JGwen, thank you for posting this – very interesting to read of yet another benefit of this way of eating. Good to hear that some of the damage caused by having high insulin and insulin resistance can be reversed so quickly. I must admit that I do feel quite sad sometimes when I think of all the damage I have done to my body – so it was lovely reading this.

I came across a book by Dr Jason Fung (The Diabetes Code). I think it is quite new as he quotes Prof. Taylor and Michael Mosley. Downloaded it and haven’t been able to put it down. So much interesting and scientific information but written in such an engaging and easy to read manner.
Very interesting extract which I have just read.
“In type 1 diabetes, blood insulin is low, so replacing insulin is logical. In type 2, blood insulin is high, so giving more insulin seems problematic. After all, giving more alcohol to an alcoholic is not a winning strategy. Using heating blankets on a heat stroke victim is not a winning strategy. Treating sunburn by getting more sun is not a winning strategy. And giving more insulin to somebody with too much insulin is not a winning strategy. Logically, effectively treating type 2 diabetes requires an approach to lower both glucose and insulin, thereby minimizing both glucotoxicity and insulin toxicity.”
I was given very intense insulin therapy for 4 years (injecting fast acting insulin after every meal and snack) but my diabetic macular oedema, diabetic retinopathy and foot numbness only got worse and worse. No matter how much insulin I injected it didn’t help – I was literally in despair until I read the BSD.
We are so “on the right track” with the BSD as it minimises both glucotoxicity and insulin toxicity.
I used to have a record card which I took into the diabetes clinic so the consultant could fill in my test results. In October I was given a glossy A5 binder full of info on managing diabetes – plus new record cards.
Yesterday I thought that perhaps I should read the info on diet because, just maybe, they have revised the diet guidelines. So, according to the NHS, to improve my diabetes control I still have to “eat starchy carbs with every meal ‘. Every meal should consist of 2/5ths starchy carbs and must be low fat. Oh dear – so no change. That is exactly the diet advice I was following prior to BSD and which was making my diabetic complications much much worse.
So my body cannot cope with starchy carbs and the cure is that I must eat starchy carbs. It’s as bonkers as telling a celiac that to treat celiac disease they must eat gluten. How sad that people following this advice are at risk of losing their eyesight and their feet to diabetic complications. Sorry – rant over.

More interesting info from the book –
“Many other studies confirmed the EURODIAB results. For example, the Golden Years Cohort Study17 followed 400 patients with type 1 diabetes who lived for over fifty years with their disease. They had beaten the odds and survived. What was their secret? Well, it certainly was not tight blood glucose control. Their average A1C was 7.6 percent, with some as high as 8.5 to 9.0 percent, which is well above the standard recommended target of 7.0 percent. In fact, not a single Golden Years Cohort patient had an A1C in the normal range, ruling out glucotoxicity as a major player. The entire Golden Years Cohort of survivors had suboptimal blood glucose control and yet their health was excellent. The common factor was a low insulin dosage. Obesity, high blood pressure, and other manifestations of hyperinsulinemia were notably absent.”
I must put my kindle down now and stop reading as husband is getting a bit fed up as I have been reading non stop since I got home from work yesterday.

Krysia that makes so much sense. There was an article in the Mail yesterday about ‘pills’ and how in fact they were making people feel more ill and even developed symptoms they had not had before. Partially this is due to over prescribing by doctors who were/ are working towards government targets to increase their own financial gain! I had heard before that doctors get a ‘fee’ for each person diagnosed with diabetes. I’m not saying that all doctors are unethical but it does make you wonder. I personally know of two people who were prescribed statins and they both became really ill until they stopped the ‘pills’!

Hi KrysiaD, it’s frustrating isn’t it? I read Obesity Code first a couple of months in and it was such an eye opener. I remember a feeling of profound relief, that I’d been given the answer to a big secret! Whilst I’m not T2, I do have diverticular disease and psoriasis, both inflammatory conditions. Thinking I had IBS, that was how I discovered bsd, looking to see what ‘diet’ could control my symptoms. I feel blessed to have discovered LCHF.

I’m also a fan of Jason Fung. The book came out at the beginning of April so it is brand spanking new. For anyone who is new to the Forum and not yet come across his work his YouTube videos on obesity and diabetes are also definitely worth watching. My kindle has gone AWOL right now but if I remember rightly MM endorses the Diabetes Code.

KrysiaD – I’ve never been on insulin but I feel so sympathetic to your ‘rant’. I often think about the people I met at the diabetes education sessions I attended. Like you, we were told to eat carbs with every meal. While I did my bit by bringing along the BSD book (and the course leaders already had all our recent Hba1c results so people could see the direct impact of the BSD on my bgls) it is still sad to think about all the people still being given the wrong advice. It seems to me you have to fight your way through all the misinformation you get from so many different quarters, doctors, nurses, dietitians, educators, (even fitness instructors in my case). I’m still trying to work out what I can best do to help spread the right message locally. Meanwhile, thank goodness for MM, Jason Fung etc.

Marie xx

nb Hope you’ve managed to put the kindle down and husband is now happy!

Verano – it feels morally wrong for doctors to over-prescribe meds for financial gain – especially if it damages their patients. Hopefully there are more good doctors who really care about their patients than bad ones.

KazzUK – I am so pleased that this way of eating has helped your symptoms. I feel the same – that I have been given the answer to a big secret.

Marie 123 – I did manage to put the kindle down and husband is happy. We had a lovely day walking around the grounds of a country house in North Norfolk with the dogs and my sister and brother-in-law. He is now watching the F1 highlights and I have my kindle ready to read the next chapter.

You are right that Michael Mosley endorses the book. He says “Clear and utterly convincing. This book deserves to be widely read”. You couldn’t get a better endorsement than that.

You did well – taking the BSD book to the diabetes education sessions. Hopefully it made people question the advice they were given – especially when they saw the impact the BSD has made on your bgls.

Luvtcook – Have started the Early time-restricted feeding that that you flagged up on this thread. It absolutely suits my metabolism and I am ‘on a roll’ with it.

The trouble is, all NHS doctors, diabetic nurses etc have their hands tied. They have to give out the information that is produced by the people at the top! Even if they don’t personally believe it! If you see your doc or nurse (we know more than they do quite honestly regarding bsd) they will advise based on government guidelines. But the government can’t do a U turn even if they know the truth. Imagine what would happen. If just 20% of people followed this bsd way, ,so many people would get well. The knock on efffect is that the food industry would lose huge money. So would big pharma, producing all those pills, ‘remedies’. Medication for our every day ills wouldn’t be needed! Trillions would be lost. The governments here and in the USA rely on every day people being ill it seems to me. It’s more profitable for them and that’s all that matters. That’s my take on it anyway. So we need doctors Aseem Malhotra to spread the word amongst ourselves. In through the back door so to speak.
Off my soapbox now!
Kazzeexx

Kazz,
That is true, they do have their hands tied. Sadly it’s also true that it is all about the money. Treating diabetes with drugs is a licence to print money for big pharma.

We are the proof that this way of eating really works and soon there will be so many of us plus more and more enlightened doctors like Dr Mosley, Aseem Malhotra and Dr Fung that Governments will not be able to ignore the fact that this way of eating reverses diabetes and the current guidelines do the polar opposite.

The chapter on Insulin was quite hard for me to read. While I was happily injecting insulin, thinking I was doing something really good for my health, I was blissfully unaware that there were large scale studies that showed that aggressive treatment of T2D with insulin caused a mind boggling 265% increased risk of death. My WHY to stay off the insulin has now got so much more important and urgent. Actually it has now become an absolute priority and I am going to do everything I can possibly do to stay off it.

That’s just how I feel, Krysia, there’s no going back for me either to that miserable, lethargic, foggy brained, unhappy dark place. xx

KryiaD, so happy for you that the TRF suits you and that you are off and running with it. Please do let us know how that works after a couple of weeks. Sounds good in theory….fingers crossed that real life is just as good. LTC

This just came to my work email (in Australia- go figure) from HealthInsightUK. I thought those in the UK might find it interesting. It’s about the uncontrolled explosion in prescribing meds in Britain over the past 15 years to try to stem conditions such as T2D, high cholesterol etc and its failure.

http://healthinsightuk.org/2018/05/14/the-great-qof-fiasco-the-untold-story-of-the-biggest-public-health-experiment-ever-and-how-its-failure-was-ignored/
It might be old news to you there but I found it absorbing.

Thanks Mariet
I’ve just read the article and it’s interesting stuff. I used to work in the NHS so I knew about QOF, the GP payment scheme and the increase in prescribing. I think it’s why I’m wary when my GP or Practice Nurse automatically offers me a prescription which seems partly based on the fact that I’m getting older. I’m not against tablets/medicines but I do like to research what I’m being offered, their effectiveness, side effects etc before making a decision. Of course, that’s a luxury I recognise I may not always have. xx

Really interesting reading Mariet. It was absorbing, and so sad to think that all those people are at risk of having side effects from meds that are not effective. No wonder that our NHS is buckling under the financial strain of all this overprescribing.

This is a wonderful thread – so much good information.

Luvtcook – can report back after just a few days. It’s almost like the eTRF has been designed exclusively for my metabolism, my circadian rhythms and life-style. I have always enjoyed breakfast and eating my largest meal earlier in the day. Because I work late afternoons and evenings 5 days a week I usually probably only have 10 minutes to stuff down an evening meal. Not an enjoyable experience at all (and that is an understatement). Have been thinking a lot lately that I really need to do something about this but was at a loss to know what to do – until you posted the link.

From day one it felt so right and so effortless. I now enjoy a leisurely coffee while
I am seeing clients and have boundless energy in the evening. 2 or 3 days a week it doesn’t fit in – but that’s probably a good thing to keep the body guessing. Will keep you posted on my progress – am hoping that this will be the answer to my insulin resistance and will also reboot my pancreas.

Thanks for the link Mariet. Very interesting. John Bergman has lots of videos on YouTube challenging the medical orthodoxy. He also appears with some other familiar faces in a Netflix documentary called The Magic Pill

I just came across this video which covers explains the quite a lot on the relationship between the two hormones which control fat storage and burning, and the production of ketones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3fO5aTD6JU&feature=youtu.be

One of the topics that comes up around27 minutes into the video is that red meat provides an essential trace element in the production of ketones, (Carnitine) . As a vegitarian this mention sparked a question in my mind. Would there be other sources of this in my diet. – because apparently the presence of this trace element can be significant in preventing loose skin. – So then I came across this link.
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Carnitine-HealthProfessional/#h3

I thought one paragraph might be important enough to justify doing a cut and paste.
Type 2 diabetes
Insulin resistance, which plays an important role in the development of type 2 diabetes, may be associated with a defect in fatty-acid oxidation in muscle [27]. This raises the question of whether mitochondrial dysfunction might be a factor in the development of the disease. Increased storage of fat in lean tissues has become a marker for insulin resistance [27]. Early research suggests that supplementation with L-carnitine intravenously may improve insulin sensitivity in diabetics by decreasing fat levels in muscle and may lower glucose levels in the blood by more promptly increasing its oxidation in cells [27-29]. A recent analysis of two multicenter clinical trials of subjects with either type 1 or type 2 diabetes found that treatment with acetyl-L-carnitine (3 grams/day orally) for one year provided significant relief of nerve pain and improved vibration perception in those with diabetic neuropathy. The treatment was most effective in subjects with type 2 diabetes of short duration [30].

Another website suggests that a meat eater will have 6 times more carnitine in their diet than a vegan. – Guess who is heading down to the health food shop to buy a carnitine supplement tomorrow.

Noticed the post by Kazz about doctors and nurses hands being tied and them having to do as they are told. It happens everywhere, although my doctor fully supports my diet he cannot endorse it and has to have the attitude that I am doing this myself. It reminded me of a report I read a couple of years ago when researching for this site and I cant find it again. But, it was by Public Health UK titled something like Guidelines for Healthy Eating. Over a 5 year period they had been following this type of diet but not as strict but using the high fat low calorie method (healthy fats only) and came to the conclusion that the current NHS advice is actually causing obesity and all the usual arguments about big pharma push their drugs etc. The NICE conclusion was that PHUK was right in its finding but it would cost too much money to re-train all the medical staff to change their thinking. End of story. Money. So they do agree with how we eat (up to a point) but are not willing to promote it.

I know exactly how much my drugs cost the French health service as there is a print out on the back of my prescription and I did a calculation based on how much I have reduced my meds and what that is saving my doctors surgery and it is something like €1200 per year (all my meds are free as a diabetic). I have told him this and suggested if he could steer some of his diabetic patients towards a low carb diet his surgery would be so much better off. His response was ‘I could never ask a French person to give up their daily baguette’. I hope on the quiet he does make the suggestion.

Hi Sunshine-Girl – Let’s hope your doc does promote it on the quiet!
A colleague of mine has been bothered by IBS and bloating and constipation for many years. She’s slim, an enthusiastic gym goer and believes in carbs when working out. This time last year, we were comparing notes on our IBS symptoms. Just this morning, she was eating sliced boiled egg, half avocado on white buttered toast. She said, she’d tried cutting out refined carbs but she was hungry all the time and had developed a sweet tooth that was impossible to ignore. I explained what was happening. She understands what I’m saying to a point and is with me all the way, but she believes in carb loading for the gym. I told her about Tim Noakes! She also thinks as she only has 1 tsp of sugar in her coffees throughout the day (she drinks a glass of water for every coffee too), that that’s nothing and says it would be impossible to give that up, likewise her redbull at the weekend! I love her to bits, but to stop the sugar is unthinkable to her, a bit like the French people not eating baguettes. The fact I no longer have IBS symptoms (diverticular actually), unless I fall off the wagon, still doesn’t convince her. It’s so ingrained, that unless she got something serious like T2, I don’t think she’d consider it.
I shall catch up on all the links at the weekend, thanks for posting, JGwen and Mariet.

I found this calculator interesting on another site by MM. It calculates your BMI, BMR and TDEE (total daily energy expenditure).
I found that I don’t have as big a daily differential between input and output as l hoped so a bit of a kick to watch the calories closely. https://thefastdiet.co.uk/how-many-calories-on-a-non-fast-day/

MaggieBath,
Thank you for the calculator – very helpful.
JGwen,
Thank you for the information on L-carnitine. Although I eat red meat once a week I am wondering if supplementing with it will help my insulin resistance. Have ordered some as the only way I will ever know if it is helpful is to try it.

This is such a great thread.

Am feeling fantastic doing all my eating earlier in the day. And my blood sugars are brilliantly low. Looking at – just maybe – have found the answer to my insulin resistance.
Low carb and eating all my food earlier in the day.

Have just read the following on the BBC website. Looks like scientists are just beginning to realize this might be important
BBC Report:
We’ve been warned repeatedly about the health perils of being out-of-sync with our body clocks. Are we eating in the right way for these circadian rhythms, and could changing our mealtime habits boost our health and help us lose weight?

Body clock linked to mood disorders
Body Clock: What makes you tick?
Should we all become early risers?
‘Breakfast like a king’
What did you eat this morning for breakfast or lunch?

The chances are it wasn’t steak and chips, chickpea curry or anything else you might normally have for dinner.

Yet some scientists believe eating more of our daily calories earlier in the day – and shifting mealtimes earlier in general – could be good for our health.

One study found women who were trying to lose weight lost more when they had lunch earlier in the day, while another linked eating later breakfasts to having a higher body mass index.

“There’s already a very old saying, eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper, and I think there’s some truth in that,” says Dr Gerda Pot, a visiting lecturer in nutritional sciences at King’s College London.

Now scientists are trying to find out more about what’s driving those results and are looking at the relationship between eating and our body clocks, dubbed “chrono-nutrition” by some, for answers.

When you eat
You may think of the body clock as being something that determines when we sleep.

But in fact there are clocks in virtually every cell in the body.

They help prime us for the day’s tasks, such as waking up in the morning, by regulating blood pressure, body temperature and hormone levels, among other things.

Experts are now looking at whether our eating habits – including irregular mealtimes and eating too late – are far from optimal for our internal rhythms.

Dr Pot, who studies chrono-nutrition, said: “We have a body clock that determines that every 24 hours each metabolic process has an optimal time when something should happen.

“That suggests that having a large meal in the evening is actually, metabolically speaking, not the right thing to do because your body is already winding down for the night.”

Dr Jonathan Johnston, reader in chronobiology and integrative physiology at the University of Surrey, said although studies suggest our bodies are less good at processing food in the evening it was not yet understood why this is.

One theory is that it’s linked to the body’s’ ability to expend energy.

“There’s a little bit of preliminary evidence to suggest that the energy you use to process a meal – you use more of it in the morning compared with if you eat in the evening.”

Properly understanding the link between when we eat and our health is important, Dr Johnston says, because it could have big implications for helping to tackle the obesity epidemic.

“If we can come up with advice to say, ‘Well actually you don’t necessarily have to change so much what you eat, but if you just change when you eat,’ that little subtle modification might in itself be a really important part of how people can improve health across society,” he says.

KrysiaD – It’s really interesting that you feel so well switching when you eat. I remember Jason Fung saying there was research to suggest optimal time for eating your main meal was earlier in the day (I think he suggested 2-3 in the afternoon – can’t quite remember where I read it/saw it)
Luvtcook – Thanks for the link, I read the article earlier this morning – not quite sure how to work it into our (family) lifestyle right now but definitely one to keep in my back pocket to pull out in future, I think.

Marie123 – it works really well with my lifestyle – but really hard to fit it in if you work a normal working day.

Funnily enough, my nan and grandad ate their main meal at “dinner time” which was lunchtime. Nan used to cook and grandad came home for lunch, then went back to work. Tea would just be a cheese and pickle roll or tinned fruit, evaporated milk and bread and butter! 🙂 That seemed to be the way that generation lived.

Good article on the benefits of yogurt to reduce inflammation (and impact arthritis as well as that caused by obesity). Would imagine the same would apply to kefir, yogurt’s kissing cousin (if not even more so). Thought this crowd might be interested.

Article link below to posting in The Atlantic, article stating ” Several new studies suggest yogurt might reduce inflammation—a process linked to different types of diseases”.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/05/theres-something-about-yogurt/561176/

Hi luvtocook. Interesting article. I also scrolled down and read No 5 “what’s making us fat?” That was interesting too!
I eat Greek yoghurt most days but can’t say I’ve noticed any difference really with the inflammation markers in my blood.
I’m reducing steroids monthly and now on 2 mgs daily from a high of 30 mgs 4 years ago when my inflammation markers were 72 and should be 0-5. I couldn’t function then. It was like having been in a car crash, flu, and a hangover all at the same time. (Polymyialgia Rheumatica)
My rheumatologist wants to see the”real” me on no steroids so he can decide if I still have PMR. Trouble is all the tablets I have can cause muscle stiffness, stiff joints and bone pain!
I will stick with the yoghurt as it’s so tasty and I love it with my berries in the morninhs
Hope you’re keeping well LTC and everyone else too.
Tilly x

I don’t know if this has been posted before but it explains why (amongst other things) a small cheat on for example carbs, has ramifications way beyond the pleasurable moment. It’s about 44 minutes in but the whole video is pure gold. Search on YouTube “leptin & insulin resistance balancing tips with Jason Fung”, I know at the weekend I had a glass- well two! – of cider and the following day my body was telling me to have another but I ignored that wicked imp and the craving was gone by the end of the day.
As a reminder, insulin stimulates hunger and leptin sends satiety signals to the brain. The rest of the craving story is in “Clever Guts” by MM.

Did anyone see that programme last night on BBC 1 about “crash” diets? Basically they had to have 800 cals per day in soup or shake form and their stats were taken at the beginning and the end of 9 weeks. 4 people were put in a house for a few days and then went home to continue the plan and introducing food …. The vicar with T2, went into remission! The lady with an incredibly fatty liver, after just 4 weeks, her liver was pretty much normal! The only thing not discussed was what ingredients were in the soups and shakes other than them being packed with all nutritional requirements. Here’s a link to iplayer…. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0b53xqs/the-big-crash-diet-experiment?suggid=b0b53xqs Here’s the blurb introducing the programme for those not able to access iplayer….
“Crash diets have long had a bad reputation, but some experts say it’s time to think again about the black sheep of the dieting world.
Dr Javid Abdelmoneim teams up with some of Britain’s top scientists in a bold new experiment that puts the latest research on crash dieting to the test. Four obese volunteers with serious weight-related health issues, including type 2 diabetes, go on an extreme weight-loss programme and give up real food, surviving on a very low calorie soups-and-shakes diet.
Will they lose weight in the long run and turn around their health problems? If it works, this radical approach to weight loss could help millions, save the NHS billions of pounds and revolutionise the way we diet.”
Well worth a watch!
Kazzee!

Kazz there’s someone in a BSD group on Facebook who claims to know someone in the original trial at Newcastle University. It spanned two years and at the end of that period they’d all regained the weight they’d lost.

Yes I did and pleased to see Professor Taylor from Newcastle was very much part of the documentary.
Although the BSD wasn’t mentioned specifically, it was interesting to see that the various diets given after the 9 weeks didn’t appear to contain much carbohydrate.
I was however a little surprised that the participants (apart from the vicar) didn’t lose more weight as many of our star pupils on the BSD often do better.
X B

Oh, that’s disappointing, MaggieBath. I’m surprised at the vicar guy cos he wanted to lose the weight and reverse his T2 as his wife had MS and he was worried he may not live to look after her. And the mum with the gastric band… who’d learned to stretch her esophagus in order to eat more! I don’t think I could have admitted that on national tv!
BusyBee – yes, I wondered why the ladies hadn’t lost as much and I wonder if the soups had flour to thicken?

No Kazz, I was referring to the original weight loss conducted by Prof Taylor to show that diabetic reversal is possible. These guys were following the same principles.
I do hope they are successful; as you say the priest had a lot of motivation tho he looked very grey by the end of it.

Ahh, apologies Maggie! Relieved to read that!

MaggieBath – thanks for the tip on the Jason Fung interview. I watched half last night and will pick it up again tonight. Last night I was particularly caught by the discussion about the body’s set weight. Although I’ve heard him talk about it before, he was describing how it’s going to take a 60 year old woman who’s been dieting for 30 plus years (62 and 25 years for me) a whole lot longer to re-set/lower her body’s set weight compared to someone who is younger/not dieted as much………. very helpful info for me as I go into maintenance.
Luvtcook – am very interested in the article about yoghurt. I eat a lot of natural yoghurt and have often felt it was something my body was craving – rarely get that with any other food.
Kazz – noticed the programme was on but didn’t watch it – sounds like I should

NB
For info I recommended the Diet Doctor website to Sunnysandy yesterday https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/recipes
– many people will know it already but if you’re not familiar with it there are some great recipes and the site also has other info/presentations etc on low carb, diabetes, intermittent fasting. There are some bits you can only access if you’re a member (I’ve never signed up) but lots of things are still free, including the recipes.

Hi Guys,
I tend to think that those of us who have a lot of weight to loose are more fortunate than those who only need to stick to very low carb for 8 weeks. – I am sure I would have gone back to my old bad habits over time if 8 weeks had been long enough for me. – It was more like 3 months before I wasn’t looking at the bread in the supermarket with wishful eyes. I started in mid October and it will probably be at least mid August before I start to move into maintenance.

Marie123 & Tillybud….I too feel like yogurt is “just the right thing to do”….too many good things related to it. I doubt it is going to be any magic bullet, but is one more thing that is in the plus column. Decided to go to my favorite Afghani restaurant for lunch today. They have a nice vegetarian lunch special (a quartet of sauteed spinach, some roasted eggplant, onions and green pepper, a roasted pumpkin dish, and some spiced chickpeas). I feel like I am eating a plateful of nutrition whenever I get it…a bit carby re the chickpeas, but it seems like having them once in a while I am doing my gut bacteria a big favor. Since starting BSD I am so much more conscious of the health benefits of everything I put on my plate.

At the moment I’m reading ‘ The Pioppi Diet: a 21-Day Lifestyle Plan’ by Aseem Malhotra and Donal O’Neill. I just can’t believe what an eye opener it is. I’m only part way through but seems that insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome are the absolute devils and the cause of so many ills. Even more interesting is that all these pills for lowering blood pressure, cholesterol etc. etc. are really of very little use. For example they argue that if you have never had a heart attack statins won’t add one day to your life. I can’t go into all the science, and parts are rather scientific, but I am left ‘gob-smacked ‘ for want of a better phrase.

I would really like to hear from anybody else who has read this book to know their take on it.

I haven’t read the book, but actually it’s worse than that, statins and aspirin are positively bad for you.
I’ve found a few videos on high blood pressure and the rest of the package some of the are slightly off the wall but we can choose what we take away from them!
These are all on YouTube.
Barbara O’Neill: Heart Health and high blood pressure
Dr Richard Bergman: Blood Pressure
There’s a film called Statin Nation but I had to subscribe to a channel to get it.
Also there’s a UK cardiologist called Richard Kendrick who believes that statins have been of no use at all.
There are more, I’ll add them as I find them if there’s the interest?
Maggie

P.S. I have seen his address to the European Parliament. It’s called something like Big Pharma Big Profits or similar.

Sorry, Malcolm Kendrick

Verano
I’ve recently bought a copy of the book but haven’t started reading it yet. I got it because my GP practice want me to take statins as a preventative measure – my cholesterol is raised, and added to diabetes and my age, I’m automatically classed as higher risk – and I knew Aseem Malhotra had looked at the effectiveness of statins in prevention. I also saw the video that MaggieBath mentions and that someone kindly posted on here/the Forum (at least I think it was on this site, was it you, MaggieBath?).
It’s called Big Food Big Pharma Killing For Profits – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcnd3usdNxo – and Aseem Malhotra is the main speaker – very interesting.

As you say, the whole thing about the metabolic syndrome and how it underpins so many diseases and chronic conditions (and the inter-connectedness of it all) was a revelation to me when I first started reading about it. It’s fascinating and very helpful, I think.

That reminds me….
I know there are quite a few people on the Forum interested in Fasting (and Jason Fung fans). I came across this video on YouTube which is from last week. It’s of a presentation given by Megan Ramos, the co-founder (along with Jason Fung) of the Intensive Dietary Management Programme).

It’s called ‘Practical Fasting: The Use of Therapeutic Fasting in a Clinical Setting in the Treatment of Metabolic Syndrome ‘. It explains exactly what they do in their clinic, who they treat and what type of fast they recommend for which clients. Not really any different from his books, but nice and practical and sometimes its just easier to watch something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY3cHwOyCmw

nb It’s also interesting that she’s obviously responding to some critique or other (or something about the risks of fasting) which had been part of the previous day’s events – maybe by Stephen Phinney?

Just checked back – the Big Pharma European Parliament panel session was posted by Kazz and Maggie Bath – thanks both xx

Thanks for the links MaggieBath I will watch them all eagerly!
Marie please read the book it is a real eye opener. I have been concerned about the number of ‘pills’ my OH takes everyday and have been asking him for ages to get the doctor to reassess all his medications. Recent articles about the side effects of multiple medications being positively bad for you and now this book have just made me even more determined to get him to the GP. Thing is I want to go with him and be armed with as much I research and I can find. So thank you both for the links.

I had a minor stroke a couple of years ago. The 12 year-old doctor caring for me prescribed statins and basically said take them or die; I was obviously reluctant to take them having read about side effects like muscle pains – which I now know has a name, statin myopathy https://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a2286
So, the young man laughed and said I suppose you’ve been reading the Daily Mail; bet he doesn’t speak to his mother like that. Long story short, I took them religiously for months and accepted the stroke had massive effects and thought what I was feeling was the development of dementia. I felt dreadful, I was getting confused by Bubble Witch Saga even.
Anyway, I forgot to reorder my prescription and within days it was like a fog was lifting, I felt like a different person and it continued to improve. I did some research and found that HDL which I had a very high level of, was critical to brain function; ffs, why give medication that messes with your brain?
So, explained to GP what had happened and he responded he hadn’t come across brain fog before but he’d had plenty of adverse events; lots of muscular pain and one patient who couldn’t walk after a week of statins. I said I’d rather be dead than continue feeling like that, he agreed and he agreed that I stop.
What puzzled me was that there appeared to be very little reporting of this particular reaction to statins, and then it became obvious; I had put it down to the damage suffered by the stroke and simply hadn’t realised what was happening. How would you when your ability to think was being closed down? If I’d kept taking them I’d probably be diagnosed with dementia by now.
And my GP wasn’t surprised! I’m very grateful that he was straight with me, but I think I had to question the prescription for him to be honest.
Robert Lustig in the Kopriva Science Seminar Series in March of this year explains that the figures that really matter are the ratio between Triglycerides and HDL. My Triglycerides are rock bottom and HDL sky high – I was struck by this when my GP read my results because he remarked on them. My ratio is excellent and I should never have been prescribed statins, it was at best lazy and at worst culpable.
Verano, you’re obviously going armed with a ton of questions for this poor unprepared GP, but the killer is, is there a single study that shows that a cardiovascular event has been prevented by statins? And the answer is no.
Go girl!!

Maggie you made me smile with your ‘12 year old ‘ doctor I think we’ve all been there!!

Your story echoes so many others. I personally know of two people prescribed statins who both became really ill. The first suffered general fatigue and aches and pains. The second was so ‘ill’ she went from a really healthy looking person to someone who almost looked at ‘deaths door’ in a matter of two months. Both became well again when they stopped the statins!

My experience with statins was as follows….. overall cholesterol 5.2, the same as it had been my entire adult life, goal posts moved so now it needs to be closer to 4 point something. Ah! says the doctor you need statins! Oh! Say I. This is MY normal so the goal posts may have been move but I’m still ‘ normal’! Then came all the fiddling around with computer programs desperately trying to get me in the ‘at risk’ group. But, try as she might, my risk factors keep falling short of the ‘magic’ number, I continued to resist.

Then, only a matter of months ago, I heard, for the first time , the word ‘ratio’. My ratio of HDL to LDL, or vica versa, was 2.1. Anything below 3 is good. My diabetes nurse was over the moon!

Robert Lustig seems to be saying much the same as Aseem Malhotra so this definitely calls for far more investigation and rereading of my book.

Thank you so much for your comprehensive reply.

My input on the statin subject comes from my doctor. I have been on very high dose for many years and nothing brought my numbers down – always around 7 or 8. Then I started getting screaming in the middle of the night cramps in my legs. Then had a few episodes of cramps in the arms. I told my doctor and he took me off the statins immediately. When I said, surely it is just a bit of cramp and I could put up with it, he said, and here is the biggy – your heart is a muscle and what would happen if that went into cramps – bang, you’re dead. I never realised that but within 6 months my cholesterol was up to 8 or 9 and he put me back on them but at a much lower dose. The thing that really brought my numbers down was this diet and the good oils and fats. He used to test me every 12 months but now every 3 months as he doesn’t quite believe my results. If they continue I will be asking him to stop the statins but for now he wont as I have had 3 risk factors: diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure, yet I have got all three under good control with the diet and he still wont budge.

S-g please read the Pioppi Diet and take a look at Robert Lustig’s work. It gives cholesterol a whole new complexion. High cholesterol per sey isn’t the devil we have been lead to believe. A bit like low fat food is good !!!

It’s all a chain of events.
Refined carbs are poisoning our bodies and causing leaky gut. Cholesterol is raised because LDL is needed to do its job repairing the damage; the blood vessels narrow because of the inflammation so blood pressure increases. Both high blood pressure and high cholesterol are symptoms of something being awry in our bodies. Removing refined carbs goes a long way to solving the problem, tho we still have cortisol, which is where mindfulness, exercise and breathing exercises come in.
I don’t know what my cholesterol is but my waking bp is below 120/80 which it has never been near with meds.
I’ve become a real low carb info junkie!

Hi everyone! This thread continues to be a great resource for links to explore. Thank you all!

How are you today, Maggie? Being an info junkie is a positive thing! This is one of my favorite quotes from the
Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu:

“The wise man is one who, knows, what he does not know”

In today’s vernacular, I think it applies to all of us who find it necessary to “turn over every rock” to discover what
knowledge might be hiding there 🙂 I’m SO VERY sorry that you’ve had to recover from a stroke. It has to be very
empowering to see your b.p. at a healthy 120/80! I started out at 160/90 with extremely high chloresterol, and
this way of life had it 120-125/70-80, and all of bloodwork is within the “optimal range”. Like you, I’m very commited
to keeping it that way!

Allie

Thanks Allie, it wasn’t a bad one but one helluva shock – even my GP was shocked as I wasn’t on the radar.
But one of my aims is to show my neighbour who’s a stroke/ heart ICU specialist just what a low carb diet can achieve. The more medics who can see living evidence of the transformation effected by this way of eating the more they are going to question the pedagogy of the profession. Even if l make him think just a little bit it’s a chink in the door, or even evidence of what he knows anecdotally.
Congratulations on your bloods, it must be so life-affirming for your doctor to recognise that you have taken charge of your own health.
Maggie

MaggieBath – it’s so great that you have taken charge of your health in such a positive way after the shock of your stroke.

An interesting programme tonight – am just checking that husband has recorded it as I am working tonight. It looks as though it will be very interesting.

The Truth About Carbs, with Dr Xand van Tulleken, is on BBC One at 20:00 on Wednesday 6 June.