Where’s all the research on lifestyle and diet?

1A4A9618-800x533

Professor Nyström and Dr Tengblad

What’s wrong with the world’s largest meeting on diabetes research? Nobody talks officially about the real problem. A problem that has been demonstrated in two gigantic studies in recent years. Studies nobody has the courage to talk about.

The market for diabetes research and diabetes medications will only increase as long as the silence continues. More and more people will get sick unnecessarily.

At the meeting, I got the chance to talk quite a bit with Professor Fredrik Nyström and Dr Anders Tengblad. They both have, just like I do, a keen interest in the importance of lifestyle for diabetics.

Official discussions about this were almost entirely absent from the conference. Despite over 1300 presented scientific articles and discussions, there were not very many about eating significantly less of what diabetics don’t tolerate (carbohydrates). How many do you think? The correct answer is… zero!

It’s in the context of this that the junk-food lunches are not only ironic, but also a symbol of the total silence about the real problem.

Ignored Science

Nyström and Tengblad, both of whom also attended last year’s EASD, are saying that the meeting then, just as this year, completely ignored lessons learned from the new large PREDIMED and Look AHEAD studies. The latter showed that the advice still being given to diabetics – eat low fat and exercise – doesn’t work! Yet, they still go on as if nothing has happened. Nobody seems to want to even discuss what the studies showed.

PREDIMED clearly showed that a higher fat Mediterranean diet was better for diabetics than the common low-fat diet. Yet most continue as before to give advice that has been proven to work poorly.

The only clear and carefully stated dietary advice that I’ve seen at this conference was from a pharmaceutical company, educational material for health care professionals. They were telling diabetics to stay away from fat. Bread, on the other hand, contains starch, which they claim to be an “important source of energy” and bread could also contain “healthful fibers”.

With advice like this the company’s sales of diabetic drugs will increase even more. But no diabetic will get better.

Likewise, the market for diabetes research (the subject at the conference) will only increase. This, as more and more people get diabetes as a result of the dietary advice that we don’t talk about here.

More

Diabetes – How to Normalize Your Blood Sugar 

Death of the Low-Fat Diet

Lunch at the Diabetes Conference

 

 

 

Older posts