Reviewing my conference notes to write this post, I am once again amazed at the valuable information that the speakers shared with us. I was honestly so privileged to have attended. In this post I will share some more of the key points made. My hope is that you will find it as helpful as I did.  Let the seeds be sowed, and when you are ready, give them water so they can flourish into something amazing that can change your life, your relationship with food and your health.

UK Cardiologist, Dr Aseem Malhotra, believes we have an epidemic of misinformation amongst doctors and patients.  His concern is that education is ineffective when one is up against the junk food industry, which aggressively markets their products . Dr Malhotra’s goal is to see policies being implemented, which will help regulate the industry.We need to make the food environment healthy as people are suffering.

66 % of people who have heart attacks, have metabolic syndrome.  If you are slim and think this doesn’t apply to you – think again. 40% of normal weight people can develop metabolic syndrome. If you drink a can of Coke, you have consumed 9 teaspoons of sugar. Sugar makes metabolic syndrome worse, which can lead to complications such as Type 2 diabetes. Lets put this into perspective: That Coke that you regularly consume, increases your risk of Type 2 diabetes by 22%. So really, a very large part of the population are at risk.

Dr Anne Childers (Psychiatric Physician) put things into perspective when she repeated a quote from the movie Fat Head, “If human history was condensed into one year, we only began farming and eating grains yesterday, and consuming vegetable/seed oils and trans fats 10 minutes ago”. Our bodies have just not had time to adapt to eating these new industrialised foods …..and what has happened since yesterday ? Heart disease has become our number one killer.

Dr Childers frequently works with children and teenagers in her practice, and emphasised how critical a good night of sleep is. Very often children suffering from ADHD, moods, anxiety or depression are just not getting enough sleep, or enough good quality sleep. Wow – think of all those kids on Ritalin. I wonder how many could have been helped by just a change of diet and perhaps undergoing a sleep study?

Sleep apnea (a sleep disorder characterised by pauses in breathing or instances of shallow or infrequent breathing during sleep), is often the cause of chronic bed wetting. Emotional moods in children is also linked to a high carb diet, and she believes that sugary breakfast cereals such as Fruit Loops is “ADHD in a box”. If you feed your children a bowl of Cornflakes before school, just know that you are basically giving them a bowl of glucose. We need to stop feeding our kids fake foods, which are high in carbs and nutrient poor. Babies should be weaned onto meat and veg, and not rice cereals and other sweet processed baby food.

Dr Jason Fung (Nephrologist and Diabetes expert) stated that injectable insulin drugs and low-fat diets DO NOT cure Type 2 diabetes – they make it worse.  Currently we are not treating the disease, but only the symptom of the disease (which is high blood sugars).  The cure for type 2 diabetes is not to treat the symptom, but to lower insulin.

Treatment protocols should therefore include a reduction in insulin administered.  But what is the reality?  We don’t lower it, we give patients more and more over time. Diabetic patients need to be put onto a low-carb diet to decrease blood sugar, which can reduce or eliminate the need for insulin. For more info you can go to www.intensivedietarymanagement.com.

Dr Gary Fettke (Orthopaedic surgeon and brain cancer survivor), delivered a very moving lecture about the role of a low-carb, ketogenic diet for cancer patients. His first slide stated: “So you think you need sugar? Cancer needs it more.” Yes, glucose (sugar) is the primary cause of cancer growth. It is our modern diet that causes inflammation and free radicals, and its the free radicals that cause chromosomal abnormalities.

Cancer needs glucose to grow. The good news is that ketogenic (very low carb ) diets can stabilise the disease and stop its progression. Also, the ketones in your blood (produced from following a ketogenic diet) are protective against the negative side effects of chemotherapy, as it protects the surrounding healthy cells. Our future treatment of cancer has to starve cancer (from the fuel it needs to grow), and that is where the ketogenic diet comes in. Nutritional ketosis is safe, and it can be used with other treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation.

After listening to this series of talks, the same question kept coming into my mind, Why don’t more doctors use LCHF nutrition  as part of their treatment protocols ?  There is scientific evidence supporting it, so why are they not embracing it? Many still just don’t (or won’t) recognise the link between health and what we choose to eat.

Are things going to change?

I have been thrilled to hear of many doctors who are advising their patients to go onto an LCHF diet to lose weight and help resolve their health issues. There needs to be more. Will universities update their curriculum to help doctors be equipped from the get-go? It is not enough to just teach them how to diagnose, prescribe drugs or perform surgery? Imagine how the health care system could be transformed if medical professionals were given the tools and knowledge to start focusing more on prevention and the education of their clients, instead of, “Ok you have ABC, so I am going to write you a script for XYZ”.

These are very important questions for which we should be expecting answers. It is OUR health at stake. At what point do doctors start contravening the Hippocratic oath to “first do no harm”? Especially if there is a better and safer way to treat people. I remain hopeful that in my lifetime I will see this radical change that needs to happen.

If you would like help in losing weight and getting healthy, please consult with one of our qualified Banting Buddies coaches. Go to our website www.bantingbuddies.com for a listing of coaches , areas and contact details. Coaches also do Skype and telephone consultations.