The origin of this post is that I sent a tweet earlier this week regarding the current crisis in insulin pricing referring to the Banting Diet, which is the precursor of the low-carb high fat diet (or LCHF diet). I sometimes do this (sending unclear messages) assuming that people will figure them out, and usually, that’s not the outcome 🙂 . At least it starts conversation (maybe I do this subconsciously, I don’t know).
In any event, I have been interested in nutrition for a long time and more interested recently (see:Just Read: Why Eating Fat May Not Make You Fat (The Big Fat Surprise) ), as more data is being produced about where our dietary guidelines came from. In the case of diabetes, I have been curious about the ways the medical and other professions counsel patients on diets in ways that may actually increase their risk of diabetes and increase their insulin requirement.
My question, therefore, has been whether the need for insulin could be eliminated in some people and reduced in others, which would blunt the impact of pricing and make living with diabetes more affordable. The other question I have is about the whether reducing the use of specialized insulins for some population would have an added effect, making the pricing power, less powerful.
I’ve read a few papers about this. I don’t feel comfortable doing a literature review myself because these days it’s really hard to interpret papers if hidden biases aren’t known. That and I may be a physician, but I do not know what it is like to live with diabetes. I do know what it is like to live as a former fat person so there is some relevance here for me.
Through the magic of YouTube, Dr. Troy Stapleton (@drtroystapleton) explains his own journey as a person with type 1 diabetes and the LCHF diet. He’s going to to have much more credibility than I and this is a good science-based + authentic overview from a patient perspective. Watch:
A person who produces insulin on this diet is going to have an insulin production curve closer to a person with type 1 diabetes (flat) compared to a person without diabetes (insulin spikes), with the idea that insulin and specifically too much insulin is a requirement for obesity.
I’m planning to do some more study this summer. At the same time, there are far more experienced researchers, journalists, physicians and scientists engaged in this work, so I’m more interested in dialogue than leadership (they are doing just fine). I always say if there’s a better way to do something, I want to know about it.
This is life in the family medicine revolution (#FMrevolution), where unlimited curiosity reigns in the interest of a person, family, community’s long healthy life. Feel fee to let me know your thoughts in the comments.