Tom Jelinek PhD - 17 June

Preface

Thedoctor of the future will give no medicine but will interest his patients inthe care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention ofdisease. ~ Thomas Edison

It is onething to master a discipline. It is another thing entirely to live it, andsubject ones life to its maxims. For me, it began in earnest when I saw thereading of 18 mM blood glucose (325 mg/dl). I was advised on the spot to seean endocrinologist, who would find the right combination of drugs to treat mydiabetes. I briefly felt sick to the stomach, as I confronted the facts. Ithen began to question the whole premise. Combinations of drugs? Arentthere better options? I had given mainstream dietary guidelines thebenefit of the doubt until that moment, and it ended badly. What if diabetestreatment guidelines were equally wrong?

My brain iswired to think of life through the eyes of individual cells, and to seethe organism as the sum of its cells. I knew my blood glucose was too high,and it was slowly poisoning me. My muscle cells were refusing to take it outof circulation. Probably my liver, also. Should I override those refusalswith diabetes drugs? That didnt feel right, so I tried the only other option:To stop eating anything that could raise my blood glucose. In short,carbohydrates. I never again ate potatoes, bread, or any other starchy food. I have not had a drop of beer, or any sweet drink. Not even fruit juice. Iacted first, and asked questions later. Right or wrong, I had to follow myinstincts. A decision on drugs could come later, if all else failed.

Fortunately,all else did not fail. Within three weeks, my blood glucose had come down from325 mg/dl to under 150 mg/dl. Within three months, my morning blood glucosewas below 100 mg/dl as often as it was slightly above. In the afternoon, Iaverage about 90 mg/dl. If measured for the first time today, depending on theday, I would be considered normal, or post-diabetic. I coined thatterm, to describe myself. Pre-diabetic implies an inevitability I havesince come to reject. My other symptoms have all faded, and my health is asgood as ever. I am no longer drowsy in the afternoon. I can hike for manyhours without lagging, and I am deeply grateful for my new lease on life.

It quicklybecame clear that the medical system looks at diabetes purely in terms ofcontrolling blood glucose, making it the only objective, regardless what itdoes to the cells tasked with taking it out of the blood. Medicine is veryeager to treat the many complications of diabetes, but is not so eager tosuggest the one course of action that can stop it in its tracks: Avoidance ofcarbs. And in spite of all the interventions, the official outlook is bleak. Many doctors and researchers refer to diabetics as the walking dead. Once blood glucose regulation goes off, they say, the horses have left thebarn. Our life expectancy is TEN YEARS less than others, due principallyto what is called our extraordinarily high risk of heart disease. Andwhat about drugs? Six large trials on type II diabetics tried to establishthat blood glucose reduction with drugs could improve cardiovascular diseaserisk. Every one failed, so they upped the doses, and tried again. The result? A significantly increased risk of death in the treatment group (Byingtonet. al., NEJM 2008; 358:2545-2559) . To call thosetreatment strategies ineffective would be to flatter them. They can makethings a lot worse. Yet somehow, most doctors missed the reports that drugscan make things worse, and continue to prescribe those same drugs. Understandably, the drug reps did not enthusiastically spread that news.