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- Herausgeber: Hammersmith Health Books
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
We are probably all aware that countries with the Western lifestyle and the standard Western diet are facing an epidemic of type 2 diabetes. Already in 2010, more than one million people in the UK were thought to have undiagnosed type 2 diabetes, double the previous estimate, and as long ago as 2008 between 20% and 30% of the adult population could be characterised as having the 'metabolic syndrome' – the forerunner to diabetes. The tragedy is that most people with these conditions regard them as inevitable evils and agree to take the medicine – or inject the insulin – when the time comes. BUT it need not be that way. As Dr Myhill writes: 'All medical therapies should start with diet. Modern Western diets are driving our modern epidemics of diabetes, heart disease, cancer and dementia; this process is called metabolic syndrome. In this book I explain in detail why and how we have arrived at a situation where the real weapons of mass destruction can be found in our kitchens. Importantly, the book describes the vital steps every one of us can make to reverse the situation so that life can be lived to its full potential.' Based on Dr Myhill's more than 30 years' experience of helping her patients return to health, find out: What metabolic syndrome is, why Westerners are all on the way to getting it, and how to avoid it; What the risk factors are for developing diabetes and how to minimise these; How to reverse diabetes type 2; How to control blood sugar with minimal use of insulin in diabetes type 1; How to balance your blood sugar levels and monitor your progress.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Reviews of Prevent and Cure Diabetes
This book could save the NHS!
One person in four (and rising) has metabolic syndrome in this country. It leads to the epidemics of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s and cancer that are drowning our health services. Fix it and you could save the NHS from drowning. This book shows us how.
In 1958, Dr Richard Mackarness wrote a book called Eat Fat and Grow Slim, which pretty much did what it said on the cover*. So more than half a century ago someone figured this out and offered a solution; but then what happened? We as a species spent half a century believing that fats are bad for us and so avoiding them, and all the time getting fatter, sicker, dumber and often deader.
Now that whole mythology is falling apart, and with the help of books like this we can re-learn what we were somehow fooled into forgetting - how to get and stay well, fit and strong with practical nutrition.
Dr Sarah Myhill provides a clear, and often entertaining, explanation of how sugar poisons us, how we become addicts, and how to get out of this ‘jail’ free. She owns up to having been a sugar-junkie herself (although I must say she hides her addiction well – unless it is to that insane horse-riding stuff she does). So if she says ‘It may be hard, but you can do it’, you know you can believe her.
You don’t need to have diabetes, or even metabolic syndrome, to benefit from this book; it offers a solution to nearly every disease you are likely to encounter in this century and this society. If GPs gave this out to their patients first, before prescribing drugs, we might indeed save the NHS.
Dr Damien Downing MB BS, MRSB President, British Society of Ecological Medicine
Dr Sarah Myhill is a medical pioneer and an explorer, a brave open-minded healer who seeks out that which works and makes people better. Her thousands of patients who have seen the irreversible being reversed under her care are testament to that. In this revelatory book, she turns her attention to the lifestyle disease of our time, and demonstrates that it is very preventable and treatable without drugs. It is a book that demands to be on the shelves of any intelligent, enquiring person.
Bryan Hubbard, What Doctors Don’t Tell You
This practical, evidence-based book reviewing mechanisms leading to diabetes, challenges current mainstream thinking about the impact of the modern Western diet on our health. Dr Myhill’s passion, curiosity and conclusions are both compelling and motivating. As both a doctor and a patient, I am only too aware that empowering people is the key to optimum health. I can’t wait to start making changes to my own diet.
Nina Lawrence, MB BChir, Consultant Psychiatrist
Dr Sarah Myhill’s latest book, Prevent and Cure Diabetes, is another masterpiece and the reader can soon see why Sarah has such a stellar reputation amongst her many thousands of grateful patients. In Britain, medical progress is skewed by Big Pharma’s need to make a profit. An oppressed medical profession often defaults to orthodoxy, custom and practice, established dogma and N.I.C.E. Guidelines - it protects them in an age of complaint and litigation. Research and the essential challenge to dogma and the establishment are sadly, often met with sneering, dismissal or personal attack rather than scientific debate which would either confirm or constructively refine new ideas.
If we fear to challenge, we never improve; we never progress.
Sarah Myhill has the courage and the expansive mind to think the unthinkable from which all progress is made. She lives in the scientific world of ‘EDPIE’:
Evaluate - Diagnose - Plan - Implement - Evaluate again.
Crucially, this is a permanently recurring process for her in all her books, where her humility and public gratitude to her sources mask her stunning and major contribution and collation of the overall product. Interestingly, many of her earlier ideas, derided at the time, have since slipped, unappreciated, into mainstream acceptance…
This book helps the professional and lay person alike. It gives clear guidance on how both to treat and to prevent disease with tools available to us all. The eloquence makes it hard to put down - a real ‘page-turner’. When could we last say that of a medical book?
Nigel Williams BSc MSc CMath MIMA MCMI FRSA, Headmaster
I am a patient of Dr Myhill’s. I was diagnosed with diabetes in 2010 since when I have been following her advice as detailed in this book. Annual blood tests have been perfect. I am taking no prescription medication, only nutritional supplements. I am as fit, well and mentally sharp in my 80s as I have ever been and much looking forward to the next 20 years.
Ken Maggs, retired teacher
* Nearly 20 years later Dr Mackarness wrote Not All in the Mind, which introduced Britain to the idea of food allergy and intolerance, and led to the setting up of the British Society for Nutritional Medicine – now it is for Ecological Medicine – of which both Dr Myhill and I are long-term members.
Prevent and Cure DIABETES
Delicious Diets, Not Dangerous Drugs
Don’t Dine with the Devil
Dr Sarah Myhill MB BSand Craig Robinson MA (Oxon)
Copyright
First published in 2016 by Hammersmith Health Books – an imprint of Hammersmith Books Limited 14 Greville Street, London EC1N 8SB, UKwww.hammersmithbooks.co.uk
© 2016, Dr Sarah Myhill and Craig Robinson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers and copyright holders.
The information contained in this book is for educational purposes only. It is the result of the study and the experience of the authors. Whilst the information and advice offered are believed to be true and accurate at the time of going to press, neither the authors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may have been made or for any adverse effects which may occur as a result of following the recommendations given herein. Always consult a qualified medical practitioner if you have any concerns regarding your health.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: A CIP record of this book is available from the British Library.
Print ISBN 978–1–78161–077–0 Ebook ISBN 978–1–78161–078–7
Commissioning editor: Georgina Bentliff Designed and typeset by: Julie Bennett, Bespoke Publishing Ltd Cover design by: Julie Bennett, Bespoke Publishing Ltd Index: Dr Laurence Errington Production: Helen Whitehorn, Path Projects Ltd Printed and bound by: TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall, UK.
Dedication
SM: ‘To my lovely patients, who have been willing guinea pigs and most forgiving when my suggestions have not worked. However, in doing so, they have pushed forward the frontiers of practical medicine.’
CR: ‘To my wife, Penny, without whom I would not be here.’
Contents
About the Authors
Dr Sarah Myhill MB BS qualified in medicine (with Honours) from Middlesex Hospital Medical School in 1981 and has since focused tirelessly on identifying and treating the underlying causes of health problems, especially the ‘diseases of civilisation’ with which we are beset in the West. She has worked in the NHS and private practice and for 17 years was the Hon. Secretary of the British Society for Ecological Medicine, which focuses on the causes of disease and treating through diet, supplements and avoiding toxic stress. She helps to run, and lectures at, the Society’s training courses and also lectures regularly on organophosphate poisoning, the problems of silicone, and chronic fatigue syndrome. Visit her website at www.drmyhill.co.uk
Craig Robinson MA took a first in Mathematics at Oxford University in 1985. He then joined Price Waterhouse and qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1988, after which he worked as a lecturer in the private sector, and also in the City of London, primarily in Financial Sector Regulation roles. Craig first met Sarah in 2001, as a patient for the treatment of his CFS, and since then they have developed a professional working relationship, where he helps with the maintenance of www.drmyhill.co.uk, the moderating of Dr Myhill’s Facebook groups and other ad hoc projects, as well as with the editing and writing of her books.
Authors’ roles
Use of the first person singular in this book refers to me, Dr Sarah Myhill. One can assume that the medicine and biochemistry are mine, as edited by Craig Robinson, and that the classical and mathematical references are Craig’s.
Craig has been an essential part of this book. As a doctor, I tend to assume much information. Craig is a First Class Oxford mathematician who thinks logically. He has written out the medico-speak and ensured the writing flows in a biologically plausible and comprehensible way. Thank you Craig!
SM
Morning Surgery at Dr Myhill’s
MONDAY
FED-UP PATIENT: ‘Just not feeling myself, tired, irritable, foggy brain, can’t lose weight, can’t get fit.’
Dr M: ‘…and your diet is…?’
QUIZZICAL PATIENT (thinking, ‘This is a bit weird; normally at this point other doctors start writing a prescription’): ‘Well, I …er … I eat a normal, healthy, balanced diet…”
Dr M---: ‘…So breakfast is …?’
SMUG PATIENT (giving confident smile thinking that Dr Myhill will be really impressed): ‘Cereal or muesli, with low-fat milk and sweetener, orange juice, toast, margarine and marmalade. Tea.’
Dr M (remember that this old matriarch, Dr M, is becoming increasingly grumpy and, in consequence, even more direct): Flashes smug patient a hot stare.
CRUSHED PATIENT (with weakening voice): ‘…Sandwiches for lunch, fruit for snacks, pasta for supper …all cooked in sunflower oil, you know!’
Dr M: ‘So you have metabolic syndrome. And if you carry on like this you will get diabetes…’
DEFENSIVE PATIENT: ‘…but I eat my five a day, I’ve cut out all fat and my cholesterol is good. I have done everything I have been told to…’
Dr M: ‘…and then you will die prematurely from cancer, heart disease or dementia – no time to explain – read this book!’
TUESDAY
CRESTFALLEN PATIENT: ‘I’ve started the book. And yes, I am a carbohydrate addict.’
Dr M: ‘You admit it…and yes…?’
SHEEPISH PATIENT: ‘…and my diet is abnormal, unhealthy and unbalanced.’
Dr M: ‘Keep reading…’
WEDNESDAY
THOUGHTFUL PATIENT: ‘Now I understand the “Why”s and “What to do”s…, but the changes are so difficult.’
Dr M: ‘Keep reading, take a leap of faith and just DO IT.’
THURSDAY
DETERMINED PATIENT (with a steely look in the eye): ‘OK, I am going to do it but I will hate you forever.’
Dr M: ‘Read the book again!’
FRIDAY
MISERABLE PATIENT: ‘I am feeling effing awful!’
Dr M: ‘Jolly good – that’s really made my day! You have the classic withdrawal reaction symptoms. You will do well. Carry on. Stick with it!’
ONE MONTH LATER
TRIUMPHANT PATIENT: ‘I have never felt so well in my life! I have lost a stone in weight. I can go all day. My brain is sharp. I just feel so cheerful. I have horizons and a future.’
Dr M: ‘Remember this moment. You will forget. Addicts always do. When you do forget and relapse – read the book again and remember this moment!’
CONSPIRATORIAL PATIENT (leaving, with confidential sly glance): ‘…and the sex is great again…’
Preamble
The word ‘diabetes’ comes from the Greek meaning ‘siphon’, illustrating one late-presenting symptom of diabetes – namely, excessive urination and excessive thirst.
There are two main categories of diabetes:
Diabetes mellitus (excessive urination caused by sugar in the urine). Here the ‘mellitus’ is derived from the Latin, meaning honeyed or sweet, and is a reference to the excessive sugar found in urine in this category of diabetes.Diabetes insipidus (excessive urination caused by abnormal pituitary function and therefore kidney function). Here the ‘insipidus’, deriving again from the Latin, means pale, or tasteless, and refers to the pale urine seen in this category of diabetes.Further, diabetes mellitus has been split into two types: type 1 and type 2. Both types have to do with the loss of control of blood sugar, but for two different reasons:
Diabetes type 1 is an autoimmune condition which results because the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas have been destroyed. The commonest cause of this is autoimmunity but some other pancreatic diseases will present with type 1 diabetes. These patients all require insulin by injection because the pancreas cannot produce the amount of insulin they need.
Diabetes type 2 is the loss of control of blood sugar for all reasons other than the loss of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. This process of losing control starts with what is called ‘metabolic syndrome’ (page 239) and, given time, inevitably progresses to diabetes. The treatment of both metabolic syndrome and diabetes – namely, to reverse that progression – is the same.
This book is largely about diabetes type 2. However, type 1 diabetes can be greatly improved by all the strategies that are also used to treat type 2 diabetes. If these treatments are put in place, even though insulin will always be needed, blood sugar control will be much improved, and insulin requirements substantially reduced. This, in turn, will reduce the risk of complications. In the not too distant future, type 1 diabetes will be curable with stem cell therapy – roll on that day! Type 2 diabetes can only be cured by restoring evolutionarily correct diets and lifestyles, as detailed in this book.
Chapter 1
Introduction – why this book?
I see many patients with diabetes. It is clear that the conventional advice given to them does not address the causes of their condition and so cannot reverse it or prevent progression. Conventional dietary and medical advice is not just inadequate; by focusing on calorie counting, cutting out fats, eating carbohydrates with every meal, and the taking of prescription drugs, it is also uninspiring and disempowering, and – even worse – it allows the disease to progress. Patients following this advice inexorably move on to more prescription drugs and premature death.
This is because the conventional medical approach fails to address the key issues of carbohydrate addiction (p 29), glycogen sponges (p 225), fermenting guts (p 152), hormonal deficiencies (p 63), the causes of insulin resistance (p 8), how to reverse metabolic inflexibility (p 239) and, also, how to establish keto-adaption (p 66). Without a full understanding of these issues, we have neither the tools, nor the mental, physical and emotional determination, to put into place the necessary lifestyle and dietary changes to reverse metabolic syndrome (p 239) and diabetes.
Already our glorious National Health Service is being overwhelmed by the complications of metabolic syndrome and diabetes. We all have it within our power to reverse this progression. We must wake up to Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ principle. Those people and families who understand the causes of metabolic syndrome and have the determination to reverse it will be the long-term survivors.
Not only must we understand these causes and put into place the changes to reverse the damage that has already been done, but we must stick to these changes – these are lifestyle changes for life. Like Darwin’s American Monkey,1 we must learn from the error of our ways:
‘An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.’
Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
The ideas which follow are for the most part based on well-researched science. However, for the reader’s information, I have indicated where some are less well researched or even speculative. Even so, all are at least biologically plausible and all come with a sound clinical basis from my practice. In addition, all of these ideas pass the ‘Do No Harm’ test.
As Linus Pauling famously said, to have good ideas we need to have lots of ideas and then throw away the bad ones.2 It may be that some of what follows will have to be discarded, but, at least no harm will have been done, and I hope that there are enough good ideas here both to enthuse each and every reader and to motivate you all to carry on through with this difficult evolution of individual discovery.
At the very least, there should be enough in this book to make you think.
‘I cannot teach anybody anything; I can only make them think.’ ‘Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.’
Socrates, Greek philosopher (470/469–399 BC)
Chapter 2
Sugar – our non-essential and dangerous fuel
For most of us, sugar in the blood is as essential, but also as dangerous, as petrol in our cars. In my clinical practice I spend more time talking about how the body controls blood sugar than all other subjects put together. I came into this subject through my interest in treating patients with chronic fatigue syndrome: blood sugar levels running too high or too low both result in the symptom of fatigue. Indeed, for many, blood sugar levels running too low can result in unconsciousness and death. (See Chapter 6, page 56 for more on this.) Importantly, this problem of low blood sugar is only a problem in people who fuel their body with carbohydrates and who have developing, or established, metabolic syndrome and metabolic inflexibility. The symptoms of hypoglycaemia (blood sugar that is too low) arise because they cannot switch into the alternative way of fuelling the body – burning fat. Interestingly, once this facility to burn fat has been re-established (called keto-adaptation – see p 66) one becomes much more tolerant of hypoglycaemia simply because the body can happily function on fat in the form of ketone bodies. If the body is happy running on ketones then adrenaline (known as epinephrine in the US) is not poured out – and it is adrenaline that gives us the symptoms of hypoglycaemia. Indeed, Dr Heinz Reinwald reported at a BSEM (British Society of Ecological Medicine) conference how some people can run blood sugars below 1 millimole per litre (mmol/l – conventional [NICE and NHS in the UK] ‘normal’ is 4 to 5.9 mmol/l before meals and 7.8 90 minutes after)* and not suffer any malign effects. I know this to be the case – sometimes I send off routine blood samples and the report comes back with the blood sugar ‘below measurable’ – but the patient was completely well at the time of testing.
Over time it has become increasingly apparent to me that this loss of control of blood sugar is driving our modern epidemics of cancer, heart disease and dementia.
Historical note: It was not always so. Maimonides (12th–13th century AD), writing in Medical Aphorisms, comments on ‘diabetes’, in Chapter 8, saying that Galen states that this condition expresses itself through a very heavy thirst and frequent urination but that it is extremely rare in the ‘West’ and that neither Galen, nor his teachers, had personally come across any cases. He further notes that cases had been reported from Egypt, positing that the cause may be the propensity of the Egyptians, at that time, to take sweet drinks. How right he may have been in his deductions. Maimonides was an extraordinary person, who prefaced his work on Ethics with the advice: ‘…one should accept the truth from whatever source it proceeds.’
Sugar is essential in the bloodstream but it is not essential as a food. For millions of years, Man evolved with very low-carbohydrate and sugar diets. He was fuelled by fat, protein and vegetable fibre. Indeed, Dr Heinz Reinwald3 recognises three ages of nutrition:
The Stone Age, of over 2.5 million years finishing about 10,000 years ago, when the diet was ultra-low carbohydrate and largely ketogenic.The Glucogenic Age from 10,000 BC to about 1850, when increasingly humans were fuelled by starches from the Agrarian Revolution.The Glucotoxic Age from 1850 to date, when the Industrial Revolution allowed wholesale access to cheap addictive sugars and refined carbohydrates.Sugar toxicity problems really came to a head in the 1960s with the great debate4,5,6 spearheaded on the fat side by Dr John Yudkin, Founding Professor of the Department of Nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College London, and on the sugar side by Dr Ancel Keys, American scientist. Keys was backed by the agrochemical industry, the food industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the US Army and the US Government. In such debates, the science is discarded – power and money always trump truth. The Glucotoxic Age took off, consumption of sugar and refined carbohydrates increased exponentially and epidemics of metabolic syndrome and diabetes ensued.
Indeed, it is predicted by some that by the year 2030, up to 50% of some Western populations will have metabolic syndrome and diabetes. My estimate is that over 95% of the current Western population, young and old, already have prodromal (latent) metabolic syndrome – namely, carbohydrate addiction. This epidemic is a direct result of our modern Western diets and lifestyles, these being diets and lifestyles not experienced or practised by our 12th and 13th century forebears. To understand how to prevent, how to diagnose and, of course, how to treat diabetes we must first understand the mechanisms that are driving this epidemic. Attention to these ‘driving mechanisms’, applied at any stage of either metabolic syndrome or diabetes, will result in prevention, remission and cure. With that, additionally, comes protection against cancer, heart disease and dementia.
Historical note: Herodotus tells of the difference in longevity of the Persians and Ethiopians. He writes of how the Persians ate bread from grain fertilised with dung and that some lived to an age of 80, whilst the Ethiopians, who lived on boiled meat, regularly lived to 120, and that they (the Ethiopians) attributed the ‘low’ life expectancy of the Persians to the fact that they ate shit! How right the Ethiopians were. Herodotus, Histories, circa 440 BC, and as recently reported in Finch 2009.7
What is diabetes type 2?
Diabetes type 2 is the end result of years of metabolic havoc as the body progressively loses control of levels of sugar in the blood. The early phase of this metabolic havoc is called ‘metabolic syndrome’.
Sugar in the blood is like the petrol in our cars. It is absolutely essential for the human body to work, just as petrol is essential for the engines of our cars to work. However, sugar in the diet is not essential except for the non-keto-adapted. There is an important, yet subtle, distinction here that will become clearer as the biochemistry is discussed in more detail; in short – sugar is essential in the blood but is neither essential nor, indeed, at all desirable, in our diets.
If blood sugar levels fall too low, we fall unconscious and become easy prey for a sabre-toothed tiger – or its modern-day equivalent!
Nature cannot allow the body to run out of fuel, so when things go wrong it errs on the safe side – if we start to lose control of blood sugar, and we cannot correct this by switching into burning fat as an alternative source of energy, then it is preferable to allow blood sugar to run on the high side – short-term gain but long-term pain because, as you will see, high levels of sugar in the blood are horribly damaging to the body. Interestingly, a similar scenario arises in pregnancy – the growing baby is exquisitely sensitive to fuel delivery mechanisms and if sugar levels fall in maternal blood, serious damage to the baby results. So Nature ensures that the mother runs her blood sugars higher than normal to protect the baby. If she has already started to lose control of her blood sugar, then pregnancy may tip her over into frank diabetes (so-called ‘gestational diabetes’). What this tells us is that high levels of female sex hormones, as experienced during pregnancy, allow women to run higher blood sugars and this explains why the Pill and HRT (hormone replacement therapy) are both risk factors for metabolic syndrome and diabetes.
Loss of control of blood sugar levels is the first step towards diabetes and is, as stated earlier, called metabolic syndrome. It is also known as ‘syndrome X’, ‘cardiometabolic syndrome’, ‘insulin resistance syndrome’, ‘Reaven’s syndrome’ and ‘CHAOS’ (Coronary artery disease, Hypertension, Atherosclerosis, Obesity, and Stroke). These are dreadful names designed to confuse patients and make doctors seem clever; doctors love to use difficult, often foreign, words to describe disease and pathology but in doing so obfuscate the underlying causes.
The preferred language of deception of the medical profession is Latin. Craig studied Latin and remembers the little ditty often murmured by his schoolmates at the beginning of Latin lessons: ‘Latin is a language, as dead as it can be; it killed the Ancient Romans, and now it’s [insert expletive] killing me.’
The real joke is that most doctors do not know what metabolic syndrome is. Again, let’s briefly turn to the wisdom of Maimonides, who states that:
‘There is one [disease] which is widespread, … I refer to this: that … person thinks his mind … more clever and more learned than it is … They … express themselves [not only] upon the science with which they are familiar, but upon other sciences about which they know nothing … If met with applause … so does the “disease” itself become aggravated.’
So, for example, having diagnosed metabolic syndrome in one of my patients, his GP referred him to the renal unit for the treatment of his ‘metabolic syndrome’, clearly showing his complete misunderstanding of the term. Indeed, a perusal of the obituaries in the British Medical Journal (where the cause of death is additionally given) shows that most doctors die from the end result of metabolic syndrome – they too have not understood!
In the 1990s, the British Medical Journal made attempts to encourage self-penned obituaries – to be published post mortem. The idea was that this would lead to more interesting obituaries, with doctors having more insight into their own deficiencies and failures. It seems that this was a doomed, yet worthy, objective – such insight is clearly missing.
‘Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.’
Internet Meme wrongly attributed to Albert Einstein†
I hope that what follows explains the problems of sugar, the mechanisms by which these problems arise and, most importantly, what must be done to correct the dangers arising from these problems. This will, I hope, provide the intellectual imperative to make the difficult but necessary changes before disease results.
‘There is an old saying that things don’t [just] happen; they are made to happen.’
John F Kennedy‡ (1917–1963)
* Note: The ‘normal’ levels given by NICE in the UK are based on a ‘normal’ population, but we no longer have such as we no longer eat an evolutionarily correct diet. The NICE normal levels are set high, and those for type 2 diabetics are set even higher (4 to 7 before meals and 8.5 90 minutes after) though they should be exactly the same.
†Note: During the course of obtaining permission to use quotations, Craig contacted the relevant copyrightholders, and for Einstein, this was, for the most part, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who kindly replied, stating that, along with virtually every other quote on the Internet attributed to Einstein, the four such quotes contained in this book were wrongly attributed. This is another reminder that one should question everything and not blindly believe all that one reads, or indeed just accept Received Wisdom. In part, this is what this book is about – questioning the accepted practice of the prevention and treatment of diabetes. It is also interesting to note that, in order to give their quotations more gravitas, the Internet Meme’ers added Einstein as originator. This is a common practice also, whereby credence is hoped to be given to an argument or point of view by attaching to it the name of a well-accepted Establishment figure. Again, this tactic has been employed in Established Medicine for centuries.
‡We are very grateful to The Textual Archives of the John F Kennedy Presidential Library for helping with this quotation which can be accessed here: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9430 and, indeed, listened to here: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKWHA-223-001.aspx This quotation was made by John F Kennedy in his Address at the University of North Dakota, 25 September 1963, and is in the Public Domain.
Chapter 3
How sugar damages the body – mechanisms, symptoms and disease
Sugar is extremely damaging to the body for many reasons. It is damaging to the body in high levels, it is damaging to the body in low levels, and the swinging of levels between the two is additionally damaging because of the hormonal response to those rapid changes. I call this the blood-sugar rollercoaster – it is often described as a ‘hypoglycaemic tendency’ (‘hypo’ meaning ‘below’, from the Greek) – but it is the whole rollercoaster that causes metabolic havoc – not just the dips.
If we constantly eat carbohydrate foods, this is a rollercoaster which just keeps on going, and along with the metabolic havoc, there are associated mood swings which mirror the ride. These emotions are very similar to those documented by Barry Ritholtz, in his financial writings on the rollercoaster ride experienced by investors in risky stocks (see Figure 1 from www.ritholtz.com/blog/).8 People who are regularly feeling these emotions, and in particular are experiencing them cyclically, are most likely already on the blood-sugar rollercoaster:
Returning to the medical case in point, in metabolic syndrome and diabetes any or all of the following problems can result. In each case, a description of the problem is followed by symptoms and diseases that may result from that problem, thereby giving clues as to whether this may be an issue in a particular individual.
Figure 1:The financial rollercoaster ride (with permission from Barry Ritholtz)
A – Sugar is damaging to the body at high levels
1. Sugar is sticky
Sugar is sticky stuff; it sticks onto and damages anything and everything. These sticky conglomerates are called ‘advanced glycation end products’ (see page 212) – the acronym is AGEs. Indeed, one way to measure our loss of control of blood sugar is to measure sugar stuck onto haemoglobin – ‘glycosylated haemoglobin’ (HbA1c).
As sugar can stick onto anything, high blood sugar will:
a) Accelerate the normal ageing process (see page 25 for more on this).
b) Stick to proteins and possibly denature them (irreparably change their structure) in such a way as to cause prion disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease. Indeed, Alzheimer’s has been renamed type 3 diabetes. In a detailed review – ‘Alzheimer’s Disease Is Type 3 Diabetes – Evidence Reviewed’ the authors Monte and Wands (2008) concluded that: ‘Altogether, the results from these studies provide strong evidence in support of the hypothesis that AD represents a form of diabetes mellitus that selectively afflicts the brain.’9 Other prion disorders include Parkinson’s and motor neurone disease.
c) Stick to the lining of arteries and damage them directly. The healing and repair process is called arteriosclerosis and the scar tissue that results stiffens and narrows the arteries. A recent arteriosclerotic ‘plaque’ or scab can break off to cause strokes and infarctions (blockages).
d) Stick to fats, causing lipodystrophy (see page 236). Under the skin this may result in an irregular loss of fat manifesting as cellulite. Loss of fat from the face causes the haggard appearance of premature ageing.
e) Stick to nerves and damage them.
Table 1: Problems with sugar because it is sticky
Symptoms of high blood sugarDiseases of high blood sugarLook ugly*. (Indeed, beauty is how we choose our sexual partners – we also call it attractiveness.) Look old before our time. Cellulite.
Arteriosclerosis leading to heart disease, stroke, gangrene, retinopathy, micro-angiopathy. (Low levels of friendly HDL cholesterol are an indicator as this is used up in the business of healing and repairing sugar and blood pressure damage to arteries.) Arteriosclerosis combined with prions causes the symptoms of dementia.
Prion disorders, such as Alzheimer’s.
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
Eye disease – cataracts, macular degeneration and glaucoma.
Sticky blood and platelets – venous thrombosis, deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolus.
Neuropathy – loss of sensation in the hands and feet (a typical result of diabetes).
Nephropathy – damage to the kidney (as a result, protein (albumin) leaks into the urine).
Erectile dysfunction in men (damage to arteries and to nerves) and low testosterone. Possibly, age-related hearing loss.
2. Sugar is a growth promoter
Sugar is a growth and, therefore, cancer promoter. What distinguishes cancer cells from normal human cells is how they get their energy. Healthy human cells should be fuelled by ketones from fat and short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) from the fermentation of vegetable fibre in the large bowel. By contrast, cancer cells can only be fuelled by sugar. Normally, cells in the body are powered by mitochondria. These engines, contained within and delivering energy to all living cells, achieve such by burning acetate (from ketones, SCFAs, sugars or protein) in the presence of oxygen. This is called aerobic metabolism. By contrast, cancer cells switch off their mitochondria – indeed this may be part of the mechanism by which they become cancerous because it is mitochondria which control cell suicide (known as ‘apoptosis’). Cancer cells get their energy only through the fermentation of sugar. This is called anaerobic metabolism.
The business of producing cancer requires two clear steps. Firstly, the normal cell has to be damaged in some way and typically this can occur because of ionising radiation, or some sort of carcinogen such as a toxic metal or chemical which damages DNA so as to switch on uncontrolled cell division. The second phase of carcinogenesis has to do with growth promotion – so, for example, we know that growth promoting hormones, such as oestrogen and progesterone, accelerate the growth of sex-hormone sensitive cancers. But the biggest and most unrecognised growth promoter of all is sugar – if you feed these cancers a high-sugar diet, then you will encourage their growth. Indeed, the British Society for Integrative Oncology recommends the ketogenic diet for the treatment of all cancers. Furthermore, some oncologists offer insulin-potentiated chemotherapy. The idea here is that blood sugar levels are lowered by the use of insulin by injection immediately prior to the infusion of chemotherapeutic drugs. Clearly this must be very carefully monitored in hospital. The very low blood sugar level that results renders cancer cells so much more susceptible to the effects of chemotherapy that the total dose of drug used can be substantially reduced – perhaps to as little as 10% of the usual.
Cancer has, indeed, been described as a metabolic disease – fermentation is the ‘bio-energetic signature’ of cancer cells.† This was first suggested in 1885 by Ernst Freund and confirmed biochemically by Otto Warburg. Warburg won the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1931 for this work. Cancers are hungry for sugar – so much so that a commonly performed test for cancer is to use a radioactive-labelled sugar and follow its progress through the body with a scan; nearly all of this sugar ends up in the tumour.
Table 2: Problems with sugar – sugar is a growth promoter
Symptoms of growth promotionDiseases of growth promotioTendency to grow lumps, bumps and cysts (e.g. breast and ovarian). Prostate enlargement. Tallness and fatness – being tall and fat are both known risk factors for cancer.
Polycystic ovarian syndrome. All cancers. Benign growths.
When I talk about blood sugar levels, I mean those in the systemic (whole body) circulation. After a carbohydrate meal, sugar pours into the veins immediately around the gut; the blood from these veins is funnelled, via the portal vein, directly to the liver. Blood sugar levels in the portal vein will fluctuate wildly, but the potential for damage is minimal because it is a low-pressure vessel. However, I suspect this constant spiking of sugar levels in the liver explains why cancer so often seeds and grows there.
