Disease

I have worked for most of my life as a Pharmacist. However, I left my profession earlier than I had intended to because I was frustrated and disillusioned. I was seeing so many people who took their medication but never got better. They had metabolic diseases and their drugs were treating the symptoms, but not the root cause, of the illness. Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, obesity and insulin resistance are the components of what is known as metabolic syndrome. These are all lifestyle-induced abnormalities and the most significant root cause of them all is a bad diet.  

In the UK there are more than 20 million obese people, and at least 4 million have type 2 diabetes. Why has this happened when there is so much advice available on ‘healthy eating’? After a lot of research, it became clear to me that the advice we are being given is wrong. Since 1983 the NHS has been promoting the consumption of carbohydrates in place of dietary fat. Saturated fat has been vilified despite the fact there is no scientific evidence that saturated fat is harmful. The relentless weight gain and prevalence of diabetes is driven by insulin resistance, which is caused by eating too much carbohydrate. I was appalled at the realisation that the diet recommended by the NHS, and many nutritionists, is causing all our metabolic malaise.

The Government response to the SARS-Cov-2 virus has involved the most draconian restrictions ever imposed on healthy people. In March we were told a three-week Lockdown was necessary to save the NHS from being overwhelmed. Nine months later we are still severely restricted. ‘Saving the NHS’ has been a constant theme along with social distancing, masks and quarantine. This implies there is nothing else to be done while waiting for a vaccine. When Government agencies, like Sage, are telling us what to do I always pay attention to what they are not saying. They have never suggested anything with which we could boost our own immunity. Surely, if we all had a potent immune system that would reduce demands on the health service.

Covid19 is a nasty viral disease, which, sadly, has hastened the death of many people. Why do Johnson, Hancock, Whitty and Vallance never mention the fact that 95% of the people who have died had at least one pre-existing metabolic condition?

The health service, which they are so keen to save, is constantly under pressure from all the millions of people who have diet-induced diseases. The real health emergency in the UK is not a coronavirus; it is metabolic syndrome. The Government has spent a staggering £350 billion on one virus. Imagine if they had put all that money, time and effort into tackling what really ails us. They could have improved the health and well-being of tens of millions of people, slashed the NHS bill for years to come, whilst also preventing a great many Covid deaths. Chris Whitty is the Government’s Chief Medical Officer and Patrick Vallance is its Chief Scientist. Throughout their tenures, they have both failed to tackle the diseases which cause hundreds of thousands of premature deaths every year.

They have failed to mention a recent study from Spain which measured the blood sugar levels of hospitalised Covid patients. Those with the highest blood sugar were 50% more likely to die from the virus than those with the lowest levels. We are told to base our meals on carbohydrate rich foods like bread, rice, pasta and potatoes. These are all known as starches but our digestive system breaks them down into simple sugars. The elevated blood sugar that follows can have drastic effects. Someone with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes may suffer from kidney damage, blindness, nerve pain, gangrene leading to amputation, dementia, heart disease and increased susceptibility to infections. A study in 2011 showed that raised blood sugar hampers our innate immune system. Healthy immune cells have a variety of functions including the ability to recognise certain molecular patterns, which identify bacteria and viruses as pathogens. High levels of blood sugar were shown, in the study, to diminish the ability of immune cells to recognise infectious agents. If we cannot recognise a virus, we cannot initiate the response we need to eliminate it.

An excellent diet not only prevents modern, non-communicable diseases but also helps us to fight infections. We need to eat a diet which keeps sugar, and therefore insulin, levels low. Good health comes from a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet, which is the opposite of official advice. A robust immune system also requires certain critical nutrients to function properly. One of those is selenium, which is needed to produce infection-fighting T cells, B cells and antibodies. Zinc is another trace mineral which is important for maintenance and development of immune cells. Lymphocytes and natural killer cells do not form properly, nor function properly, unless there is an adequate supply of zinc. Studies have shown that people with optimum levels of zinc are far less likely to die from Covid than those who are deficient. The best sources of selenium and zinc include salmon, tuna, beef, chicken, free-range eggs, mushrooms, sardines, nuts and dairy products.

Vitamin D has a wide range of benefits in the human body. An optimum level of Vitamin D has previously been shown to reduce the severity of an Influenza infection. Knowing this, some researchers tested the vitamin D status of hospitalised Covid patients and found a clear relationship: the lower the Vitamin D levels, the worse the outcome. Properly controlled trials have now been conducted which confirmed these observations. We make Vitamin D, from cholesterol molecules, when the sun shines on our bare skin but during the winter we need to eat oily fish, eggs, liver and beef to obtain a sufficient supply. Supplement tablets are also available.

I am not suggesting that an optimum level of these nutrients is a cure for Covid, but, if you become infected, your chances of a severe illness are considerably greater if you are deficient. Why have Whitty and Vallance never mentioned this when there is no downside to having an ideal intake of essential nutrients? It is important to note that the great majority of foods containing selenium, zinc and vitamin D are of animal origin and high in fat. We are frequently told we need to reduce our intake of meat. This message is driven by dogma and not by science. Red meat is the most nutrient-dense food humans can eat. We evolved into the dominant species on the planet because, for over a million years, our ancestors chased after, and ate, animals.

Large sections of the population are unwell because we are fed by a food industry that pays little attention to our health and treated by a drug industry that pays no attention to our food. Pharmaceutical companies do not want you to believe you can keep yourself healthy with the right diet and lifestyle, because if we all did that, their profits would plunge.

References:

Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease – PubMed (nih.gov)

Insulin Resistance – PubMed (nih.gov)

Coronavirus: 95% of victims in England hospitals had underlying health conditions | UK News | Sky News

Admission hyperglycaemia as a predictor of mortality in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 regardless of diabetes status: data from the Spanish SEMI-COVID-19 Registry — COVID-19 Research Collaborations (elsevierpure.com)

Dietary sugars inhibit biologic functions of the pattern recognition molecule, mannose-binding lectin (scirp.org)

Selenium in the Immune System | The Journal of Nutrition | Oxford Academic (oup.com)

Zinc in Human Health: Effect of Zinc on Immune Cells (nih.gov)

Vitamin D and the immune system – PubMed (nih.gov)

Nutritional composition of red meat (wiley.com)

There are about 4 million people in the UK who have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and there are probably millions more who are not yet diagnosed, or who have pre-diabetes and will soon have the full disease. It has become so common, I worry that some people may be slightly too relaxed about it but it is an awful disease and nobody should be blasé. Most people would say that diabetes is too much glucose in the bloodstream. It is true that diabetics have too much sugar in their blood but that is not really the disease: it is a symptom of the disease. The real disease is Insulin Resistance, which can also be referred to as Carbohydrate Intolerance.

If you have diabetes, it will degrade your blood vessels. The tiny capillaries in your kidneys and the retina of your eyes can become so damaged that you need kidney dialysis and may go blind. Diabetes also greatly increases the risk of heart disease and stroke and this is the major cause of death in diabetic people. Some of your nerve fibres can be damaged causing neuropathic pain, which is a nagging pain that normal pain killers do not control. The damaged blood vessels in your legs reduce the blood flow to your feet and this leads to ulcers that will not heal. These ulcers can develop gangrene and then you will have to have your toes, feet or legs amputated. In England alone, 120 diabetics have part of a limb amputated every single week

A healthy adult circulation contains about 10 pints of blood with one teaspoon (or 5 grams) of glucose dissolved in it. The level of glucose is very strictly controlled. When it falls too low, the hormone glucagon is released and glucagon brings glucose out of storage and into the blood. If the level rises too high, the hormone insulin is released and insulin transports glucose out of the blood and into the cells. If the cells don’t need any more glucose and the storage area is full, insulin gets the liver to convert the extra glucose into fat and stores it in the fat cells.

The reason obesity is so closely linked to diabetes is because, if insulin didn’t convert excess glucose to fat and store it away, you would become diabetic whenever you ate too much starchy food. (Starch is just a lot of glucose molecules joined together.) Putting on weight is the body’s way of avoiding diabetes. Eventually though, the body cannot cope anymore and the system breaks down and blood sugar goes up. Obesity and diabetes are linked because they are both symptoms of insulin resistance. Obesity doesn’t cause diabetes: they are both caused by too much sugar.

What causes insulin resistance? Insulin does. The carbohydrates you eat are converted to glucose which raises your blood sugar and increases insulin production. Over the years, an excess of insulin in the blood makes your cells resistant to it and then it cannot do its job. Blood sugar goes up, which stimulates more insulin production, leading to more resistance and, suddenly, you have type 2 diabetes.

These are some of the common symptoms of diabetes: increased thirst; frequent urination; dry mouth; unexplained weight loss; feeling tired and weak; blurred vision with headaches; and recurrent infections, especially thrush. If you go to your doctor with any of these symptoms, you will be given some tests and if you have high levels of blood glucose, you will be told that you have type 2 diabetes. It is very likely that you will also be told that diabetes is a progressive, incurable disease. You will be given medication which either increases sensitivity to insulin or increases insulin production. You will also be told to control your diet. Unfortunately, the dietary advice you are likely to get will make your diabetes worse. The standard advice is to eat plenty of fruit, vegetables and whole grains and to reduce the amount of fat you eat, in a mistaken attempt to lose weight. If you want to avoid diabetes, or make it go away if you already have it, you should completely ignore the official dietary advice.

Diabetes is a disease of too much insulin but when the tablets no longer work, they will inject you with insulin. The only food group that does not stimulate insulin is fat and they want you to avoid it. Fruit and whole grains have high levels of carbohydrate which raise your blood sugar and insulin. If you follow the official advice, you will discover that what they told you told is true; diabetes is progressive and incurable. If you ignore the official advice and eat a low-carbohydrate, high-fat (LCHF) diet, you will avoid diabetes and quite probably reverse it if you already have it. Please note, if you are taking medication for diabetes and you change to a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet you must tell your doctor and monitor your blood very closely because your sugar levels will fall and the medication may precipitate a hypo.

There are dozens of different cancers: some are more serious than others but all of them are to be avoided if we can. There are also many possible causes including smoking, air pollution, and a wide variety of toxic chemicals used in the manufacture of everyday items. For many years, people have thought cancers were driven by genetic mutations but evidence is growing that cancer is a metabolic disease. The toxic substance that disrupts our metabolism the most is sugar.

A German doctor, Otto Warburg, discovered that cancer cells use a different energy metabolism compared to healthy cells. He won a Nobel prize for his work in 1931. He found that malignant tumors rely entirely on glucose as a source of energy, while healthy cells can use fat molecules instead. Cancer cells use glucose at 10 to 12 times the rate of normal cells and Warburg suggested that cancer might be starved of energy by reducing sugar intake. It is important to remember that all carbohydrates, when digested, become sugar molecules.

Whenever blood sugar levels rise, the pancreas produces insulin to lower them. Insulin, however, does a lot more than this. It is a master hormone with many effects in the body, including the stimulation of cell growth. A tumour is a mass of rapidly dividing, and growing, cells: an excess of sugar will feed those cells and the inevitable increase in insulin will stimulate their growth.  Breast cancer, which is one of the most common types, has been linked to sugar intake. Breast tissue contains a lot of insulin receptors.

Obesity is known to be associated with a large increase in the risk of cancer. People become obese because they eat too much carbohydrate, and sugar, which is stored as fat by the hormone insulin. Their risk for cancer increases because they spend years with elevated blood levels of both sugar and insulin. While it is impossible to be so precise as to say, ‘sugar causes cancer’, we can be confident that eating a low-carbohydrate diet reduces the chances of getting cancer and improves the odds of recovery should we develop it.