Low Carbohydrate and Healthy Fat living is about health first and weight loss or what I prefer ‘weight normalisation’ second.
Some people who start LCHF lose significant amounts of weight quickly and some struggle, but the common theme is that they feel better, more alive, less lethargic, better clarity of thought (particularly the people with diabetes) and a feeling of ‘control’ once again.
I had a patient teasingly ‘have a go’ at me recently. :p Continue reading
I have had a good couple of weeks. I am not feeling so alone on my Low Carb Healthy Fat journey.
The medical profession is ‘coming out’ with me. A big family catchup over Easter reinforced that this LCHF campaign is well worth it, even it is just for those closest to me. But it is going well beyond me now đ
Most of the people I love and care for are adopting the lifestyle, not as much as Belinda Fettke BPhotography and myself, but now have the concept firmly entrenched.
The common theme amongst them is frustration that there are so many negative influences around them when they are trying to do the right thing for them, their children and the people they either work with or spend time with. This is despite the positive health benefits they have had and even more frustrating when those same people ask them how come they are so well.
One sister is a primary school teacher and we chatted about the classroom concentration and attention disaster and how it is all timed with the lunch box food. We discussed an idea. She is going to try something in the next few months with the children and see how it goes.
Another sister is an ICU nurse. She shared her story of shift work and cr@p eating habits of staff, particularly on night duty. People trying to get through the night with junk food, sugar and caffeine hits ending up with significant health issues. She has turned her health around recently with LCHF. I tried telling her about it all 3 years ago but she didn’t believe it – what do older brothers know anyway (I still love you Carly xx).
Our daughters Kate and Megan are well on board and contributing greatly to the Diabetes & Health Research Centre. They have their own frustrations with their immediate work and university environments. Hang in there family smile emoticon
Our daughter-in-law even told me about the biochemical polyol pathway that she had come across whilst studying biomedical science. I don’t think Heidi believed me when I talked about it as being an integral part of my Nutritional Model of Modern Disease last year. She and William are coming around to LCHF. http://www.nofructose.com/âŚ/nutritional-model-of-modern-diâŚ/
The medical profession is turning too!
I have had discussions, meetings and email contact from several doctors and dietitians in the recent weeks.
On board with the LCHF concept in health management and now advocating it to their patients and staff. These people are in my local community, this state and nationally. These are just personal contacts in the last 2 weeks seeking support themselves or just wanting to be part of it all.
In order of contact – not ‘egos’ tongue emoticon
Cardiologist
Plastic Surgeon
Radiotherapist
Neurosurgeon
Radiologists (2)
General Practitioners (4) – There is now at least one GP in each of the bigger Launceston practices advocating LCHF in having a role to play in health.
Dietitians (3)
Haematologist
Nutritionists (2)
Nurses (at least 5 ‘new’ adoptees)
A major way that this awareness is growing is by the community adopting LCHF and taking it back to their doctors. Early followers of this page will remember me advocating this method.
Do not wait for the medical profession to change. Do not wait for the government bodies to change. They are influenced by inertia and the food and pharmaceutical industry.
Make the changes and choices yourself – feel better and healthier and then lead by example.
Thank you to my family and community for leading this. ‘WE’ still have a long way to go but it is nice to know that I am not alone.
When does a little elevated blood glucose become Diabetes?
‘We’ are told by our ‘peak’ Diabetes Australia body that Diabetes is a progressive disease for ‘sufferers’ and that insulin will be required and that there is no cure for Type 2. It is accepted by the majority that it will be a decline into frank diabetes and cardiovascular complications. If you have any doubt of that then just ask a newly diagnosed patient about how they feel.
From Diabetes Australia:
“Type 2 diabetes is a progressive condition so eventually it may be necessary to start taking insulin to control blood glucose levels.. ..This is just the progression of the condition and should not be viewed as any kind of failure on your part.”
From the Diabetes & Health Research Centre – Take back control of your health and your Diabetes. Everyone adopting a LCHF – Low Carbohydrate and Healthy Fat – lifestyle is experiencing a new found control of their diabetes and all that I know of are reducing their medication and reliance on the system. Some have had a complete reversal of their requirement for medication.
I know who I am recommending to listen to. www.DiabetesHealthCentre.com.au
This review article sums up a lot of information on blood glucose. Nice and sensible.
http://www.phlaunt.com/diabetes/16422495.php
http://www.diabetesaustralia.com.au/Living-with-DiaâŚ/âŚ/FAQs/
Easter and chocolate have been hand in hand my entire life. Apart from the Easter ‘feast’, I used to go through up to a Cadbury Family block a day for the rest of the year – and then tried to exercise it off.
Why was I addicted to the chocolate?
Was it the chocolate or the sugar?
Many people tell me they can give up sugar and carbs but not the chocolate. This got me to thinking about what makes the sugar, and carbohydrate, palatable.
Have you tried just eating sugar or carbohydrate by itself? It doesnât taste that good. Sugar beyond a teaspoon doesnât taste that pleasant. Try having a glass of water with 15 teaspoons of sugar in it, the equivalent of a can of soft drink. You canât do it without wanting to heave it back up.
Try some 90% dark chocolate (6.7% sugar) and compare it to the âmilkâ chocolate (50% sugar). I can only have a small amount of the dark chocolate and thatâs enough. It doesnât taste that good. Letâs stop kidding ourselves. Itâs the sugar that we are addicted to and not the cocoa.
By the way, who was the marketing genius who came up with the term âmilkâ chocolate? âMilkâ chocolate is SUGAR chocolate. Marketing the chocolate as a healthy dairy product is just another misleading marketing ploy, as per usual.
The sugar and particularly the fructose component is what drives the behaviour. It is the chemical which plays a major role in hunger and making you want another piece of chocolate or treat or cake or biscuit. Add to that the shiny bright wrappers that advertise the sugar to you and itâs hard to miss them in the shopping aisle. Buy me, eat meâŚ
The food industry mimics nature. Fruit is the natural source of sugar and Mother Nature does the same advertising.
When fruit is at its ripest Mother Nature does the same advertising. The fruit is brighter, bigger, shinier and tastier. Itâs brilliant. In nature we, as animals, need to have as much sugar and carbohydrate as we can gorge ourselves on at that time of plenty to deliberately get fat to survive the winter hibernation.
Our problem is that sugar is around all year in the shops âadvertisingâ itself for consumption. You rarely see chocolate in a plain wrapper. Lollies are brightly coloured for the same reason. Even sugar is bleached away from its natural brownish colour.
Remember the marketing. Enjoy a treat if you wish but donât extend the time frame.
Easter this year for me is about family and community. We will be indulging in some feasting but not a lot of chocolate. All the best and be safe.
Joanna McmIllan recently put up a blog post about the February Low Carb Cape Town Summit that I attended and spoke at. She appears to have been at a different meeting to the one I attended as her report seems to be at odds to what I heard and saw. She certainly seems to have missed my talks!
Several points seem to be have been left out by her.
Joanna is a nutritionist who appears in the public arena here in Australia regularly. On this occasion Joanna admits that she was invited âas a guest of Atkins Internationalâ to attend the meeting as an independent nutritionist. However thatâs only part of the story.
There was a small contingent of Australians and a few New Zealanders present and several came up and spoke directly to me. I heard that Joanna was present but I never saw her, let alone spoke with her. I was told that she was going on to an Atkins International sponsored event in Johannesburg following the Low Carb Summit and apparently had a speaking engagement there. I can only imagine that her travel expenses, accommodation, food, conference fees and then speakers fee were graciously provided for by the corporate industry.
The Atkins group had a significant presence at the Low Carb Summit and were promoting their food products that were laced with artificial sweeteners. Chocolate and sweet alternatives were offered to me on more than one occasion – I said no thank you.
My trip to the conference was self funded and I am out of pocket several thousand dollars for that experience. No regrets for that opportunity. There were no speaker fees for me but my accommodation was kindly paid for by the conference organisers. I was not there promoting book sales. Joanna has inferred that we all had vested interests there. Hmmm.
Joanna goes on in her blog to state that science conferences are a great way â to speak and debate ideas with the presentersâ. If that was so, it would have been a great opportunity to speak with me as the only Australian doctor presenting there if she was truly interested in debating ideas.
Joanna claims that the presenters presented hypotheses as facts and no one talked about the quality of the food. Maybe she missed my talks.
I thought that it was worth putting up one of my slides from the talk with the clear heading âHypothesisâ. Maybe she was asleep for this one. If she missed that part of my inflammation talk then she would have missed me talking about the quality of the food, eating real food and eating mindfully. A shame really, if you are going to be misreporting an event that you are being financially supported to attend and report on.
As Joanna was missing my talks, she seems to have skipped over my repeated term of Low Carbohydrate and HEALTHY Fat living. I prefer that term to high fat because LCHF is about replacing refined carbohydrates with a higher amount of healthy fats. The conference delegates were all in agreement with that and to get away from having massive amounts of fat. That is where some people get confused.
I think that Joanna is in agreement with that concept of healthy fats from her article but it seems that she has, in her own words, has âthrown the baby out with the bathwaterâ by decrying LCHF.
Maybe we could have debated the ideas if she wanted to. Maybe she doesnât know about all of those artificially sweetened products that her sponsor was promoting. Maybe we can meet up at another time and have a meaningful discussion.
https://drjoanna.com.au/blog/the-low-carb-summit-blog-389/
Joanna McmIllan recently put up a blog post about the February Low Carb Cape Town Summit that I attended and spoke at. She appears to have been at a different meeting to the one I attended as her report seems to be at odds to what I heard and saw. She certainly seems to have missed my talks!
Several points seem to be have been left out by her.
Joanna is a nutritionist who appears in the public arena here in Australia regularly. On this occasion Joanna admits that she was invited âas a guest of Atkins Internationalâ to attend the meeting as an independent nutritionist. However thatâs only part of the story. Continue reading
I have come across this feature article on Coca Cola from 1950. I wonder where we would be without this colossal marketing giant’s influence over the last 100 years.
Some corporate brilliance here. Not good for our health long term but we have grown up with this media surrounding us and now we are paying the price.
Read on how Coca Cola influenced the world.
“Coke’s peaceful near-conquest of the world is one of the remarkable phenomena of the age. It has put itself (in the phrase of a Coca-Cola executive with a literary bent) “always within an arm’s length of desire.” And where there is no desire for it, Coke creates desire.”
“… to keep the young man from harm, the girl hadâas a special sacrificeâgiven up her daily quota of a dozen Cokes. “She has become as thin as a nail,” wailed her mother, “and I have been afraid she would die” – So we had the observation that obesity was related to soft drinks in 1950.
“In most places Coke has blended into the local scene as if the brown-green of its bottles and the fire-brigade red of its advertising were some kind of protective coloring.”
“..out of good American common sense, Coca-Cola is in the business of creating business wherever it goes.”
“It’s the start of a carefully planned program which is going to affect the lives and pocketbooks of everyone in this room . . . Let’s stop and think for a moment about happiness.”
“One of Woodruff’s smartest moves was his policy of supplying U.S. soldiers anywhere in the world with nickel Cokes, no matter how much money the company lost in the process. The Coke bottling plants which moved along with the invading U.S. armies and brought the sight and taste of Coke to millions of people who had never heard of it before were actually the biggest impetus of Coca-Cola’s present international boom.”
And all of this was in 1950!
The Coca Cola branding was the ONLY advertising I found in the townships in Cape Town in 2015. It was pervasive. It is a long battle to regain this ground.
Angelina Jolie has her ovaries out now for fear of cancer – was that a good idea? Not by my reasoning.
Maybe it was good for this Hollywood star but can can it be justified for the masses?
This is clearly an emotive topic. Angelina had a double mastectomy nearly 2 years ago because of her increased risk for developing breast cancer. That was her choice after having many tests. She decided what she thought was best for her. She was applauded for her decision at that time.
But was it sensible for all?
Following that very public announcement, there was a significant increase in women around the world having preventative breast removal, because they were at increased risk, not because they had breast cancer. Continue reading
We should never have to endure either.
The reason homicide statistics are written up and become so prominent in the media, is because the thought of being ‘murdered’ scares us so much.
Helpless victims certainly don’t deserve to die. Continue reading
