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This approach may be contrary to conventional treatment recommendations, but it seems so logical that I'm convinced that it's a superior way to treat diabetes, (and probably most autoimmune diseases.
LOS ANGELES - When Bob Krause turned 90 last week, it was by virtue of an unflagging determination and a mentality of precision that kept his body humming after being diagnosed with diabetes as a boy.
A leading diabetes research center named the San Diego resident the first American known to live 85 years with the disease, a life that has paralleled _ and benefited from _ the evolution in treatment.
Back in the day before insulin was discovered and made available as a medication, diabetes was treated with a diet low in carbohydrate. The doctors back then took the view that if diabetics couldn’t handle sugar, then the best thing was for them not to eat it (in the form of sugar and starch). It makes sense, and even a 6-year-old understands this concept. What a shame many health professionals seem to be blind to what is blindingly obvious. And it’s a shame that leading diabetes charities continue to promote a diet that is, by virtue of its high carb content, actually contraindicated in diabetics.
It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
Tex - That's a very interesting article. It is common sense, but I remember when I got on the pump and was told I didn't have to do the low carb diabetic diet, I was ecstatic. That was of course after growing up eating sweets and then being told you can't have them anymore. I guess if I had never had any sweets, I wouldn't have missed them.
My mother kept her A1C around 5, but she also passed out a lot from low blood sugar. She had several seizures and had to be rushed to the hospital on several occasions. She wound up dying last October at the age of 67 from complications after heart surgery. They were giving her massive doses of steroids, which caused her blood sugar to skyrocket. Her immune system was so shot that she wound up getting a fungus that is found in dirt and rotting fruit. It's something that most of us are exposed to every day. I guess what I'm trying to say is that she should have eaten what she wanted to and not spent so much time trying to keep her A1C at a normal level. She tried so hard to keep the complications of diabetes at bay so that she would not die at an early age and it happened anyway.
Sorry about the rant, but this hit way close to home for me.
I truly feel your pain at the loss of your mother, and her lifelong health struggles... and what those mean for you and your children. I think you're pointing to an important issue - there is not one single measure for health. Not blood sugar, not A1C, not the biopsy results... I feel that the current hysteria about cholesterol takes focus away from patient health and puts it on lab results. Those lab results may be useful, but a patient's health can't be reduced to the numbers.
For those visionary people who figure out how to measure new things, or what the implications are for health - it is a revelation. Unfortunately, in practical terms - my brother-in-law is a wonderful and caring cancer surgeon. He describes himself (when tired and frustrated) as basically a car mechanic. Having had some mechanics over the years - the best are imaginative and interested problem solvers... but most just follow the flow chart (first we look at this, then we do that...)
Anyway - I totally hear you - A1C is good to pay attention to and is not the whole story.
From one daughter to another, and I was blessed with my mother's light in my life for longer than you were - so unfair.
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