Health 4 Life~The Science Behind Consumption

Actually no, it does not. There are many examples of competent people who also, for one reason or another, seek to be in the public eye. One cannot assume that just because a professional is in the media and is, in fact, advertising themselves or their profession that this inevitably means that they are a huckster.
I know what you are thinking, however. To wit:

On the other hand, if they're not promoting themselves in the media you can be pretty sure that they're not a huckster.

trueAnyway, I'm off today so I'm going to the health club. My self-improvement program continues....and I am doing everything that known science has to offer.I will see this new Doctor May 30th and we can re-evaluate the competency then.Edited by Phat, : added

Intermittent Fasting can be a useful tool for allowing controlled Autophagy in order to rebuild the cells into better and healthier versions. It should, of course, be supervised by a Doctor.I am taking my rebuilding process very slow and purposeful. Through trial and error, I am learning what to eat and what not to eat, how often, and in what balance. I am slowly breaking my carbohydrate addiction that caused the continued insulin resistance(along with prescribed insulin) which led me to my diseased state. As of yesterday, I weighed 232, but I am not so concerned with losing weight as I am with feeling and being healthier. I expect my final weight should be roughly what it was in High School---205-210.

This is crap, Phat. You've fallen for another pile of shit. I'm really terribly sorry. At least your Christian rubbish was mostly harmless - all these faddy quack cures are going to kill you.

I'm not convinced this is a crap approach. Of course balancer and moderation are key concepts, as is medical supervision, but the practice is gaining more of a widespread acceptance even in the medical community. Intermittent fasting: Fad or science-based diet?
Author Jennifer HuberContrast this article with another article from Standford:
Breaking down diabetes: New controversy on blood sugar loweringYou may have had some good arguments on the religious stuff, but you have not done your homework on this topic. Note the quote from the second article:

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At face value, the ADA argument appears to favor drug companies selling the newest diabetes medications. The statement suggests that low blood sugar (a common side effect of many diabetes medications) is not really a problem as long as the newest medications are used, often at a cost of $500 to $700 per month for each drug.

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The debate centers on natural methods for reducing blood glucose versus drug-related methods. The natural approach is better, in my opinion.You have advocated a rational, balanced dietary approach...but the science shows that a Type II diabetic cannot process carbohydrates normally. The ADA recommends diet and exercise, and science has shown that the lo-carb diet is the best one for type II diabetes...some have even argued that the so-called food pyramid was derived only after intense lobbying from the carbohydrate industry.Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

I took the time to read these articles, and I don't see any ringing endorsement for what you are proposing. What do you find encouraging in those articles? Has anyone attempted to prescribe drugs costing anything like there amounts (500-700 dollars per month) to you? Is that really what the debate is about? I understand the concern about the profit motive of the pharmaceutical industry, but metformin, based on what I see on the internet, costs about 20 dollars a month, with generic versions being about 10 dollars a month. Are you really being given the kind of advice that is the subject of this article? Are you having low blood sugar episodes?You seem to approach medicine the same way you approach many other subjects and your success so far seems mixed.

Indeed. My boneheaded insistence on taking long-acting insulin to preserve my pancreas...initiated 10 years ago, and propitiated by latter Doctors who never bothered to research nor question the need--was indeed my fault. It was also they who did not research my need for insulin when they took me on as a patient---they simply asked if I was taking it and adjusted the dose upwards as my blood sugars refused to move below 7%. Granted I was not trying to manage or control my diet--for many years---for many reasons which I dont really want to discuss at length except with a counselor...but yes you have a point. My results have been mixed. The Trulicity was eagerly prescribed by my pharmaceutical-loving endocrinologist and were it not for my trusty union insurance would cost $1000.00 a month!! It ended up still costing $75.00 and I got rid of it a month ago with great results!My point in all of this is to show that it is not having a great doctor--if they dont bother understanding the dietary approaches that Fung and others do understand while also being all too eager to prescribe drugs. In the end, it was my taking charge of the treatment and even going against what I saw as bad medical supervision which has led to my current 6.3% 3-month reading and the best control--without the drugs, mind you---that I have had in over ten years.

I have found adequate evidence that the low carb approach is the soundest diet for Type II Diabetes. It is most certainly not a fad nor quack science. The jury is still out on the intermittent fasting, which is a fad among dieters as well as diabetics....and even though Dr.Fung advocates it I am being more cautious in that approach.Currently, I see some small fasts--a couple of days of water only--as non-harmful. My blood sugars never go too low since I got rid of the drugs that would push them too low. Type II Diabetes is a metabolic disease that is properly treated through diet and exercise and, yes, metformin and Lisinopril. No other drugs are needed. I blame the Doctors that I had for being too dense to see this obvious truth nor to have tested me to verify. I blame myself as well, however. I can be a stubborn one. My overall long-range goal is to reduce my weight to healthy levels, get rid of adipose internal fat around my organs, maintain an eventual balanced diet...the purpose of extreme low carb is to drop the weight which cannot be done through traditional ADA dieting.(nor with medications such as insulin)Add by Edit: One bone of contention that I have with many of the educated types here at EvC is that you respect educated doctors to the point of obedience, assuming that they know more than you do.
My entire rant is to assert that they often do not...either willfully or ignorantly. They were the ones who stood by and approved of the medications which kept my weight on, did not lower my blood glucose, and in fact, increased the very insulin resistance that was causing the problems.Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

Could you point out the evidence in those two articles?

those two specific articles do not have that content.

Medical conditions and their treatment are highly complex things. We learned qute a long time ago that individual 'cures' are rarely useful. Modern medicine progresses best through the 'gold standard' tests of double blind trials and meta anaysis.The best guy I know on the subject of evidence is this chap. He's a guru of 'Bad Science'. Here in a short and funny Ted talk.Ben Goldacre: Battling bad science | TED Talk

That was a good talk! I think I understand where he is coming from.
From The transcript

In science, we don't care how many letters you have after your name -- we want to know what your reasons are for believing something. How do you know that something is good for us or bad for us? But we're also unimpressed by authority because it's so easy to contrive.

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What I've just shown you are examples of the very simple and straightforward ways that journalists and food supplement pill peddlers and naturopaths can distort evidence for their own purposes. What I find really fascinating is that the pharmaceutical industry uses exactly the same kinds of tricks and devices, but slightly more sophisticated versions of them, in order to distort the evidence they give to doctors and patients, and which we use to make vitally important decisions.

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Also I noted this:

it turns out, when you look at the methods used by industry-funded trials, that they're actually better than independently sponsored trials. And yet, they always manage to get the result that they want. So how does this work?
09:52
How can we explain this strange phenomenon? Well, it turns out that what happens is the negative data goes missing in action; it's withheld from doctors and patients. And this is the most important aspect of the whole story. It's at the top of the pyramid of evidence. We need to have all of the data on a particular treatment to know whether or not it really is effective.

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I did a little digging through some of the data mentioned in my links from Stanford. What I found was not exactly what I hoped to find, but I noted it nonetheless.

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A certain professor, Christopher Gardner did a study on low fat vs low carb diets.

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Low Fat or Low Carb? Its A Draw, Study Finds

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They did note that low carb seems to work better for insulin resistant patients, but the results are not conclusive at this time.

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Admittedly I would never have found this strictly from studying Dr.Jason Fungs sources, since though his credentials are sound and not of mail order variety, his research is never fully revealed---only the favorable results are talked about.

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Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain "
~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
Paul was probably SO soaked in prayer nobody else has ever equaled him.~Faith

He has a very good web site with lots of interesting stuff.Bad Science I'm afraid that gives an error before loading.But looking at that title, I feel immediately that it's garbage. Bad science.Why? Because it sounds like a straight shoot out; Carbs vs Fat. What if both are crap? What a study like that needs is a control, a group that's eating a well balanced normal diet and/or the standard diet such paople are advised to use.How else can you test whether one is an improvement over normal, sensible eating or whether it's better than the standard treatment?If the trial did that, I apologise to them.

Associations of fats and carbohydrate intake with cardiovascular disease and mortality in 18 countries from five continents (PURE): a prospective cohort studyNotable:

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During follow-up, we documented 5796 deaths and 4784 major cardiovascular disease events. Higher carbohydrate intake was associated with an increased risk of total mortality (highest [quintile 5] vs lowest quintile [quintile 1] category, HR 128 [95% CI 112—146], ptrend=00001) but not with the risk of cardiovascular disease or cardiovascular disease mortality. Intake of total fat and each type of fat was associated with lower risk of total mortality (quintile 5 vs quintile 1, total fat: HR 077 [95% CI 067—087], ptrend<00001; saturated fat, HR 086 [076—099], ptrend=00088; monounsaturated fat: HR 081 [071—092], ptrend<00001; and polyunsaturated fat: HR 080 [071—089], ptrend<00001). Higher saturated fat intake was associated with lower risk of stroke (quintile 5 vs quintile 1, HR 079 [95% CI 064—098], ptrend=00498). Total fat and saturated and unsaturated fats were not significantly associated with risk of myocardial infarction or cardiovascular disease mortality.

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Interpretation
High carbohydrate intake was associated with higher risk of total mortality, whereas total fat and individual types of fat were related to lower total mortality. Total fat and types of fat were not associated with cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction, or cardiovascular disease mortality, whereas saturated fat had an inverse association with stroke. Global dietary guidelines should be reconsidered in light of these findings.

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From what I've read so far, higher fats do not contribute to higher risk unless accompanied by higher carbohydrates.