This forum "v" The NHS (sort of)

The hospital doctors and GPs have to tell us what the Policy makes tell them to tell us. They will have to wait for policy to be changed at the highest levels which, as with most policy changes, takes forever. However, if you get a doctor who has got diabetes (and I recently saw a locum who had it and she knows a few others that also have it) they seem to almost invariably be low carbing themselves. My locum doctor had done the Newcastle Diet and is currently low carbing and is chuffed beyond belief that, in her opinion, she has reversed her Type 2. Sadly the locum has left my health centre and I am back with the dinosaurs who can't get their heads round low carbing although the DN seems okay with it.

It's a mystery isn't it.

Terryrhino said:

In not for one minute blaming GP's or anyone like, I know it's the policies they have to stick to I just can't get my head around it there is so much information about low carbing why can't the higher powers that be change and re-educate themselves??
Maybe there is more money to be made in pushing carbs onto people!?

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Its the same mentality, many years ago, that had doctors recommending smoking and offering patients cigarettes. And just as harmful, in my view.

I suppose if you look at it from their point of view, if they do completely change Policy then they are admitting they have been giving the wrong advice for all these years. And, directly due to that wrong advice, a lot of people have had diabetes life changing things happen to them. Maybe, just maybe, the policy makers are worried that all those people might sue them.

Terryrhino said:

I
But I keep hearing and seeing things online and people's knowledge of diabetes who don't suffer with it, and from my own doctor!!!! That carbs are ok sugar is ok, just cut down a bit "you'll be alright" and while I was in hospital last month there was no problem with them serving me bread potatoes ice cream pasta fruit jams hot chocolate etc etc.
I love what the NHS do they've saved my life a few times and I have much respect for them but maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to join together and join forces to fight the diabetic fight surely two heads are better than one?
I think my main point here is if carbs turn to glucose and mostly raise BS why are our health professionals suggesting we eat them ???

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My first comment is that not everyone has diabetes and that includes quite a lot of doctors so they are more likely to push the party line. The party line (section 1.3.3. of Nice guidlines to type 2 diabetics) is to encourage them to eat as the rest of the population does. (The Eatwell advice). This enables them to feed you **** in the hospital.

As for two heads better than one. I find that a bit simplistic. Industry is driving the Eatwell advice.

http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2016/03/eatwell-guide-conflicts-of-interest/

The NHS are advised. by N.I.C.E.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-29705499

I don't think that we all are putting our heads together in the first place.

Another thing that could be the reason is that most people, left in the dark, are eating far worse than the guidelines of the Eatwell plate.

One of the main clinical issues most non diabetic specialist endocrinologists would suggest is to cut the carbs and sugars to the standard of the eat well plate.
This is because in the past a lot of specialists are concerned about the lack of glucose to the brain as in T1s. T2s are different, the amount of glucose is high, so they don't need the same advice, unfortunately, this comparison is indicative of past history and the older specialist would condone low carb for the fear of the lack of glucose that is produced on a very low carb diet.
We know now, that it's rubbish. Low carb does not bring on hypos. And our liver helps when necessary.
My first endocrinologist was of this opinion about carbs.
But it was carbs that was killing me!

And it is government policy to get you to eat so called healthy carbs!

I think most of us have been through the "what the heck is it all about" phase where we can't quite believe some of the questionable, or ill-informed opinions we hear.

Who knows best?

My response would probably be my meter knows best. Like most folks, I have parameters I like to run within, and my meter gives me that feedback I need loud and clear. Of course, that's frustrating, bearing in mind the NHS inability (financially) to support widespread self-testing, but I'm afraid it's where we appear to be.

All I would say is keep up your hard work and keep listening to the feedback from your meter.

I am by no means a Low Carb fanatic, but there is no escaping the fact that if you don't add fule to the fire it will eventually go out.
BUT.....Am I storing up other problems by eating low carb? I am too old to conduct a long term study

we should go together and finance a new "diabetic type 2-bible" of low-carbing both one part for meat eating people and one for vegans and vegetarians and promote it bigtime as THE SOLUTION-of diabetes type 2

It can't be right for you guys to take food out the mouth of pharma bods and carb producers/sellers you'll have their kids starve for the lack of cola when you put them on the dole.

Scotland Has a new eatwell plate, in England the Dinosaur has not stirred yet.

I concur that Low Carb probably needs some validation before we all get too anti eatwell.

Freema said:

we should go together and finance a new "diabetic type 2-bible" of low-carbing both one part for meat eating people and one for vegans and vegetarians and promote it bigtime as THE SOLUTION-of diabetes type 2

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That is a very good idea!!! Lol.... You would need to get some people like Dr Unwin on side and Dr Aseem Malhotra.. Aseem etc - he is considering a cookbook next year. He is the doctor behind the recent film "the big fat fix". He's more meditereanean eating than heavy saturated fats. Genuinely a great guy.

I relate to the low carb though and does it have detrimental effects on other health long term? I've done low carb pretty much since 13 and now 53. I have had breast cancer and got a chronic paralysed colon with other stuff wrong with stomach. Did lower carb contribute towards this? If you take me alone, you would be likely to say yes... but my brothers have ate like this for longer.. they haven't got a thing wrong with them and are older than me...
The only thing I find difficult to think about is that my being lean is likely to have caused long term damage from radiotherapy.. apparently persons that have more weight can handle it better.. ie ribcage and heart is more protected. So being a low carber and being lean never helped my recovery from cancer...

Freema said:

we should go together and finance a new "diabetic type 2-bible" of low-carbing both one part for meat eating people and one for vegans and vegetarians and promote it bigtime as THE SOLUTION-of diabetes type 2

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We already did

https://phcuk.org

donnellysdogs said:

That is a very good idea!!! Lol.... You would need to get some people like Dr Unwin on side and Dr Aseem Malhotra.. Aseem etc - he is considering a cookbook next year. He is the doctor behind the recent film "the big fat fix". He's more meditereanean eating than heavy saturated fats. Genuinely a great guy.

I relate to the low carb though and does it have detrimental effects on other health long term? I've done low carb pretty much since 13 and now 53. I have had breast cancer and got a chronic paralysed colon with other stuff wrong with stomach. Did lower carb contribute towards this? If you take me alone, you would be likely to say yes... but my brothers have ate like this for longer.. they haven't got a thing wrong with them and are older than me...
The only thing I find difficult to think about is that my being lean is likely to have caused long term damage from radiotherapy.. apparently persons that have more weight can handle it better.. ie ribcage and heart is more protected. So being a low carber and being lean never helped my recovery from cancer...

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okay you have been through a lot.. yes and sometimes being fat is good.. or just a little fat, also when it comes to servere longterm illness affecting appetite it can be lifesaving to have some fat on ones body..

how come your whole Family have been low carbing in the first place... it is kind of a newer phenomenon to eat low carb isn´t it ?
but really good to have people that can be the proof of low carbs is not a "killer"

Squire Fulwood said:

We already did

https://phcuk.org

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thanks for that link... I´ll read up on it ... but what a good initiative

I don't think it's so much that health professionals *have* to push the party line, more that they believe it. Until they have a reason to question it, that is.

Plus you have to bear in mind that dietitians are busy pushing the Fat Will Kill You mantra, rather than reading up on recent research, both new studies and reexamination of old data, which show that fat DOESN'T kill you. When they get that message in their ear constantly from the people who are the experts in diet, what are they supposed to think?

What we need is evidence. Our HbA1C's, BP, lipids, weight change etc. They can't argue with that, can they?

I know the current situation seems incredible and bizarre, and the lower carbing view just common sense for T2s, but you may not realise how far things have already come.

My low carbing started about 33 years ago, when I discovered a small, privately published book on hypoglycaemia in the health section of a book shop. It made such a difference to my 17 yr old existence, that I haven't eaten 'standard' carbs since.

But back in those days, the term Low Carb didn't exist. No one even knew what a carb was. No one had a clue. It was like being the only person on the planet who wasn't eating normally. Since then, we have had The Hay Diet, Montignac, Atkins, South Beach, Dukan, www.bloodsugar101.com , www.dietdoctor.com 5:2, Fung's Intensive Dietary Management, New Atkins, Bernstein, the Cholesterol Myth, etc. etc. and average people recognise the word 'carb' as actually meaning something. Even health professionals know what people mean when they say Low Carb - even if they hate and reject it as an option.

Now (at last!!!) there are places like this, blogs, recipes, facebook groups, Public Health Collaboration UK, you tube lectures, Cereal Killers (film), people interviewing and running N=1 studies on themselves and blogging and You Tubing their results... media coverage, actual studies that have been conducted to a standard people find difficult to reject... though of course they try. lol.

Even this forum changes rapidly. I first signed up to it maybe 5-6 years ago, and gave up almost immediately. The amount of Low Carb crushing and even bullying that went on was astonishing, and the Low Carbers used to feel so victimised and so repressed that they lashed out in retaliation - and I wanted no part of it. Some of it was really nasty. Two years later I tried again, and found that people had stopped shouting down low carbing. There is still a lot of discussion, but there is so much evidence nowadays, that we can all make up our own minds and go for what we consider to be the best long term decisions/risks for our own bodies...

Much more civilized nowadays. We have also had the introduction of intermittent fasting, widespread T2 self testing (on here, at least) and the Newcastle Diet, so it isn't just Carb or Low Carb, there are a lot of different options now, and people can actually self-test to discover what works for their body. Astonishing progress has been made.

- And I think this is what has made the snowball grow slowly as it rolls downhill.
For decades people were told 'I'm a doc and I'm telling you to eat carbs and pop pills'. No one had a clue that those carbs were spiking them to the ceiling, and causing damage with every mouthful.

But now self testing can be self funded for T2s, and suddenly they can see what those carbs are doing to their blood glucose.
and this is (IMHO) the thing that has made the most difference. Even 5 years ago, self funding testing for T2s was a rarity. Now it is one of the first things suggested to a new forum member.

Don't underestimate how far things have moved. I find it astonishingly heartening. It is just a pity that for most of the 30+ years I have been watching, T2s have been let down by misinformation. Times are really changing.