I've been working on an ambitious project lately that I've been wanting to do for a very long time. It's been a lot more work than I thought it would be and it is not as easy as it might seem. But this is too important a resource to not try to get out there sooner rather than later.
Over the past few months, more and more readers have been contacting me to help them in their search to find a low-carb doctor in their area. Here are just a few of these e-mails:
Jimmy,
Your site is fantastic. Would you know how to find any low-carb doctors in Southern California? I live in Orange County, but L.A. would be OK. ********** Hey Jimmy,
Thank you for continuing to share the low carb lifestyle. I lived the life for a while and it did such wonders for me that I need to get back in action.
Jimmy, do you know how a person can find a doctor who's pro-low carb? Just thought I'd ask you as you're a man of vast information. They have searchable doctors for everything else but pro-low carb that I can find. ********** I can't find any doctors here who are low-carb friendly. The most I can hope for is that they won't be totally antagonistic. ********** Jimmy:
Do you happen to know if there are any listings of doctors who are friendly with the low-carb theory? My personal doctor is nearing retirement and I'd like to replace him with someone who accepts the low-carb theories already or is at least open-minded about it. ********** Jimmy,
I have a question that I hope you can help with. Naturally, some of the people I've known for a long time, and especially if they haven't seen me for awhile, ask about how they can do what I did. I'm sure you get the same thing.
I refer them to Protein Power, Jonny Bowden's book (which I loved, especially for the way he addressed low-carb myths), etc. But I would love to be able to refer them to a doctor who does low-carb (in the Los Angeles area). This is especially important for those who are very overweight and/or are already diagnosed with diabetes.
I know what an uphill battle it will be for them otherwise with just about any doctor they do see, including their primary care physician or diabetes specialist (how crazy is that ADA stuff for Type 2 especially, notwithstanding their recent small movement!!?). It's hard enough to resist family and friends, but it takes a special person to do battle with their own doctor telling them they'll have a heart attack from eating that Atkins bacon and butter stuff.
Do you know of any resource to find low-carb friendly doctors? Have you found any resources to find doctors? ********** Hello Jimmy,
I am having one heck of a time finding a local doctor who can support my decision to go low-carb. I was thinking that having a thread or some sort of resource where people can recommend doctors would be fantastic. Do you know of any list that already exists?
Up until now, no such web site existed that lists low-carb physicians all in one place. That was unacceptable to me, so I decided to create it myself. It's still a work in progress, but it's finally here!
If you want to see if there is a low-carb doctor in your area, then keep checking this blog early and often. I am still doing research, adding new doctors all the time, and I welcome your suggestions, too. E-mail me the name and address of any low-carb doctors in YOUR area that I can add to this list.
I hope this becomes an invaluable resource for people in their quest for a doctor who understands the importance of livin' la vida low-carb. Feel free to post your comments about any of the doctors listed that you already know about. Scroll along the right-hand side of the page to see if there is a low-carb physician in your state. They are listed in alphabetical order by state.
THANK YOU to everyone who has written to me asking about a low-carb doctor list. Ask and you shall receive. :D Don't lose hope that you CAN find a low-carb friendly face in the medical community who can help you lose weight and improve your health with a controlled-carbohydrate nutritional approach. YOU CAN DO THIS!!!
Michael Torchia personally experiences the horror of modern medicine
It's always painful to lose a loved one and it is never easy. But when you lose your mother and it very well may have been preventable, the feeling is magnified hundreds of times over. But this is exactly what is happening to my friend and personal trainer to the Hollywood stars Michael Torchia right now.
The leader of the Holistic Health Foundation received quite an eye-opening experience about the state of medical care in the United States of America recently after his 80-year-old mother suffered a heart attack. When he flew from California to Atlanta, Georgia to be with her, Michael was shocked by what he saw and could not believe the seeming lack of care and concern by the hospital treating the woman who gave birth to him.
On Sunday, Michael Torchia's mother passed away due in part to the "neglect, mistreatment and lack of proper care" as Michael put it in a brief column he wrote entitled "Hospital Doesn't Understand Life, Hastens Death." This is but a microcosm of a much bigger overall problem with medical treatment in the 21st century and should remind you why it's not always a good idea to trust and believe the so-called health "experts" in the world today.
Here's the story about what happened to Michael's mother in his own words:
I wrote recently about my mother, a Type-2 diabetic for most of her life, with a malfunctioning heart valve from birth. After age 80, she began having congestive heart failure attacks a few times a year. Every time she would have these attacks, I would fly out to Atlanta to help her with my expertise in holistic methods of healing and knowledge of nutrition.
Shortly after my treatments, she recovered quickly and went back to a normal lifestyle. I realized the power and healing ability of energy work from years of working with Reiki Masters from around the world. In addition, I have studied and utilized Reflexology with all my clients for over 20 years.
Two weeks ago, my mother had a heart attack and I immediately flew to Atlanta to help her recover. She was in the prestigious cardiac care center at Piedmont Hospital and doctors informed me that her body was slowly failing and she should be sent to a hospice to spend her last few days of life.
Refusing to accept the doctor's suggestion, I reviewed her medical charts and medical stats on her heart monitor. I began utilizing music to help stimulate her heart rate. The mind controls how fast or slow the heart will beat. It is a proven fact that the heart beats to the beat of the music and we cannot control it, so I asked the nurses to play classical music to stabilize her heart rate and maintain her blood pressure.
My mother's daily food chart showed she was barely consuming 500 calories a day which was causing her extremely weak condition and inability to talk coherently. After revising her food and water consumption, performing reflexology, energy work, giving her words of encouragement and lots of love, she made a dramatic improvement.
She went off her most of her meds and was supposed to go through physical therapy and return home the following week.
Unfortunately, after I returned to Los Angeles, the hospital doctors immediately moved to her to a general care section of the hospital and did not give her the personal care as we requested. The nursing staff went back to not feeding her enough calories, removed all monitoring equipment and never performed physical therapy, which was a crucial part of her recovery stage.
Instead of attending to her needs they ignored her cries to help her sit up, because her back was severely cramping. After the nursing staff got tired of her pleading, they strapped her legs and arms down and doped her up with sleeping pills.
Obviously, even in the most prestigious hospitals they do not believe in holistic healing and just rely on medicating patients. It is such a shame that most doctors have no respect for holistic methods of healing because they help people live better quality lives.
My mother died November 4th, 2007, suffering from neglect, mistreatment and lack of proper care. Statistics from universities around the country prove our health care system is not working and people are dying that could of survived longer and better quality lives. My mother was such a blessed woman to live a long and happy life and did not deserve to suffer at the end, she deserved to pass gracefully...
Obviously, Michael Torchia is hurting with the passing of his mother. But he makes some really good points about how doctors and others in the medical profession seem to just go through the motions of protocol rather than treating the individual. I understand they have procedures for handling various health issues, but we are not all the same and customized care is sometimes needed.
I'm not saying his mom could have been given a few more days, weeks, months, or years to live had they provided the attention she obviously needed. But it should anger anyone to hear of such traumatic conditions going on right here in America. When we talk about the state of health care in our culture today, these are the kind of nightmares that make you want to turn to holistic and alternative health options as a means for getting healthy and staying that way.
Livin' la vida low-carb is a nutritional holistic health method and is roundly criticized by most doctors, nutritionists, and medical "experts" as a dangerous fad that will lead to heart disease and a whole host of health problems. And yet the evidence in real people like me says otherwise. I'm as healthy as I've ever been in my entire life, my weight is stable, and I am more energetic and excited about life than ever before!
If I had stuck with what the doctors told me to do to lose weight and get healthy, then today I'd be a hungry, miserable low-fat dieter struggling to lose weight on my 500+ pound body, irritable that I would be stuck eating disgusting fat-free cheese and tofu, and mad at life that it would deal me such a cruel fat. But I didn't! I turned to an alternative that worked for me and it's still working four years later.
Let the story of Michael's mom remind you why you have chosen a path that runs counter to the conventional wisdom that prevails in the medical community. When the people who are put in charge of taking care of your health when you are in need just allow you to wither and die rather than try to make you better, then you'll be happy to know you have made the right decision for your health by sticking to the healthy low-carb lifestyle. It's a decision that I know I'll NEVER regret!
Dr. William Davis says modern-day heart care "tragically off track"
Heart health in the United States and around the world is that much more pronounced nowadays in light of the fact that obesity rates and and so-called "high" cholesterol have risen to the level of being labeled diseases that require a pharmaceutical response. But there's at least one cardiologist in America who believes all the current treatments being used against coronary heart disease risks fall well short of the mark in actually doing anything about artery blockages that lead to a heart attack or stroke.
His name is Dr. William Davis and this heart doctor from Milwaukee, Wisconsin believes heart health is nothing more than a money-making venture for hospitals while patients experience no actual improvements in their risks of having a cardiovascular event while following the recommended high-carb, low-fat diet and popping expensive and dangerous statin drugs. Those are just a few of the topics he and I discussed in my interview with him which I will share with you today.
Fans of livin' la vida low-carb are gonna LOVE Dr. Davis! ENJOY!
1. Today we have with us Dr. William Davis, an unconventional cardiologist who also serves as the medical director of Milwaukee Heart Scan in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Dr. Davis is an outspoken opponent of the traditional methods and treatments espoused by the medical and pharmaceutical industries for dealing with heart disease. Before we get into the details of what you believe about that, Dr. Davis, tell us a little bit about why you got interested in the subject of heart disease in the first place. Does heart disease run in your own family?
I came to the world of heart disease by the usual misguided route: When I was young, I found it exciting because of the opportunity for procedures to “fix” this disease.
After about 10 years of a cardiology practice heavily focused on angioplasty, stents, and the like, I began to recognize that this was a treadmill of futility.
I was just toying with these notions when my real epiphany came—-my mother died of a heart attack at age 62. Here I was, an interventional cardiologist employing all the newest techniques and my own mother dies of the disease I thought I understood.
That was the moment when it struck me: The world of conventional heart care was terribly and tragically off track.
2. Much of what we have been taught about heart disease focuses on dietary fat consumption, excess body fat, LDL/total cholesterol, and too much stress. But most of these “scams” as you describe them are not based on the science behind heart disease. How did such dogmatic axioms become so ingrained in our culture as undeniable truths?
The limited understanding of issues like cholesterol in the 1960s and 1970s has become deeply ingrained into the practicing cardiologist of this century. Unfortunately, it means that your practicing family practitioner, internist, or cardiologist is still performing a test that was outdated over a decade ago—-the cholesterol panel.
Today, there are more insightful and sophisticated tests that uncover the causes of heart disease far more effectively than cholesterol testing.
There’s also an economically perverse equation at work: If your heart disease is prevented, there’s virtually no profit in it. But if you are allowed to have a heart attack, there’s a bonanza of thousands of dollars of procedures that follow. This is a situation aided and abetted by hospitals, cardiologists, and the vast infrastructure of corporations that support the procedural cardiovascular care system. It is a system that generates tens of billions of dollars each and every year and sports a growth rate that is the envy of Wall Street.
3. You wrote two books about this subject--Track Your Plaque (2004) and What Does My Heart Scan Show? (2007)--to help dispel many of these so-called truths about heart disease and to help better prepare people about how they can detect and even prevent the risk of developing heart disease. And yet 9 out of every 10 cases of heart disease go undetected until a heart attack occurs. That’s why you developed a simple 3-step program has helped many patients see how much plaque is built up, find out why it is happening, and to give them complete control over the problem. Discuss how you came up with this novel concept for treating heart disease when most other cardiologists and physicians look at LDL cholesterol. Why is that such a poor way to gauge heart disease risk?
It's no secret: LDL cholesterol has proven a miserable failure as a detector of coronary heart disease.
Abundant clinical trial experience has borne this fact out: LDL cholesterol of the average American: 132 mg/dl; average LDL cholesterol of someone suffering a heart attack: 134 mg/dl—they’re virtually indistinguishable.
So, if your LDL cholesterol is, say, 141, will you die tomorrow? Will you require a heart bypass operation to restore flow to your blocked coronary arteries 2 years from now? Or, will you be dancing on the graves of all your friends and neighbors 50 years from now, never having experienced a stitch of heart disease? Cholesterol won’t tell you.
Cholesterol is a predictor on a statistical basis, but fails miserably when applied to a specific individual. This led me to search for better tools to identify the person with heart disease risk.
The best test for heart disease is a test that measures the disease itself, not some risk for the disease. That’s how I stumbled on heart scans as a method of detecting early coronary heart disease. Heart scans are measure of the disease itself-—atherosclerotic plaque-—not some risk factor that might predict its development.
4. I recently highlighted a rather humorous post you wrote on “The Heart Scan Blog” about your experience on a low-fat diet as prescribed by Dr. Dean Ornish for “reversing heart disease.” What’s wrong with the low-fat , low-salt, low-cholesterol (DASH) diet recommendation that Dr. Ornish and virtually every other medical professional prescribes to people who are developing or already have heart disease?
The misguided advice offered to most people is that a low-fat diet reduces cholesterol and heart disease. This is simply untrue for the majority of people.
In fact, the opposite is true: a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet filled with wheat products like whole grain bread, wheat crackers, pretzels, fiber breakfast cereals, and wheat pasta raise cholesterol. Corn starch-containing products, white rice, potatoes, and processed carbohydrates are similarly to blame.
They raise small LDL cholesterol particles, the worst form of cholesterol of all. While large cholesterol particles are rather harmless, the small cholesterol particles are the ones behind heart disease in over 70% of cases. And it's small LDL cholesterol that is hugely magnified by high-fiber, high-carbohydrate diets.
5. One of my readers sent me an e-mail with concerns about the diet you recommend in “Track Your Plaque” because it is basically a lower-fat approach (albeit, not as low-fat as Dr. Ornish recommends). Your diet calls for 24 percent fat coming from unsaturated fat sources in conjunction with a high-fiber (35g daily) intake. What are your thoughts about a higher fat diet and more specifically one that includes saturated fat?
The Track Your Plaque book was written in 2003 before its publication in 2004. Much has happened in the few short years since its release.
Among the changes to the somewhat low-fat approach articulated in the book is diet that has proven more effective in correcting the causes of heart disease: a diet higher and richer in healthy fats like those from fish, raw nuts, olive oil, canola oil, flaxseed and grapeseed oils, and wild game. These changes, along with a reduction in carbohydrate content, suggest that a diet that is at least 30% fat (calorie percent) is probably more towards the ideal.
However, I do believe that saturated fat remains an issue. Saturated fat really became an issue when humans began to fry their foods and add animal fats like butter and shortening. It became an even bigger issue when the “factory farm” phenomenon seized control of American farming away from the traditional family farm, introducing economies of scale like corn feeding of livestock that transformed beef, pork, and chicken into high saturated fat foods.
The trend to reject saturated fat is really a trend towards rejecting the factory farm movement driven by enormous multi-national corporations intent on supporting the fast food and processed food industries.
6. I lost nearly 200 pounds on the Atkins diet back in 2004 and have been able to maintain that weight loss ever since by continuing to implement the principles I learned from the late great Dr. Robert C. Atkins. And yet you do not recommend this particular way of eating over the long-term as a way to improve health. What specifically is unhealthy about eating an Atkins-styled diet beyond weight loss and is there a better way of eating that you believe is both heart healthy and bring about weight control?
Interestingly, before Dr. Atkins died, he articulated a diet that was more balanced in monounsaturated fats, less rich in saturated fats, included more vegetables, fruits, nuts, and other healthy foods.
We need to remember that the “Induction phase” of the Atkins’ diet that permitted indiscriminate and unlimited intake of meat, cheese, and other saturated fat-rich foods was simply that—-the induction into the world that allowed you to be divorced from the addictive property of refined carbohydrates.
In we were to follow the Induction phase of the Atkins’ diet indefinitely, we would experience increased bladder infections, kidney stones, rashes, osteoporosis, cancer (liver, colon, prostate, breast), diverticulosis, and other chronic conditions. The induction phase is a useful tool to make the break from carbohydrate-addicted physiology, but not a recipe for long-term health.
7. For people interested in having their plaque measured by a heart specialist like yourself, the Heart Scan Resource Center at TrackYourPlaque.com is an excellent resource for finding a recommended center where this can be conducted. Walk us through what that process is like. What exactly happens when a patient comes into your office for this test? How soon will they know the results of their scan and can begin working on correcting any abnormalities?
Actually, heart scans are performed at heart scan centers. I do not own a heart scan device. Thus, I have no vested interest in having people undergo heart scans.
Heart scans are, nonetheless, a valuable tool for detection and quantification of coronary atherosclerotic plaque, the material that constitutes coronary artery disease and the stuff that causes heart attacks.
Heart scans are ridiculously easy tests. Some EKG leads are applied, hold your breath—-you’re done. No IV, no poking or prodding, no pain. The paperwork truly takes more time than the scan itself.
You walk away from the scan center with a score, a calcium score that reflects the total amount of atherosclerotic plaque in your heart’s arteries. Because calcium occupies 20% of the volume of atherosclerotic plaque in your arteries, measuring calcium is a useful and practical method of indirectly measuring the total amount of plaque in your heart arteries.
Once you have a heart scan score—a precise measure of atherosclerotic plaque in your coronary arteries—you have a starting place to seize control and stop the increase in your score, perhaps even reduce it.
8. Just so we're perfectly clear about what you are saying, am I right in assuming you believe people should people stop worrying about their cholesterol numbers because they really don’t have a bearing on heart disease? How about those who are taking cholesterol-lowering statin medications like Lipitor, Zocor, and Crestor, among many others to lower their “high” cholesterol? Is there a reason for them to remain on those drugs in light of what we now know about heart disease?
The cholesterol reducing drugs do have role—-unfortunately, the majority of people are put on these drugs for the wrong reasons.
Let me explain. Someone will come in because of a reportedly high cholesterol. We do more testing and discover that the majority, say, 90%, of the cholesterol particles are small. This pattern is very likely to contribute to formation of plaque in the arteries. It also responds exceedingly well to a reduced carbohydrate diet. Many, many times, a person with this pattern will follow a diet that slashes carbohydrate content and cholesterol levels drop like a stone. In this instance, statin cholesterol drugs may be entirely unnecessary.
Another exception: A person with a high cholesterol that is not truly high. When you are provided an LDL cholesterol from your doctor’s office, it has not been measured, it has been estimated. The crude estimation is based on a calculation called the “Friedwald equation,” an equation derived in the 1960s when new technology for testing was not yet available.
It sounds ridiculously simple, but simply measuring cholesterol can provide insights that can often suggest that a statin cholesterol drug is not necessary. The more sophisticated testing is called “lipoprotein testing.”
9. Cardiac care is “big business” with nearly $60 BILLION dollars annually spent by Americans on heart health-related expenses. In fact, half of the profits generated from most hospitals comes from cardiac care alone--a staggering number which should be a real wake-up call to people who are concerned about health insurance and healthcare costs. Who or what do you believe is driving this heart disease “business” and are they intentionally trying to make people sick to continue the big payday?
Performing heart procedures pays big money. Prevention of heart disease does not.
That simple perversion of the healthcare equation explains a lot. Physicians and hospitals are not in business to provide health. They operate businesses that are meant to profit from treatment of disease. Wiping out a disease is not part of the picture.
Put in a stent and reap about $2000 to the cardiologist, $25000 or more to the hospital. Perform a heart bypass operation, and the physician gets at least $5000, the hospital $70-100 thousand.
Prevent a heart attack and you get paid . . . maybe a couple of hundred dollars for several hours work. Which do you think most physicians choose? Which do you think hospitals promote in endless TV commercials and billboards? What about the stent industry, manufacturers of implantable defibrillators, operating room equipment, and on and on.
Heart disease is big business. In fact, it is the biggest business every conceived in health. Why try to change it?
I try to change it because there is a far better way, a way not built on profit, but on returning control of health and life back to the individual. I see what I do as self-empowerment of the individual, taking control over health and away from hospitals and physicians and back to the human being whose life is at stake.
10. THANK YOU again, Dr. Davis, for joining us here today at the “Livin' La Vida Low-Carb” blog to talk about one of the most important health issues of our lifetime. I’m anxious to have one of these screenings myself in the near future and encourage my readers to do the same. Do you have any words of encouragement and hope to share before we end this interview today?
We are just beginning to enter an age of taking back control of health from hospitals and physicians and returning it to the individual. The biggest chunk of this phenomenon is heart disease.
I believe that the tools necessary to seize control of coronary heart disease are already available to the vast majority of people. It involves heart scans, testing that effectively uncovers the underlying causes of heart disease (including the rejection of the cholesterol testing scam), and following a program that truly corrects the causes.
I endorse web sites like Livin' La Vida Low-Carb because they shed light on the enormous sea of misinformation being fed the American public. Your 200-pound weight loss itself speaks volumes about the useless detour the American diet has followed. There are far better answers than the ones being provided by organizations like the American Heart Association, the USDA, the Surgeon General’s office, and other official organizations. We need to turn to the real world wisdom provided by the national experiment in health and diet provided by people like Jimmy Moore.
In fact, I tell my patients that if they want heart disease, they should follow the American Heart Association diet. On the other hand, if they want to substantially reduce, perhaps eliminate, risk of heart disease in their lifetimes, they need to follow a diet that eliminates the distortions of convention habits and wisdom.
Be sure to visit "The Heart Scan Blog" often for more from Dr. William Davis. And you can e-mail him to thank him for the work he is doing on behalf of heart health at heartprotection@aol.com.
Dr. Hamish Meldrum under fire for comments, but he's spot on
It's not often that I find myself in agreement one of the leaders of a major health organization since most of the time they get it all backwards, but I have nothing but great admiration and respect for the head of the British Medical Association right now because of his response to the growing trend by obese people in the UK to pop a pill to deal with their weight problem rather than taking the appropriate actions to change their diet and health through lifestyle changes.
After reading what Dr. Hamish Meldrum was quoted as saying in this This Is London column, I just about jumped up out of my seat and cheered him for having the courage to say what needed to be said. Although he's getting railed by everybody and their momma for being insensitive and cruel towards fat people, I think he was simply stating what most people are already thinking but were too afraid to say out loud.
Dr. Meldrum has been disgusted by the trend he sees dieters using to seek out the next miracle "magic bullet" in the form of a pill that will help them lose weight. I've blogged about this many times before whenever the latest obesity pill is released and marketed to the public--Acomplia, Obestatin, Relacore, and most recently the over-the-counter weight loss drug called Alli.
The dirty secret behind these pills (in case you haven't heard and/or figured this out for yourself yet!) is you have to eat a low-fat, low-calorie diet in order for them to be effective. Jeepers creepers! If I have to do THAT in addition to taking these risky medicines, then I think I'll just stick with livin' la vida low-carb thank you very much!
Dr. Meldrum agrees that this constant obsession over the issue of obesity is very likely what is leading the overweight and obese to abdicate their responsibility to do something about it. Describing this issue as a disease has given doctors a license to treat it medically with drugs rather than insisting on their patients to try implementing effective lifestyle changes.
AMEN TO THAT! People don't like hearing the truth about their weight problem and then lash out at doctors who are forthright about it. That's why many doctors are turning a blind eye to their patient's obesity because they don't want to risk the scorn and even potential legal liability of confronting their patients with this (remember this Florida police chief who got fired for creatively trying to motivate his pudgy officers into shape?).
The bottom line, Dr. Meldrum says, is the medical profession is going about treating obesity in all the wrong ways without addressing the real problem.
"We are saying, 'This patient has a hyper-appetite problem' rather than, 'They are just greedy,'" he contended.
He added that obesity is not a medical issue, but rather a "societal" problem (that needs to be addresed by the individual) that will not go away just because of the creation of risky new pharmaceuticals which only serve to hide the symptoms of the bigger problem.
"We are in danger of over-medicalizing," Dr. Meldrum continued. "The evidence of anti-obesity drugs is not good. The evidence for effective intervention in primary care for obesity is very weak."
Then why is this the primary way we treat obesity in 2007? You see more news stories and attention given to anti-obesity drugs and gastric bypass surgery than you do the promotion of dietary changes and natural lifestyle interventions. There needs to be more confronting of obese people with these options rather than the more "extreme" measures that are currently considered the norm.
With self-imposed goals to reduce the number of obese people in the UK, doctors are trying to fudge the numbers artificially to make the cut. Dr. Meldrum is disgusted with this and says it is the wrong way to bring about changes.
Over a million obesity drug prescriptions were written in the UK last year raking in 47 million pounds in 2006 alone for the drug companies. This represented a sharp increase of 16 percent and those numbers are still on the rise.
The only thing that will work is lifestyle change and these medicinal responses have an "effectiveness...under dispute," Dr. Meldrum contended. Especially for children, simple changes in diet and physical activity could be all that's needed to bring about the necessary reductions in weight needed to live a long, healthy and productive life well into adulthood.
Lest his concerns are misunderstood (which they were!), Dr. Meldrum reiterated that he is open to all methods for treating the obese.
"I am not saying we should not look at how we can medically treat people who are very obese," he asserted. "But to me it is obviously an issue where prevention is better than cure."
I could not be more proud of Dr. Hamish Meldrum from the British Medical Association than I am right now for saying what needed to be said. We need even more fearless leaders in leading positions of health authority willing to speak out on behalf of the truth like this even when it is unpopular. That's the only way we'll ever see meaningful changes come about in regards to obesity and health.
THANK YOU Dr. Meldrum and NEVER stop talking about this issue!
Share your comments with Dr. Hamish Meldrum using this BMA contact page and be sure to share your gratitude to him for being so forthright on an issue of grave importance. Perhaps his American counterparts could follow suit? Yeah right, who am I kidding?!
Get to know diabetes and obesity practitioner Dr. Mary C. Vernon
If you are livin' la vida low-carb and/or have Type 2 diabetes, then there is a doctor that you should be abundantly aware of for the tremendous contributions she is making for the cause of health in the United States today. She is Dr. Mary C. Vernon and she has a private medical practice in her hometown of Lawrence, Kansas.
I previously shared with you my podcast interview with Dr. Vernon a couple of weeks ago as well as an interview at my blog last year to introduce you to this remarkable doctor who is actively using the low-carb nutritional approach as an effective means for controlling her patients' blood sugars as well as their weight.
She is on the frontlines of the debate over how to best treat Type 2 diabetes as the co-author of the book Atkins Diabetes Revolution and has been going around touting the Duke University study that found dramatic improvements in diabetics who went on the Atkins diet to treat their disease. Dr. Vernon is constantly at odds with the American Diabetes Association (ADA) who insist people with diabetes should eat all the carbs they want as long as they take their medicine. But Dr. Vernon says carbohydrate restriction is the key, not medicine.
After meeting Dr. Vernon in person twice over the past couple of years, I can tell you there is nobody more devoted to seeing people get healthy the low-carb way than she is. Educating her patients and helping them see real results just through changes in their diet is what helps motivate her to keep doing what she's doing. She even is willing to answer questions from people across the country and around the world through her informative "Ask Dr. Vernon" blog.
Because of all that she has done to change how people view the low-carbohydrate nutritional approach as a viable alternative to the low-fat diet, I named Dr. Vernon among my Top 10 Movers & Shakers of 2006. Additionally, her work got national recognition when it was highlighted in this outstanding column by Adam Campbell in Men's Health magazine in November 2006.
Because of all the added attention being given to Dr. Vernon over the past year for her work to change the dynamics of how to best treat diabetes and obesity, she has been getting more and more attention from the diabetic media, including CNBC's dLife.
If you are ready to be inspired and reinvigorated about why you are livin' la vida low-carb, whether you have diabetes or not, then check out this brief 4-minute clip of Dr. Vernon during her recent appearance on dLife:
WOW! Can we clone you, Dr. Vernon? :)
While it would be nice to have access to doctors who are as committed to their obese and diabetic patients as Dr. Vernon is wherever you live, that is sadly not the case. But as the current president and a member of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians (ASBP), she assures me that there are others out there who are just as passionate as she is about livin' la vida low-carb.
Click here to locate a bariatric physician in your area and ask them if they are open to using a low-carbohydrate approach to treating obesity and diabetes. If they say YES, then you've found a doctor who can help tailor an effective strategy for helping you.
THANK YOU, Dr. Vernon, for being a shining example of what a doctor is supposed to be like with their patients--empathetic, caring, willing to listen, and knowledgeable about what really works. You are a real hero and on behalf of my readers here at the "Livin' La Vida Low-Carb" blog, I salute you today. God bless the work you are doing!
Let's party in Dr. Vernon's name with a porterhouse, shall we?
Rather than make you scroll through all the comments of that fantastic post to get to the comment posted by Robin Baker, I'll share it with you here. She makes several excellent points about how livin' la vida low-carb used to be the norm within the medical community several decades back, but times have obviously changed.
Here's what Robin wrote about that:
Let's go back forty-odd years to the mid sixties:
Me: "Doctor, I've got fat."
Doctor: "Give up sugar, potatoes and bread" (he didn’t mention rice or pasta as no one in England ate them at the time).
Me: "How about fatty foods?"
Doctor: "Within reason they don't matter. So long as you control your carbohydrates, the body accepts the fats it needs and rejects the rest."
Calories in equals calories out, but per my doctor, not metabolized in the case of excess fat, so long as I controlled my carbs!
Outstanding points that absolutely needed to be said. But it was the illustration Robin Baker gave next that absolutely NAILED it and I've never heard it put this way before. It's an analogy about the difference between carbs and fat that should be used early and often when trying to explain how livin' la vida low-carb works to burn stored fat.
Here is her masterpiece illustration:
On calories in/calories out, try this one too: Take a four ounce block of balsa wood and a four ounce block of African hardwood. Add a box of matches. Calorific value of the two blocks is about the same.
Strike a match and light the balsa. It will burn away all by itself. Now use the rest of the matches trying to light the hardwood. You’ll be lucky if it catches.
So the calories you used to "metabolise" (burn) the balsa were vastly fewer than for the hardwood. For balsa, say carbs. For hardwood, say fat. Get it?
Holy cow, that's absolutely BRILLIANT!!! Why haven't I heard this used before?! Can you imagine the visual this could provide to people giving LIVE talks about livin' la vida low-carb in front of an audience? I bet NOBODY would ever be able to get that image out of their mind when thinking about a high-carb, low-fat diet vs. a low-carb one ever again. This is indeed a POWERFUL way to drive home the point!
THANK YOU ROBIN BAKER!
Robin goes on to explain that she is a 62-year old woman who has been "wonderfully successful" on the Atkins diet since 2004 (hmmm, same year I lost 180 pounds!) and says her current blood works shows her cholesterol levels, including HDL and triglycerides, are "perfectly normal." She lost 20 pounds and has kept it off ever since.
To the naysayers, she ended her comments with a sinister little "Heh!!" YOU GO GET 'EM, ROBIN! Congratulations on your Atkins success and keep laughing in the face of those who still refuse to understand. Maybe one of these days the light will finally come on for them, too! We can only hope.
I did something today that I absolutely LOATHE--paid a visit to my family doctor.
No, it's not that I dislike wanting to feel better when I am sick. Nor am I so ignorant that I would not want to get treated by professionals who have dedicated their lives to making people better. But something has seemed to change almost overnight in recent years within the health industry that is quite disturbing to me.
It's this business of health insurance. More specifically, the affordability of getting QUALITY health insurance. What the heck has happened to the cost of healthcare nowadays that everything has to cost so much money for the average person to get basic coverage? It's enough to make your blood pressure rise (but I can't afford to see the doc about it!)
Sure, rising healthcare costs undoubtedly have a lot to do with the rapid increase in obesity-related diseases like diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and cancer, just to name a few. In fact, Medicare costs have tripled because of doubling obesity rates, so it's a real problem that is rearing its ugly head. And diabetes costs $132 billion annually to treat. I have chronicled why these issues exist and how to correct them through livin' la vida low-carb many times since I started this blog.
But getting back to the subject of health insurance for the average American, now we have literally tens of millions of families who don't have ANY health insurance at all. Yikes!!! This has become personal for me now because you can count my family among the ranks of the uninsured.
When I was employed by a fairly large company up until October 2006, I had pretty good health insurance through one of the most well-known companies providing health insurance today. The premiums were reasonable for the insurance which only required a small co-pay for general doctor visits and prescriptions while covering my wife's gall bladder surgery and tests at virtually 100%. Like I said, it was GOOD coverage.
However, losing that job meant losing that insurance unless I wanted to pay through the nose for the COBRA coverage that was extended to me. I decided to pass up the COBRA because the cost was much too unreasonable financially with the uncertainty about what my next job would be.
While we are on this subject, why does health insurance have to be tied to your place of employment anyway, hmmm? That seems like a screwy way to provide adequate coverage for the millions of Americans who work for small businesses that can't afford good group coverage plans. Believe me, I've had a few of them and you've got to be rich to afford the medical care! What's the point in having insurance?!
At the same time, I've also worked for big companies that have more purchasing power when providing health benefits to their employees. And that's a bonus for the people who are privileged to work for these companies. Think about it, though, that doesn't seem right now, does it? Why should your job determine the quality of your health insurance?
Can't we somehow pool the resources of the self-employed, small businesses, and individuals without health insurance and come up with the largest group policy plan in the country we could call the U.S. Health Insurance Plan that would provide that same kind of GOOD health coverage (like people who work for the government get!) at an affordable cost?
Plus, without delving into the politics of this issue (I REALLY don't!), why does this issue have to be so politically charged when people are seriously hurting for help? This isn't a Democrat or Republican political football that can be passed back and forth between elections while NOTHING is done about it. We need REAL solutions and not more empty pie-in-the-sky promises imploring class warfare.
And, lest I am misunderstood, I am NOT advocating universal healthcare coverage like they have in Canada with people being put on extremely long waiting lists for operations, transplants and the like. I don't want FREE healthcare, just insurance that is affordable and effective. Is that too much to ask?
Getting back to today's office visit, it was not for me, but my wife Christine. She bumped her knee on something a couple of months ago and just let me know last week that it still hurts (um, honey, were you gonna let me know about this anytime soon?!). She was afraid to bring it up because we are without health coverage right now. That's sad, isn't it?
Actually, we TRIED to buy health insurance from a company that will remain unnamed here and we actually got approved for the reasonably-priced policy rather quickly at the end of December. But when we went to use it for another medical issue Christine had a few weeks ago, the terms of the agreement as explained to me by the insurance salesman were not the same in reality.
We were told that we would have $1,000 that we could spend on doctor visits which seemed like PLENTY of money for an entire year. But after Christine's first visit which cost about $200, the insurance company said we could only use $50 until the end of the first quarter. Say what? Yeah, it seems the $1,000 is cut up into four $250 increments for each quarter. Who PLANS to get sick spread out over the year?!
Needless to say, after several back and forth conversations with them about this and other discrepancies about the plan we thought we had bought, both the insurance company and I mutually agreed it was best to drop the coverage and find another place for health coverage.
So that's where I'm at right now. I WANT health insurance, but finding a good plan for the right price is the tricky part. Where do you go for such coverage in this volatile environment? Since when did this issue get to be so complex that people would rather risk NOT getting sick than to pay through the nose on medical costs?
Here are my three bare minimum basic requirements for a GOOD healthcare plan:
1. I must be able to use it with my family doctor whenever I get sick or go for a routine checkup and have full coverage with a copay of no more than $25.
2. Major coverage (around 90%) for any big medical emergencies that may need addressing, such as heart attack, stroke, cancer, etc.
3. Prescription drug plan that has a $10 copay for generics and $25 copay for prescriptions.
Speaking of prescriptions, while I was in the waiting room for an hour listening to my iPod as Christine was getting her knee x-rayed and checked out by her doctor, I was stunned to see how many pharmaceutical reps came through this office. You can see them coming a mile away: nicely dressed, usually good-looking, carrying a gigantic tote bag (of drug samples) with their latest miracle pill they are pushing, and wearing a name tag of who they represent.
Guess how many I saw come in and out while I was there? 2? 4? How about EIGHT of them in all! They've got the system down pat, too--sign in at the front desk at their special sign-in sheet and just walk back in front of the patients who have been waiting for umpteen minutes in the lobby area while their doctor gets schooled on the next can't-live-without-it drug. UGH UGH UGH! Isn't that so tacky?!
Worst of all to me is the fact that they come bearing gifts like a lobbyist on Capitol Hill trying to woo a Congressman to vote for certain key pieces of special interest legislation. The same goes for these pill peddlers. I saw one of them hand about ten items to the front desk receptionist out of her big bag that undoubtedly had the logo of her company and/or name of her drug plastered all over it.
I know people need to make a living somehow, but that's one occupation just about as crooked as a used car salesman or a trial lawyer is. They are helping their companies rake in literally hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars annually by convincing doctors to prescribe drugs to their unsuspecting patients that are questionable at best for treating disease while natural remedies like livin' la vida low-carb and the overwhelmingly positive research coming out about it is simply ignored. Why? It's FREE and money can't be made pushing a healthy lifestyle change!
Okay, enough of my soapbox, what do you think? Have I just become too cynical about the healthcare industry these days that I've become jaded to reality? Or, is it somehow better than I'm making it out to be? Or quite possibly could it be even worse? I would LOVE to hear from doctors, pharmaceutical reps, the uninsured or underinsured, and anyone else who plays a role in this debate.
There are no easy answers, but there must be a way to make this all work for the benefit of every American who wants and desires the opportunity to insure the peace of mind that comes from knowing you have a plan in place in the event a health calamity should hit. Does such a plan already exist and I just don't know about it?
If you know of or represent a health insurance company that meets my basic requirements, then I am VERY interested in learning more about that plan. Please send any information to me at livinlowcarbman@charter.net. I look forward to reading your comments in response to this issue that will not be going away anytime soon.
Oh, by the way, Christine's knee is fine. She has a deep contusion that the doctor said may take as much as nine months to heal. There was nothing he could do to alleviate the pain and fix her knee. That little visit to tell Christine there was nothing he could do for her cost a cool $150! Man, I'm in the wrong profession!
1-31-07 UPDATE: I received the following response from one of my regular readers who just happens to work in the medical industry and has firsthand knowledge (and of course commentary) about health insurance.
Ah, Jimmy! My husband is a physician and I file the healthcare insurance for our patients. I'm sorry to say it, but you're asking for the impossible. Everything is a tradeoff.
Do you want to be able to sue your doctor for malpractice? Then be prepared to have him order umpteen tests you really don't need, just so he'll be able to cover his rear end in court when the time comes.
Do you want new drugs developed for your diseases? Then expect drug companies to act like a business and not like a charity. What's the latest chemotherapy drug developed by a charity?
Do you want to pay low copays? Then you'll see a limitation somewhere else--the number of visits, the doctors you're permitted to see, the size of the premium paid by you plus your employer.
Do you want nationalized health insurance? (I know you don't but lots of people do.)Then recognize that the cheapest outcome of all is--death. Heroic measures cost a bundle. If the nationalized healthcare system makes you wait for your cardiac cath or your liver transplant or whatever, there's a good chance that you will simply die and avoid all those unnecessary expenses. And if there's only one national insurer, the patients can't take their business elsewhere, can they?
I'm not too fond of the current system either. I scream at the stupidity of insurance companies all the time.
My husband and I have a policy with a $20,000.00 deductible(!), so we get to pay for all our prescription drugs and office visits out of pocket (no professional courtesy anymore). Believe me, we shop around!
We finally found a clinic that takes cash only and has contracted with specialty doctors in the community for reasonable rates, also in cash. They've saved so much money by not dealing with insurance that they can pass the savings on to their patients. What we pay for an office visit there is less than the copay many of our patients have to pay on their insurance.
Okay, rant over. Hope this information helps!
Plenty to chew on there. THANKS for sharing your unique perspective. Anyone else?
2-2-07 UPDATE: Here's another perspective from someone who sells insurance.
Hi Jimmy,
I enjoyed your article and I share your frustration. I'm a self-employed insurance agent and guess what, I have to buy this stuff, too. I don't like the price of health insurance either.
For the last twenty years or so politicians and the media have framed this issue as a "health insurance" problem, as if insurance companies manufacture money. The problem is a "healthCARE" problem, and one glaring fact that everyone in politics and the media leave out is that we have a LARGE population of baby-boomers who are getting older and starting to file more claims as their parts begin breaking down.
I'm one of those baby-boomers. I'm 55. Thirty years ago when my peers and I were in our 20's we paid premiums but didn't file many claims. As a group, we actually helped hold the cost of medical insurance down for everyone else for a couple of generations. Now we're filing claims and it's our claims that are raising the average cost of premiums for everyone else. No one gave us credit for keeping costs down, so I guess it's good that we're not getting the blame for forcing them up now, but that's the reality.
Your comments about low co-pays interest me. When a drug or a medical service costs more to provide than the co-pay you paid, who pays the difference? The answer: someone else. When other people pay co-pays that are less than the cost of the drug or the medical service, who pays the difference? Answer: YOU DO.
That's all that any kind of insurance arrangement is, a cost sharing plan. When bad things happen to you, other people help pay for it. When bad things happen to OTHER people, YOU help pay for it.
I understand your desire for a low co-pay, but it's not realistic and never has been. Co-pays were a method that the insurance companies used to force doctors to join preferred provider organizations ( PPO's ) back in the early 90's. The insurance companies basically bribed patients into demanding that doctors join PPO's by discounting their regular fees so that the insurance companies could hold their premiums down.
Insurance companies aren't stupid. They know that if prices get too high the government will nationalize their industry. Their co-pay strategy worked but now consumers have become accustomed to them and seem to think the difference is paid from some magical pot of money somewhere. It isn't. It's paid by other policyholders like you.
The future of healthcare, if it isn't taken over by the government (which might happen) lies in consumers taking more responsibility for their healthcare expenses. Insurance plans with high deductibles, coupled with Health Savings Accounts are the future, in my opinion. I suggest you take a look at some of those.
Having a family and going without ANY health insurance is like risking EVERYTHING YOU OWN at Vegas without actually having any fun.
Our governor down here in Texas, a Republican named Rick Perry, had an interesting quote the other day. He said healthcare is the only industry where the consumer doesn't know what services actually cost, and it has no incentive to care because someone else is paying the bill. Sums it up pretty well, in my opinion.
Finally, I have a funny story to share with you, too. A few years ago I was visiting with one of the small businesses whose health insurance I used to handle. It was a doctor's office and I was meeting with the doctor's wife to discuss their options for dealing with the rate increase their health insurance carrier had just issued for them and their ten employees. Doctors have to buy health insurance, too.
The doctor's wife was REALLY complaining about insurance companies and their prices when there was a knock at the door. It was her husband, the doctor, and he had an attractive young lady with him. "This is Laura. She's from Merck Pharmaceuticals and she wants to know what night next week she can take us to dinner at The Mansion on Turtle Creek". ( Look this place up. It's probably the most expensive restaurant in Dallas. Movie stars stay there when they come to Dallas.)
The doctor and his wife decided that the following Thursday would be best, the doctor closed the door, and the doctor's wife went right back to complaining about the high cost of health insurance premiums.
I get cracked up every time I think about that woman. Good luck in your search!
Oh, that story at the end was TOO FUNNY! Here was my response back:
THANKS for your insights. I agree with most of what you wrote and have looked into medical savings accounts as my best option right now. I've stayed healthy since losing my weight, but my wife Christine has several medical needs for her eyes and back. She's the one I'm concerned about making sure she is covered.
It's not an easy problem to solve, but it must start with the consumer making good choices for themselves and stop relying on the free ride they expect from their health insurance. People who keep themselves healthy and away from the doctor should not be penalized for being well. It's almost like you should get sick to make health insurance worth the cost. And that's sad.
THANK YOU again for your comments! I REALLY appreciate them. Take care!
No, that's not Low-Carb Dave, but it could describe how he feels
There are many things that can just plain make you spitfire mad in this world. The senseless killing of innocent girls in an Amish community. Babies being born with incurable diseases or deformaties. A father who takes the life of his entire family. You know, the kind of stuff that makes you so upset and angry that you can hardly contain your emotions.
But, to a lesser degree, there are issues like the one my blogging friend "Low-Carb Dave" Koch wrote about today at his blog that can still get your blood boiling over when you stop and think about the ramifications of actions taken long ago. Especially when they are completely preventable from happening, but were not.
What is it? The overdrugging that goes on in our society.
Dave talks about back in the early 1980s being put on the steroid Prednisone which was used to treat his severe childhood asthma to reduce the inflammation in his lungs. He talked about the harrowing experiences he went through with this condition as a child and how it "was freaky" at times for him and his parents.
He recalled being given "bucket loads of these steroids" to treat his asthma rather than looking at more natural alternatives. At the age of seven, Dave got chicken pox and was not able to attend school for nearly two months because of the one-two punch that the chicken pox along with his asthma presented him. Actually, it very near killed him! Predictably, the steroid use increased exponentially as well because that's what the doctors thought was best.
But there was one side effect from taking all these drugs: OBESITY!
"When I went back to school, it was the day they were doing class photos," Dave recalled. "What I remember clearly was the different way that my classmates treated me. The reason? I was fat. I had become a fat kid. Before the chicken pox was the last time I remember having a flat stomach."
In addition to the weight gain, Dave experienced the loss of lean muscle mass and a huge boost in appetite that led him to eat and eat and...well, you know what happened (read more about just how big Low-Carb Dave eventually got by clicking here). In studying the impact of steroids on his body a little more as he has gotten older, Dave discovered that these drugs can actually induce a diabetes-like state of glucose intolerance. Yikes! Most amazing is the fact that none of his doctors who prescribed these drugs for him even batted an eye at what they were doing to his body.
But guess who they blamed instead for Dave's weight gain? They pointed the finger at his mother saying it was her fault for making him fat. The doctors constantly chastised Dave's mother about his growing weight problem and demanded she do something about it before the problem got worse. One doctor who Dave described as "a good guy" tried to help Dave with his eating problem, but he wanted to prescribe some Prozac to help. UGH!
Not surprisingly, Dave's cholesterol numbers were high and the doctors urged him to get on a statin drug to bring the numbers down. But that's right about the same time that Dave made the bold and wise decision to start the Atkins diet. In fact, one doctor he discussed his new eating plan with talked about how one person he knew had lost nearly 200 pounds on the low-carb diet. But then he revealed to Dave something that most of us already suspected.
"The Food & Drug industry was stopping people from finding out about [the effectiveness of Atkins]," Dave's doctor exclaimed.
Dave said that gave him every reason in the world to do this with confidence and he has never looked back since. Even after losing 66 pounds by livin' la vida low-carb, another doctor wanted him to try LAP-BAND surgery. This was what REALLY angered Dave and made him to decide to go it alone to "take the future of my health into my own hands!"
Because of all those years of steroids he took, Dave is still feeling the negative effects on his blood sugar from the glucose intolerance he developed. Dave has his own theory about why his doctors didn't warn his mother about this nasty side effect.
"The reason you don't hear about this is the same reason that the government promotes a low-fat diet," Dave noted. "It's because of the huge interest by corporations in having people eat plenty of carbohydrates."
Dave's right, you know. This is precisely why a low-carb diet is not promoted right alongside the low-fat diet. Too many interest groups would be up in arms lobbying for the government to stop hurting their business by pushing livin' la vida low-carb. Low-fat does not threaten them, but low-carb does. It's funny, you never hear any of the industries hurt by the low-fat diet whining and complaining about their profits being cut into by that diet, do you? Hmmm, I guess it should cut both ways!
Today, Dave has become a huge low-carb weight loss success story and he's STILL losing weight as he seeks to make himself healthier and healthier thanks to the amazing low-carb lifestyle. Here's what he had to say about his philosophy on eating carbs today.
"If you want to eat carbs, that is your choice. Please respect my requirement to not eat them," Dave remarked. "It's something I have no choice in. I have felt the best I have ever felt in my whole life being off carbs! The amount of misery, health and self-esteem problems I have experienced because of obesity is enough to fill volumes of books. Am I mad at the doctors? Yeah a little. Am I willing to take charge of my own life now? Hell YES!"
YOU GOT GET 'EM, LOW-CARB DAVE!!! I'm so proud to know you and the remarkable transformation that you have become right before our eyes in just this past year. The best part about your story is that you are STILL changing for the better to become that big stud of a man that you have always wanted to be--slim, trim, happy and healthy for the rest of your life and never returning to morbid obesity again. You inspire me as you encourage and educate others with your weight loss, Dave. Keep it up, my friend! I couldn't be prouder of you than I am right now.
Dave's story is yet another example of why I am always about providing you with information that you may not hear anywhere else. Doctors may not have an agenda, per se, but the people feeding them their information about drugs obviously want to make money. Getting people to start livin' la vida low-carb doesn't make them any moolah, so guess what they suggest doctors do instead? Do you see why so many of us are getting spitfire mad at doctors for making us fat?!
Dr. Feinman saw incredible behavioral changes of actual low-carbers
The results of a survey of 3,000 members of a popular low-carb forum were published today and the results of the survey showed some very surprising results about the dietary habits of people who are livin' la vida low-carb.
Lead researcher Dr. Richard D. Feinman, along with Dr. Mary C. Vernon and Dr. Eric C. Westman, wanted to see what kinds of changes that real-life low-carb dieters make when they begin counting carbohydrates for weight loss and improved health.
According to the survey of members of the Active Low-Carber's Forum, low-carb dieters aren't gorging themselves on tons of fatty foods as the popular media and opponents of the low-carb lifestyle suggest. Instead, they are actually replacing the old starchy and sugary foods that were previously consumed with lots of green leafy vegetables and salads. You may recall that I previously referenced the preliminary results of this survey last year when I blogged about how people who go on a low-carb diet tend to double their vegetable consumption.
In fact, 54 percent of the survey participants increased their salad greens with 34 percent reporting "double their usual consumption" of green vegetables to replace the starch and sugars they had been eating.
Additionally, a small percentage of respondents said they had drastically increased consumption of such high-fat foods as beef, bacon, and butter--foods that most people believe are the staples of a low-carb diet. But what the researchers found was that half of those people who lost 30 or more pounds on low-carb and kept it off for a year had not significantly increased their consumption of those foods. One exception was the lower-fat chicken. Thirty-four percent of low-carb dieters had doubled their chicken consumption.
In regards to the reaction from family doctors, Dr. Feinman said he was surprised by the change in attitude about low-carb living in the medical community. Half of the survey participants said they consulted with their doctor about going on low-carb before and during their experience and 55 percent of them said their doctor supported them in their effort along with another 30 percent who said their doctor displayed no opinion or support until weight loss happened.
Dr. Feinman said this is an important shift in thinking that is happening.
"Physicians can prescribe a diet for people who want to do low-carb that involves replacing starch and sugar with green vegetables and salads, a diet that few could object to on conventional health- or nutrition-related grounds," Dr. Feinman explained.
Oh, they'll still find a way to object to it, Dr. Feinman. But the clear message of this survey is that all the stereotypical biases against livin' la vida low-carb are dead in the water WRONG! This survey clearly shows that is true.
But the survey turned up another bug-a-boo surprise about portion control. Most of the survey participants did not actively engage in watching their portions beyond the natural responses to restricting carbs, but over half said they felt like they are eating less food now than they did before starting low-carb. Dr. Feinman said this should serve "as a model" for doctors interested in helping their patients lose weight.
"Most people were happy with the diet and a section of narrative comments produced consistent responses of 'have more energy,'" Dr. Feinman added.
Indeed we do, Dr. Feinman. The answers to this 27-item questionnaire were quite revealing about the actual behaviors of people following a low-carb regimen. The demographics of the average respondent show that they were mostly women and mostly significantly overweight with a significant number intending to and, in many cases, succeeding at losing more than 100 pounds. Most of them follow the Atkins or an Atkins-like diet.
One notable statistic from the survey was the fact that most of the respondents did not turn to the government or health agencies for information about their diet and health. HA! I wonder why with all the low-fat, low-calorie, portion-control propaganda they relentlessly push on the American people day in and day out! Good for these survey respondents for bucking the trend and learning about other ways to lose weight and get healthy.
The results of Dr. Feinman's survey were published today in the Nutrition Journal.
10-3-06 UPDATE: The always entertaining and ever-witty Dr. Mike Eades blogged about this survey today at his popular blog. Check it out!
This ABC News report makes a connection between the rapid increase of people looking for effective pain treatments to the rise in obesity rates in the United States.
I can remember when I weighed over 400 pounds and would have several areas of my body suffering from chronic pain. Whether it was in my back, ankles, knees, neck, feet or side, some place or another on my body would constantly be in pain so much so that I couldn't help but be constantly reminded of my obesity problem. Getting out of that pain is an enormous motivating factor for trying to lose weight, too!
The story mentions a statistic from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that find more than 60% of Americans are considered overweight. This number has risen at an "alarming rate" by nearly tripling since 1964 when only 23% of Americans were classified as overweight. How did we go from more than three-fourths of the nation being skinny to nearly two-thirds being fat in just 40 years?
I think the way the low-fat diet has been pushed on Americans as the "only" healthy way to lose weight and keep it off has been a major contributor to this problem. While it sounds good to tell people they need to eat a more "healthy" and "balanced" diet, it's just not realistic for medical professionals to expect everyone to be able to follow that kind of eating plan for their entire lives.
That's why I was so glad to find the low-carb lifestyle because it provides a healthy and delicious alternative to the failed low-fat diet craze that swept through the United States in the 1980s. We will not see a change in obesity rates until people are given all the facts about how livin' la vida low-carb can help them. As weight problems continue to grow and grow (all pun intended!), doctors will eventually have to take a closer look at the low-carb lifestyle and recommend their patients begin a low-carb plan to lose weight and restore their health.
Restoring health is the biggest benefit I have seen on my own low-carb journey. I know I have put myself in a better position to not have diabetes, heart disease or chronic pain. These things will not be a problem I will have to deal with in the future.
One nutrition expert who has been in practice since the 1980s said in the article that he doesn't remember seeing many 300-pound patients when he first started treating patients. But now he says 300-pound patients are the norm.
There was a through-provoking quote made in the story by a chronic pain specialist in Pittsburgh.
"I think for many doctors there is a hesitancy to weigh their patients and talk about weight because of the social stigma associated with the obese," said Dawn Marcus, a chronic pain specialist in Pittsburgh. "But if doctors decline to evaluate their patients' weight, they miss a good opportunity to improve their health and get rid of their pain."
Why would a doctor who is allegedly getting paid to help be as healthy as you can be want to deprive you of any information that would get you there? If doctors are hesitant to fully explain the ramifications of carrying around too much weight, then who's gonna do it?
Unfortunately, it's already taboo to tell someone they're fat. When it's put that bluntly, it can be hard to hear (and politically incorrect at that!). But I contend that people need to confront the obese people they love and care about with a message of hope that they can have real success on a low-carb lifestyle. Don't nag them about it or make any idle threats about why they need to lose weight. That tactic won't work in a million years. But sharing about a weight loss method that can help them with their problem will.
A June 2004 study in the Clinical Journal of Pain found that overweight and obese people have a much more difficult time overcoming pain and their lives are adversely affected by it.
Here's an illustration from the article that explains why the link between weight and pain exists:
"It's like carrying a 30- to 40-pound bag on your back when hiking. After just an hour or two, you notice the weight and start feeling pain in your back and joints. The difference is if you're overweight, you can't take it off instantly and say, 'Ooh, I feel so much better now.'"
You can pop all the Tylenol in the world, but it's only going to mask the pain temporarily. The best way to take care of residual pain from carrying around extra weight is to lose it. There are some secondary pains, such as headaches, which happen as a result of being overweight as well. A study in the article notes that a large number of of obese and overweight people miss as many as four days of work every year because of a severe headache brought on by their weight problem.
"The findings suggest that people with obesity were more likely to report frequent, more painful and more debilitating headaches than other groups," a doctor in the study said.
The article also contends that doctors feel helpless about dealing with obesity problems because they don't believe they have been equipped to deal with such issues.
"Sometimes it can be like beating their heads against a wall," a doctor said. "We don't have good tools to treat obesity. Some pharmaceuticals are moderately effective. Counseling can help too, but that requires more time than the average physician can spend with their patients."
This doctor doesn't have a time problem (although they do try to push you out the door within minutes of seeing the doctor!). What he and millions upon millions of other doctors have is a lack of education problem. They have not fully examined the alternatives to a low-fat diet, such as the low-carb lifestyle, and completely bought into everything the AMA tells them regarding "good health" hook, line and sinker. It may go against everything they were ever taught in medical school about health to believe that low-carb is good, but it is essential these doctors get educated so they can help their obese patients.
It is rare to find a doctor these days who has either done his own research or sought out independent medical research that proves the low-carb way of eating is the right choice for most of their patients. This is a travesty considering the American healthcare system is widely considered the best in the world. Doctors can offer their patients much better advice than repeating the lie that their patients have to do low-fat/low-calorie in order to lose and maintain their weight.
Noting a dramatic four-fold increase in the number of weight loss surgeries such as gastric bypass since 1999, doctors are noticing even those are dangerous because of the complications that often arise after the surgery, including continued chronic pain and even death.
My mother had gastric bypass surgery done in December 2003 (just weeks before I started my low-carb lifestyle). Since then, she has lost 120 pounds and looks great. But it wasn't without complications, either. She was hospitalized twice for dehydration and malnutrition. And she'll occasionally have stomach pain when she eats more than her shrunk stomach can handle. There's no way on God's green Earth I would ever do such a surgery myself unless I had tried every other way possible first. Yet, that probably would have been my next consideration after doing Atkins had the low-carb lifestyle failed me. Thankfully, though, livin' la vida low-carb worked to perfection to help me lose weight, keep it off, and be the healthy man I am today.
A quote at the end of the story states: "We need to not be afraid to tell our patients that they're overweight," a doctor said. "It's not like saying 'you're ugly' or 'I don't like you.' It's about telling them about a real medical condition. And it's the only way to begin to help."
Now you're talking. An open and honest discussion between doctors and their patients is the only way the obesity epidemic is ever going to be addressed in this country. Now if we can just get the doctors to recommend low-carb as an option for helping people deal with their weight. What can it hurt since two-thirds of Americans are already overweight or obese despite decades of having the low-fat diet shoved down their throats. The time has come to try something different because what we've been doing has failed miserably. Got low-carb?
This Dover, New Hampshire-based Foster's Online article about a supposedly new weight-loss program called Bariatrics took an unfair swipe at the low-carb lifestyle that I would like to address.
In the article, a doctor at Physicians Healthy Weight Center in Hampton, NH named Jennifer Warren along with her husband opened the anti-obesity center in March 2004 and have had great success at helping people lose weight. In fact, their patients have lost an average of 17 pounds each. Not bad and a laudable effort on their part.
As a former overweight person, Dr. Warren says she understands what it is like on both sides of the health spectrum. That's why she uses prescription drugs, exercise, diet changes and lifestyle changes to help her patients lose weight. Again, this seems to be a great endeavor for them to pursue.
But what she says specifically about her patients who have been on the Atkins diet and failed angered me to no end.
"I call them Atkins survivors. They come in and are afraid of carbs. If you're on a really strict Atkins you can't eat more than 28 grams of carbs a day. That's not enough to exercise and then you’re shooting yourself in the foot because if you can't exercise you'll never be healthy," she says. "I have to reeducate people that not all carbs are bad. High-fiber carbs are absolutely necessary for them to be healthy … You got to go beyond reading artificial labels."
With all due respect to Dr. Warren, she could not have mischaracterized what eating a low-carb lifestyle is more if she tried. Let me break down why she is wrong.
First, people who do not succeed on Atkins cannot blame the program for their failure. The plan works if you stick to it by the book. Even a little deviation from what Dr. Atkins wrote about in his books will cause people to have less success than those of us who went by the book. Call them "survivors" if you want, but I call them cheaters for not doing low-carb the right way.
Second, people who are on low-carb are not "afraid of carbs." In fact, I love my carbs and try to eat the right amount for me every single day. Contrary to popular belief, Atkins does not mean "no carb," but rather controlled-carb. Find the amount of carbohydrates that your body needs to lose or maintain weight and stick with it.
Third, I don't know many people who do Atkins who have to stay at "28 grams of carbs a day" as Dr. Warren suggests. In fact, each person has a different Atkins Carb Equilibrium (ACE) number that they can get to and still remain in ketosis. For some that number can be as high as 100 carbs per day. For others, it COULD be as low as 25-30, but that is not the norm. Her comments prove she does not know what she is talking about.
Fourth, Dr. Warren believes people who do Atkins can't exercise because they allegedly don't get enough carbs for energy. That's just plain hogwash! I have been a daily exercise freak since I started Atkins and never have a problem with being able to exercise. She is correct that you can't be healthy unless you exercise, but doing Atkins does not prevent you from taking advantage of this health benefit as she suggests. Again, my own story proves she is wrong!
Fifth, she talks about having to "reeducate" her patients that not all carbs are bad for you, but fails to acknowledge that the Atkins plan does not look at all carbs the same either. Dietary fiber and sugar alcohols are not counted in the carbs allowed each day because they have little to no effect on your blood sugar. In fact, getting an adequate amount of fiber is essential when you are on Atkins. But I didn't hear Dr. Warren mentioning anything about this in her diatribe against it! She says, "High-fiber carbs are absolutely necessary for them to be healthy." And that's exactly what Dr. Atkins recommends people eat on his program!
Finally, Dr. Warren exclaims "you got to go beyond reading artificial labels" as her final jab at low-carb. I tell people all the time that they've GOT to read food labels and be smart about it. Too much sugar and salt is much worse for you than too much fat. Watch your net carb intake (total carbs minus dietary fiber and sugar alcohols) and you will lose weight and restore your health. I'm living proof!
I don't blame Dr. Warren for her ill-advised and ignorant comments about the low-carb lifestyle. It echoes what many in her profession spout off about Atkins without a notion of any facts to back up their claims. That's why you need to constantly educate yourself about the low-carb lifestyle and countering this kind of disinformation with the truth. If you are going to be livin' la vida low-carb, then prepare yourself to encounter this often. And I'll be here to help clear the air when it starts to get polluted with this garbage. :-)
April 25, 2005 UPDATE: The journalist who wrote this story sent me an e-mail today informing me she would pass on my reaction to the comments by Dr. Warren about the Atkins lifestyle to her. I'll keep you informed if I hear anything from Dr. Warren.
(2004) and 
