Tag: low-carb

Jan30202130th Jan 202130th Jan 20212Commentsby fmadmin

Nutrition in crisis: healing the harm from bad science

Posted in Food for Thought

By Marika Sboros

Crisis, you say. What crisis? If you’re talking nutrition science, it’s not just one crisis. Take your pick from related crises around nutrition in the US, the UK and South Africa – and most of the rest of the globe.

That’s more good reason to read Nutrition in Crisis, Flawed Studies, Misleading Advice and the Real Science of Metabolism.

It’s not new – it was published in 2019. The author is US biochemistry professor Richard David Feinman of the State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. He enjoys a reputation as a teacher with “a gift for making accessible the intricacies of the body’s biochemistry”.

The book’s content remains relevant today.  It is primarily about biochemistry and food metabolism. It is about why nutrition science is in such bad shape, scientifically and ethically – and a source of harm. It’s also about one crisis in particular. Google misinformation, disinformation, fraud, nutrition science and carbohydrates and you’ll come across all the evidence you could want to red-flag crisis.

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Nov0520205th Nov 20202nd Dec 20200Commentby fmadmin

Dr David Unwin: how he can ‘stop people dying from COVID-19’

Posted in LCHF

Photo: Nick Bolton on Unsplash

By Marika Sboros

UK GP Dr David Unwin is receiving high praise globally from medical colleagues and other experts for his new low-carb study. It shows efficacy of low-carb diets as first-line treatment for type-2 diabetes. It builds on research showing benefits of these diets as possible prevention against the ongoing COVID19 pandemic.

Published in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) Nutrition, Prevention & Health, the study is open-access. Among plaudits, US professor of medicine Mark Cucuzella calls it “an amazing work of faith, perseverance, and the desire to heal”.

On Twitter, Czech medical lawyer attorney and global health management consultant Jan Vyjidak declares its results “astonishing”. No other real-world, primary-care evidence has comparable results, he says – as far as he knows. Scottish GP Malcolm Kendrick goes further in a provocative blog (scroll down for a full version). It proves that “Dr David Unwin can stop people dying of COVID-19 – by helping them lose weight”, Kendrick says.

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Aug0320203rd Aug 20203rd Aug 20202Commentsby fmadmin

Naiman weighs in on low-carb versus low-fat wars

Posted in LCHF

Dr Ted Naiman

By Marika Sboros

Among the plethora of diet books weighing down virtual shelves, I came across a quirky one: The P:E Diet by US physician Ted Naiman.

It puts protein back on a pedestal as the prince, if not the king, of foods for health in body and mind.  It elevates high-intensity exercise to brave new heights. And it weighs in on low-carbohydrate versus low-fat diet wars.

He and co-author William Shewfelt come down on both sides of those wars. They also hammer solid nails into the coffin of perennial fear-mongering around high-protein diets. Still, many experts see potential harm in an “unnaturally high intake of protein” long-term.

The P:E in the title stands for an intriguing protein-to-energy ratio in foods. The book’s subtitle is Leverage Your Biology To Achieve Optimal Health. Naiman and Shewfelt might have added: Buffest Body And Optimum Sports Performance Safely, Effectively, Sustainably.

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Feb24202024th Feb 202025th Feb 20208Commentsby fmadmin

Hospital food: Malhotra’s war on ‘obscene, processed junk’!

Posted in Food for Thought

Hospital snack that infuriated a cardiologist

By Marika Sboros

Hospitals are places of healing, dedicated to patients’ health, right? Wrong. They should be, of course, but they aren’t always.

Particularly when it comes to hospital food.

Critics say junk food is just another symptom of hospitals that practise the lucrative repeat business of sick-care, not health-care.

The latest medical expert to wade into hospital food is Dr Aseem Malhotra, an NHS (National Health Service) and Harley St consultant cardiologist at ROC Private Clinic in the UK. Malhotra took to Twitter and Facebook last week to blast an NHS hospital for the snack it served his father, Dr Kailash Chand, after major sinus surgery.

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Jan23202023rd Jan 202024th Jan 20203Commentsby fmadmin

Dr Mariela Glandt: sweet medicine to beat diabetes in Israel

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

A century ago, doctors looked on in awe as patients with type-1 diabetes responded to life-saving insulin therapy. These days, Israeli endocrinologist Dr Mariela Glandt feels “the same awe” watching her type-2 diabetes patients get off insulin.

Glandt, who trained at Harvard Medical School and Columbia University in the US, lives and practises in Israel. She is on a mission. Glandt has started a revolution in Israel against mainstream medical treatment for type-2 diabetes (T2D). She hopes it will spread more widely through orthodox medicine globally.

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Jan17202017th Jan 202018th Jan 20200Commentby fmadmin

Dietitians: health hazards or mainstream LCHF healers in 2020?

Posted in LCHF

Picture: Stuart Dawes

By Marika Sboros

Will 2020 be the year that low-carb finally goes medical mainstream to treat and prevent a wide range of life-threatening diseases? Will dietitians be the main movers and shakers who achieve that magic by dispensing cutting-edge, 21st Century, evidence-based dietary advice?

Is 2020 the year they become healers who use food as medicine?  Or will many of them just carry on dishing up unscientific, industry-led dietary dogma that researchers say makes them dinosaurs – and a public-health hazard?

The signs are auspicious for positive change. One sign is the recent launch of the Cape-based Nutrition Network’s world-first, internationally curated, low-carb, high-healthy-fat (LCHF) online training course for dietitians and Certified Nutrition Specialists (CNS).

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Nov0320193rd Nov 201923rd Jan 20202Commentsby Marika

ISRAEL WAKES UP TO LOW-CARB AND KETO!

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

Dr Mariela Glandt is the brains behind Israel’s first keto, low-carb, high-healthy-fat (LCHF) conference. The event draws leading LCHF and nutrition experts from around the world.

It takes place at the Hilton Hotel in Tel Aviv on November 7 and 8, 2019. There’s still time to book a place.

Glandt hopes it will bring LCHF and keto into the medical mainstream. She is founder and director of the Glandt Center for Diabetes Care in Tel Aviv. The clinic specializes in optimization of diabetes care through very low-carb (ketogenic) diets.

Glandt trained as an internist at Harvard and an endocrinologist at Columbia University. She has more than two decades of experience in treating diabetes. She also has clinical experience in the many related conditions that significantly increase the risk of life-threatening diseases.

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Oct10201910th Oct 201910th Oct 20190Commentby Marika

Ketosis for kids: is mother’s milk really a danger?

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

Mention the “k” word (ketosis) for kids and many, if not most, paediatricians and paediatric dietitians recoil.

Ketogenic diets are very low in carbs and very high in healthy fats (VLCHF). The very idea of putting kids on keto diets scares paediatricians and dietitians.  Especially for infants.

It’s as if paediatricians and dietitians consider it close child abuse, not far from infanticide. They pass on those fears to parents.

Yet babies are born in ketosis and mother’s milk is very high-fat – and low-carb, relatively. This keeps newborns in ketosis all through nursing, says US neuroscientist Dr Angela Stanton.

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Jun0520195th Jun 20195th Jun 20191Commentby Marika

Shawn Baker: heavyweight medicine man in praise of meat

Posted in Vital Signs

BakerVITAL SIGNS

By Marika Sboros

US physician and orthopaedic surgeon Dr Shawn Baker once dreamt of owning a cheesecake factory. He also dreamt of being able to eat all the cheese and sweets he wanted.

He has come a long way since his birth in Hof, a small West German town on the Czech border to an American father in the US Air Force and a South African mother. Ironically, given Baker’s vigorously anti-sugar stance these days, his mother hailed from a family with links to Hullett’s. The company remains dominant in South Africa’s powerful sugar industry.

In a Q&A Vital Signs profile, Baker tells how he conquered his chronically sweet tooth on his medical journey. He also tells how fought off establishment attacks after he advised his obese, diabetic patients to change their diets – and eat more meat – to reduce the needs for drugs and invasive surgery.

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May20201920th May 201921st Dec 20208Commentsby Marika

Facebook: real reason for take-down of top low-carb group?

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

What’s really behind Facebook’s deletion of one of its biggest low-carb groups, the Banting 7 Day Meal Plans? The social media titan’s responses leave more questions than answers.

Did interests opposed to low-carb therapies sabotage the group? Did Facebook assist that agenda without checking for conflicts of interest?

Facebook claims that a “user” hacked and deleted the group. That made the deletion “voluntary” from within, it says. If so, what does that mean for the personal data of the group’s more than 1,6million users?

There are 1.1 million South African “Banters” – as supporters of low-carb, high-healthy-fat (LCHF) therapies are known in that country. The rest are scattered across the planet. Could the hack have compromised their data? Could the user have hacked Facebook as well?

Facebook has gone to great lengths to suggest otherwise. It reinstated the group on May 17 but not before its sudden removal on May 14 went viral. That precipitated a tsunami of protest from users and supporters around the world on Facebook and Twitter.

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May15201915th May 201920th May 201911Commentsby Marika

Why won’t UCT just say sorry to Noakes for academic ‘mobbing’?

Posted in LCHF, noakestrial

UPDATED with UCT response received after publication today. Scroll down below.

By Marika Sboros

Extensive, uncontested evidence on public record shows that staff of the University of Cape Town and its Faculty of Health Science participated in what many see as the academic bullying of Prof Tim Noakes.

Will UCT and the Faculty ever apologise for that academic bullying – or “mobbing” as it is now popularly known? The signs are not auspicious, says Noakes.

Academic mobbing is a global phenomenon. In South Africa, the uncontested evidence suggests that it’s a scourge. It has affected not just UCT but also other top universities: Stellenbosch, North-West (formerly Potchefstroom) and my alma mater, the University of the Witwatersrand.

Don’t mistake academic mobbing for academic politics.

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Feb17201917th Feb 201917th Feb 20195Commentsby Marika

TRUMP: OFFICIALLY OBESE, SHORTER … AND MORE!

Posted in Food for Thought

By Marika Sboros 

It’s official. US President Donald Trump is obese and shorter than he claims to be.

Trump physician Sean Conley has released his patient’s latest physical exam results. Despite (or perhaps because of) the results, Conley declared Trump to be in rude, good health.

He also predicted that Trump’s “good” health would continue throughout his presidency. And forever after.

Conley is the first psychic physician to serve the White House incumbent. His medical crystal ball, however, is faulty.

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Jan28201928th Jan 201928th Jan 20190Commentby Marika

THE DIET FIX: FINALLY, ‘LAST WORD’ IN WEIGHT LOSS!

Posted in BOOKS

Picture: Dreamstime

By Marika Sboros

Are you battling to lose weight? Confused by the minefield of conflicting nutrition and weight-loss advice out there?

Or simply and seriously concerned with your health or the health of those you care about?

If so,  this book is for you.

The Diet Fix is by British public health and obesity researcher Dr Zoë Harcombe. The sub-title says it all: How to lose weight and keep it off… One last time!

On the front cover, British consultant cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra calls The Diet Fix “a gamechanger”. It is that and more.

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Nov30201830th Nov 201810th Dec 20180Commentby Marika

Herzegovina plays host to Keto Health Revolution

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

How easy is it to stay not just low-carb but keto (very low-carb) over the holidays, specially  winter? Easy enough – when you know how. Just ask Greek nutritional therapist and keto evangelist  Apollonas Kapsalis.

He and Croatian wife Roberta are the power-couple behind the popular Greek Goes Keto website.They have arranged a unique keto event in Mostar, Herzegovina on December 8, starting at 17h00 (CET). Their aim: to begin the Keto Health Revolution in Herzegovina’s winter high-carb heartland.

If you can’t be there in person, they are livestreaming via Greek Goes Keto Facebook page. I will join them via Skype for a brief chat.

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Nov18201818th Nov 201810th Dec 20186Commentsby Marika

Harvard study: ‘Case against carbs, for fats grows stronger’

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

It’s not the definitive word for best weight loss diets but it’s close. And it doesn’t venture into the contentious plant- versus animal-food divide. A major new Harvard study shows that replacing carbohydrates with fats speeds up metabolism.

It overcomes one of the biggest hurdles in conventional weight-loss diets: the “plateau”. That is the metabolism slowdown that prevents weight loss on conventional diets.

It’s why so many lose some weight but stay hungry and find it increasingly harder to lose more.

The Harvard study in the BMJ is well-designed and randomised. It is also one of the largest feeding studies ever conducted, say the authors. Add recent US research by Virta Health on low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) diets to reverse type 2 diabetes and experts say it’s a recipe for speedy, safe, sustainable weight loss.

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Sep28201828th Sep 201828th Sep 201816Commentsby Marika

FETTKE FREE AT LAST: AHPRA DROPS ALL CHARGES!

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

Australian orthopaedic surgeon Dr Gary Fettke is a free and vindicated man. The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) has dropped all charges against him.

In a letter to Fettke, AHPRA clears him of any wrongdoing or misconduct in a case that has dragged on for more than four years. The Agency has also apologised for its actions against him.

Those actions include slapping a lifetime ban on him in 2016 from speaking to patients about nutrition. Not just any nutrition but his advocacy for low-carb, healthy-fat (LCHF) therapies.

The ban falls away – although Fettke had ignored it anyway.

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Aug21201821st Aug 201822nd Aug 201813Commentsby Marika

Low-carb diets will shorten your life? Fat chance!

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

Well, here’s a page turner for the diet books. A new study in The Lancet Public Health claims that low-carb diets could be killers.

The researchers claim that the diets increase your risk of mortality (premature death) by shortening your lifespan. In other words, the researchers argue that low-carb diets are life-threatening.

They also claim the same for high-carb diets. But don’t mistake that for any kind of anti-carb stance. On the contrary. The researchers claim that “moderate” carbohydrate consumption (50-55% of the diet) is the way to go.

They say that moderate carbs from plant foods up your chances further of avoiding a premature end. They speak of  “controversy” around low-carb diets. Therefore, they claim that low-carb diets containing animal foods are even more life-threatening than those with plant-based foods.

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Aug0920189th Aug 201817th Aug 20185Commentsby Marika

Diet-heart hypothesis: zombie or written in scientific stone?

Posted in Heart Disease

By Marika Sboros

The diet-heart hypothesis is a curious creature. To some scientists and physicians, the hypothesis that saturated fat causes heart disease is a zombie. Despite all the stakes they drive deep into its heart, it just won’t die.

To others, it’s written in scientific stone. That’s even when supporters, such as Harvard nutrition and epidemiology professor Walter Willett, call it “incomplete” and “overly optimistic” in its classical form.

The hypothesis hovered in the wings at a groundbreaking conference in Zurich, Switzerland in June. That’s when it wasn’t taking centre stage. Willett and others vigorously dispute the notion of any terminal hole in the diet-heart hypothesis.

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Jul14201814th Jul 20189th Aug 20185Commentsby Marika

SWISS RE: TYPE 2 DIABETES REALLY CAN BE REVERSED

Posted in Diabetes

This is the first in a two-part series on a remarkable event that took place in Zürich, Switzerland, in June 2018. It is a review of a conference that will hopefully help to change conventional medical treatment for obesity and type 2 diabetes dramatically in the near future.

The venue augured well: the elegant buildings of the Swiss Re Institute’s Centre for Global Dialogue in Rüschlikon on the west shore of Lake Zürich.

Speakers came from top research institutions around the globe. They argued that mainstream medical treatment for type 2 diabetes just doesn’t work well. In effect, it keeps people fat, sick and dependent on drugs.

That was fighting talk from physicians and scientists from around the globe. Their alternative was just as groundbreaking: It gives people with type 2 diabetes hope that they can reverse their condition safely and effectively without resorting to drugs or surgery.

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Jun0420184th Jun 201811th Jun 20180Commentby Marika

Vintage eating: look backward, fast forward to good health!

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

Fast food is often just a euphemism for junk food. Ditto for “convenience”, so-called “comfort” food. A new book gives bold new taste, flavour and health to fast food.

It is Dinner Plans, Easy Vintage Meals by Jennifer Calihan and Adele Hite. It shows how easy it really is to make healthy foods fast for dinner daily.

The secret is in the “vintage”, say the authors. Vintage meals are the “original fast food”. Vintage eating is the way your great-grandmothers used to cook. That was “back when people used to feel satisfied between meals and look and feel better”.

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