Vegan diet may treat diabetes (CBS News)

[LeftyMom]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/26/health/webmd/main1837927.shtml


(WebMD) Eating a low-fat vegan diet may be better at managing type 2 diabetes than traditional diets, according to a new study.

Researchers found 43% of people with type 2 diabetes who followed a low-fat vegan diet for 22 weeks reduced their need to take medications to manage their disease compared with 26% of those who followed the diet recommended by the American Diabetes Association (ADA).

In addition, participants who followed the vegan diet experienced greater reductions in cholesterol levels and weight loss than those on the other diet.
...

The results showed that both diets improved diabetes management and reduced unhealthy cholesterol levels, but some improvements were greater with the low-fat vegan diet. (continued at link)

[jobycom]

1. Haven't we been saying that for a couple of decades... Oh never mind

Always amusing when doctors finally catch up.

[Lindacooks]

2. Barley and black beans, yum.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. I for one am shocked. Shocked I tell you.

www.diabetea.com

www.glucotize.com

[enid602]

4. India

And yet, incidence of diabetes is hemorraging in India lateley, despite (some say because of) their vegetarian traditions.

[LeftyMom]

5. Only some castes and religious groups in India are vegetarian

and those are lacto-vegetarians, not vegans.

[China_cat]

6. Very high carbs

Carbs push blood sugar up and keep it there. I deal with this daily. A vegan diet would kill my carb sensitive diabetic in short order.

(2 french fries pushes his blood sugar through the roof)

[livinginphotographs]

7. VEGAN, not vegetarian.

You do just as much damage to your body consuming the breast milk of cows as you do consuming their flesh.

[Cha]

9. I know I was.

Fortunately with a vegan diet there is still plenty to eat! :P

[SOS]

8. Diabetes in India?

I suspect the super-size Coke and Hot Fudge Sundae, rather than the traditional vegetarian diet.

[flvegan]

11. Lately, due to more recent dietary changes.

Attributed largely to a move away from traditional diet to a more "western" one, and also including more refined foods.

"Despite" maybe, but because of? Bollocks.

[populistdriven]

12. Ever been to an Indian Vegetarian restaurant? HUGE CARBS

Plus a 40 year old vegetarian indian friend of mine who exercises and has no family or personal history of heart disease recently had quad stunts (would have been a quad bypass 10 years ago)

Now he is low carb and doing much better

[pitohui]

14. thank you, bushmeat -- i know exactly what you're going thru

Now he is low carb and doing much better

this is a story being repeated in homes all across the world at this time of century

my mom's thanks for being an "early adaptor" of the low fat diet was to be the first to have bypass surgery in a family of slim, active people where heart disease had never before been recorded

it is sad

we were lied to...and we're still being lied to

but people want to believe that we can skate by on the cheapest of cheap veggie diets w. no meat, no dairy, no eggs -- the same diet that killed people young for thousands of years

i remember believing it too and it's scary, it's like how did they get us to believe something so contrary to science and human physiology?

[catzies]

16. Here's the answer to your question

Q: "How did they get us to believe something so contrary to science and human physiology?"

A: Advertising.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[iverglas]

13. it isn't either/or

And science with an agenda is to be suspect. Neal Barnard (whose work I've cursorily followed for some time) has agendas.

http://www.activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/oid/23

I'm aware that the source is an industry mouthpiece with its own rather obvious agenda, but it reports things worth considering, and I'm just googling quickly:

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. PCRM is a fanatical animal rights group that seeks to remove eggs, milk, meat, and seafood from the American diet, and to eliminate the use of animals in scientific research. Despite its operational and financial ties to other animal activist groups and its close relationship with violent zealots, PCRM has successfully duped the media and much of the general public into believing that its pronouncements about the superiority of vegetarian-only diets represent the opinion of the medical community.

“Less than 5 percent of PCRM’s members are physicians,” Newsweek wrote in February 2004. The respected news magazine continued:

(PCRM president Neal) Barnard has co-signed letters, on PCRM letterhead, with the leader of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, an animal-rights group the Department of Justice calls a “domestic terrorist threat.” PCRM also has ties to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. An agency called the Foundation to Support Animal Protection has distributed money from PETA to PCRM in the past and, until very recently, did both groups’ books. Barnard and PETA head Ingrid Newkirk are both on the foundation’s board.

New York Times columnist Joe Sharkey put it more crisply in a November 2004 piece about PCRM’s annual airport-food ratings. “The physicians’ committee has a PETA link,” he wrote, “and its food rankings reflect that agenda.”

... The American Medical Association (AMA), which actually represents the medical profession, has called PCRM a "fringe organization" that uses "unethical tactics" and is "interested in perverting medical science."

Like or dislike the agenda, it's an agenda.

I feed a diabetic who also needs cholesterol meds -- diagnosed suddenly as Type II at the age of 49, and as Type I three years later. When he was first put on insulin, and we got thrown temporarily onto the 45 grams of carb per meal crash diet to get his rising blood sugar levels under control, one of the first things I did was eliminate our big glass of milk with dinner -- about 15 grams of precious carbs, and "bad" carbs at that. (I do now take large calcium supplements.)

Obviously, anyone who continued to drink milk would be having a hard time getting enough nutrition on the remaining available carb allowance, and would quite likely take in more carbs than someone who didn't drink milk, just to get the same amount of actual food. But not all dairy products are equal. Without cottage cheese, with half the carbs of milk, we'd have a hard time ever having dessert -- I am the queen of cheesey jelly delite: many varieties of uncooked cheesecake sweetened with aspertame and fruit. I haven't figured out how to make tasty desserts with turtle beans yet. We also eat very low-fat -- but that includes things like skinless chicken breasts and very lean meats.

I'm suspicious of the results of this study because there was obviously no control over, or data collected about, the subjects' actual food intake. I wouldn't be making any choices based on the study alone.

Simply cutting out dairy products would indeed probably make the vegan-diet subjects much more likely to be eating fewer carbohydrates. There are other ways of accomplishing the same goal, and if measures with the same effects were implemented by people not on a vegan diet, I can't imagine why essentially the same results would not be observed.

[flvegan]

15. Agenda? You should look further into activistcash.com

No, really. Especially before you quote them.

[iverglas]

17. how 'bout you try looking further

into the posts you choose to reply to -- or maybe just reading them, or not pretending you didn't. Whichever applies.

No, really. Especially before you treat a stranger as if she were a fool when you have no basis for doing so.

I'm aware that the source is an industry mouthpiece with its own rather obvious agenda, but it reports things worth considering, and I'm just googling quickly: ...

That's what I said. Managed to miss it somehow, did you? Or just pretending I didn't say it?

The reason I used that source was that it was handy, and actually because of its quotations from OTHER sources. Which, of course, have their own agendas.

Hmmmm. Don't we all?

So, was the stuff I quoted actually FALSE? Was anything I said about the study in question UNREASONABLE? Or is your plan just to insult me without responding to a single fucking thing I said?

[flvegan]

18. So you googled quickly and came up with this:

"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. PCRM is a fanatical animal rights group that seeks to remove eggs, milk, meat, and seafood from the American diet, and to eliminate the use of animals in scientific research. Despite its operational and financial ties to other animal activist groups and its close relationship with violent zealots, PCRM has successfully duped the media and much of the general public into believing that its pronouncements about the superiority of vegetarian-only diets represent the opinion of the medical community."

Subjective bullshit. A handy source doesn't beget a good one. Hell, I could go to Freerepublic and get all KINDS of "sources" on why Dubya is the best preznit in the world. Googling quickly is just that. That's why I suggested looking further into it.

Thanks for getting testy, though.

[iverglas]

19. you're very entertaining

Thanks for getting testy, though.

Gee! What an excellently designed experiment that was!

Call someone an idiot, repeatedly disregard what s/he says, see whether s/he gets testy. Rinse, repeat.

Quite the valuable contributor to the discourse, ain't ya?

The day that I need you to tell me to look further into something -- anything -- I will let you know. 'K?

[flvegan]

20. I don't see where

I called you an idiot. Nor did I disregard what you said.

A post was made, followed by a suggestion. You then attacked the poster with a much lesser argument. There's a word for that...if you google quickly (again), maybe it gets discovered.

[iverglas]

22. then you just need to look further, don't you?

I don't see where I called you an idiot.

Huh. And yet you responded to me, a complete stranger who had said nothing to or about you or about anything you had said, by saying:

You should look further into activistcash.com
No, really. Especially before you quote them.

-- completely disregarding my disclosure of my awareness of the suspectness of the source, and speaking to me as if I were located somewhere in the region of your big toe. Down.

Nor did I disregard what you said.

Oh, I see. You just chose not to acknowledge it and say something to me that no one who was having regard to what I had said would have said. I'm seeing the difference ... if I get out my microscope.

A post was made, followed by a suggestion.

Yeah. That's what it was. A suggestion. You betcha.

You then attacked the poster with a much lesser argument.

Hmm. Uh, "the poster" ... would be you, if I'm following, right? I responded to being treated with contempt by getting testy. That's what you're getting at?

There's a word for that...if you google quickly (again), maybe it gets discovered.

Oh, I'm not needing to google. I had the word from the starting box. It's "agenda", I do believe.

Coupled with "using every tactic in the book to discredit anyone who questions it", I'd say.

[flvegan]

24. Uh, no...I don't.

I don't see where I called you an idiot.

Huh. And yet you responded to me, a complete stranger who had said nothing to or about you or about anything you had said, by saying:

You should look further into activistcash.com
No, really. Especially before you quote them.

-- completely disregarding my disclosure of my awareness of the suspectness of the source, and speaking to me as if I were located somewhere in the region of your big toe. Down.


Look, if you're going to "quickly google" and post as a statement, then you'd better get ready for plenty more of this. Stranger or not. Oh, and don't project my opinion of you.

[iverglas]

25. ooooh, more advice from the cheap seats!

Look, if you're going to "quickly google" and post as a statement, then you'd better get ready for plenty more of this.

Look, if you're going to persist in taking what people say out of context and DISREGARDING the other things they say, you'd better get used to being called on it.

You quote one thing I said, and have once again ignored what else I said -- like:

Neal Barnard (whose work I've cursorily followed for some time)

I KNOW who Neal Barnard is. I've probably known who he is since you were in kindergarten. I didn't google to find out who he was -- I googled to find a handy summary of WHAT I ALREADY KNEW. You read my post, and so YOU KNEW that -- but you chose to disregard it, just as you chose to disregard my own commentary on the secondary source of the information about him that I cited.

Oh, and don't project my opinion of you.

If you're going to post incomprehensible things like that, you might also want to get used to people saying: eh?

[flvegan]

26. I know him personally.

Anything else?

[iverglas]

21. some things for you to look into further

Now ... it's hard to know what sources someone is going to reject for some unexpected reason. I don't necessarily know what the party line is on anything. I'm reminded of when I was returning from a week-long course for community activists offered by the Centre for Popular Economics at the U of Massachusetts at Amherst -- the faculty being people I knew to have good solid left credentials. At the airport in Boston, I was insulted that the Lyndon Larouche people were accosting everyone else and not me, so I accosted them. The sneered at my Centre for Popular Economics T-shirt and called me a tool of something or other, as I recall. Ya can't please everybody all the time.

Anyhow. I'll consider something published by the U of Toronto, myself.

http://www.news.utoronto.ca/inthenews/archive/2006_03_02.html

If everyone stops eating chicken, the deadly avian flu pandemic would be averted, Neal Barnard, head of a Washington-based non-profit group called Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, said.

... Barnard's veggie kit plays on the public's over-reaction to a real threat; some are buying Tamiflu, an antiviral drug, University of Toronto ethics specialist, Trudo Lemmens said.

Banning all contact with chickens, whether in the cooking pot or on the farm, has no value, Lemmens said.

"If it mutates and becomes a flu virus that's transmittable from human to human, then it doesn't matter whether we have chickens around or not," he said. "The logic is flawed."

And from an evidently Barnard/PCRM-friendly place:

http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/hero02152004/

Press Action Hero of the Week: NEAL BARNARD

One of the Atkins Diet's most intrepid adversaries is the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, the group that orchestrated the release of the medical information about Atkins' medical condition at the time of his death. And the man behind the Washington, D.C.-based group is Dr. Neal Barnard, a psychiatrist originally from North Dakota who earned a place on the animal exploitation industry's most wanted list soon after he founded PCRM in 1985.

... While the meat, dairy, cosmetics, pharmaceutical and medical industries have tried to portray it as a group with a secret agenda, PCRM has never hidden its mission: to promote a vegan diet and an end to the use of animals in medical and scientific experiments. ...

How interesting. Dr. Neal Barnard -- psychiatrist (I'm sure you're aware of his credentials, but they're easily confirmed). Psychiatrist with a political agenda even his friends acknowledge.

Now, where do I want to be getting my health / medical / nutritional advice from?

A psychiatrist with a political agenda? Not unless I can find some very good reason to pick him instead of, oh, my partner's endocrynologist.

I don't recall saying that his study was of no value at all, or that nothing he says deserves consideration, of course, and I still don't.

[flvegan]

23. Nutritional advice?

I don't know. A specialist or whatever training "my partner's endocrynologist" has?

To be honest, I have more nutritional training than most doctors do. Sad, but true.

As for your first example, I fail to see where Dr. Barnard said that. Looks to me more like a little spin. From that article, he says:
"A drumstick is just not that tasty to justify what is around the corner," said Barnard. I'd rather see the context or the WHOLE interview before I bought into that.

[iverglas]

27. hmmmm ... eh?

I don't know. A specialist or whatever training "my partner's endocrynologist" has?

I can't even parse that one.

I knew I should have made full disclosure -- I should have told you my partner's full annual medical schedule. Including his regular sessions with the nutritionist at the endocrynology department in the hospital, and the classes we have taken. And of course I should have told you how he and I (me being the chief cook, him being the bottle-washer and cat farmer), neither of us actually being complete morons, have devoted many, many hours to researching every aspect of his disease, and how I in particular have devoted myself to the study of the nutritional aspects. Beans, beans, beans, beans. AND skinless chicken breasts and lean beef and pork (sadly, both of us are nauseated by anything that comes from under water, except pure white canned tuna), and cottage cheese, and very thinly sliced whole-grain bread and low-carb pasta and tortillas and the odd bit of brown rice, and so many fucking leafy green and red and yellow vegetables that I have callouses from the chopping.

Time to go eat some of it. Maybe you could have a snack or something, since I won't be here to enjoy any more of your condescension.


Oh yeah ...

As for your first example, I fail to see where Dr. Barnard said that.

That's right. The official news organ of the University of Toronto made it -- whatever "that" is -- up.

Oh, I get it. The U of T is where insulin was discovered, as I'm sure you know. So it's part of the big vast conspiracy of ... whatever.

But soft! You quote the article and comment:

"A drumstick is just not that tasty to justify what is around the corner," said Barnard. I'd rather see the context or the WHOLE interview before I bought into that.

Gosh. Got google?

[K8-EEE]

28. Yes! My Father Went Off His Meds After Becoming Vegan

He went from being a meat-and-potatoes martini exec when I was growing up to vegan now...he's healthier in his 70's than he's been for decades, literally.

[Strathos]

29. We are omnivores

get used to it. I think a balanced diet with small amounts of meat is the way we're supposed to eat. Why is it religious people want everyone to be religious and vegetarians want everyone to be vegetarians?

[Moderator]

30. Lock

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