Beating the virus: We need to cut glucose and prescription drugs not calories and fat
7By Jerome Burne It’s official. […]
By Jerome Burne It’s official. […]
By Jerome Burne The Hybrid Diet […]
If the low carb diet was a political party, it should be now be close to forming a government. Its story mirrors that of actual parties – founded decades ago, it was small for a long time, languishing on the fringes of respectability; its policies were dismissed as untested and possibly dangerous by the low-fat ruling party which had close links to big business.
It’s hardly news that things have not been going well for various professional elites lately. Economists so busy promoting the neo-liberal agenda they failed to notice the on-coming depression; politicians resolutely deaf to constituents’ complaints that generosity to those at the top had destroyed jobs and cut wages at the bottom.
A small but remarkable trial of the effects that a change of lifestyle can have on diabetes and obesity has just been published in the relatively obscure SAMJ (South African Medical Journal).
The results are impressive and the implications ground breaking. The starting point is that the official ‘evidence based’, low fat, calories-in equals calories-out approach isn’t working.
Here’s a really bad idea. Send a dozen nutritionists to work alongside regular doctors in a Medecins Sans Frontières team providing emergency treatment to the wounded in a war zone. It’s a bad idea because they would lack any relevant skills. They might help speed up recovery but in the operating theatre they’d be be worse than useless as the wounded come in.
Last week the front page of The Times carried a story that was an opening shot in a revolution. I’m sure that the editors didn’t intend it as that and that the readers didn’t see it that way either. It was a story about shifting from the long recommended low fat diet to one that cut back on carbohydrates instead. Standard fare for the cuddly lifestyle pages, hardly material for social upheaval.
The sugar tax is obviously a very sensible idea but it’s much more than that. It’s prophetic, it’s a sign of a major change, it’s the swallow that could be heralding a medical summer. The tax is shorthand for a long running battle around what is a healthy diet, which turns out to be about a lot more than just diet.
It’s no secret that there are serious problems with the practice of scientific evidence based medicine (EBM). It’s obviously a good idea to have a system for ensuring treatments are safe and effective. But as a defence against dangerous or poor drugs, the working of our current one makes the pre-crash banking regulation look rigorous.
Here’s a radical idea. Why not use drugs for cases where they are appropriate, safe and effective. And don’t use them when they aren’t. Wild eh! It’s an idea that could save the NHS billions. Three clinicians I know are thinking along exactly these lines.
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