[dissident]

He may want to lay off the tuna since it has a lot of methylated mercury. Ingestion of a very potent neurotoxin even in "small" doses is not a good idea.

https://www.acsh.org/news/2016/06/06/tw ... hylmercury

Note the delayed action. If a chemical does not kill you right off the bat, that does not imply it is safe.

[onlooker]

All this highlights the fact that the profit based healthcare industry does REALLY not have the patients best interests in mind but making profits. A microcosm of the current world we live in. And yes, sugar is the No. 1 villain. While I agree with you Tanada about specialized individualized treatments, I think prevention is quite universal. Exercise, eat whole fresh unprocessed foods especially fruits and vegetables , sleep sufficiently, avoid too much sugar and salt, and drink enough water.

[jedrider]

They claimed: “It is time to shift the public health ­message in the prevention and treatment of coronary artery ­disease away from measuring serum lipids and reducing dietary saturated fat. Coronary artery disease is a chronic inflammatory disease and it can be reduced ­effectively by walking 22 minutes a day and eating real food.” In a nod to their belief that vested interests are ­pushing the low LDL cholesterol message, they concluded: “There is no business model or market to help spread this simple yet powerful ­intervention.”

He’s just released a book, The Pioppi Diet, which has gained traction in the UK. The basis of the diet, borrowing from the lifestyle in the Italian village of Pioppi, is to stay away from sugar and refined carbohydrates rather than fat, to eat ­vegetables, nuts and extra virgin olive oil daily, get seven hours’ sleep, walk regularly and avoid stress.

My two cents: The medical establishment does a very poor job of promoting health as they're original focus was on curing or ameliorating illness and nothing more. The medical establishment has NEVER had an emphasis on health.

They are good at cutting you open, attaching measuring devices and prescribing regulated drugs. If you don't fit into that model, then they have nothing for you.

[onlooker]

They claimed: “It is time to shift the public health ­message in the prevention and treatment of coronary artery ­disease away from measuring serum lipids and reducing dietary saturated fat. Coronary artery disease is a chronic inflammatory disease and it can be reduced ­effectively by walking 22 minutes a day and eating real food.” In a nod to their belief that vested interests are ­pushing the low LDL cholesterol message, they concluded: “There is no business model or market to help spread this simple yet powerful ­intervention.”

He’s just released a book, The Pioppi Diet, which has gained traction in the UK. The basis of the diet, borrowing from the lifestyle in the Italian village of Pioppi, is to stay away from sugar and refined carbohydrates rather than fat, to eat ­vegetables, nuts and extra virgin olive oil daily, get seven hours’ sleep, walk regularly and avoid stress.

My two cents: The medical establishment does a very poor job of promoting health as they're original focus was on curing or ameliorating illness and nothing more. The medical establishment has NEVER had an emphasis on health.

They are good at cutting you open, attaching measuring devices and prescribing regulated drugs. If you don't fit into that model, then they have nothing for you.

Fully agree. And note in your last paragraph how what they do focus on is making them lots of money. My advice to those close to me as been to focus on prevention and especially diet given how much "bad" food is out there

[KaiserJeep]

Nobody is denying that prevention trumps a medicinal/medical remedy to a chronic condition. However let us make a very clear distinction between the doctor and patient responsibility.

The doctor is obligated to explain to you the deleterious effects of eating too much food, the wrong types of food, the deleterious effects of drugs and alcohol, and the consequences of too little exercise. My doctor does this, in fact inquires about how successfully I have been dieting and exercising every month. Then he takes blood, blood pressure, and tweeks the prescriptions if required.

If your doctor doesn't do that, find a new doctor. Don't be like my Father, who said (and was serious) "I had to try five doctors before I found one who would let me drink beer."

The rest is up to you. The diet, the exercise, the periodic doctor visits, the consumption of drugs and alcohol. All your responsibility. Also your failure if you can't do it.

Also, it's YOUR FAULT AND YOUR RESPONSIBILITY if you decide to disregard professional medical advice, and if you have an always revolving opinion about what is best for your own health. Having concern is great, in fact necessary - but the doctor is the professional, and you are the amatuer. BTW, being healthy and feeling healthy can be the same thing, but often are not. Lots of people can figure out what feels good, right up until not following the advice of a doctor kills them.

Take me for example. My Beta Blocker (Atenolol) (which BTW is about $10/quarter) makes me lethargic, by depressing my heart rate. But my resting pulse rate is too high without it, and other Beta Blocker medications are less effective, or have even worse side effects. So I take it and use strong coffee when I need to not feel lethargic. I also take an ACE inhibitor called Ramipril, and the combination of both medications keeps my blood pressure well controlled. That is in fact SO IMPORTANT that I have a blood pressure machine and monitor it daily. I had one stroke and I never want to have another, I might not be so lucky the second time.

There are no symptoms to uncontrolled blood pressure. None. You feel great until you drop dead. It's important.

[onlooker]

Quite agree Kaiser. In the end, the onus is on each person having the intention and discipline to take care of their own health. My outlook is not how long you live but maintaining till the end a minimally acceptable quality of life. Oh and take advantage of the Internet"s vast storehouse of info. But as always using discernment when surfing the Web.

[Tanada]

Kaiser what about when you are following all the standard medical advice and your chronic conditions continue to worsen because you do not fit the standard course of treatment? What if you have developed insulin resistance from eating too many carbs following the Standard American Food Pyramid diet based on grains and it has damaged your metabolism to the point that nothing resembling the Standard Course does anything but make the issues you experience worse?

What if 60% of type 2 diabetics are obese but 40% are normal weight and the medical profession focuses almost all of its nutritional advice on the 60% while the 40% grow increasingly sick without detection because the doctor never orders the same blood tests that are standard for the obese until an unfortunate event takes place? 40% of Americans with Metabolic Syndrome aka Insulin resistance are normal weight and their issues other than blood pressure are routinely missed because it is not standard care to send normal weight patients for HBa1C testing unless they show signs of unstable blood sugar.

Have you ever experienced the joy of telling your Md that you are following the the food pyramid and exercising a timed 5 hours a week which is BTW twice the doctor's requirement and have them roll their eyes and stop just short of calling you a liar because their diet and exercise program is not helping you regain your health? Of course they also are thrilled to give you more advice of the exact same sort and then say you must be not following it correctly.

The Medical 'Practice' is operated by a great many individuals but a lot of them are so arrogant they can not accept facts contrary to their beliefs. If a patient comes in and asks about an alternate course of treatment based on their own research many Doctors will go out of their way to refuse the patient even trying the alternatives to see if they work better than the standard course of treatment.

The patient is in the end responsible for using the diet and exercise program that works for them. If the standard course doesn't work for you then you should experiment until you find a program that does work for you. Blindly following the standard course of treatment has cost me a great deal physically in the second half of the time I have been on this Earth as the problems it caused with my metabolism accumulated bit by bit over the years. once I discovered alternate methods work for me I would have to be a stone fool to resume blindly following the standard medical advice that got me into the mess I now live with every day. Thanx, but I will pass.

[KaiserJeep]

Tanada, they keep careful records, analyze them, and draw valid conclusions. There are literally many man-centuries of effort and a whole lot of discussion behind these medical reccomendations. Every time their treatments killed somebody, they noted that in effect - they measure the effectiveness of alternative treatment regimens and choose the most successful, the medicines with the highest rates of success and the lowest rates of mortality.

You are welcome to your opinion and welcome to do what you want about your own health. But you remain an amatuer at this, drawing conclusions from a sample size of one person, under totally uncontrolled conditions. I'm not going to argue these points, the medical profession has a proven record of success. My doctor and myself both believe in the statistics. You are welcome to believe in crystals, magic, the advice of elderly relatives, whatever you read in books, in fact anything you want.

But none of the people who killed themselves doing what "felt right" or what "seemed right" to them ever wrote books about their experiences. I don't claim that medical professionals are any wiser or luckier or more intelligent than anybody else. They are carefull record keepers who analyze most carefully what results they do get. They have records of treating hundreds, thousands, or millions of people. That's all.

My doctor is in fact quite supportive of whatever I have success doing. I don't know how you developed your opinion about doctors but I'm sure you had reasons. Maybe I was just luckier with my doctors than you were.

[Tanada]

Tanada, they keep careful records, analyze them, and draw valid conclusions. There are literally many man-centuries of effort and a whole lot of discussion behind these medical reccomendations. Every time their treatments killed somebody, they noted that in effect - they measure the effectiveness of alternative treatment regimens and choose the most successful, the medicines with the highest rates of success and the lowest rates of mortality.

You are welcome to your opinion and welcome to do what you want about your own health. But you remain an amatuer at this, drawing conclusions from a sample size of one person, under totally uncontrolled conditions. I'm not going to argue these points, the medical profession has a proven record of success. My doctor and myself both believe in the statistics. You are welcome to believe in crystals, magic, the advice of elderly relatives, whatever you read in books, in fact anything you want.

But none of the people who killed themselves doing what "felt right" or what "seemed right" to them ever wrote books about their experiences. I don't claim that medical professionals are any wiser or luckier or more intelligent than anybody else. They are carefull record keepers who analyze most carefully what results they do get. They have records of treating hundreds, thousands, or millions of people. That's all.

My doctor is in fact quite supportive of whatever I have success doing. I don't know how you developed your opinion about doctors but I'm sure you had reasons. Maybe I was just luckier with my doctors than you were.

All of the things you refer to as treatments that killed people were things that killed very quickly. Treatments that do small amounts of accumulated damage require actual science to be detected because they are not 'in your face bad' which is pretty obvious. For example the very first statin drug that was tested on humans was so good at eliminating Cholesterol (a needed human building block for cell repair and hormone transport) that several of the volunteers died within weeks of starting the 90 day trial and the rest of the test was cancelled out of fear of killing the rest.

Chemotherapy and radiotherapy for cancer patients, initially they started with very high doses to kill the cancer ASAP in the thought that this was the best regimen. However 5 year survival rates actually went down though of course it took 5 years to be sure of that. Modern Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are much more targeted, you no longer get large broad radiation doses for solid tumors and they now give you just enough chemical poison of a kind targeted a little better for cancer cells with chemotherapy. These improvements mean that modern cancer treatments are a great deal better than they were 40 years ago when they really did little other than make the patients last weeks or months truly miserable. I respect Cancer Doctors because even if it took them a while they started learning right away how to improve the course of treatment.

In the 1950's a fraud named Doctor Ancel Keys developed the Diet heart hypothesis aka the Cholesterol Theory. He altered data to fit his hypothesis rather than admit he had made a mistake because his answer 'felt right' to him and his wife. Because he had done work for the US Government during WW II developing K-rations and working on starvation studies for POW's rescued in the middle of the war his opinion was held as valuable and with his altered data to back up his hypothesis he was lauded as having discovered a crucial factor in human heart health. There were a number of doctors who disagreed with his hypothesis and pointed out its deficiencies repeatedly, but he had Uncle Sam on his side so none of that mattered. Keys Cholesterol theory is not supported by ANY scientific study, quite the opposite in fact. Every well run study that limited variables for confounding factors demonstrates the same thing, Cholesterol levels are irrelevant as markers for heart health. Deceased heart patients in the tens of thousands have been autopsied and their Cholesterol levels are all over the spectrum of possible values.

It turns out that manufactured trans fatty acid intake is a much more relevant marker for heart health in an otherwise normal individual. the less hydrogenated oils a person consumed in the five years prior to death the less likely they were to have heart disease from dietary causes. Yes the smokers and heavy drinkers were still harming themselves, but those were long known risk factors. The problem is the Cholesterol theory said trans fatty acids made from vegetable oils were healthy and natural saturated fats were unhealthy. Two generations of Americans were bombarded with this propaganda based on a lie by a researcher who falsified data but who had the backing of powerful people in the government who trusted him. As a result the original formula for Margarine (beef tallow with a small quantity of oil and food coloring to make it look like butter) was replaced with Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil which is solidified by the manufacturing process to add a high percentage of Trans Fatty Acids. In fact this propaganda has been so pervasive that you probably had a disgusted reaction to the description of Margarine even though it is made from natural food items and has no deleterious effects on human health.

You see Trans fatty Acids of the type made by hydrogenating vegetable oil are only slightly metabolized by the human chemical enzymes in the cells of your body. The cells mistakes them for a natural fatty acid which can be Saturated, monounsaturated or polyunsaturated. All three natural fats the human cell has enzymes to catabolize for energy or to incorporate into the cellular membrane made of phospholipids as structural material. If the cell has all the structures it needs for healthy function and the energy requirements are met these fatty acids are released back into the blood stream so the capillaries can distribute them to other cells which need them.

When being used for structure the cell needs a mixture of monounsaturated and fully saturated fatty acids to attach to the phosphorus to create the semi-permeable membrane that is the cell wall and structure. If it mistakes a trans-fatty acid for a saturated fatty acid as frequently happens the cell membrane is not put together as it normally functions because trans-fats have a 'kink' in their structure for every unsaturated bond forced into the trans configuration. In a monounsaturated trans fat there is one kink and in the poly there are two or even more. These kinks create greater permeability in the cell membrane which cause the cell to have to work harder to maintain the chemical differential between the blood stream and the interior of the cell. IOW the cell can compensate up to a point, but it requires energy that would not have been used in a normal membrane. Even worse for cellular structure trans-fatty acids are not highly stable, they have a half life for existence and at some point the trans configured double bond will spontaneously revert to the cis configuration macing a monounsaturated trans fat revert to being a monounsaturated normal fat. That would be problematic because the phospholipid layer is built with alternating layers of saturated and monounsaturated fats and the trans fats get placed in the saturated portion so now the cell has a mono in the wrong place. For the poly trans fats the situation in structure is worse because the multiple bonds do not spontaneously revert all at the same time, so they are left with first a flexible but still kinked fatty acid in place of the saturated fat and eventually with a poly unsaturated in place of a saturated.

In the Catabolism pathways for natural fatty acids the trans fats can enter the pathway and undergo the two initial cycles of beta oxidation to generate energy for the cell as normal. However once the molecule has been shortened by two cycles the trans configured portion of the fat reaches the reaction site on the enzyme and does not fit into the molecule. This halts the reaction and the molecule is rejected by the enzyme and a different available molecules enters the pathway. If the cell is undergoing high energy consumption at the time from say exercise these distorted molecules accumulate until energy demand decreases, then they are released back into the blood stream as shortened trans fats that the body recognizes as useless for structure.

However until such time as they spontaneously revert to cis configuration the body can not catabolize them any further either so they get stored in adipose tissue as triglycerides. The problem with this is human fat cells cycle their contents constantly, when the insulin content of the blood stream falls to normal levels about 6 hours after a meal the fat cells release small quantities of fatty acids into the blood stream to feed the heart and other muscles which actually prefer fat as their fuel of choice. The human body cycles through the stored fat molecules including the stored trans fats, but those trans fats can not be used for energy or structure because they are in the wrong configuration for energy and too short now for structure. Therefore the trans fats cause your adipose tissues to cycle more fatty acids into the blood to provide the amount needed for cell structure and catabolism despite the quantity of trans fats mixed into the supply. This is part of what drives higher triglyceride levels in the blood stream in some people. This in turn drives higher cholesterol because cholesterol is a transport mechanism for triglycerides.

IOW Cholesterol is a compensatory mechanism for excess trans fat in the body in addition to its normal roles as a hormone prerequisite and structural repair aid. By limiting endogenous cholesterol production as Statin medication does you limit the bodies capability to deal with the trans fats already stored in your system and those eaten in processed food every day. The FDA allows food manufacturers to label foods as 0 grams trans fat so long as 'one serving' is 'less than 0.5 grams'. In practice this means some manufacturers reduced the serving size enough to fall below the threshold without making any substitution for the use of trans fats in their process. In Europe they could not get away with this because the government requires nutrition labels list all ingredients as part of the standard quantity of 100 grams.

From prehistory up until about 1920 humans ate natural foods. Then Crisco (Crystallized Cottonseed Oil) entered the mass market as a vegetable based lard substitute manufactured by hydrogenating vegetable oil. Cottonseed oil is the easiest to solidify of all vegetable oils other than olive oil which is much more expensive. Originally Crisco was developed as a substitute for tallow as a candle fuel. As Kerosene and then electricity displaced cheap tallow/Crisco as candle fuel the manufacturers who had invested huge sums of money into plant and equipment for the process needed someone to buy their product so they invented 'vegetable shortening' for baking and produced a whole series of pamphlets and even complete cook books where every single recipe called for the 'new' 'great' manufactured lard substitute Crisco. When they were successful they spawned a whole group of imitators who jumped on the bandwagon of manufacturing trans fats and selling them to people as food. The sales pitch often involved the fact that these hydrogenated vegetable oils were tasteless so they did not change the flavor of food items in any fashion. This should have been a red flag because any natural food you eat has a flavor you desire, this is how your body tells you to eat more of whatever it is, from plain fruit to plain beef jerky.

Note that none of these entities set out to hurt people, they were just looking for a way to make a profit and pay their bills just like anyone else. However the few food tests done with Crisco in the early days were not at all successful. It didn't cause the test animals to keel over and die, however when Crisco is substituted for natural fats in a calorie controlled diet the test animals become hungry and fat at the same time because their bodies store the trans fats they can not catabolize and the lack of usable calories leaves then in calorie deficit. Being hungry while putting on weight is not a situation most humans find desirable so these test results were not prominently published. If the Crisco had made you feel full while still leaving you in calorie deficit it would be a wonder food, but that is not how metabolism works. This example also perfectly demonstrates that 'a calorie is a calorie' is a false statement because you can get lots of calories out of Crisco in the standard lab test, but if your cells can not access those calories it really doesn't deliver those calories to you does it? In fact there are hundreds of foods that are either poorly digested or poorly catabolized that have a calorie count in the lab completely out of proportion with their calorie impact on you as a biological system trying to access those calories to metabolically function.

Crisco = Cholesterol. Margarine made in the same process = cholesterol. Processed food containing partially or fully hydrogenated vegetable oils = cholesterol. All for the very same reason, the trans fats are structurally damaging, they are only partially catabolized, and both result in greater systemic inflammation which is the root cause of heart disease in patients who do not consume tobacco or excessive quantities of alcohol.

Yet between the manufacturers advertising skill, the FDA lack of oversight and the institutionalizing of Ancel Keys Diet Heart hypothesis blaming ingested cholesterol in your food; trans fats were allowed and promoted in the American diet for most of the last 50 years. Because the Doctors did not use due diligence to verify the effects of trans fats on human metabolism generations of people were told to eat more trans fats made from vegetable oils and avoid saturated fats made from animal oils. Partly this was because animal fats in food come with cholesterol because that is one of the ways animals store fatty acids for easy access.

Hydrogenated plants oils are free of cholesterol because only animals manufacture these molecules, plants use an analog molecule called phytosterol that Ancel Keys was all in favor of. So fear of Cholesterol lead to a very significant increase in the consumption of polyunsaturated fats and trans fats with a commensurate decrease in the consumption of saturated fatty acids that contain and promote cholesterol formation and function.

Trans fats clog up the metabolic enzymes in cells and create faulty structural membranes (anabolism) and disrupt energy production (catabolism), but were promoted by manufacturers and the US Government for generations as the healthy food choice over animal products despite all evidence to the contrary.

Every neutral lab testing trans fatty acids for food found that they stimulate cholesterol production and those who did membrane testing and catabolism testing discovered the problems they caused with cellular metabolism as much as fifty years ago, possibly longer. Because these studies did not support the FDA/Industry/Keys Cholesterol Hypothesis they were for the most part ignored and researchers were either asked to study something else, or lost funding to study the topic, because it was 'settled science' the authorities all agreed with.

The number of Americans who have suffered from these decisions is unknowable, however we do know that Heart Disease and Cancer grew extremely prominent in the last 70 years since Keys issued his first 'seven country study' with altered data sets to support his theory. We know trans fats cause inflammation (heart disease) and cellular membrane damage (Cancer?).

But in the world according to KaiserJeep all Doctors are honest and upright individuals who study the data intensively searching for any errors in judgement or beliefs that may be causing issues with their patients. Doctors would never alter data to fit a desired outcome or ignore data indicating their treatment regimen was harmful, right? Right?

Oh wait, the historical record says the exact opposite! But hey Doctor Keys is dead and the main proponents of trans fats as a dietary problem have won the fight at long last so all the problems are solved and the people now working in the medical profession have magically become paragons of virtue who all tell their patients the Cholesterol theory has been disproved and Statins are not needed right Kaiser? Right?

NYT 1990 Interview Dr. Enig Cholesterol Researcher

[KaiserJeep]

Tanada, I think you have been victimized, probably repeatedly. I apologize for the words I have said and am about to say, but my beliefs are just as strong as yours, and I have statistics on my side.

No, I didn't read every word you wrote, it was frankly too long, too much of a rant, with too little reasoning. I skimmed each paragraph. It was five screens at my display scale setting, well beyond the normal bounds of good taste for this Forum. I don't doubt your convictions, only your judgement.

For the record, I eat butter, not margerine. I cook with Crisco oil or olive oil and avoid vegetable shortening and lard. I don't avoid glutens or dairy products from cattle. I believe in eating meat, dairy, grains, vegetables, fruits, and sugars in many forms, and YES I eat too many calories.

I think I could take fewer drugs if I simply ate less, ate different things than I do eat, exercised more, and drank less alcohol and more water.

But I am fairly certain that whatever one "feels", how healthy they feel, what they want to eat and how much they want to exercise, are unrelated to actual health. Meaning:

Eating lots of calorie laden rich foods is very enjoyable, but deady.

Being a couch potato while watching videos and web surfing and avoiding exercise is enjoyable but not very healthy.

Consuming drugs and alcohol is enjoyable but again not good for you.

In fact I am fairly certain that the behaviors that actually extend your life and improve the quality of your life are the things you enjoy least and hate most. Too bad that is the case, but it's pretty much a certainty. In fact anything that tastes good, feels good, or looks good is probably a net deficit for your entire human lifetime.

I'm also pretty sure you have spent way too much time reading on this topic and obsessing over it. Every time you read somebody's book or web page, you were - consciously or unconsciously - comparing their words to your life experiences and making judgements based upon way too little data, that afore-mentioned sample size of one life experience. YES this is how THEY (the writers of this nonsense) victimized YOU.

In fact, you could spend the rest of your life reading these things and making such judgements without ever improving either the quality of your life or the length of it. Based on the apparent convictions you hold and the sheer fervor with which you express them, I would guess that is the most likely outcome.

Go for it. Do what feels good and seems to make sense to you and you alone. Ignore all the other fools in the World, especially that group of humans, millions in numbers, who have been patiently accumulating data and debating it for centuries. You obviously believe that you know more than them and that your beliefs are the only correct ones.

Let us agree not to argue over this topic, both because it is one that we can never agree upon, and because it is actually fairly off topic for a Peak Oil forum.

[dissident]

So the global warming denier is a medical industry bootlick. How cute.

Insulin resistance is an established fact. It is partly genetic but can be controlled via diet. This is due to the fact that cells can reduce the number of insulin receptors if insulin levels are high. So we have a progressive worsening of insulin resistance with age. Control insulin levels by diet and physical activity and you avoid the "death spiral".

Family doctors send your blood samples to get checked for sugar levels but basically never for insulin levels. You only get blood sugar levels when the pancreas beta cells are dying off and you are entering Type II diabetes. So it is utterly pointless to measure only blood sugar levels for anyone from the ages of 20 to 70 (there are cases of Type II appearing at the age of 20).

We have had fresh eggs blacklisted as a bad food since the 1970s due to ridiculous powdered egg studies. There is now backpedalling and apparently fresh eggs are OK now. It took about 30 years for the BS to stop. But the mantra that fat makes you fat is repeated ad nauseam. Utter BS propagated with criminal disregard. Even if the average urbanite does not have a clue, you fatten pigs for the market by feeding them carbs (including fruit). To make a pig lean you feed it fat scraps. So we have "fat free" cookies peddled as "healthy". Ludicrous. These cookies turn into glucose and triglycerides. With fat there is a very strong satiation mechanism unlike with carbs. The argument that fatty acid molecules have twice the energy of carb molecules (on average) is meaningless. There is always additional room in the stomach for sugary desserts.

If you are "normal" your cells can burn off the glucose quickly (generating heat) in response to mild insulin increases. If you are insulin resistant then you convert the glucose into fat and store it in fat cells. (However, the fat cells can be insulin resistant to different degrees depending on the individual so that storage may not be effective). Associated with this bifurcation is high blood insulin levels which slowly act to reduce insulin receptors on cell walls. Keeping to a high carb diet makes insulin resistance a progressive disease. The only way to consume high carb doses (as recommended by the fake food pyramid) is to engage in a substantial amount of physical activity to burn off the glucose in muscle tissue without relying on insulin. Most people are tied to desk jobs and computer screens to spend an hour of intense physical activity after every meal. (If you can get an elevating platform for the monitors or an elevating desk and stand instead of sitting).

[KaiserJeep]

You show no respect, a sign of poor upbringing.

I was diagnosed as "pre-diabetic" about 10 years ago, and got along fine on a modified diet and exercise program for 8 years. For two years I have been considered a full blown Type 2 diabetic, although as yet I use only oral drugs to treat this condition.

You can find a variety of opinions on this disease, and I happen to believe the establishment view. Obviously, a lot of you think yourselves smarter than the majority of doctors everywhere. I think that is a pretty clear indication of both low intelligence and arrogance.

But you are all welcome to treat yourselves with whatever alternative therapies you want. After all, the human race is in overshoot, and we need to breed for intelligence now especially. So go for it. Let the survival of your genes speak for your point of view.

[careinke]

You show no respect, a sign of poor upbringing.

I was diagnosed as "pre-diabetic" about 10 years ago, and got along fine on a modified diet and exercise program for 8 years. For two years I have been considered a full blown Type 2 diabetic, although as yet I use only oral drugs to treat this condition.

You can find a variety of opinions on this disease, and I happen to believe the establishment view. Obviously, a lot of you think yourselves smarter than the majority of doctors everywhere. I think that is a pretty clear indication of both low intelligence and arrogance.

But you are all welcome to treat yourselves with whatever alternative therapies you want. After all, the human race is in overshoot, and we need to breed for intelligence now especially. So go for it. Let the survival of your genes speak for your point of view.

So you have high blood pressure, are overweight, and have gone from pre-diabetic to full on diabetic all under the care of your Omnipotent, and much more knowledgeable doctor than you? Sounds like he is working great for you. Continue on!!!

[KaiserJeep]

I tend to think those things would have happened anyway, because the Diabetes and Cholesterol are in my genes from my Father, and the Rheumatoid Arthritis has crippled my Mother's Family for at least three generations. But my serum Cholesterol has long been under control, since I was in my 20's, and my arteries are squeeky clean. My Mother took handfulls of aspirin, but I cannot tolerate the stuff, so I have a prescription NSAID that requires a quarterly liver panel to check for side effects, and an opioid drug when that doesn't work.

As for being overweight, so are over 80% of Americans, probably including you. 8 years of diet and exercise before being forced to take drugs for Type 2 diabetes is far above the average time, slightly over half of affected people either begin drugs immediately or within the first year. When the RA grew so bad I had to give up the treadmill for the stationary bicycle, is when I started to gain weight. Achieving the same calorie consumption on that damned bicycle requires about twice as long and is misery.

[onlooker]

I include a link to this E-book "Diabesity", which probably mirrors what Dissident stated:
https://play.google.com/store/books/det ... DAodb9QFlw

[KaiserJeep]

Yes, there is a thriving marketplace in such books, with a whole spectrum of cures and treatments and lifestyle changes, and many contradict one another. You can probably choose an online book that matches your preconceptions. If you keep reading long enough, you can probably find a book that matches just the way you want to live anyway. The one that makes you feel good to read it because it reinforces your existing beliefs. The book that will in your mind satisfy your desire to feel good, because it tells you to behave and eat just as you want to anyway.

I'm pretty sure that most people take charge of their healthcare in just that way. They don't care for the mainstream medical advice to eat different foods and lesser amounts, and to exercise until you are exhausted. So they find something they like better, and they'll never know they could have lived years longer because they are dead. Because feeling good and being healthy are not necessarily related. In fact it's pretty much the opposite, healthy behaviors leave you hungry, unsatisfied, and fatigued.

Your choice because it's your life. Nothing wrong with choosing to enjoy life more and die earlier, after all.

[onlooker]

If you are "normal" your cells can burn off the glucose quickly (generating heat) in response to mild insulin increases. If you are insulin resistant then you convert the glucose into fat and store it in fat cells.

I would think that in any 1 eating session consuming too much carbs without fairly immediate exercising leads to storage of fat and weight gain. My personal experience confirms this. So "mild" insulin increases stands in contrast to insulin resistant bodies which will be producing higher levels of insulin increases and commensurately storing more of the glucose as fat. Perhaps Dissident you can detail why fatter people tend to be more "insensitive" or resistant to insulin?

[onlooker]

Because feeling good and being healthy are not necessarily related. In fact it's pretty much the opposite, healthy behaviors leave you hungry, unsatisfied, and fatigued.

My personal opinion is physical health and mental well being correspond and tie together

[Newfie]

My personal experience with our health care system lead me to be at least highly skeptical. I get an annual check up. The few complaints I do have the system has been woefully capable of dealing with. At my last visit my Dr told me my symptoms were “impossible.” This is the new and improved Dr., the previous one was worse.

I have a couple of personal friends who are MDs. Nice folks, I would not trust them with my life if at all possible.

[KaiserJeep]

Onlooker, OK with me. Eat as much as you want of anything you want, and exercise as little as you wish. Feel good, delude yourself about what the feeling means, and keep doing so. Lots of books push the scam that if you feel good, you are healthy. It's a very popular notion.

Mainstream doctors are such a bummer, with their insistence upon healthy, bad tasting food, a half empty stomach all the time, and more and more regular exercise than almost everybody wants.

So ignore the statistics about mortality and lifetimes and do what you want. Find a book that agrees with you if that's what it takes for you to feel good. Because books that advocate mainstream medical lifestyle reccomendations are miserable marketing failures. Everybody - including all of you reading this - already know this stuff, and you don't want to do it or read about it. Because deep down in your genes, through a few hundrded thousand years of huddling in caves and hiding from the cold of the ice age, those apes that survived in the greatest numbers had thick layers of fat to see them through the Winter. So unfortunately we have evolved to crave lots of rich foods and grow fat.

Newfie, I agree you must find a Dr. whoom you can get along with. Unfortunately, mine is older than me, and in any case I'll be moving away from here not too long from now. So I'll have to find a new doctor.