Tag: carbohydrate

Feb0720177th Feb 201712th Mar 20188Commentsby Marika

TAUBES AND THE CASE AGAINST SUGAR: SWEET AND SOUR

Posted in BOOKS

UPDATED

By Marika Sboros

Unless you’ve just beamed down from another planet, you’ll know that US science journalist Gary Taubes has a new book out. It’s called The Case Against Sugar. I haven’t read it yet. I’ve only read the reviews, most of them favourable – except one. It is Bad sugar or bad journalism? An expert review of “The Case Against Sugar”. The author is US neurobiologist and obesity researcher Dr Stephan Guyenet.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve since read it. It’s riveting and definitely vintage Taubes. It’s an investment in long-term health.)

Guyenet’s review is not a complete hatchet job. First, he damns Taubes with faint scientific praise. Then he sticks the knife straight into Taubes’s research heart. Guyenet says that Taubes “misunderstands (or chooses not to apply) the scientific method itself”. He accuses Taubes of “extraordinary oversight”. He also says that Taubes ignores “inconvenient facts”.

US physician Michael Eades has read the book – twice – and reviews it in a post on his Protein Power blog. He has given me permission to republish it here. He comes to very different conclusions compared to Guyenet. Here’s the sweet and the sour of reviews.

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Sep10201610th Sep 201612th Sep 20160Commentby Marika

Cancer: doctors have been looking in the wrong place

Posted in BOOKS

sherlock-holmesHere’s a book on cancer that really is a game changer. Or rather, it will be if the medical establishment were to allow it to be. It is The Cancer Revolution: integrative medicine – the future of cancer care by Patricia Peat.

This book  is ‘no eccentric view from a lone maverick’ , says British health writer Jerome Burne. It contains contributions from 38 doctors, clinicians, researchers and practitioners. It doesn’t suggest conventional treatment is irrelevant. It looks at why, despite billions spent on cancer research, improvement in survival rates has been ‘pitiful’: specialists have been looking in the wrong place for better survival outcomes. Here’ a shortened version of Burne’s brilliant review with a link to the full version. – Marika Sboros

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Aug0920169th Aug 201630th Mar 20172Commentsby Marika

CANADIAN STUDY SHEDS LIGHT ON WEIGHT LOSS, MEDICINE THAT ‘NO LONGER CURES’

Posted in LCHF

light bulbIn Part One, South African doctors and dietitians say this small Canadian study isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. In the final Part Two, Foodmed.net  looks at why this research really does shed new light on weight loss and diabetes, despite what the critics say.

Though small and short-term, experts say it  is  part of a movement towards ‘pragmatic trials’ that blur the lines between science and clinical practice. The movement is a new paradigm to replace medicine that ‘no longer cures’ and instead produces ‘customers for the pharmaceutical industry’: 

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Jul11201611th Jul 201611th Jul 20160Commentby Marika

Will pasta make you thin? Fat chance!

Posted in LCHF

PASTABy Marika Sboros

Italian scientists say they have proved that eating pasta won’t make you fat. That it actually helps you to get thin.

That’s how media across the globe heralded a new study published in Nutrition and Diabetes. That’s how the researchers themselves have happily punted it .

Can a pizza study be far behind? 

The research is grist to the anti-low-carb mill. A knock-out blow to the low-carb side of the UK “fat wars”. It sabotages a powerful “Martin Luther moment”. It supports Public Health England’s much maligned Eatwell Guide. 

Or does it? Is this just Big Carb fighting back – and losing? Here’s look at what the researchers really say and what their data really show: 

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Jun14201614th Jun 201615th Jun 20162Commentsby Marika

Britain’s ‘fat wars’: PHC warriors take up low-carb arms

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

stormtrooperBritain’s “fat wars” are spreading, as sporadic skirmishes break out between the newly created independent Public Health Collaboration (PHC) and the establishment Public Health England (PHE).

The latest salvo was the PHC’s inaugural annual conference in Birmingham on June 11. The stellar panel of speakers drew heavy armoury of scientific research to challenge conventional public health advice and call for a complete overhaul of the UK’s official dietary guidelines. 

A leitmotif running through the conference came through a study by one of the conference speakers, top British obesity researcher Dr Zoe Harcombe, published in the BMJ Open Heart in 2015. It showed that the US guidelines on which the UK’s guidelines are based, were without scientific foundation when first introduced in the late 1970s, and remain so today. Results have been catastrophic: 

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Jun0220162nd Jun 20164th Oct 20173Commentsby Marika

Cancer therapy of the future? Already here, says Fettke!

Posted in Cancer
Dr Gary Fettke

Australian surgeon Dr Gary Fettke makes a special study of nutrition for cancer

 The metabolic model of cancer has to be one of the most exciting areas of research these days. Australian orthopaedic surgeon Dr Gary Fettke is making it his life’s work to spread the news. What does an orthopaedic surgeon know about oncology? Lots, as it turns out.  Fettke is also a senior lecturer at the University of Tasmania, and does research into diet to treat diabetes, obesity and cancer. He is also a cancer survivor. Here’s a summary of a fascinating presentation Fettke gave to the low-carb summit in Cape Town in 2015. He titled it:  So you think you need sugar? Your cancer needs it even more! – Marika Sboros

By Gary Fettke

If you have cancer, here’s what you definitely want to avoid:  

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May18201618th May 20163rd Jun 20160Commentby Marika

Why heart foundations are off beat on health!

Posted in Heart Disease

heart healthHeart foundations globally keep beating to the tune of billions of dollars funding from product endorsement. I wouldn’t have such a problem with that were it not for heart foundations endorsing products that are anything but heart-healthy. The Heart Foundation of Australia even endorsed McDonalds products as healthy, for heaven’s sake. It very sensibly cut ties with the fast food chain in 2011. That was always likely to be a vain attempt to reclaim any vestige of credibility, given other unhealthy products it endorses. Another example is the Heart and Stroke Foundation of South Africa that still endorses margarine, although CEO Dr Vash Munghal-Singh tells me that’s under revision.

The  Heart Foundation of Australia recently retired it’s endorsement ‘tick’, following the Canadian lead. It can look like one step forwards – but also two steps backwards. The foundation favours a new star rating system that is highly flawed, says Australian physician Dr Joe Kosterich. And like its opposite numbers worldwide, the foundation is fat-phobic. It still promotes low-fat, fat-free foods and a high-carbohydrate intake.  It recently recommended people eat up to 14 servings of carbohydrate foods a day. That’s not just nuts; evidence suggests it can be a killer for both heart and diabetes patients. Here Kosterich looks at why heart foundations get it so wrong so often. – Marika Sboros

Dr Joe Kosterich

Here is something you are likely to have missed. The Heart Foundation of Australia, following Canada’s lead, is retiring its tick:

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May0920169th May 201621st Jul 20165Commentsby Marika

Has the low-carb, Banting bubble finally burst?

Posted in LCHF
Screen Shot 2016-05-09 at 3.21.04 PM

Are low-carb foods on their way out?

By Marika Sboros

The low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) bubble appears finally to have burst. A new study shows that doctors and  dietitians who say LCHF is a passing fad have been right all long. Carbs are fine even if you are obese as long as you keep fat low in your diet.

You might even believe that if you buy into findings of a study presented by US metabolism specialist Dr Kevin Hall at the International Obesity Congress held in Vancouver Canada earlier this month.

Hall has participated in studies in the past hinting at mortal wounding of the carb-insulin hypothesis of obesity including a study in the journal, Cell Metabolism, in 2015. Now he says his new research delivers the terminal blow.

Other doctors and scientists say: Not so fast. Hall is premature in declaring the death of the carb-insulin hypothesis. US physician Dr Michael Eades, a world authority on LCHF, goes further and says Hall may be “going rogue” and has “done something extremely bizarre” …

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Apr30201630th Apr 201630th Apr 20160Commentby Marika

The rise of renegade doctors prepared to fight dogma

Posted in LCHF
Doctor, medicine,

Doctors who are prepared to say no to dogma

By Marika Sboros

If you read nothing else today, scroll down to click on the link to a powerful blog by brave British GP Dr Joanne McCormack. In it, she explains why she  openly advocates low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) food as medicine for diabetes and other serious disease in defiance of official dietary guidelines.

McCormack says her advice to patients is “not so much unconventional as the beginning of a global movement of doctors and scientists who treat chronic diseases in a non-interventionist way”. That way is  “based ultimately on the very simple idea that if a food has been eaten for millions of years, it must be safe, and that non drug methods may have less side effects and be more effective”. She is clearly not fat-phobic or a pusher of statins as first resort for heart disease.

Her blog  comes by way of award-winning British health journalist Jerome Burne (Health Insight UK and Body of Evidence). He’s well worth following for an independent voice on health, nutrition and medicine, the antics of doctors and dietitians in the thrall of food and drug companies. Burne rightly says: We need more  doctors like McCormack!

Must read! Meet a doctor who thinks for herself and wants you to as well


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