Don't blame your Doctor.

My experience of the NHS, and that of my family and friends, has been 100% positive. The medical profession has never let us down. The media gets great delight in telling us about occasional medical horror stories, regarding the NHS, but we hear very little about the hundreds of thousands of people, who are saved or cured every day of the week. I have lost count of the times, I have read of people rubbishing Doctors on diabetes forums and social media. It’s my opinion these people are missing the point.

General Practitioners are not diabetes experts. I don’t suppose many would claim to be. Think about it, they have to know about thousands of medical conditions, they are in effect, a sort of gatekeeper. They have to know what they can delegate to a practise Nurse, what they can deal with themselves, and what requires specialist investigation at a hospital. Living with diabetes is a 24 hour seven days a week job, that being said, the job becomes second nature in a very short space of time. Make no mistake, you have to become your own diabetes expert.

You have to become responsible for your diabetes. Blaming someone else when you have not helped yourself, won’t bring your eyesight back, blaming someone else, won’t grow another foot. Pointing the finger at someone from the grave, is one tough gig. Fortunately, it is easy to become your own diabetes expert, but you have to make the effort. The best place to start is acquiring the tool kit, without the right tools, you don’t stand a chance of controlling your diabetes. 

The good news is, the toolkit costs no more than a good restaurant meal. You will need a blood glucose meter, in the UK around £10 for a full starter kit which includes the meter, a lancet pen, test strips, lancets, you even get a small case to store the kit in. You will also need weighing scales to weigh your food and a carb counting book. If you want to get a head start in becoming your own diabetes expert, get hold of a copy of Dr. Richard Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution. Bernstein is arguably the world's leading expert on blood glucose control, his book is a masterpiece. 

And how to use it can be found here. A point worth thinking about, are you overweight, do you have type two diabetics in your family. If so it might be worth getting yourself a BG meter and testing every now and again. It's a fact people can be pre-diabetic or have type two diabetes for years, before it become obvious, with the usual symptoms and diagnosis confirmation. Don't leave it until it is too late. Think it won't happen to you, that's what I thought. With four generations of type two in my family, I should have known better.  

All sounds very easy yes, the truth is for most type two diabetics, controlling diabetes could be very easy, but it is not. Look at the situation this way. If you want to build a house, you have to get the foundations right, otherwise the house will never be sound. It’s the same with diabetes, if your diet or as I prefer to say lifestyle is not right, you will never get long term control of your diabetes. The NHS does not recommend a low carb higher healthy fat diet. This leads to year after year NHS diabetes audits reporting around 93% of type one diabetics and around 70% of type two diabetics, never obtaining safe blood glucose numbers. Why has this failure rate been tolerated for so long, you may be wondering. It’s not all doom and gloom for all, for some the epidemics of type two diabetes and often linked obesity is a Godsend.

Pharmaceutical companies are earning £billions from diabetics, all around the world, countless medical professionals, are earning a very well paid living treating diabetics. Hang on a minute, didn't I say don’t blame the Doctors. It’s a fact Doctors have to work within very strict guidelines. Stepping out of the guidelines cost Professor Tim Noakes a great deal of money and a two year battle with the authorities, to defend his reputation, and keep his licence to practise. When Surgeon Gary Fettke tried to help his diabetic patients, he was banned from giving nutritional advice to his patients or the public for the rest of his medical career. It was a case of shut up, get back to cutting off diabetics limbs or else. These are not isolated incidences, other medical professionals have fallen foul of the ‘the guidelines’ and who has spent massive amounts of money influencing the guidelines? Multinational junk food companies and big pharma.

I said at the start of this post, most GP’s are not diabetes experts, neither are they nutritional experts. Dietitians are the nutritional experts, and all across the world, many of the most high profile dietitians have sold out to junk food. It has often been said, prostitution is the oldest profession in the world. It could be said it’s an honest profession. Every adult knows what a prostitute does for a living and why they do it. The world of dietetics is a comparatively new profession, and often a very murky place. Dietetics is failing in many areas. Clearly big changes have to be made, if dietitians want to earn the trust and respect we have for our Doctors. 

Marika Sboros is a journalist based in South Africa. Marika has compiled a list of medical professionals, including dietitians and lay people, who advocate a low carb higher healthy fat lifestyle, not only for diabetics, but for all people. The list is growing, the truth becomes more clear, as each day passes. Whole fresh food is the best way to maintain good health, whole fresh foods, can help reverse the main, and most damaging symptom of type two diabetes, highly elevated blood glucose. It should be a no brainer for all, but as I said in our blog profile years ago "Welcome to the crazy world of diabetes" 

Eddie