RANT #32: The Lies They Tell Us About Managing Diabetes (Even if "they" don't mean to)

I'm reading Gary Taubes' recently published book "Rethinking Diabetes" and I'm MAD AS H*LL! Not at the author, but at all the so-called experts, well-meaning doctors and researchers over the past 150 years who apparently have been ignoring scientific methodologies and study results about diet and disease because they are afraid to let go of their pre-conceived notions and embrace a net truth.
     I HIGHLY recommend the book if you care about preventing or managing diabetes, overweight issues or yes, even heart disease. But, it's more than 400 pages long, and you may not have that much time. So, I will attempt to summarize its main points - and the author's concerns - in the most brief and simple way I can [LEGAL DISCLAIMER: I am trying my utmost to accurately represent the authors' findings, and will avoid implicating any person or organization by name in the process. If any readers take exception to my study highlights, or is offended by them, please read Taubes' substantial research findings before coming to me with any complaints. I'm just the messenger, though a very passionate and frustrated one.]

• DIET CONTROL: Before there was injectable insulin (which was discovered in the early 1920s), the only way diabetes could be managed and save people from death was through dietary control. Because clinical trials weren't in practice until the 1950s, the only way doctors could treat and save patients from imminent death was by experimenting on them with various trial-and-error diets. CONCERN: The unfortunate fact is that certain influential doctors in Canada, the US and Europe developed hypotheses about their treatments early on that led them to emphasize and talk about only those results that matched their initial qualitative hypotheses and to reject those "anomalies" or peer results that contradicted their findings. 
• PANCREATIC INSULIN: More than 100 years ago, doctors discovered a link between glucose levels in the blood and the pancreas' role in delivering natural insulin to convert that glucose into energy for the body to thrive, while also preventing excessive glucose and keto levels in the blood from killing patients. Those doctors deserve great credit for their observations and initial success with reducing diabetic mortality. CONCERN: The early connection doctors made between carbohydrates, the pancreas, insulin, and glucose levels caused them to be less curious - or to mostly ignore - any role that lipids (fats) or protein played in the conversion of food to glucose, to fat stores, to energy, which has "fed" more than a century of misleading, or unhelpful advice and well-meaning collusion about how macronutrients affect the body's metabolism (regardless of diabetic issues). AND they willfully ignored or actively squashed any peers who attempted to share contradictory or new findings. 
• INSULIN INJECTIONS: Man-made insulin was a game-changer for the lives of people who either had non-functioning pancreas (Type 1) or were insulin resistant (Type 2). CONCERN: It quickly moved doctors and researchers away from a focus on specific diets and dietary levers as a means or supplement to minimize insulin use to its most necessary levels in a body. [Experts will say "but we do tell people to exercise and eat well. True enough. But millions of diabetics could be using less insulin or no insulin at all (Type 2 specifically) if there were more definitive studies and programs about how to use food/diet as a "drug" to fight diabetes most effectively.]
• SCIENTIFIC BLINDERS: There has been no lack of care and concern about diabetes and heart disease and no question that doctors and researchers have devoted their lives to fighting, treating and understanding it. Unfortunately, ego and bias seems to have gotten in the way of many doctors' efforts to provide conclusions, recommendations and advice, causing them to mislead organizations, media, politicians and the public by promoting notions they BELIEVED in, DESPITE a lack of statistical evidence supporting their biases. CONCERN: Studies that could more conclusively provide statistically supported evidence for dietary changes and habits to best treat and prevent diabetes and heart disease haven't been conducted because the experts have tried and failed to prove their limited hypotheses about fat, cholesterol, and other causes of disease. 
• FOLLOWING THE WRONG SCENT: Early on, doctors and researchers got fixated on dietary fat as a contributor to obesity, diabetes and heart disease (together or separately). And cholesterol levels. And saturated fat. And fiber consumption. And they spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the past 75+ years trying to prove the link between these factors. Result: No clear or definitive links between dietary cholesterol and heart disease (read the book). No proof that more fiber prevents heart disease. No proof that high cholesterol (overall) in the diet increases the likelihood of heart attacks (fact from the book: BOTH high HDL and LDL together are actually more protective!). CONCERN: Doctors ignored or squashed evidence that the most common variable was  actually SUBSTANTIALLY INCREASED SUGAR CONSUMPTION, not certain fats or simply excess calories, that has transformed diabetic-free communities around the world in the past century into diabetic- and heart disease-ridden cultures. (Again: read the book if you doubt this fact.)

Ironically, the answer has been in our grasp from the beginning. SUGAR (or more accurately: high-carbohydrate diets)! In the American vernacular, we often jokingly say that eating too much sugar will turn us diabetic, but of course we don't really believe it because we don't see a direct correlation. There are plenty of people who indulge in sugary foods and never develop diabetes. Of course, it's not sugar alone, but how the body metabolizes macro nutrients including carbohydrates, fat and protein while storing and drawing energy in fat cells for the body that can lead to Type 2 diabetes and contribute to heart disease.
     So, in case you ever wonder why I have so many low-carb eating recommendations and talk so much about glycemic index, and sugar spikes, and tell people to avoid sugar, it's this book (and the Zone Diet, 30 years ago) that have convinced me that sugar control (along with less stress and exercise) will serve us better than just shooting up with insulin (which I do, daily, because I have Type 1 diabetes) and eating whatever we want. 

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