Recently while driving through the wilds of South Dakota, I stopped at a rest stop and found a newsletter called "Add 15 Years.com," with topics such as "Obesity-Diabetes Fix Known Since 1890," "Factory Raised Meat = Health Disaster" and "Too Late, Fructose Overwhelmed Diabetics" (actually, it read "Frutose Overwhelmced Diabetics," so I knew it was a homemade product without the benefit of an editor).
I bought the journal for a dollar and read it aloud to my friend. As far as I can tell, the author, Harlan Jacobsen, is not a doctor, a dietician or any other of the titled "knowledgeable" people in medicine. He is a patient who developed diabetes and took it upon himself to read everything he could find on the subject. And he found what some of us in medicine have lately discovered – classic medicine and the dieticians have got it wrong.
After reading the works of Weston A. Price and many others outside the purview of "groupthink" medicine, Jacobsen changed his diet to one of high-fat natural foods, and his diabetes has disappeared. He eats essentially a Paleolithic diet: Grass-fed meat with its fat, nuts and berries, a few vegetables and little of the new, high-sugar hybridized fruits, and he supplements with fish oil and Vitamin D. He is 81, and not on prescription meds.
A few of his quotes are great: "Check your acquaintances. Bet every fat friend eats nothing but low fat, (high sugar) …"
"Your body was made to run on fat."
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"You have bought into the 'big lie.'"
"Most of my high school buddies are at least 50 pounds overweight. Many have had either a hip or knee replacement [or] bypass surgery."
"Personally, I feel lonely as the only one not on any prescription drugs."
"Eliminate sugar, flour, eat all the animal fat, olive oil, coconut oil and protein you want: It worked for 2 million years."
"Your body will be so surprised and delighted with the ancestors diet it was designed for and no more abuse, it will likely surprise you by fixing inadvertently many ailments besides diabetes."
Too often we in medicine have become captives of our theories – theories based on our limited understanding of scientific principles. We fail to look at the world around us. Mr. Jacobsen recounts in his articles the evidence in nature of the benefit of a natural, fatty diet. He recalls, for example, the Inuit who lived on 90-percent whale blubber and were thin people until exposed to the wheat-based products of the white culture.
I observed this myself in Arizona, where once healthy Quechan and Cocopah Indians have become fat diabetics eating tortillas. Dr. Atkins, who was a cardiologist like Dr. William Davis, author of "Wheat Belly," also observed regression of arterial plaques using cardiac catheterization of patients eating his diet, which emphasized low carbohydrate content and did not limit fats.
The idea that fat makes you fat and that we should eat a diet filled with "complex carbs" and fruits is wrong and should be expunged from our books. But it won't be for a long time.
In fact, in our increasingly centrally controlled medical bureaucracy, "groupthink" is reinforced by bureaucrats labeling what they consider quality medical practice and criminalizing anything the bureaucrats disagree with. Scientific progress requires flexibility in patterns of thinking, and we all know how inflexible government bureaucracy is.
So, for those of you out there who want to stop being diabetic, or you just want to live longer, healthier lives, don't be afraid to explore the world of ideas outside your doctor's office. And do what Mr. Jacobsen suggests – look at the people who are taking the standard advice: Are they healthy?
There is a great picture circulating through email of two women, both English – one a health "guru" vegan who eats nothing but complex carbs. She looks terrible: bad skin, bad hair, bad musculature. The other, a noted chef who eats quality foods, including meat and butter and cream, looks gorgeous with a voluptuous figure, beautiful hair and skin –and she is nearly 20 years older than the other woman. I sent this email to my sons – one in medical school – with the caption, "QED," i.e., "It is proven."