For years, G.P’s have prescribed drugs and ‘healthy eating’ advice to patients with type 2 diabetes with little success. If anything, most found their patients gained weight, were hungrier and needed more medication to control their condition.
All of that changed some three years ago with an article in the GP magazine ‘Pulse’ about the Southport GP Dr. David Unwin and his pioneering work with his NHS patients with type 2 diabetes.
Doctors were stunned by the remarkable success Dr. Unwin was having reversing the disease which blew apart the idea that type 2 diabetes is a chronic and progressive disease that cannot be put into remission. Previously, most GP’s were offering their patients standard NHS advice for diabetics, i.e. to lose weight by eating smaller portions, and following a low fat diet that was high in carbs such as pasta and rice. It wasn’t working!
Dr. Unwin’s research showed that patients with type 2 diabetes should actually be avoiding these starchy foods because they break down into glucose (sugar) when eaten, which raises blood sugar levels.
The new advice now adopted by many GP’s is to recommend low carbs as the way to eat, i.e. swap cereals and toast for eggs at breakfast, choose a salad with protein over a sandwich for lunch and have meat and veg instead of pasta at dinner time.
The principle behind this way of eating is that eating less Carbs helps to stabilise blood sugar levels so the body needs to produce less insulin, the hormone that pushes blood sugar into the cells and stores it as fat. Thus, the body is encouraged to burn fat instead of storing it.
An estimated 3,500 UK GP’s are now offering low carb programmes as an alternative way to tackle the growing obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemic seen across the country.
As one GP has reported : “The realisation that patients could actually come off insulin if they changed their diets suggested to me that what they were eating had a far more powerful effect than any medication”
At Gymophobics, all members are recommended a low carb diet as a means of losing weight and lowering blood sugar and the concomitant risk of type 2 diabetes.
