It’s been a difficult week. My closest friend, Phil Dabney (everyone called him Phil; I call him Dabney), died Monday night. He had been found unconscious in his apartment a week prior. The doctors estimated he had been unconscious for at least two days. They thought his brain had been starved of oxygen and that he would not recover. His family made the decision to withdraw life support. He was then given lorazepam and morphine and was dead in short order. They basically killed him.
Dabney was diabetic. He was obese. His feet were twisted from multiple surgeries, and he wore orthopedic shoes. He was blind in one eye. He had heart disease and kidney troubles. He had horrible neuropathy that caused constant pain, and his hands shook so much he couldn’t even cook for himself.
He was taking about 15 different drugs as though he was suffering from a pharmaceutical deficiency. He trusted his doctors. They are, after all, the professionals we turn to when we’re sick.
As for his diet, he relied on the American Diabetes Association (ADA) to guide him. But the ADA is as misguided as the USDA when it comes to nutrition. They demonize meat and saturated fat and promote a diet high in carbohydrates. I quote from their website their recommendation based on the diabetes food pyramid:
The largest group—grains, beans, and starchy vegetables—is on the bottom. This means that you should eat more servings of grains, beans, and starchy vegetables than of any of the other foods.
Should someone who has trouble regulating blood sugar levels eat a large proportion of their diet in carbohydrates? Should obese people eat complex carbohydrates that will most likely be converted to triglycerides and stored as fat? The answer to both questions is a resounding NO! Why is the ADA so clueless?
According to Dick Bernstein, diabetes is a spectrum of closely related disorders, all of which involve impaired absorption of glucose into the cells of the body. And the best way to manage diabetes is to manage blood sugar levels by controlling sugar consumption, and by sugar I mean all carbohydrates.
We cover a lot of ground in this interview, including how sugar is transported into cells, why the ADA and USDA dietary recommendations make people fat and promote diabetes, how insulin affects other hormones, how diabetic neuropathy develops, symptoms of pre-diabetes, recommended blood sugar levels, healthy dietary recommendations, and more.
I was not exacting enough in my questions during this interview, so there were some misunderstandings, but we straightened them out.
As a caveat, Dick states that aspartame has been tested extensively and proven safe for consumption. I don’t agree with this conclusion, but I’ll keep an open mind to the possibility that it is indeed harmless. First off, I don’t believe that just because the FDA approved something that it’s safe. The many drugs that have been pulled off the market attest to the FDA’s poor record. And I also know that a lot of valid studies never get published. There are far too many anecdotal accounts of illness from aspartame to discount. I experienced problems myself from ingesting it.
Total time: 44 minutes.
Interview
Click to listen to interview or right-click to download MP3 file.
Bio
Richard K. Bernstein, M.D., F.A.C.E.,F.A.C.N., FA..C.C.W.S., has been a diabetic since the age of twelve. He was trained as a management engineer and had been a business executive most of his life. In 1969, while suffering from a number of the complications of this disease, he desperately sought a a means for normalizing his own blood sugar. He aquired a device used in emergency rooms to measure blood sugars at night when the labs were closed. He then began to measure his blood sugar throughout the day, hoping to find what made it go up and down. This led to the development of “self-monitoring of blood glucose,” a simple procedure that uses one drop of finger tip blood. The technique has since become widely accepted by the medical profession throughout the world. Dr. Bernstein has authored six of the leading books for diabetics who are interested in controlling their blood sugar to prevent the complications of diabetes. His two most recent books are used by people across the world to help them in their quest to normalize their blood sugars. You can visit Dr. Bernstein at Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution.
Links in Interview
Good Calories, Bad Calories
Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution
Metabolism Society
Dr. Bernstein’s Free Monthly Teleconference
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
That’s very sad about your friend. This happens far too often, doesn’t it? S0 much harmful information passed on by some of these organizations, and drugs that do a lot of harm too.
I really enjoyed the interview. I’m always rather shocked by the standard recommendations for diabetics! I hope that more people will take what Dr. Bernstein says into consideration.
Very interesting that there is something that can be done to stop the carbohydrate cravings diabetics often experience. I wonder, do they have to keep getting those injections their whole life, or will they be able to stop once they have transitioned to a lower carb diet?
Yes, very sad. I miss him a lot. He was my bosom buddy and spiritual rock.
I imagine that the cravings subside once the body begins running primarily on fats. I know when I am disciplined in eating low carb that my sugar cravings stop in just a few days. It may take a while longer for the diabetic blood sugars to stabilize.
He sounds like a fantastic person. So awful when good people like that are harmed like this.
I know what you mean about low carb eating helping with cravings. I used to love sugary foods but after being off most of them, I didn’t want them anymore. It took a few days for the cravings to go down – those days were rough – but stop they did thankfully.
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