From the DietDoctor.com website — Dr Andreas Eenfeldt interviews Dr Jason Fung, a Canadian nephrologist who treats obese and diabetic patients. In addition to LCHF, Dr Fung often recommends fasting as an effective part of the intervention.
CategoryInsulin Resistance
This two-minute clip from Dr Ted Naiman’s presentation is a brief explanation of the obesity epidemic. It is about the activity of insulin in the body. For most people, this is resolved through diet — not pharmaceuticals or exercise (although exercise is important).
Click the image below to view the video clip on DietDoctor.com. For the full video presentation, and a lot more great information, you can become a member of the Diet Doctor website for $9 per month. I am not affiliated with the site in any way, but I am a paying member and it is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to understand more about how a low carb approach can transform health. Highly recommended.
We need more young docs like Dr Priyanka Wali.
She saw that diabetic patients were not getting better with the conventional pharmaceutical approach that she had been taught. She started doing her own research and learned that a low carb ketogenic diet might be a better intervention, so she tried the diet on herself first and found that she felt much better, and knew that she could prescribe it as a therapy for her diabetic and insulin resistant patients. She now uses it in her practice and it is working.
The interview below was done at the Low Carb USA Conference in San Diego. Interviewer is the great Ivor Cummins.
A FEW QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW
I started treating patients with diabetes and the first thing I noticed was that the guidelines weren’t working. My patients weren’t getting better.
I started to look for answers that were outside what we had been taught in medical school, which was not very much about nutrition.
Physicians don’t understand what are the macronutrients that affect insulin levels. This is not common knowledge among the medical community.
[Our current prescription-driven model of medicine] is the result of business being a greater priority than human lives.
We are incentivized to prescribe medication.
I lived the [dietary] guidelines and I started to see that something wasn’t right.
Just look around you. Insulin resistance is rampant.
The first thing is changing the guidelines.
Insulin is a hormone secreted by the pancreas in response to elevated levels of glucose (blood sugar). Its function is to move the glucose into the body’s cells to be used for energy. Insulin is also the fat storage hormone — excess glucose that is not burned as energy or stored in the cells as glycogen will be converted into adipose tissue (fat). See the Insulin-Fat Connection by Dr Richard Bernstein.
Insulin Resistance
Insulin resistance is a condition in which the body’s cells fail to respond to the normal actions of the insulin. The body produces insulin, but the cells in the body become resistant to it and are unable to use it as effectively, leading to hyperglycemia (excess blood sugar). Beta cells in the pancreas subsequently increase their production of insulin, further contributing to hyperinsulinemia (excess insulin in the blood). This often remains undetected and can result in Type 2 Diabetes.
For a good overview of insulin resistance, obesity, and Type 2 diabetes, see Dr Sarah Hallberg’s TEDx talk below, titled Reversing Type 2 diabetes starts with ignoring the guidelines.
Dr Hallberg is the Medical Director of an obesity clinic in Indiana, and she says that the American Diabetes Association’s recommendations to eat 45-60 grams of carbohydrate per meal is making patients worse — carbs raise blood sugar, and that is exactly what T2 diabetics need to avoid. As Hallberg points out, “Diabetes is a state of carbohydrate toxicity. Insulin resistance is a state of carbohydrate intolerance.”
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