UK family doctors will be trained in low-carb diets
You may know Dr. David Unwin from our Low carb for doctors series. He is a family doctor (GP) based in the UK and he’s doing more fantastic work! In conjunction with Diabetes.co.uk, he has written a learning module called ‘Type 2 diabetes and the low GI diet’, which will be offered as training to GPs through a new online course offered by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), London.
Dr. Unwin has had fantastic results using a low carbohydrate diet with diabetes patients in his own practice and is keen to enable other GP practices around the UK to experience the same benefits: transformative health improvements for patients and dramatic cost cutting for clinics. He told Pulse magazine:
Implementing a low-carb approach for people with T2D has been transformative for our patients and practice staff, with significant diabetes drug budget savings into the bargain of over £35,000 a year.
Many patients understand they should give up sugar but still consume high glycemic index carbohydrates that digest down into surprising amounts of glucose.
We see proud patients putting their diabetes into drug-free remission on a weekly basis by cutting the carbs.
Congratulations to Dr. Unwin and Diabetes.co.uk for this important next step in increasing awareness about low-carb diets for diabetes, and a big thank you for the work you do!
Pulse: RCGP launches GP training on low carb diet for diabetes patients
Videos about diabetes
More with Dr. David Unwin
Video course: Low carb for doctors
Well done Dr Unwin ...you are a star !
Ric
Now, I wonder how long before this can be taught in schools - currently GCSE students of Food Tech are expected to learn about and follow the Eatwell Plate model - as a low carb eater I find it extremely difficult to deliver this. Failure to teach this will hinder the children when they sit their exams; yet in continuing to teach them that this is the government advocated way to eat is setting them up for a life-time of health issues. I say this as a Teacher in an SEN school where a disproportionate number of children have been diagnosed as diabetic and are on metformin at the age of 13-14yrs.
In one of Prof. Lustig's lectures on Youtube, he cites an estimate that I think 40% of naturally thin individuals in the USA are metabolically-damaged and 80% of the fat individuals are damaged. It's not 0% and 100%.
In other words, being fat isn't a cast iron sign of bad health, only of a thrifty metabolism. Being thin isn't automatically a good sign of good health, only of a tendency to burn away unwanted food and drink.
The thin individuals get no visible warning. In today's society, a BMI of 22 is mistakenly seen as a sign that they will not get ill and everything is OK. So it is probably the thin who take least action until they get a MI, CI or possibly a diagnosis of T2D.
I wish the advice was clearer, i.e. everyone's at risk. Being fat merely raises the risk.