How to Treat Diabetes

The American Diabetes Association diet head-to-head against a vegan diet.

  • http://www.seriousstrength.com Fredrick Hahn

    I did watch it.

    He uses ad hominem arguments against Dr. Cordain (5:20 into the video) Art DeVany, Mark Sisson and cleverly leaves out Dr. Feinman, Dr. Eades, Dr. Davis, Dr. Volek and many other experts who support a paleo diet who DO have the credentials.

    He also shows pictures of vegan body builders who are obviously taking anabolic agents (early on in the video).

    He also fails to understand that a paleo diet includes many plant foods. Just no grains.

    After admitting he doesn’t know anything about leaky gut (permeable bowel syndrome which is recognized as a legit medical condition by the AMA), I love it when he says:

    “But what I DO know is that a paleo diet is a fad diet.”

    What a crack up. He bashes people like Dr. Cordain credentials and though he has no credentials either, HE KNOWS. LOL. Classic.

    As I mentioned to you, and to which you did not reply, try eating only plants for a few months. Eat no commercially created foods like fortified soy burgers and take no vitamin or mineral supplements – IOW adopt a TRUE vegan diet – and see how long it takes before you become weak, sick and malnourished.

    I on the other hand will eat only animal products. Meat, organs, etc.

    But you won’t take that challenge will you? And it seems you are too afraid to even discuss it.

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    • Toxins

      So you watched the introductory video and now everything he says is false even with his mass amount of scientific references? I think you are the one who is afraid to even see the opposing argument. You have no credentials yourself to advocate such a diet, stop being hypocritical.

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    • kaodjs1

      It’s true that vegans require B12 supplementation (and Dr. Greger recommends algae-derived DHA as well). Paleo-diet promoters like to point out that because B12 vitamins are new on the human species’ timeline, we are not evolved to eat a purely vegan diet, and because we are not evolved to eat it, they argue, a purely vegan diet is not optimal for human health. It’s true that our need for B12 shows that we did not evolve to eat a purely vegan diet. In fact, there were wide variations among ancient hunter-gatherer diets, ranging from mostly meat to mostly vegan. Aside from the obvious problem of defining what our ancestors evolved to eat in light of the diversity of their diets, most paleo-diet fans miss the obvious fact that humans definitely did not evolve to eat the meats of today (even if grass-fed and free-range, although that IS healthier than factory-farmed) or the fish swimming in our polluted seas. As studies profiled on this website repeatedly show, the meats you find at a modern grocery store are packed with substances (e.g., antibiotics and other feed additives) and composed of manipulated genes found nowhere in our species’ dietary evolution. Today’s meats (and today’s seafood animals) are, as the body of medical and nutritional literature shows, bad for human health. The body of evidence supports that — for those of us without the time and space to run down wild game, raise free-range livestock genetically unaltered since the dawn of modernity on those animals’ evolved diets, or fish in unpolluted waters — a plant-based diet with proper B12 and algae-derived long-chain fatty acid supplementation is our best bet for meeting our evolved dietary needs in today’s world, where there is limited farmland, dwindling wildlife, and 6.5 billion people to feed.

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  • http://www.seriousstrength.com Fredrick Hahn

    The citations he is using do not support his arguments. They are not controlled scientific papers.

    And now YOU use an ad hominem argument too!

    If you and he are right – that people who don’t have credentials in nutrition should be discussing nutrition – then he should not be doing so and worse, it neuters ALL his arguments.

    So much for his video series!

    And since references are so very important, why does he flash them on the screen so incredibly quickly? I had to spend 15 minutes trying to lock-pause on them and then I had to use a magnifying glass to read them. What a joke.Why not let people see them fully?? The answer is clear: He doesn’t want you to.

    And you STILL haven’t answered my vegan/meat eating challenge.

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    • Toxins

      If you paid any attention to what he was saying, you would know he has the citations go quickly because he explicitly states that you can either pause the video and read them or you can let the video flow for a general understanding. I never said that people who don’t have credentials should not be discussing nutrition, this is what YOU implied! Stop putting words in my mouth!

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  • http://www.seriousstrength.com Fredrick Hahn

    “If you paid any attention to what he was saying, you would know he has the citations go quickly because he explicitly states that you can either pause the video and read them or you can let the video flow for a general understanding.”

    Go to the first video and try to pause on the references. You can’t.

    “I never said that people who don’t have credentials should not be discussing nutrition, this is what YOU implied! Stop putting words in my mouth!”

    You said:

    “You have no credentials yourself to advocate such a diet, stop being hypocritical.”

    Perhaps I misunderstood you. The point is he is wrong for trying to suggest that since Dr. Cordain doesn’t have the credentials, what he is saying is not valid. That is an ad hominem argument.

    What about my challenge?

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  • http://www.clinicalcatalyst.com DrDons

    Hi Frederick, I will come at your challenge from a different perspective. How we come to our beliefs and practices is complex. The most cited reference is Kuhn’s Structure of the Revolution where he talks about scientific studies gradually accumulating until there is a “paradigm shift” to a new model. Having practiced adult medicine for over 30 years with the last 5 focusing on adding nutrition and exercise prescriptions to my practice and spending the last 4 years giving educational talks to physicians and lay persons I have come to the belief that a properly done whole foods plant based diet with supplemental B12 is the best diet to avoid many of the chronic diseases afflicting us. Beyond my professional experience I have also had the personal experience of going from SAD to Vegetarian to now 5+ years plant based. All the studies that I have seen seem to support my beliefs and the ones that I have reviewed that support meat eating are flawed or narrowly focused. When you introduce change to a complex system you need to measure all outputs otherwise you run the risk of helping one measure and harming others. In complex systems you get the best results by not violating system design. We are designed as herbivores. The fact that we can function as omnivores doesn’t change our design. I will comment on diabetes since alot of your posts seem to rest on the misconception that the cause of diabetes is carbohydrates. It is true that type 2 diabetes is a glucose processing problem but the “upstream” cause is the fats in the diet( both animal and plant fats). They interfere with insulin and turn of the genes that run the mitochondria that burn glucose. This is supported by the fact that Dr. Barnard’s study showed that a low fat plant based diet was superior to the ADA diet in controlling HgbA1C and reducing medications. He doesn’t cite the number of diabetics who were cured(off medication with normal glucoses). In the last two years of my practice using Dr. Barnard’s approach I had 15 diabetic patients “cure” themselves. More recently I had the opportunity to take care of a patient at the McDougall clinic who came in on two hypoglycemic agents with a fasting blood sugar of 159. I took him off his meds and he went on an 8 day low fat starch based diet. At the end of 8 days his sugar was 129.(He also was taken off his BP meds and left with a lower BP than when he came into the program, he also stopped his TUMS as his reflux was gone). He continued the diet on return to home and 4 months later his sugar was 100. Six months later he stopped home testing as his fasting sugars were in the low 80′s. As of last month his weight is down 70#. He is off all medications including his statin for cholesterol. I know that individual antedotal stories don’t “prove” anything but it is experiences like this that cement my beliefs. I provide four studies for your review:Sparks et al, Diabetes, 52(2002): Fat in diet down regulates the genes that produce mitochondria. Petersen et al, NEJM, 350(2004): Fat in diet increases insulin resistance within cells. Goff et al, European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 59(2005): Vegan diet shows reduced intracellular fat and decreased insulin resistance. Anderson, JW & Ward, KD, High-carbohydrate, high-fiber diets for insulin-treated men with diabetes mellitus, Am J Clin Nutr, 32,Nov 1979, p 2312-2321. I also would invite you to view my presentation to the San Francisco Vegetarian Society at http://www.archive.org/details/sfvs_2010_11_13_Don_Forrester. I would be interested in your comments and would be glad to furnish references. My final comment is that the science is constantly changing so it is important to keep up… you never no when you will reach the “tipping point” to a new belief system. I doubt if I met your challenge but hopefully you found some of my comments and information interesting. Best wishes for continuing health.

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  • http://www.seriousstrength.com Fredrick Hahn

    “Hi Frederick, I will come at your challenge from a different perspective. How we come to our beliefs and practices is complex. The most cited reference is Kuhn’s Structure of the Revolution where he talks about scientific studies gradually accumulating until there is a “paradigm shift” to a new model. Having practiced adult medicine for over 30 years with the last 5 focusing on adding nutrition and exercise prescriptions to my practice and spending the last 4 years giving educational talks to physicians and lay persons I have come to the belief that a properly done whole foods plant based diet with supplemental B12 is the best diet to avoid many of the chronic diseases afflicting us.”

    Hi Dr. Dons –

    As I mentioned earlier and in several posts here and at Dr. McDougall’s site (to which I received no response), when you take a person off of a typical Western diet and place them on a vegan diet, their health will improve. But their health does NOT improve BECAUSE of the plants, it improves mainly because you have removed the carcinogens and junk foods which damage their health.

    If you fasted the typical American for three days giving them plenty of fresh water, their health would also improve. But this does not mean no food is better than some food. So I have no doubt that a vegan diet is, in the short term *better* than a Western fake food diet. But I must point out that having to give your patients B supplements is a tell tale sign of a diet deficient in meats. A healthful diet should require no supplements.

    “Beyond my professional experience I have also had the personal experience of going from SAD to Vegetarian to now 5+ years plant based. All the studies that I have seen seem to support my beliefs and the ones that I have reviewed that support meat eating are flawed or narrowly focused.”

    Can you be more specific? Flawed how?

    And how do you explain cultures who eat a lot of meat (like the Inuit) who experience extremely good health? How do you explain my family and I and the many who eat as we do who enjoy stellar health?

    “When you introduce change to a complex system you need to measure all outputs otherwise you run the risk of helping one measure and harming others. In complex systems you get the best results by not violating system design. We are designed as herbivores.”

    This is entirely untrue. We are clearly omnivorous. Stop supplementing your patients with B vitamins and see what happens to them.

    “The fact that we can function as omnivores doesn’t change our design.”

    No it dictates our design.

    “I will comment on diabetes since alot of your posts seem to rest on the misconception that the cause of diabetes is carbohydrates.”

    That is a strawman argument. I never once said that. My point and argument is that if you are a diabetic, the go to diest should be low carbohydrate, high fat not low fat high carbohydrate since diabetes is a condition of carbohydrate intolerence. Carbohydrates do not cause type II diabetes. No one ever developed type II diabetes by eating mainly animal matter and some plant matter.

    “It is true that type 2 diabetes is a glucose processing problem but the “upstream” cause is the fats in the diet( both animal and plant fats).”

    Please provide the evidence of this and then explain why a high fat, low carb diet always reverses type II diabetes. If what you say is true, a high fat diet would always worsen the condition. It never does.

    “They interfere with insulin and turn of the genes that run the mitochondria that burn glucose.”

    This is no true.

    “This is supported by the fact that Dr. Barnard’s study showed that a low fat plant based diet was superior to the ADA diet in controlling HgbA1C and reducing medications.”

    Again, the ADA diet allows for too much total refined carbohydrates which cause quickly elevated blood glucose levels. Fat does not affect blood glucose at all. And you’re forgetting that a high fat, low carb diets always defeats a low fat, vegan diet for blood glucose control. Again I ask you or anyone to produce a single study that indicates that a low fat, high carb/starch diet is superior for controlling diabetes when compared to a high fat, low carb diet. Just one please.

    “He doesn’t cite the number of diabetics who were cured(off medication with normal glucoses). In the last two years of my practice using Dr. Barnard’s approach I had 15 diabetic patients “cure” themselves.”

    If they were eating a SAD diet before, I have no doubt this is true. This still does not indicate that it is the best approach which is what I am arguing.

    “More recently I had the opportunity to take care of a patient at the McDougall clinic who came in on two hypoglycemic agents with a fasting blood sugar of 159. I took him off his meds and he went on an 8 day low fat starch based diet. At the end of 8 days his sugar was 129.”

    Had you put him on a high fat, no starch diet his blood sugars would have been much better than that. Again, this is my entire point. You’re a doctor – it is your responsibility to do what IS best for the patient not what you believe is best.

    “(He also was taken off his BP meds and left with a lower BP than when he came into the program, he also stopped his TUMS as his reflux was gone).”

    This is due to the cessation of his high refined carb diet.

    “He continued the diet on return to home and 4 months later his sugar was 100. Six months later he stopped home testing as his fasting sugars were in the low 80′s. As of last month his weight is down 70#. He is off all medications including his statin for cholesterol. I know that individual antedotal stories don’t “prove” anything but it is experiences like this that cement my beliefs.”

    Again, a high fat, low starch diet would have seen these same benefits and even better much sooner.

    “I provide four studies for your review:Sparks et al, Diabetes, 52(2002): Fat in diet down regulates the genes that produce mitochondria.”

    I’ll look at this but the fact is that high fat diets proliferate mitochondria.

    “Petersen et al, NEJM, 350(2004): Fat in diet increases insulin resistance within cells. Goff et al, European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 59(2005): Vegan diet shows reduced intracellular fat and decreased insulin resistance. Anderson, JW & Ward, KD, High-carbohydrate, high-fiber diets for insulin-treated men with diabetes mellitus, Am J Clin Nutr, 32,Nov 1979, p 2312-2321. I also would invite you to view my presentation to the San Francisco Vegetarian Society at http://www.archive.org/details/sfvs_2010_11_13_Don_Forrester.

    I’ll look these over but again whenever you take someone off of a SAD diet and their health improves, you must take into account this as a confounding variable. If I quit smoking and start chewing gum and my lungs improve, it isn’t the gum that is making my lungs healthier. Because you are biased in favor of a vegan diet, you view the results of these studies with rose colored glasses. We need to look at the studies that compare high fat, low carb to low fat high carb and see what fares better for diabetics. At this time the data suggest that the “winner” is high fat, low carb.

    “I would be interested in your comments and would be glad to furnish references. My final comment is that the science is constantly changing so it is important to keep up… you never no when you will reach the “tipping point” to a new belief system.”

    This is true.

    “I doubt if I met your challenge but hopefully you found some of my comments and information interesting. Best wishes for continuing health.”

    Well the challenge was to provide a study that indicates that a low fat, high starch diet is superior to a high fat, low carb diet for the treatment of diabetes. This challenge has yet to be met by you, Dr. Greger, Dr. McDougall or anyone. Happy holidays!

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    • Toxins

      Your forgetting that your diet needs to supplement fiber, potassium, vitamin e and vitamin c. This is according to Dr. Atkins. Vitamin b12 is not found in abundance as it was in the past, as Dr. Greger explains, it used to be in the water supply and even on vegetation. Its also interesting to me that you continually claim that carbohydrates cause diabetes when high complex carbohydrate, whole plant food diets successfully reverse diabetes. You can’t keep ignoring this fact.

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      • http://www.seriousstrength.com Fredrick Hahn

        “Your forgetting that your diet needs to supplement fiber, potassium, vitamin e and vitamin c.”

        No it doesn’t as I eat salads, seasonal fruits, liver , eggs and enjoy the sunshine daily. I need no supplements at all in fact. And there is no human need for fiber BTW. Show me the evidence.

        “This is according to Dr. Atkins.”

        Any supplementation is due to the induction phase where you lose a lot of water due to the non-need to store intramuscular glucose. And some low carb docs suggest that supplementation MAY be necessary if you are not eating organ meats, something we all should do.

        “Vitamin b12 is not found in abundance as it was in the past, as Dr. Greger explains, it used to be in the water supply and even on vegetation.”

        You get plenty of B vitamins from meat today especially if you eat grass fed, free ranging meats. Dr. Greger is apparently misinformed or purposefully misinforms. If the latter it is to keep his vegan agenda alive.

        “Its also interesting to me that you continually claim that carbohydrates cause diabetes when high complex carbohydrate, whole plant food diets successfully reverse diabetes. You can’t keep ignoring this fact.”

        Strawman. I never said that carbs cause diabetes. Chronically high levels of blood gluose can lead to insulin resistance and thus to type II diabetes. You really have a hard time reading and comprehending what people say.

        And STILL none of you can produce a single study showing that a low fat, high starch/carb ad libitum diet is a superior dietary approach to treating diabetes than a high fat, low carb diets. What’s the hold up? What’s the trouble? Do you mean to tell me there are none? If there were you’d have shut me up with a half dozen by now.

        All you do is shift your goal posts, toss out strawman, ad hominem arguments and fail to put up a shred of hard evidence that meat is unhealthy or that a low fat, high carb diet is superior to high fat low carb.

        I’m waiting…

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  • http://www.seriousstrength.com Fredrick Hahn

    One more thing – you state that Dr. Barnard’s study showed that a “vegan” diet was superior to a ADA diet for diabetes treatment. This indicates that research matters to you – and it should.

    I provided research that indicated that the high fat, low carb diet was thus far the best diet for treating diabetes but you dismiss these as ALL being flawed without providing any explanation as to how the are flawed.

    This strongly indicates your bias and, in my opinion, robs your patients of the best treatment for their condition. And isn’t this what matters most of all?

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  • http://www.seriousstrength.com Fredrick Hahn

    And yet another thing Dr. Jon – how do you reconcile our absolute requirement for B12, not in plant foods, with your “belief” we’re herbivores?

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  • http://www.seriousstrength.com Fredrick Hahn

    I looked at Barnard’s data – the HbA1c is, while better, is still pitiful. High fat, low carb diets do a much better job of normalizing A1c.

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  • http://www.seriousstrength.com Fredrick Hahn

    And I’m sure you must know the recent work done by geneticist Dr. Cynthia Kenyon.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_Kenyon

    It is very fascinating work.

    I await the data which indicates that a low fat, high starch, ad libitum diet is superior to high fat, low starch/carb diets for the treatment of diabetes.

    Anyone?

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  • michaelresanders

    In the Paleo era, women raised plants using human and animal feces as fertilizers (in India we find the same today). The B-12 was in the feces and in the dirt, water, etc. So the human body developed based on getting B-12 from external sources such as the dirt on the plants eaten, etc. There was no need to eat animals to get B-12 back then or even today as long as dirty plants were/are eaten. Since we wash our plants today and no longer for the most part use animal based fertilizers we no longer get the B-12 the way we used to anciently; hence, we either eat a little animal meat from an animal that got its B-12 from the plant eating animals (with the dirt), or as Apes do we eat our own feces, or we take a supplement. The entire argument based on B-12 is fallacious.

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  • Turing

    It’s interesting that in the the last study cited if you look at Table 3 you’ll see the average BMI was still 32.3 after 74 weeks of being on a vegan diet. This was a little better than the group on the convention but not by much and it’s still far from below what’s considered a healthy BMI of 25 or less.

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