karppaus.info

ABOUT RETHINKING DIABETES

An eye-opening investigation into the history of diabetes research and treatment by the award-winning journalist and best-selling author of Why We Get Fat

Before the discovery of insulin, diabetes was treated almost exclusively through diet, from subsistence on meat, to reliance on fats, to repeated fasting and near-starvation regimens. After two centuries of conflicting medical advice, most authorities today believe that those with diabetes can have the same dietary freedom enjoyed by the rest of us, leaving the job of controlling their disease to insulin therapy and other blood-sugar-lowering medications. Rather than embark on “futile” efforts to restrict sugar or carbohydrate intake, people with diabetes can lead a normal life, complete with the occasional ice-cream cake, side of fries, or soda.

These guiding principles, however, have been accompanied by an explosive rise in diabetes over the last fifty years, particularly among underserved populations. And the health of those with diabetes is expected to continue to deteriorate inexorably over time, with ever-increasing financial, physical, and psychological burdens. In Rethinking Diabetes, Gary Taubes explores the history underpinning the treatment of diabetes, types 1 and 2, elucidating how decades-old research that is rife with misconceptions has continued to influence the guidance physicians offer—at the expense of their patients’ long-term well-being.

The result of Taubes’s work is a reimagining of diabetes care that argues for a recentering of diet—particularly, fewer carbohydrates and more fat—over a reliance on insulin. Taubes argues critically and passionately that doctors and medical researchers should question the established wisdom that may have enabled the current epidemic of diabetes and obesity, and renew their focus on clinical trials to resolve controversies that are now a century in the making.

Two decades earlier, I had been affected by the writer Gary Taubes’s controversial and groundbreaking 2002 article in the New York Times Magazine, “What If It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?”, which chronicled the growing movement in dietary and diabetes circles to reduce carbohydrates in order to lose weight and lower blood sugar.

Taubes’s forthcoming book, Rethinking Diabetes: What Science Reveals About Diet, Insulin and Successful Treatments, explores a century’s worth of research into diabetes, and attempts to show why so many experts got things so wrong for so long. This is Taubes’s fifth book about nutrition science, and I would argue that his meticulous, science-based work (he is a three-time winner of the National Association of Science Writers’ Science in Society Journalism award) makes him the Bryan Stevenson of nutrition, an early voice in the wilderness for an unorthodox view that is increasingly becoming accepted.

1960: < 2 million Americans with diagnosed diabetes
Today: 30 million*
Is this a problem that can be solved by drug therapy?
There must be a better way
My new book, Rethinking Diabetes, is out Jan 2

This is the truth about @garytaubes. Probably one of the greatest lifesavers on the planet. And he doesn't even practice medicine.

The Very Meaty History of Treating Diabetes Before Insulin
A surprisingly effective method for its time

In an excerpt from his book Rethinking Diabetes: What Science Reveals about Diet, Insulin, and Successful Treatments, Gary Taubes recounts the story of the 18th century doctor John Rollo, who “may have been the first physician to successfully bring a case of diabetes under control.” What did Rollo prescribe his patients? Meat. So, so much meat.

Taubes refers to this as “the animal diet,” which is exactly what it sounds like. (Thankfully, Rollo’s refinement of this meant that he moved away from telling patients to eat “rancid old meat and fat.”) The thinking behind this was to reduce carbohydrates in diabetes patients, and it seems to have worked to prolong the lives of several of the people he treated, provided they stuck to the regimen.

If you’re reading this description and getting flashbacks to, say, the heyday of the Atkins Diet, you’re not alone. And while it’s nowhere near as sophisticated as insulin, Rollo’s overall line of thinking has aged relatively well. In 2018, Anahad O’Connor wrote in the New York Times about a study that showed diabetes patients successfully regulating their blood sugar levels via a diet low in carbohydrates and high in protein.

There’s another lesson in Tabes’s retelling of Rollo’s story, and it stems from the experience Rollo and his colleagues had in treating diabetes with the “animal diet.” Not surprisingly, Rollo and his fellow doctors learned that patients fared far worse when they cheated on their diet, snacking on bread or something similar before it was safe to do so. It doesn’t matter if it’s the 18th century or the 21st — sticking to what a doctor prescribes can make a big difference in treating whatever ails you.