You may have already seen this video, How To Become Diabetic In Six Hours, produced by a doctor who’s selling yet another low-fat, Ornish-style diet. I don’t expect any low-carb types to be fooled, but give it a look just for fun and then we’ll analyze the bologna.
A quick recap in case you couldn’t play the video: Dr. Delgoofy tells us that dietary fat causes insulin resistance and diabetes. To prove the point, he swallows a half-cup of olive oil and – horrors! – his triglycerides nearly double. Then he consumes a big ol’ sandwich and some pizza and – double horrors! – his triglycerides rise to 214, and his glucose shoots up to 131. This, he assures us, proves that dietary fat causes diabetes.
As I often say about journalists after reading slanted news stories, I can’t tell if this is guy is intentionally dishonest or merely stupid.
Let’s start with that shocking rise in triglycerides after Dr. Delgoofy cannonballs a half-cup of olive oil. The horror music was a nice touch, but the result is about as horrifying as drinking a gallon of water and then discovering that the volume of urine in your bladder has doubled an hour later. In fact, if you ever swallow a half-cup of oil and your triglycerides don’t rise dramatically, check yourself into a hospital pronto and ask them to find the blockage in your digestive system.
The reason you find a long list of “essential fatty acids” listed in biochemisty textbooks is that — surprise! — your body needs fats. Your hair, your nails, your brain, your nervous system, your cell walls, your hormones, etc. — they’re all fat-dependent. Now, I suppose in theory you could fill a hundred syringes with fat and inject the stuff where it’s needed, but that would probably hurt. Plus your body likes to break nutrients down into little-bitty pieces before using them.
Consequently, most of us prefer to get our essential fats by eating them. The digestive system then does the work of breaking them down into itty-bitty pieces and packaging them as triglycerides — three fatty acids bound up with a glycerol molecule. Then the triglycerides are delivered to your tissues through your bloodstream.
So when Dr. Delgoofy showed us that the triglycerides in his blood doubled after a big belt of oil, all he proved is that his liver and bloodstream are in working order. If Dr. Delgoofy is a real doctor, then he surely knows that eating always raises triglycerides. That’s why doctors measure your triglycerides after a 12-hour fast. To give you an idea of how dramatically eating a meal can affect the measurement, here’s a tidbit I found online:
My blood triglyceride level was alarmingly high 497 mg/dL. It turned out to be a false result. A nurse sent to my home by my life insurance company had taken my blood sample just a few hours after I ate lunch. When my doctor drew my blood after an overnight fast during my annual physical a few months later, my triglyceride level was 97.
Larry Lindner
Tufts University School of Nutrition Science & Policy
If your fasting triglycerides are high, then you do have a problem. But it’s not dietary fat that causes high fasting triglycerides. Rather than explain it myself, I’ll quote Dr. William Davis:
One of the most common triglyceride myths is that eating fats increases triglyceride. But that’s only a half-truth, since fats do indeed increase triglycerides - but only if triglycerides are measured after eating. Depending on the quantity of fat consumed and other factors, triglyceride levels can reach around 300 mg/dl after a fat-containing meal, only to descend rapidly.
In contrast, carbohydrates can increase triglyceride levels many times higher, increasing levels to 300, 400, 500 mg/dl or more, even occasionally in the thousands, after many weeks to months of carbohydrate-excess. But carbohydrate excess leads not just to after-eating high triglycerides, but high triglycerides all the time.
The real story is that fats in the diet decrease triglycerides - at all other times except after a meal. The higher the fat content of your diet, the lower your triglycerides will be in a fasting blood draw. This has been well-established in numerous diet trials comparing low-fat with low-carbohydrate diets.
After demonstrating a perfectly normal rise in triglycerides after swallowing olive oil, Dr. Delgoofy continues his anti-fat demonstration by chowing down on a big sandwich and some pizza. Lots more fat, of course, but now he’s also consuming a heapin’ helpin’ of refined flour. Surprise, surprise … when he checks his blood levels awhile later, his triglycerides are up again, and so is his blood glucose level.
Once again, if he’s a real doctor, he knows perfectly well the rise in glucose was caused by the bread and the pizza crust, not the cheese and the meats. If he wanted to prove fat spikes blood sugar, he could’ve simply shown us a glucose reading after the olive oil. But nope … he stuffs himself with white flour, measures his glucose, then hopes to fool us into blaming the fat.
After seeing Dr. Davis give a lecture on the low-carb cruise, I got into the habit of checking my glucose after meals. Meats, eggs and cheeses barely cause a blip. But one white potato pushed my blood sugar up to 162. A small serving of pasta kicked it up to 174. After reading the latest book by Drs. Eades & Eades, my mom was finally persuaded to go on a low-carb diet. A few weeks later, her fasting glucose was down by 20 points. Her blood pressure and triglycerides dropped as well.
If her current diet is going to cause type 2 diabetes, I’d sure like for Dr. Delgoofy to explain the biochemistry of how that’s going to happen. I’d also like for him to point out the people who ate low-carb, high-fat diets and became diabetic in the process. I can certainly point to type 2 diabetics who were able to stop taking insulin shots after going low-carb.
Dr. Delgoofy tells us we should limit our dietary fat to 15% of total calories. Let’s back up to the beginning of his presentation and see how that’s working for him. Take at look at the fasting blood-work he showed us before consuming the olive oil:
The triglycerides are impressively low, so I’m guessing he doesn’t eat much sugar or other refined carbohydrates. But his HDL is an anemic 37. Mine was 64 last time I had it measured. As I found while digging through the American Heart Association’s data some months back, it’s low HDL that’s associated with heart disease, not high LDL. Here’s what the AHA itself says about HDL:
With HDL (good) cholesterol, higher levels are better. Low HDL cholesterol (less than 40 mg/dL for men, less than 50 mg/dL for women) puts you at higher risk for heart disease. In the average man, HDL cholesterol levels range from 40 to 50 mg/dL. In the average woman, they range from 50 to 60 mg/dL. An HDL of 60 mg/dL and above is considered protective against heart disease.
So even according to a kindred-spirit, fat-phobic organization, Dr. Delgoofy’s HDL is too low. Mine’s great. That’s because I eat plenty of fat. While we’re at it, let’s compare more of our cardiovascular markers.
Dr. Delgoofy told us his LDL is too low to be measured. The word to describe that claim rhymes with “tullpit.” Unless you want to spend a lot of money for a complicated lab test, LDL isn’t measured; it’s calculated by something known as the Friedewald equation, which looks like this:
LDL = Total cholesterol - HDL - (Triglycerides/5)
The reason we didn’t get an LDL reading for Dr. Delgoofy is that his triglycerides were inconclusive and simply shown as < 45. Dr. Eades and others have pointed out that the Friedewald equation tends to overestimate LDL for people with triglycerides below 100, but with that caveat in mind, let’s estimate Dr. Delgoofy’s LDL. For the sake of argument, I’ll assume his triglycerides are 40. We know his total cholesterol is 182 because his cholesterol ratio (total cholesterol/HDL) was listed as 4.9.
182 - 37 - (40/5) = 137
His LDL is probably lower than that because of the limitations of the Friedewald equation. But if he walked into a doctor’s office and had his lab work done, he’d be told his LDL is too high and his HDL is way too low. Meanwhile, here’s how my LDL would be calculated:
203 - 64 - (70/5) = 125
Mine would also over-estimated. But going by the standard tests, I win that contest. Now let’s look the other ratios commonly used to predict heart trouble.
A virtual tie on the last one. But on every other ratio, the guy whose diet is more than 50% fat is kicking the pants off the guy who tells us to limit our fat to 15%. And by the way, my fasting glucose level is better too. His was 96. To prepare for this post, I checked mine this morning. It was 85.
Given his low triglycerides, Dr. Delgoofy’s heart is probably healthy. I sincerely hope so. But after seeing this video, I have doubts about his brain.
I don’t blame Ronald McDonald for the rise in obesity and diabetes. I made that clear in Fat Head. But if he starts handing out statins with the burgers and fries, I may have to track him down and punch him right in his red nose.
No, scratch that. It wouldn’t actually be Ronald’s fault. I should track these people down and punch them in the nose instead:
Fast food outlets could provide statin drugs free of charge so that customers can neutralise the heart disease dangers of fatty food, researchers at Imperial College London suggest in a new study.
In a paper published in the American Journal of Cardiology, Dr Darrel Francis and colleagues calculate that the reduction in cardiovascular risk offered by a statin is enough to offset the increase in heart attack risk from eating a cheeseburger and a milkshake.
Those must’ve been some amazing calculations. After several major clinical trials that lasted for years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, researchers have been left with contradictory results. At best, they can say that among people with previously identified heart disease — and no one else — statins might prevent one heart attack for every 100 people who take them.
And yet this group in Britain fired up a copy of Excel and precisely calculated that one dose of statins offsets the coronary damage from a Double Quarter Pounder and a chocolate shake. Their study (ahem, ahem) should’ve been laughed into instant oblivion. Instead, it appeared in the American Journal of Cardiology (which next month will publish a study examining the heart-protecting effects of standing outside naked and howling at passing aircraft).
Good grief. We’re finally seeing major media outlets like the Los Angeles Times openly question the supposed benefits of statins, and in the same week we’ve got doctors suggesting Ronald McDonald should serve them as a side dish … at least in Britain, where statins are already an over-the-counter drug. Here’s part of what they wrote in their paper:
Routine accessibility of statins in establishments providing unhealthy food might be a rational modern means to offset the cardiovascular risk. Fast food outlets already offer free condiments to supplement meals. A free statin-containing accompaniment would offer cardiovascular benefits, opposite to the effects of equally available salt, sugar, and high-fat condiments.
Yeah, fabulous idea:
“Salt? Ketchup? Statin?”
“How much is the statin?”
“They’re free, sir.”
“Really? They cost money at the pharmacy. Give me a dozen.”
An article about the study (ahem, ahem) in today’s Science Daily was so full of bologna, I ingested three days’ worth of saturated fat merely by reading it. Here are some quotes:
Statins reduce the amount of unhealthy “LDL” cholesterol in the blood. A wealth of trial data has proven them to be highly effective at lowering a person’s heart attack risk.
What “wealth of trial data” would that be, exactly? Let’s review what the Los Angeles Times said on the topic:
In the first of three studies published in the Archives [of Internal Medicine] last month, medical researchers found that, contrary to widely held belief, statins do not drive down death rates among those who take them to prevent a first heart attack.
Perhaps those researches forgot to limit their study group to people who’d just consumed a Big Mac. But it’s not just the Archives of Internal Medicine that’s knocking statins lately. In a paper published in a French medical journal, researchers examined the clinical trials and came to same conclusion: several recent studies have been conducted to test the effects of cholesterol-lowering drugs. Most were disappointing or inconclusive, some were stopped early (and never published) because the results weren’t flattering, and the only one that declared a clear benefit for statins — JUPITER — is highly suspect. That’s the one where the investigators moved their end-point back in time to get a result they liked.
But back to the Science Daily article:
“It’s ironic that people are free to take as many unhealthy condiments in fast food outlets as they like, but statins, which are beneficial to heart health, have to be prescribed,” Dr Francis said.
Doctor, I’m going to step out on a limb here and suggest that any substance that messes with your basic biological functions probably ought to be prescribed. And if they aren’t prescribed, people should be given all the information about them. Before we put a dish of statins next to the ketchup dispenser, can we at least talk about side-effects?
Statins have among the best safety profiles of any medication. A very small proportion of regular statin users experience significant side effects, with problems in the liver and kidneys reported in between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 10,000 people.
AAAARRGGHHH!! No, damnit, I mean the real side effects! One in a thousand? Are you kidding me? Dr. Beatrice Golomb has been tracking statin side-effects for years and says the rate could be closer to 30%. Most doctors just don’t attribute the side effects to the statins they’re handing out. My mom’s doctor certainly didn’t.
Studies have shown a clear link between total fat intake and blood cholesterol, which is strongly linked to heart disease.
So we’re back to that same old @#$%. If A is linked to B and B is linked to C, then A must cause C. Just one little problem: nobody can produce a single study that shows that eating saturated fat causes heart disease. Recent studies have concluded exactly the opposite: there is no link between the two.
Recent evidence suggests that trans fats, which are found in high levels in fast food, are the component of the Western diet that is most dangerous in terms of heart disease risk.
No kidding. Too bad the goofs in white coats convinced us we had to stop frying in tallow and lard … you know, like we did back when heart disease was rare.
Even if you buy the theory that saturated fat raises cholesterol and elevated cholesterol causes heart disease, this proposal is still almost charmingly stupid. Heart disease is a chronic condition. It develops over years. To the minor extent that statins prevent a second heart attack, they do it over the long term. They’re not condoms for your arteries. If you have the occasional one-nighter with a milkshake, you can skip the protection without receiving a surprise phone call a few months later.
But apparently these researchers are convinced that saturated fat clogs your arteries the way tobacco stains your teeth: a little bit with every dose. Eat a burger, grow some plaque — unless, by gosh, you pop a statin immediately to halt the process.
If, heaven forbid, we start serving fast food with a side of statins, here’s what will happen: five or 10 years from now, you’ll see headlines about a new study that links fast-food consumption to muscle weakness, depression and memory loss. The blame, of course, will be assigned to the burgers. Michael Jacobson of CSPI will seek out the nearest TV camera and declare Quarter Pounders “Alzheimer’s in a bun.”
The researchers note that studies should be conducted to assess the potential risks of allowing people to take statins freely, without medical supervision.
This is coming from the same people who think it’s “ironic” that we dispense free ketchup in restaurants but require a prescription for statins? What a nice little note of caution.
They suggest that a warning on the packet should emphasise that no tablet can substitute for a healthy diet, and advise people to consult their doctor for more advice.
No thanks. The way doctors give out statins these days, I think white coats should come with a big warning label on them.
This is so upsetting, I’m not even going to attempt to make wisecracks about it. Pfizer has received approval in Europe to sell chewable Lipitor tablets to kids older than 10. I’ve pasted the AP article below.
I generally think of personal-injury lawyers as the blood-sucking scum of the earth, but when the kids who take this liver poison end up with permanent muscle damage 15 years from now, I will cheer if Pfizer is successfully sued for billions of dollars. Let the greedy scum punish the greedy scum.
Pfizer gets EU approval for kids’ cholesterol drug
TRENTON, N.J. — The European Union has approved a new chewable form of cholesterol blockbuster Lipitor for children 10 and up with high levels of bad cholesterol and triglycerides, a type of blood fat, Pfizer said Tuesday.
The approval includes children whose high blood fats are due to an inherited disease that causes extremely high cholesterol levels, familial hypercholesterolemia.
New York-based Pfizer Inc. won U.S. approval for Lipitor use in children 10 to 17 with that condition in 2002.
Lipitor is the world’s top-selling drug, with 2009 sales of about $13 billion, but its U.S. patent expires at the end of November 2011. Pfizer, the world’s biggest drugmaker, will quickly lose most Lipitor revenue once generic competition hits, so the company has been trying to boost sales where possible before then.
Pfizer said last fall that it plans to apply for a six-month extension of its patent in European countries, after doing studies of Lipitor in youngsters.
As in the United States, the European Union allows drug makers to seek an additional six months of patent protection for medications if they test them in children, who generally are excluded from the drug studies performed to win approval for a new medication.
Pfizer already won such an extension for its crucial U.S. patent on Lipitor.
For blockbuster drugs, those extensions can easily bring hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenue. Normally, they are for drugs that are widely used by different age groups.
Until recently, cholesterol drugs have been primarily taken by adults with heart disease, but their use has expanded to younger patients as more obese, sedentary teenagers and adolescents develop heart disease and diabetes.
Lipitor is approved to lower risk of heart attack and stroke, but can cause dangerous muscle pain or weakness, and it cannot be taken by patients with liver problems or by nursing or pregnant women.
My next-door-neighbor is a lawn guy. I see him all the time from my office window, puttering around in his yard … seeding, fertilizing, watering if we haven’t had rain for awhile, and of course, mowing and trimming. Not surprisingly, he’s got a healthy lawn, which anyone can tell from the rich, green color of the grass.
I’m not a lawn guy. Never have been. I spent most of my adult life living in apartment buildings, where the lawn (if there was one) was the landlord’s problem. We rent a house now, so I’ve finally got the lawn, but I still have no desire to put any work into it. I pay a guy to ride his lawnmower around the place, and that’s the extent of my involvement. No seeding, no fertilizing, no watering. The grass isn’t just grass; it’s a motley mix of grass, clover and weeds, with a corresponding mix of hues. During dry spells, there are brownish patches.
So as you might expect, my lawn isn’t going to win the local association’s “Most Beautiful Lawn” award anytime soon. (Yes, they have one.) That doesn’t matter to me, but I wouldn’t mind having a nice, healthy lawn. So after comparing my neighbor’s lawn to mine, I’ve figured out a solution: I’m going to hire a company to spray-paint my grass the same color as his. Then my lawn will be just as healthy.
The company I have in mind is Merck. I’m picking them because they apparently believe that since people with high HDL are less prone to heart disease, they can prevent heart attacks by developing a drug that artificially jacks up HDL. Riiiiiight. Paint the grass green, and the lawn is healthy. And if I have a mechanic tinker with my Mitsubishi so it produces exactly the same amount of exhaust as a Maserati, it’ll do 180 on the highway.
What’s amazing is that Merck is jumping in where Pfizer already failed, as the Wall Street Journal reported in this article:
It’s been nearly three and a half years since Pfizer abruptly pulled the plug on its $800 million effort to develop torcetrapib after the HDL-cholesterol raising drug was linked to a higher risk of death in a 15,000-patient study.
The disastrous outcome contributed to Pfizer’s stunning decision in September 2008 to sharply curtail early-stage research for drugs for cardiovascular disease, a franchise the company has owned for more than a decade with the blockbuster statin Lipitor and the blood pressure pill Norvasc (now generic).
Pfizer ended its clinical trial three years early because the death rate among the subjects taking torcetrapib plus a statin was 60% higher than in the group that only took a statin. (Since the patent on Lipitor will run out soon, Pfizer was hoping to create a new miracle combo drug.) The higher death rate, by the way, included a higher rate of fatal heart attacks. Gee, you’d almost think something was wrong with the Lipid Hypothesis.
And here’s the interesting part: the drug did exactly what it was supposed to do. In early phases of clinical testing, Pfizer breathlessly reported that the miracle combo boosted HDL by 44 to 66 percent, while lowering LDL by 41 to 60 percent. Wowzers! … high HDL, low LDL. Your doctor would read your drug-induced cholesterol score and happily sign a declaration that you’ll probably live to be 100. Then a couple of years later, your family could take that declaration, fold it up neatly, and put it in the pocket of your burial suit.
The point is, high HDL and low LDL don’t confer benefits in and of themselves. It’s far more likely that they’re markers for good cardiovascular health, not the cause. (In the case of low LDL, it’s not even a good marker. See this post for more on that topic.) Pushing markers up or down with drugs is nothing more than treating a lab score. And as Pfizer found out, the drugs can produce nasty side effects that far outweigh any benefits.
My HDL on my last lab test was 64. Combined with a score of 70 for my triglycerides, it makes for an impressive lab result. But it’s not those numbers that are keeping me healthy; it’s the diet that produced those numbers. A diet rich in natural fats raises HDL. A diet low in sugar and starch reduces triglycerides. A diet rich in natural fats and low in sugar is also a diet that’s more likely to keep blood sugar under control, and less likely to produce the inflammation that can damage arteries.
As I’ve said before, I don’t expect pharmaceutical companies to abandon the drug business and start recommending a change in diet. That’s not why they exist … and some of the drugs they’ve produced have been modern wonders.
Unfortunately, it’s the cholesterol-manipulating drugs that have been raking in the big bucks for the past 20 years, so of course Merck is going to jump on the HDL bandwagon. Prepare yourself for the press releases coming down the pike over the next few years. First you’ll see headlines about how Merck’s new drug raises HDL by 90%. Then you’ll read about clinical results that are “inconclusive.” Finally, Merck will quietly put out a release giving the pharmaceutical version of “The operation was a success, but unfortunately the patient died.”
Then I’ll hire some of their former employees to paint my lawn.
‘Twas the night before statins, and all through the land
Our lipids were lethal, as we’d soon understand.
Our eggs were all stacked in the fridge with great care
In hopes they’d be scrambled, or fried if we dare.
The children were calm and well-fed in their beds,
While visions of sausages danced in their heads.
The dads, mostly lean, and wives often thinner
Had just settled down for a porterhouse dinner.
When out in the world there arose such a clatter,
They sprang from their plates to see what was the matter,
And what on the cover of TIME should appear,
But an arrogant scientist, peddling fear.
Cheers and belief from an ignorant press
Gave a luster of truth to the new, biased mess.
So away to the doctor we flew in a pack,
In hopes of a plan to end heart attacks.
He was dressed in all white from his neck to his butt
(which conveniently hid the size of his gut).
He sat us all down for a well-meaning chat:
“More carbohydrates — avoid all that fat!”
So sugars and starches we passed through our lips,
Only to wear them on bellies and hips.
Our hearts with their plaques continued to swell,
We grew diabetic and weren’t feeling well.
The doctor announced it was likely our fault –
We were, after all, still eating salt.
“But there’s no other option,” he said with shrug,
And pulled out his pad to prescribe some new drugs.
“Now Crestor! Now Zocor! Then Lipitor next!
Now Lipex! Now Lescol, and best take Plavix!
To the depths of the liver! To the artery wall!
Force it down, force it down, foul cholesterol!”
Our appetites crazed, we soon looked like blimps.
Our children lost focus, our manhood went limp.
The doctor examined joints now wracked with pain
And concluded the patients were old or insane.
He chose Celebrix for muscles that ache,
And added Cialis to the drugs we should take.
“Now stick to your diet, and be of good cheer,
If this doesn’t work, I’ll do lap-band next year!”
We’ve got family coming in to celebrate our first Christmas in Tennessee. I’ll be taking the rest of the week off, except to check comments. Happy holidays to all of you.
Sometimes when I read health and medical articles in the newspaper, I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, scream, or just bang my head against the wall. If memory serves, a recent article about the wonders of gastric-bypass surgery prompted a full round of each, followed by a string of expletives that made me grateful my daughters were in school. (If my memory is fuzzy, it’s probably because of the head-banging.)
The article, which appeared in our local newspaper but originated with the Los Angeles Times, was headlined: Gastric bypass: Is it a diabetes fix? Here is a link to the online version so you can read the full story in all its glorious stupidity. In the meantime, I’ve pasted several snippets below, with my comments interspersed.
The discovery came about by accident more than a decade ago: Weight-loss surgery often led to dramatic improvements in the control of Type 2 diabetes, often before patients had even left the hospital.
Wow, that’s amazing! I wonder what it is about having surgery that reduces a patient’s runaway blood sugar so quickly. Perhaps by the time most of us reach adulthood, we have a big wad of undigested cotton candy sitting in our small intestines, left over from childhood trips to the state fair. Remove the intestines, remove the cotton candy. Makes sense.
Or perhaps it has something to do with the post-surgery diet, which consists of two to three ounces of sugar-free liquids or sugar-free gelatin. Newsflash: if you stop dumping sugar and starch into your digestive system, your blood sugar goes down.
Today, evidence of the connection is so solid that some doctors say surgery should be considered as a treatment for diabetes, regardless of a person’s weight or desire to lose weight.
Yes, more surgery is clearly the answer. Granted, a couple of generations ago we had only a fraction of the Type 2 diabetes rate we see today, and that was long before surgeons were comfortable ripping people’s guts out. But what the skeptics forget is that safety standards were lax in those days, and lots of people used to accidentally rip their own guts out in day-to-day activities like chopping wood, tossing lawn darts, and going fishing with really big hooks. It’s much safer and far less painful to let a surgeon remove your intestines.
“We thought diabetes was an incurable, progressive disease,” says Dr. Walter J. Pories, a professor of surgery at East Carolina University and a leading researcher on weight-loss surgery.
Well, of course you did, Doctor Doofenshmirtz. That’s because people in your profession have been trying to cure diabetes with low-fat diets, then scratching their heads in amazement when the diets don’t work. By the way, if you’re ever quizzed on the topic of alcoholism, the answer is: No, you can’t cure it by switching from bourbon to scotch. I thought you should know.
“This operation takes about an hour, and two days in the hospital, and these people go off their diabetes medication. It’s unbelievable.”
No, I believe it. They’re able to go off their medication because the surgery also forces them to go off sodas, corn chips, bread, Cocoa Puffs, mashed potatoes, pancakes, cookies, bagels, french fries, snickerdoodles, Little Debbie Snack Cakes, Twinkies, and Chunky Monkey ice cream. In fact, about all they can eat are tiny portions of meat and vegetables.
But experts still aren’t sure why obesity surgery helps resolve Type 2 diabetes or how long the effect might last.
It’ll last as long as the newly-mangled patients avoid sodas, corn chips, bread, Cocoa Puffs, mashed potatoes, pancakes, cookies, bagels, french fries, snickerdoodles, Little Debbie Snack Cakes, Twinkies, and Chunky Monkey ice cream
This much is clear: Patients who have weight-loss surgery begin to lose weight rapidly, which by itself improves Type 2 diabetes, allowing diabetics to more easily control their blood glucose levels. But something else appears to be occurring as well.
The “something else” is what’s not occurring: consuming sodas, corn chips, bread, Cocoa Puffs, mashed potatoes, pancakes, cookies, bagels, french fries, snickerdoodles, Little Debbie Snack Cakes, Twinkies, and Chunky Monkey ice cream
There is strong evidence that surgery — especially gastric bypass surgery, which makes the stomach smaller and allows food to bypass part of the small intestine — causes chemical changes in the intestine, says Dr. Jonathan Q. Purnell, director of the Bionutrition Unit at Oregon Health & Science University.
Yes, all kinds of wonderful changes occur in the digestive system when you rip out several feet of it. Here are just a few:
Reduced ability to absorb fat-soluble vitamins, leading to chronic deficiencies in vitamins A, B12, D, E and K - even if you take a lot of supplements.
Dumping of poorly-digested food into the large intestine, causing dizziness, bloating, diarrhea and fatigue.
Ulcers.
Nausea and vomiting
But researchers now suspect it has other functions related to metabolism.
Of course it does, you @#$%ing idiots! When you’re limited to a few ounces of protein and vegetables per day and have to give up sodas, corn chips, bread, Cocoa Puffs, mashed potatoes, pancakes, cookies, bagels, french fries, snickerdoodles, Little Debbie Snack Cakes, Twinkies, and Chunky Monkey ice cream, your metabolism changes.
Surgery somehow alters the secretion of hormones in the gut that play a role in appetite and help process sugar normally.
No, making a drastic change in your diet alters the secretion of hormones. When you give up sugar and starch, you don’t need nearly as much insulin anymore. Ask Dr. Jay Wortman. He gave up sugar and starch after becoming a Type 2 diabetic, and he doesn’t need medication either. (But of course, the Canadian government is convinced his new diet causes heart disease.)
But diabetes also tends to resolve or improve in 50% to 80% of people who have lap-band surgery, in which a band is placed around the top of the stomach to make it smaller, he says. And there is some evidence that the effect occurs in a newer type of weight-loss surgery called gastric sleeve, in which a portion of the stomach is removed so that it takes the shape of a tube or sleeve.
Uh, what a minute … I thought you were just telling us that removing several feet of the intestines creates magical hormonal changes. The lap band and the lap sleeve just force you to eat less — which for most people means focusing on protein foods and giving up sugar and starch. Do you see the contradiction here?
Evidence suggests the effect on diabetes can last for an extended period or even indefinitely, particularly if people don’t regain a lot of weight.
It’s not regaining the weight that causes diabetes to return. The weight gain and the diabetes are both caused by people deciding they can fill their itty-bitty stomachs with itty-bitty servings of sodas, corn chips, bread, Cocoa Puffs, mashed potatoes, pancakes, cookies, bagels, french fries, snickerdoodles, Little Debbie Snack Cakes, Twinkies, and Chunky Monkey ice cream. Then they get insulin spikes that make them ravenously hungry, so they eat more than they’re supposed to. Some even manage to stretch their itty-bitty stomachs back to a nearly-normal size.
“There is durability, but we also know that some people do get the disease back again,” Purnell says… It’s not clear yet why people have different responses.
Well, let me take a shot at explaining this mystery, Dr. Frankenstein: some people stick to the recommended post-surgery diet of meat and vegetables. Some people go back to eating the sugar and starch that made them fat and diabetic in the first place.
Studies from several other countries show that surgery also results in remission of diabetes for people who are not morbidly obese.
So let me get this straight: obesity causes diabetes, yet we can cure people who aren’t obese but still have diabetes by ripping their guts out and forcing them to stop filling up on sodas, corn chips, bread, Cocoa Puffs, mashed potatoes, pancakes, cookies, bagels, french fries, snickerdoodles, Little Debbie Snack Cakes, Twinkies, and Chunky Monkey ice cream. Call me crazy, but it’s starting to sound like diet might have something to do with developing Type 2 diabetes. (No, wait … it’s a progressive, incurable disease that nobody can really explain …)
There is even discussion, particularly in other countries, of performing weight-loss surgery for people with Type 2 diabetes who are not overweight.
Of course there is. Other countries don’t have our obesity rate. How the heck are the bariatric surgeons in France and Spain supposed to make a living if they’re only allowed to operate on fat people?
“Doctors say, ‘If I can lower glucose by medications, why send patients to surgery?’” Purnell says. “Surgery, however, allows people to have meaningful and sustained weight loss and their diabetes is better. There are risks involved with surgery, obviously, but it makes sense, to me, to do surgery.”
Spot-on, Dr. Frankenstein. As you know from your advanced medical training, there are only two types of treatments that can make sick people well: drugs and surgery.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go bang my head against the wall.
"This movie is funny and entertaining and amazingly informative."
"Contradicts everything you've ever been told about diet and heart disease with true science to back it up."
"Funny and smart, you'll be hard pressed to spend a more enlightening 100 minutes, and you'll come away with more practical knowledge than a whole college course in 'convential' nutrition."
Once again, if he’s a real doctor, he knows perfectly well the rise in glucose was caused by the bread and the pizza crust, not the cheese and the meats. If he wanted to prove fat spikes blood sugar, he could’ve simply shown us a glucose reading after the olive oil. But nope … he stuffs himself with white flour, measures his glucose, then hopes to fool us into blaming the fat.
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