This recent WA Government report makes for interesting reading for people trying to reverse their Type 2 diabetes by using a low carbohydrate or keto diet and who are fighting their GPs and Dietitians
You were lucky to have a good GP. For a while, diabetes educators were telling people to eat carbs… I was told to eat 9 serves (exchanges) a day… that wasnt normal for me even before diagnosis… I figured they knew more than me so I did it, put on weight, lost control of my BGL and was accused of not sticking to the diet. When I dumped most carbs and got control again, I was congratulated… I told them what I was doing and was told I was wrong. I never went back.
The Diabetes Australia recipe pages horrify me, and I bet they still dont get why people end up needing extra insulin if they make half those dishes. Even their low carb is more than I am comfortable with. I try to stay under 50g a day. I usually fail but its a goal.
My husband, insulin dependant diabetic, with partial amputations of his feet and fingers recently spent 1 week in hospital. Every morning his breakfast consisted of cereal, fruit juice, coffee and a slice of white bread with butter and jam.
The only part of that breakfast on a keto (very low carb diet 20 gms per day) is the coffee.
My sister reversed her type 2 by following the DietDoctor referred to in a post above and is no longer on any medication.
The health system is broken in some respects, but doctors (GPs I mean) have to be guided by the general diabetes guidelines which, if you look at what Diabetes Australia pushes… are simply wrong. I will never understand why they want you to eat the foods that raise blood sugars. No doubt theres input from Big Pharma who stand to lose a lot if we all reverse our type2.
I can’t say that ‘Big Pharma’ push for changes to dietary guidelines that benefit them but they certainly do encourage Drs to push their preferred lines. Conferences where Drs have perhaps 2 days of anything that can be called lectures and then multiple days of enjoyment, gifts to Drs, close ties to studies that help boost their drugs in market usage and similar practices have been seen for some time.
For years because fructose didn’t raise BSL in anyway like glucose and sucrose Diabetes Australia and many other similar worldwide societies used and promoted it’s use in recipes. Yet there was already evidence that fructose was not in anyway good for diabetes or diabetics. There certainly was sponsorship of many of these societies by ‘Pharma’ and certainly there was much advertising dollars spent that was used by these organisations. Of course there was also benefits to those businesses that supplied fructose as the usage by diabetics while not possibly huge was probably still a significant enough benefit to encourage it’s use.
Until recently complex carbs were still seen in diabetic guidelines as a very important part of the diet. More recently the impact of any carb in a diabetic diet is being questioned and only minimal amounts are usually advised.
What I am trying to get at is that there are many vested interests in industry in promoting their products even if evidence exists to the contrary about the use of those products. It can be subtle, or even obscured, or it can be very transparent, it could be innocent or it could be ‘sinister’. Evidence is not always that easy to establish of that vested interest even if the casual link is evident.
Interesting response. If I had evidence, I would not be in a position to reveal it. As it is, all I have is opinion and supposition based on years of being subjected to the antics of various drug reps.
There is quite a gap between seeing sales staff pushing their goods (however ethically that may be done) and saying an industry is corrupt and influences health guidelines to the detriment to a large number of patients. I would not be comfortable making that kind of leap at all but especially in public.
I’m quite happy to make the leap in public but thats why no names are mentioned, nor evidence given. As for a gap… there really isnt one. However, you can continue to be nervous if you like. You wont change my mind, or my opinion.
I never had that ambition, I know that I can never do that. I was trying to show the spectators that your method of drawing conclusions could be improved upon and thus the conclusions that your draw might not be as good unless you do.
Syncretic, are you an undercover Big Pharma representative? Just a joke!
Anyway, your reply sounds a bit sinister…‘to say something in public’…‘not comfortable’ -more like it is not safe.
I am happy you are not my neighbour, I wouldn’t feel comfortable next to you!(((
But it has happened in the past and it is now apparent that some industries have used influence to change guidelines. Asbestos usage while it was known for some time to be quite detrimental, was allowed to be put in household products for years by Governments who took little or no action to stop that usage until it was more broadly exposed as to how bad it was. Another that is quite obvious now is that the Tobacco industry did the same, the sugar industry is another. To think that somehow ‘Big Pharma’ is not somehow tempted to or that they even not do similar things is perhaps giving too much credit.
Some of the following are perhaps a bit too much conspiracy theory but many of the quoted links are still worthwhile even in those type articles.
‘I am not comfortable’ means just that, I would not feel good making claims of corruption and conspiracy without evidence. I believe that evidence is paramount in helping us understand the world and to make good decisions. Those who can do away with evidence worry me.
I might have suspicions that I cannot support with solid evidence, if so I would never speak about them publicly. To make accusations in public means to me that you reckon you have the goods and you are prepared to stand by your claims. To say at the same time that you don’t have the evidence is dissonant.
Nothing sinister at all in my reply. I don’t have any relationship to Big Pharma and never have had. If I have any barrow to push it is making public discourse useful and reliable, it is using media as part of a community where we respect specifics not general innuendo and solid data more than vague opinion.
I don’t deny that representatives of companies do try to influence government and sometimes act to improve their position in the market by doubtful means. But which one of the links provided shows that bIG pHARMA corruptly influenced the guidelines about diet for diabetics in order to improve their drug sales?
I made no attempt to make an assertion that it had to do specifically with Diabetes but it was in response to your general comment “There is quite a gap between seeing sales staff pushing their goods (however ethically that may be done) and saying an industry is corrupt and influences health guidelines to the detriment to a large number of patients”. It has happened, it is likely happening and it will probably continue to happen. Until someone drops the papers in a filing cabinet that ends up in the ABC’s hands, it gets published on Wikileaks, someone talks to an investigative journalist or some similar whistleblowing activity occurs we probably will never truly know what depths may or may not have been plumbed. Given the vast amounts spent on lobbying, past corporate history, past adverse but hidden drug histories eg Merck & the drug Vioxx (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1779871/) and the current push for profits you could make some reasonable guesses though.
