Tag: Mediterranean diet

The Cause of Type 2 Diabetes

The cause of type 2 diabetes has been known since at least the 1920s.

In 1923, Dr. P.J. Cammidge wrote "that one of the commonest causes of a seeming progressive failure of carbohydrate tolerance was a conscious or unconscious increase in the fat of the diet."

J.S. Sweeney wrote two papers in 1927 and 1928 that showed high-fat and high-protein diets increase insulin resistance.

Sir Harold Himsworth (1905–93) was a renown medical doctor and researcher. He was appointed Professor of Medicine at the University of London in 1939. He is best known for his work on diabetes although he had many other interests including the effects of radiation, tropical medicine and epidemiology.

Himsworth presented a paper in 1935,

"Showing the different diets eaten by different races, nations and social classes throughout the world and a close correlation has been demonstrated between dietary preference and the incidence of diabetes mellitus. [...] A high proportion of carbohydrate and low proportion of fat were found in all cases to be associated with low diabetic incidence, whilst a low proportion of carbohydrate and a high proportion of fat were associated with a high incidence."
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9 September 2021
The PURE Study Myths

Dr James Muecke is the Australian of the Year in 2020 which was awarded for his work as an eye-surgeon and his work in preventing blindness.

Muecke believes that we should be eating more eggs, cheese, meat and dark chocolate to minimise diabetes, its associated blindness (diabetic retinopathy) and diabetic neuropathy. Peripheral diabetic neuropathy is nerve damage of the limbs that is caused by diabetes. 50% of adults with type 2 diabetes have peripheral neuropathy. It can result in pain, numbness and an increase in sensitivity. Diabetes account for more than 80% of amputations.

Muecke cites the PURE Study to justify his low-carbohydrate, high-fat, animal-based diet.

The PURE Study is an observational study in 27 countries that examined 225,000 people. The study period is 20 years.
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3 September 2021
Dr James Muecke Australian of the Year in 2020

Dr James Muecke is the Australian of the Year in 2020 which was awarded for his work as an eye- surgeon and his work in preventing blindness.

He is trying to convince Australians to eat more meat, eggs and dairy. Australia is ranked number 2 in meat consumption, just behind United States but in front of Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and New Zealand.

Muecke has declared that we need to “Declare war on type 2 diabetes and cut back on sugar” in order to reduce the incidence of blindness.

He believes that it is the introduction of sugary drinks and highly processed foods are the cause of diabetes – not a high-fat, high-protein diet as shown by numerous papers dating back to 1927.
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11 November 2020
Lyon Diet Heart Study

The Lyon Diet-Heart Study was a

“randomized, single-blind secondary prevention trial aimed at testing whether a Mediterranean-type diet, compared with a prudent Western-type diet, may reduce recurrence after a first myocardial infarction.”

The study consisted of 605 patients who had recovered from a myocardial infarction at a hospital in southern France. The experimental group emphasised “more bread, more root vegetables and green vegetables, more fish, less meat (beef, lamb and pork to be replaced with poultry), no day without fruit, and butter and cream to be replaced with margarine” which was high in alpha-linolenic acid (an omega-3 fatty acid).
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23 June 2020
Harvard Researchers Paid to Support Sugar

A recent story that has been appearing on the internet is that Harvard Researchers Paid to Support Sugar and this is the reason why sugar and carbohydrates have been exonerated in their role of causing heart disease. Fats and saturated fats have unfairly blamed for the obesity and heart disease epidemic.

The article states that, "Early warning signals of the coronary heart disease (CHD) risk of sugar (sucrose) emerged in the 1950s."

"By the 1960s, 2 prominent physiologists were championing divergent causal hypotheses of CHD: John Yudkin identified added sugars as the primary agent, while Ancel Keys identified total fat, saturated fat, and dietary cholesterol. However, by the 1980s, few scientists believed that added sugars played a significant role in CHD, and the first 1980 Dietary Guidelines for Americans [4] focused on reducing total fat, saturated fat, and dietary cholesterol for CHD prevention."
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6 March 2020
Ancel Keys and the High-Fat Diet “Experts”

Popular commentators frequently accuse Keys of manipulating data in his 1953 paper, Atherosclerosis, A Problem in Newer Public Health.

This study is sometimes referred as the Six Countries Study. A number of popular commentators think this is the Seven Countries Study— they count England and Wales as two countries.

This paper was presented in Amsterdam in 1952 and in January 1953 in New York.

Far too much attention is paid to one page of a minor discussion paper written in the early 1950s. Keys writes,

“The fact that the present high rate from degenerative heart disease in the United States is not inevitable is easily shown by the comparison with some other countries.”

This was the purpose of the paper.
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24 July 2018
Ancel Keys did not manipulate his data

Popular commentators frequently accuse Keys of manipulating data in his 1953 paper, Atherosclerosis, A Problem in Newer Public Health.

This study is sometimes referred as the “Six Countries Study”. A number of popular commentators think this is the Seven Countries Study— they count England & Wales as two countries.

This paper was presented in Amsterdam in 1952 and in January 1953 in New York.

Far too much attention is paid to one page of a minor discussion paper written in the early 1950s. Keys writes,

“The fact that the present high rate from degenerative heart disease in the United States is not inevitable is easily shown by the comparison with some other countries.”

This was the purpose of the paper.
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28 May 2018
Robert Lustig and The Men Who Made Us Fat

Robert Lustig is a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco. He is the author of Fat Chance: Beating the Odds against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease. He specializes in childhood obesity and studying the effects of sugar in the diet. He is the director of the UCSF Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health Program and a member of the Obesity Task Force of the Endocrine Society.

Unfortunately, much of what he says is simply wrong, which given the amount of media exposure that he receives, is deeply worrying.
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26 February 2018
Misconceptions of Denis Stewart

Denis Stewart is a herbalist from the Hunter Valley (NSW, Australia). He is an associate professor at University of Newcastle since 2002. He founded the Southern Cross Herbal School in the late 1970s.

He presents a weekly radio show on 2NUR FM, a Newcastle-based radio station, on health topics.

I am concerned about some of his material. I posted Denis a (real) letter and sent an email without receiving a response. I also sent an email to 2NUR FM listing some concerns.

Below is a list of some of the concerns that have not been addressed.
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14 November 2017
The Pioppi Diet

The Pioppi Diet movie and book by Aseem Malhotra, a London cardiologist and Donal O’Neill, an Irish film-maker that receives a great deal of publicity. A review in the British Journal of General Practice quotes Professor Dame Sue Bailey, the Chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, who describes the book as a “must have for every household and a must read for every medical student and doctor”.

Andy Burnham, current (2021) mayor of Greater Manchester and former UK Secretary of State for Health writes,

This book has the power to make millions of people healthier and happier.

Pioppi is a small village on the Tyrrhenian Sea which is located on the west coast of Italy. It is approximately 150 km (90 miles) south of Naples. Ancel and Margaret Keys resided here for over 25 years. Martii Karvonen of Finland and Jerimiah Stamler of the USA are other well-known medical researchers who resided in the village.

Malhotra is a keen high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet advocate and is desperately trying (unsuccessfully) to merge his opinion into a distorted view of the Mediterranean diet.
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3 October 2017