Total Pageviews

Monday 24 November 2014

Could a low carb/high fat diet be better for diabetics?

Merseyside doctor, David Unwin, suspects that a high-carbohydrate diet may have the opposite effect to that intended for those with diabetes.

There have been several gratifying instances reported in this column recently where readers have proved a lot more successful than their doctors in treating, and indeed "curing", their diabetes, usually by switching from the currently recommended "high–carb/low–fat" diet to its opposite, which involves a plentiful intake of meat, milk, butter, cream and similar delights. This might sound a bit too controversial for some, but is vindicated by the impressive results achieved by Merseyside family doctor David Unwin.
A few years ago, Dr Unwin began to suspect that the advice favouring complex "high–carbohydrate foods" such as wholemeal bread, pasta and rice might have the reverse effect to that intended, by acting to increase the blood sugar level in those with diabetes. "Bread should be recognised as a concentrated sugar with a higher glycaemic index than sugar itself," he writes.
Accordingly, he proposed that all the patients in his practice who had been newly identified as having type 2, or "pre–", diabetes should adopt a high–fat diet. The results, published in the journal Practical Diabetes, are truly astonishing – an average weight loss of 9kg with a reduction in waist circumference from 120cm to 105cm. There was also a striking improvement in both their blood sugar levels, with only two still in the abnormal range. Seven patients were able to come off their medication.
Their blood pressure also improved and the average cholesterol reading fell from 5.5 to 4.7 – seeming to disprove the persistent rhetoric of the past 20 years implicating "high–fat" foods as a cause of raised cholesterol.
More on this article here.
Eddie

2 comments:

JanKnitz said...

Kudos to doctor Unwin for actually paying attention to the facts. My question is why other doctors can't see what's right in front of them--that the usual high carb low fat diet does NOT work and results in higher blood sugars (duh!) and progression of disease. It terrifies me that they can't recognize this but they are going to advise me about my health.

Anonymous said...

He also says that you can eat potatoes and porridge. Another quote from his is to go easy on cheese and processed meats.
The more I read about him, the more I feel his LC diet is far removed from the people who eat a lot of bacon, cheese and sausages.
We haven't even been told if he provided testing equipment for his guinea pigs or whether they had to rely on an HBA1c.