish! I was told by DN wholemeal bread, weetabix, fruit and brown rice etc. all ok (no wonder my sugars were starting to climb up again through no fault of my own as I thought I was doing the right thing (not!) but luckily I found this forum and can rectify it but there are others out there who aren't so lucky!
 
It’s really disheartening and downright dangerous. I recently declined my local diabetic ‘education’ classes in favour of a 1-1 call with a dietician. I had previously had a chat with her, explained I was keto and she seemed supportive of a low-carb diet. So I had my half-hour call, she had nothing new to add and mainly seemed to want to send me some leaflets and tick her boxes. And at the end, having spent 30 mins telling her what a game-changer, what a life-changer low carb was and how well I was doing and feeling on it, she just couldn’t help herself...”have you considered adding more carbs back into your diet?”

Aaargh no, of course not when my meter tells me I cannot handle them. Nothing more to say after that, I really couldn’t be bothered to have her try to justify that suggestion.
 
DCUKMod said:
What was the DUK meeting @NicoleC1971 ? Was it a public forum, or by invitation? (Just curious.)
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During lockdown the DUK branch near me (Southern region) have instigated some Zoom chats open to the public though you need to contact them to be sent an invitation.
The lady who spoke did not seem to be a type 2 specialist but I was a little dismayed that she seemed to categorise low carb as very new, unporoven and rather faddy or even dangerous. I could hear some South East Asian accents on the phone who sounded confused about the issue of carbs but were clearly happy to be told they could eat rice, chapattis etc.
\I will follow up with the DuK host and try to respectfully point out where she is out of date. The problem is that I am not a state dietician so have no credibility!
 
I am being taken back about 6 years when I was referred to a nutritionist who was also the DSN for our county. Similar chat about minimum carbs (260) and starchy foods. Then I owned up to being LCHF and she went ballistic. I showed her the extensive Excel Plots and food log I kept, and tried to show how my weight had dropped and how my sugars were now very definitely in control. She dismissed these as being falsely calculated, and that I was using the wrong meter (XCEED that was GP prescribed), She prescribed a new one (NEO) [and test strips for a T2D YEAH ! Way to Go! ] So I am still getting my strips and lancet on scrip some 5 years later, But these are from my GP who supports me and gets his proof from my HbA1c once a year. Needless to say that nutritionist discharged me as being uncooperative. I hear she now works for the DUK team in the next town as I met her again at one of their roadshows. She still insists on EATWELL in all its glory, and was at that time advising it for a Parkinsons User group. I pity them, especially if it does get classified as a form of diabetes.
 
I ate a ‘healthy’ diet for years of low fat, low sugar foods, whole meal bread, pasta and rice, jacket potatoes and plenty of fruit inc a banana each day and still developed diabetes. Of course I knew it was healthy because that was the diet that my mother, a T2 diabetic, had been advised to have which she diligently followed and progressed from pills to injections with eye complications that left her blind. Unfortunately, unlike people these days, she did not have access to the internet (she died in 2007) so relied on the medical profession to advise her correctly which, I now know, they didn’t.
 
Yet others always have to caveat statements by saying talk to your health care professional, scarey.

It does make me wonder about the ethics of these people. Eric Wesman, Jason Fung and Ted Naimen tested what they had seen work in patients, then used their gray matter.
 

I wondered if that was the case. I haven't been available yet for the ones running in our area.
 
I just checked my local DUK support group. The latest news update on their site is 2018 and the last event being advertised was in 2014. The nearest support group that seems to be active is in the middle of Wales some 50 mikes away as the crow flies, but much further up the M5/ M4 so Zoom would be useful for our area. Nothing on the support site about that
 
Always a silver lining?
 
Wouldn’t be wonderful if a country’s public Heath care would spend more money supplying people with a BG monitor, then trying to educate people that they should eat “whole healthy grains.
If people knew how to use a BG meter they could see what a food does to their BG and the debate would be over.
 
And they would be shown up as having lied to us for the past 50 years...do you see the slight flaw?
 
I'm another that still feels disheartened by our medical profession. Given what I have found out about diabetes I think I will take with a grain of salt any advice about many chronic illnesses. If I hadn't found this site I would not be in a good place. I would weigh a lot more, be very disheartened and possibly not alive. Even now when my doctor can see what I am doing is working she doesn't really agree. It is coming to the point that I need a new doctor which is disappointing as I regarded her well before. Now I wonder what else she is not learning from her patients. She nearly had convulsions when after she told me I needed more salt in my diet my response was- pork crackling- no she said too high fat.

I have toyed with the idea of seeing a dietician to get more food ideas but I know they need to be kept friendly as I do not have the patience to argue with someone who considers themselves an expert but can't help me.

This site is awesome and I am so grateful to the mods, to the people on here who post and respond particularly to newbies and to those who started it. I suspect in the early days they could not have envisaged what an amazing resource this would become. I am also very grateful to be given the opportunity to have a head start on things- @JoKalsbeek nutritional thing for example- it made starting this journey a lot easier. I just wish that the whole medical profession would get on board so we can start actually changing the increasing n umbers of type 2s. My firm belief is if I knew 20 years ago what I know now I could have reduced my carbs a lot much earlier- instead I was told keto was a fad diet and to eat m ore healthy carbs.
 
Oldvatr said:
was at that time advising it for a Parkinsons User group. I pity them, especially if it does get classified as a form of diabetes.
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That's a fascinating suggestion. Please could you point me towards any references?
 
Alexandra100 said:
That's a fascinating suggestion. Please could you point me towards any references?
Click to expand...
I was relating a personal experience that my wife and I had at a Parkinson User Group so I have no reference for that occasion. The following shows Eatwell is still the official diet plan being recommended for this condition
https://www.webmd.com/parkinsons-disease/guide/eating-right-parkinsons

Here is some current research into the possible link between the two conditions
https://www.cedars-sinai.org/blog/diabetes-parkinsons-disease.html

Here is info on this site
https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes-complications/parkinsons-disease.html

Also some of many such websites of varying credibility
https://charliefoundation.org/keto-for-parkinsons/
https://www.michaeljfox.org/news/ask-md-whats-best-diet-parkinsons

Finally from the Parkinsons main site
https://www.parkinson.org/blog/scie...le/Parkinsons-Disease-Insulin-Resistance-HOMA
 
@Oldvatr thanks very much. Have you come across the suggestion that exercise can help with Parkinsons? I read an article by a young woman who reckoned she had at least greatly delayed its progression by vigorous exercise biking.
 
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