The Diabetes Economy – T2D 12
Insulin, first discovered in 1921, revolutionized the treatment of type 1 diabetes. Dr. Banting licensed insulin to pharmaceutical companies without a patent because he believed that this life saving drug for T1D should be made available to everybody who needed it. So, why is insulin so hard to afford today? Only three pharmaceutical companies manufacture...
Public Health Collaboration
One of the most urgent health problems facing the Western world is the enormous health burdens placed by diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. They lead to life changing events like heart disease, stroke, cancer. Not only that, but fatty liver (non-alcoholic steatohepatitis or NASH) will very soon become the leading cause of...
Inflammation and T2D – T2D Part 1
This week I’d like to discuss type 2 diabetes (T2D) and inflammation. Usually I try to follow topics sequentially, but I was reviewing an article about type 2 diabetes and inflammation and thought it was quite interesting. The results of a large trial (TECOS) were released in June 2015 and illustrates once again the futility...
Of Traitors and Truths – The Epiphenomenon of Obesity VI
I was reading about a clip of the great crusader Dr. Aseem Malhotra showed at the recent LCHF summit in Cape Town and was reminded of one of the great truths of our time. You cannot be betrayed by those whom you do not trust. While we often blame Big Food for...
Populations in Transition – Hormonal Obesity XXXIII
The populations of China and the Far East are slowly developing the same epidemic of diabetes and obesity that has overtaken the United States. As noted in the previous post, one of the strongest correlations with obesity is the intake of wheat. As noted in the Sugar section, the sugar intake is also increasing the...
The Diet Soda Delusion – The Epiphenomenon of Obesity V
Replacing a regular sugared drink with diet sodas seems like a good way to lose weight. Diet drinks have zero calories and no sugar. Since this will lower sugar intake, it seems like a good idea. Both the American Diabetes Association and the American Heart Association in 2012 endorsed the use of diet drinks as...
The Pima, Sumo and Canine Diets – The Epiphenomenon of Obesity IV
The Pima Indians of the American SouthWest have the highest rates of obesity and diabetes in North America. An estimated 50% of adult Pima are obese and of those, 95% have diabetes. How did this occur? There are many hypotheses. The Thrifty Gene Hypothesis became popular in the 1970s and some people still believe it. According...
Poverty and Obesity – The Epiphenomenon of Obesity III
Poverty correlates very closely with obesity as we can see in this map of obesity in the United States. The striking increase in the prevalence of obesity throughout the USA is also immediately apparent. Despite the large contribution of genetics to obesity, these changes have occurred within a single generation. Therefore, the increase in obesity...
The Genetics of Obesity – The Epiphenomenon of Obesity II
One commonly overlooked aspect of obesity is its genetic underpinnings. Obesity tends to run in families. Obese parents have obese children. Obese patients often have obese siblings. Yet most conventional theories of obesity do not account for these genetic effects. Start here for Hormonal Obesity. For example, in the erroneous Caloric Reduction as Primary theory,...
Childhood Obesity – The Epiphenomenon of Obesity Part I
Now that we have a working understanding of hormonal obesity, we can start to apply this knowledge to understand the epiphenomenon of obesity. We can use this more complete theory of obesity to understand the associations, epidemiology and secondary phenomenon of obesity in a way that more limited theories like the Caloric Reduction as Primary...
