Doctors confirm Dr. Bernstein's methods, article

http://www.diabetesincontrol.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16701&catid=1&Itemid=17

Here is the full text of the article published in the journal Nutrition.

Quoting from the article.

The benefits of carbohydrate restriction in diabetes are immediate and well-documented. Concerns about the efficacy and safety are long-term and conjectural rather than data-driven. Dietary carbohydrate restriction reliably reduces high blood glucose, does not require weight loss (although is still best for weight loss) and leads to the reduction or elimination of medication and has never shown side effects comparable to those seen in many drugs.

Here we present 12 points of evidence supporting the use of low-carbohydrate diets as the first approach to treating type 2 diabetes and as the most effective adjunct to pharmacology in type 1. They represent the best-documented, least controversial results. The insistence on long-term random-controlled trials as the only kind of data that will be accepted is without precedent in science. The seriousness of diabetes requires that we evaluate all of the evidence that is available. The 12 points are sufficiently compelling that we feel that the burden of proof rests with those who are opposed.

The points that caught my eye are that this approach does not require weight loss and the benefits are immediate. This echos my own experience, I was able to able to attain my blood sugar goals for the first time with my very first low carb meal.

This article was written by the leading scientists and clinicians in the low carb world. It is reasonable objectively but it still isn't going to be recieved like something from the Cochrane Collaboration. It is a real uphill battle. There is certainly compelling evidence that a low carb diet is an option, it has performed quite well compared to essentially all other diets in managing diabetes and it has never been found to have adverse effects. But this is like a tree falling in the woods. If this article was written by Hope Warshaw and Marion Franz then it would be a breakthrough. But people find it hard to be objective when they are shown to be wrong. Often they have to find a way of extricating themselves from the public embarrassment (such as the ADA has). I'm not holding my breath for Ms Warshaw and Ms Franz, but Joy Bauer seems to have come around even if she hasn't updated her website with her new position.

There are two major problems with this:

1) One is with statements like this: Reducing carbohydrates is the obvious treatment. It was the standard approach before insulin was discovered Okay, so we take not one or two steps back, but over a hundred years. It's statements like these that imperil the significant progress that has been made in diabetes research and public support for continued funding into research.

2) We already have a significant problem with T1D being diagnosed as T2D. This will probably only make it worse, because insurance companies would rather blame their T1D and T2D customers and have their medication be a new diet rather than insulin.

I dont know, Brian.. I looked at what Warshaw and Franz have to say and it sounds so far away from what I know from my own experience, that I wouldn't bother looking at their website. Why do you?
I also couldn't find where Bauer says anything on her website about saturated fats being ok.

The way I look at it -- with all due respect to modern advances in science -- what was true 100 years ago about the human body is still true today.

I think Dr. Frederick Allen gets historical precedence credit for advocating low-carbing. Typically in his advocated diet, 8% or less of total calories come from carbs (that may be slightly more carbs than Bernstein allows!).

"Total Dietary Regulation in the Treatment of Diabetes", 1919.

There is a mafia that controls the public policy recommendations and they are at the center of the body that controls those recommendations. When the group that controls the recommendations finally gets a clue things will change.

Look at Joy Bauer's piece on the Today show from that link. She hasn't updated her web site but all her recent advice has been touting carb restriction.

Actually I think it even goes back to William Banting in 1863. And to go along with the new fangled low carb fad diet, I found some the tasty recipes and menus in this little classic.

Selling diets and books, it never ends.

My personal and positive experience with using a lower carb diet is consistent with many here as well as the assertions made in this paper. I believe that a low carb diet benefits most people with diabetes. I'm amazed that the nutritional policy-makers have backed themselves into an indefensible corner. In a way, justice already prevails as they stew in their own cognitive dissonance.

This way of eating helps people with diabetes. And it causes no harm. I was damaged, however, by my own ignorance, due in part by the keepers of the nutritional status quo.

The truth will out. Without the endorsement of the major medical advocates, it will just take time. Each of us that benefits from this way of eating will continue to speak our truth and at some point a tipping point will be reached and low carb eating for diabetes will become mainstream. Fifty or 100 years from now people will look back and wonder, "What were they thinking? Why did it take them so long to embrace such an obvious and long-standing treatment?"

People sometimes do strange inexplicable things. Multiply that by 10 for organizations.

By the way, low carb diets will never replace the miracle of modern insulin. Together, they're a potent combination.

I like the assertion here that the "burden of proof rest with those who are opposed." Will the defenders of this crumbling kingdom risk engaging with the tenets of this article?

There are forces at work behind the scenes that led to the terribly misguided high carb nutritional “standards” and the same forces keep them there. Modern agriculture is big business and there are lobbyists in DC every day campaigning for more and more (multi billion) subsidies for corn and wheat production… This trickles down to policies recommending more corn and wheat consumption-- which leads to them being ground up, boiled down, etc and put in almost everything sold to Americans- doesn’t take a rocket scientist to trace the dots back to when diabetes and other health problems started spiraling out of control in this country. Do aboriginal Australians suffer from epidemic levels of diabetes?

Yes, aboriginal Australians have three times the diabetes rate of the non-indigenous peoples. I blame it all on the "western" diet.

I mean the ones actually still living the aboriginal lifestyle not eating a western diet

Interesting article. Do you know how they define carbohydrate restriction?

From the paper in Nature:

Very low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet (VLCKD)
Carbohydrate, 20-50 g/d or less than 10% of the 2000 kcal/d diet, whether or not ketosis occurs. Derived from levels of carbohydrate required to induce ketosis in most people. Recommended early phase (“induction”) of popular diets such as Atkins Diet or Protein Power.

Low carbohydrate diet: less than 130 g/d or less than 26% total energy
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) definition of 130 g/d as its recommended minimum.

Moderate Carbohydrate Diet: 26 - 45%

None, the traditional diet is protective against diabetes.

Sounds like we’re in agreement

100 years ago, doctors starved their diabetic patients.