All of the N=1 private individuals helping establish this website have been on a health journey. For all of us some kind of chronic condition led us to question our fundamental beliefs about food and health.
Many of us are old enough to remember 1977. In 1977 saturated fat became the food that was killing us. We recall our parents switching from whole foods to processed low fat foods. From whole milk to processed skimmed milk. We stopped frying our foods in lard or dripping and switched to processed vegetable oils.
We added in large quantities of vegetables and cereals and starchy foods, processed cereals, rice and pasta. We reduced our red meat and we ate chicken instead, fat removed.
Despite all these changes, over the years we all developed chronic conditions . Some of us also got fatter. Some of us became infertile, or had erectile disfunction. We developed all manner of issues, we gradually increased the number of drugs we were taking and at some point we finally visited our doctor and could no longer ignore the horrifying truth that we would die, faster than we should, from something horrible.
Recently a group of us met up. All of us were jubilant because all of us had transformed how they felt, reversed diabetes, got rid of innumerable other conditions. All of us know that whatever lies in store for us , we will face it with more hope than we had. All of us, independently, went searching for our answers.
We consulted our doctors, our dieticians , our nutritionists, our nurses and we all read avidly. We didn’t know each other at all, but through the power of the internet and social media, we all stumbled our way to realising that hyperinsulinaemia was at the heart of our problems. We all understood that the way to deal with that was to adopt a lower carb. diet higher natural fat diet, and through that reduce the level of inflammation in our bodies.
We had a dinner that evening. A dozen people sat round restaurant table, full of renewed enthusiasm for life. All of us made similar basic food choices.
Our pre-dinner snack olives and salted nuts. Our starter fatty fish, eggs or offals, Most of us eat meat, mainly red meat some with and some without vegetables. There are no vegans amongst us.
We had the restaurant prepare a diabetes friendly desert – Hot dark chocolate whipped into double cream poured over a portion of raspberries with double cream and nuts.
We happily washed that down with a glass of red wine and some cold water. We walked to our restaurant a distance that many of our party would not have been able to cover for many years.
For many of our party, we took our health journey unaided by our official health professionals, sometimes in direct opposition to their notions of “healthy eating”.
Even today many of our health professionals look on in bemusement as our health markers reverted back to healthy levels that some of us have never seen. Just like those published by Virta Health (see box).
More importantly we all have a renewed zest for life. Numbers on medical sheets tell one story. But for us the bigger story is the sense that we got our lives back.
We have reduced our brain fog, our retinopathy, our dry coughs, our carpel tunnel syndromes, our migraines and Innumerable other conditions.
We will never again listen to someone telling us to eat a low fat, low saturated, low salt, low red meat diet. None of us will pay any attention to five star health ratings applied to processed foods. Why should we? it was killing us before.
This website draws together the expertise we found and pays tribute to all those who helped us find our way.
We suspect and hope that our story will resonate with many across the world.
We hope that you will all take the time to send in your story so that together we can start to make a voice for change in our food supply and the dietary advice. given.
There are numerous controversies out there. We all came to similar conclusions independently as to which side of the particular debate we are on and that is why we worked with Scientists to help create a scientific consensus that shows that our dietary choices have sound underpinnings.
Please make your own mind up. Then come join us if you agree.
Rachel
Additional Information
I was diagnosed T2 diabetes in May 2017 from a routine blood test as I had been on hypertensives for several year.
I followed a low carb. way of eating from the night of my diagnosis inspired by diabetes.co.uk.
I started on the diabetes.co.uk forum in need. I remember how shell shocked I was. Today I’m a moderator and I so want to help people get past that feeling of shock. I’ve had an article pubished in my local paper and Im schduled to so a radio interview on my local BBC station . I also have an intereview and article in a national magazine in the pipeline.
My diagnosis was a blessing in disguise as I’m fitter than I was before T2 enteres my life.
In 15 months I changed my Hba1C from 70 to 45 in one month flat and 34 now.
I lost 83 lbs ( 38 kg) & 3 dress sizes . I now sleep well, and have become an experimental cook with a newfound love of walking. I ow consider myself well informed and educated on all things T2.
Amanda
Additional Information
Re: Dietary guidelines and health – is nutrition science up to the task? NO IT ISN’T
As published in the BMJ: www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k822/rr-15
I am 60 years old, a teenager when dietary guidelines exhorted us all to switch to polyunsaturated fats, and carbohydrates in preference to meats. My family followed the news enthusiastically. Low-fat products, cereals, feeling guilty at ordering a steak, which I hardly ever did. For the record I didn’t eat sugar either – I did wholeheartedly embrace low fat though.I distinctly recall conversations with my later, naturally slim husband, when he was tucking into his steak and I was eating my “boil in a bag” calorie counted, low fat, low sat fat , low salt option. He was so “Lucky” to be able to eat in such an unhealthy fashion.Forty years on a perpetual roller coaster of hunger pangs, weight gain and ill health followed in 2016 by diabetes . I now find out that the “science” upon which this was all based was actually just a well-intentioned guess. One that went spectacularly wrong.
I found out a few more things too:
That in 1915 we treated diabetics with a low carbohydrate diet – now totally counter to current carbohydrate heavy guidelines
- That in 1912 we knew how to fatten hogs – use cereals & skimmed milk – Official guidelines for all today.
- That in 1951 the advice to lose weight was to reduce carbohydrates.
- That food questionnaires upon which most of this epidemiological data has been generated are probably fundamentally flawed:-
- Grapes & raspberries in the same box – why? Because they are small? They have totally different effects on the human body.
- Meat products “reconstituted animal by products wrapped in refined flours cooked in seed oils” confused with and now used to warn anyone from anyone eating traditional air dried meat products.
- That the questioners betray both their nutritional ignorance & their cultural bias, much of the meat consumed not even in the experience of the average American epidemiologist. (think cow’s stomach – on the menu everywhere in Japan)
- That many of the studies of whatever origin come complete with a massive bias from the funder and that the “plant based” lobby largely represents the processed food industry.
- That this new standard diet is so appalling that just about anything will be an improvement – paving the way for an explosion in pharmaceutical interventions many simply attempting to deal with the consequences of poor diet.
I, like so many others, stopped going to my doctor, instead I turned to those with practical experience and sorted out my health myself.
How?
I got rid of processed food, refined carbs. & polyunsaturated fats.
I got rid of anything with a “healthy” label – Low fat, low sat. fat, low salt = AVOID.
If it’s low sugar – turn over, find out just how many refined carbs are hidden in it – then AVOID.
So in essence I moved back to eating traditional foods popular before epidemiologists “helped” to confuse us all as they continue to do.
The decision to vilify saturated fat and with it the food of our forefathers, paved the way to the current global catastrophe. Epidemiologists bear some responsibility for this catastrophe and continue to do so.
It is time that those responsible stood up and admitted to the world that they got it wrong, before we see an even greater fall in fertility and increase in suffering.
I, and thousands of others, are angry every time we see you justifying your existence blinded to the damage you have all done to us with your speculative pronouncements decrying the food we have eaten for generations.
I watch with horror, as I see new generations being led down the same path – eat a carbohydrate heavy diet, experience massive hunger pangs but it’s your fault if you can’t resist the refined foods on display everywhere. Food aid of skimmed milk and cereals given to the poor. Cafes where it’s not even possible to put full fat milk in one’s tea.
Doctors developing skills to remove parts of stomachs of those who succumbed to this evil brew of low fat, carbohydrate heavy processed foods.
I am only an N=1, my voice does not count. I IGNORE official guidelines and tell anyone I can think of that they need to do so too. The food pyramid derived from epidemiology is actively harming the population. and more importantly for me – ME.
Instead I eat – the same stuff my husband was eating to keep slim all those years ago – good quality proteins, meat of all types, offals, fish, vegetables. dairy, eggs. I avoid polyunsaturated fats and anything it gets put in, like the plague. Vegetables are side dishes, fruits – a sweet treat – nature’s candy.
My reward? Weight loss, stable blood sugars, renewed energy, reversal of diabetes (Hba1c 5.3% from 10.3%) improved cholesterol and all other health markers into a healthy range, no more hunger pangs, food cravings, need to snack . Such a simple fix – understand the power of real unprocessed foods – stuff that does not need a label at all.
When Scientists puts out a study suggesting that eating 63 portions of vegetables per day is a healthy option for humans, and governments stay silent, when instead they should withdraw funding, then you just know – we as human beings are on our own.
I am only N=1, but trust me, we number thousands and we will not put up with the current situation for much longer. It is time to be honest and let the world know that research got it wrong and that nutrition science as it currently stands is a total fail
Competing interests: No competing interests