I’m always pleased to hear stories from my readers who are keeping their ears close to the ground regarding things that are happening in the realm of nutrition and health because there’s a lot more stuff going on behind-the-scenes to help keep the conventional wisdom paradigm going than we even realize. Take the Concord, CA-based Institute for Natural Resources (INR) seminars for example. One of my blog readers who is a massage therapist in Texas attended one of their workshops last Friday night entitled “Diabetes, Obesity, & Heart Disease” led by a biochemistry and nutrition PhD and registered dietitian named Dr. Lacye Ratliff. This seminar is promoted to a variety of health professionals as continuing medical education credits for medical doctors, registered nurses, pharmacists, registered dietitians, psychologists, massage therapists and more.
The stated “Learning Objectives” of this seminar include the following:
1) Identify the relationship among obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
2) Describe, in the development of atherosclerosis, the role of insulin resistance and inflammation.
3) State ways in which a maladaptive lifestyle contributes to cardio-diabesity.
4) Describe the link between cardio-diabesity and oral health.
5) Describe the link between periodontal infection and systemic disease.
6) List lifestyle, pharmaceutical, and alternative therapies to produce proper levels of blood lipids, blood pressure, and blood glucose.
7) Describe, this course’s implications in the areas of dentistry and mental health.
The itinerary of topics discussed during this 6-hour workshop was quite extensive too:
• A Deadly Trio: Cardio-Diabesity (Heart Disease, Diabetes, and Obesity).
• Metabolic Syndrome: Is It a Useful Concept? Why Do Risk Factors Cluster?
• The Epidemic of Insulin Resistance, Prediabetes, and Diabetes. The Glucose-Heart Disease Connection. The Link between Diabetes and Cancer.
• Insulin Resistance, Abdominal Obesity, and Cognitive Decline.
• Diabetes Drugs: Current Controversies.
• The Changing Paradigm for Cardiovascular Disease. No Longer a “Plumbing Problem.”
• Heart Disease as a Chronic Inflammatory Condition. Role of Endothelial Dysfunction. Women and Heart Disease.
• Vascular Age: What Is the Physiologic Age of One’s Arteries?
• Vulnerable Plaque: What Causes It? How to Detect Subclinical Atherosclerosis.
• Early Life Determinants of Metabolic Risk. Are We Programming Our Children for Cardio-Diabesity through Prenatal Exposure?
• The Curse of Maladaptive Lifestyle: A Mismatch with Our Paleolithic Genome. Fast Food and Post-Prandial Dysmetabolism.
• Super Foods and Beverages: Role in Health.
• Sugar and Heart Disease. Fructose and Metabolic Chaos. The Fitness, Obesity, and Health Equation.
• Psychocardiology: The Mind-Heart Connection. The Link between Psychosocial Stress and Inflammation. Elevated Cortisol and High Blood Pressure.
• Sleepless in America: A Pathway to Cardio-Diabesity. Abdominal Fat and Sleep Apnea: the Chicken or the Egg?
• Dental Health: Periodontal Infection and Systemic Disease: The Role of Oral-Hematogenous Spread of Pathogens. Brushing to Prevent Heart Disease?
• Diabetes and the Incidence of Periodontal Disease. Tooth Loss and Control of Blood Sugar Levels. Periodontal Disease and Inflammation.
• Oral Health Symptoms of Diabetes: Xerostomia; Wound Healing; and Burning Mouth Syndrome.
• Oral Health, Antibiotics, and Blood Sugar.
• Lifestyle, Pharmaceutical and Alternative Therapies to Improve Blood Lipids, Blood Pressure, and Insulin Sensitivity. What Do We Know?
• Interventions to Improve Endothelial Function and Reduce Inflammation.
• Eating for One’s Genome. How to Become a 21st Century Hunter-Gatherer.
• Dark Chocolate: Pleasure or Therapy? Cardioprotective and Insulin Sensitizing Effects of Alcohol.
That’s a lot of material to cover in just six hours. My reader shared a fantastic analogy that beautifully describes what it was like sitting through this blitzkrieg of information.
Imagine a freight train coming down the tracks at full speed. Each car has different items (topics in the seminar) in them with an identifying sign painted on the side. You’re standing as close to the cars as you can get. The noise from the cars whizzing by is the noise the presenter makes as she rapid fires the information. How much information would one get from reading the sides of the cars while it was whizzing by? Not much.
Oh I’m sure. But a few of those topics sounded pretty exciting, right? Weeeellllll, not exactly. My reader who is well-versed in the low-carb/Paleo message said Dr. Ratliff only spent “maybe one minute” on what their definition of a Paleo diet is…and it’s not even close to how most of the low-carb/Paleo community would describe their diet. Here’s how she described it to this audience of medical professionals:
Low-fat nutrition with a specific limit on the intake of saturated fats, avoid high-fat dairy and bacon, and a heavy promotion of a diet high in fruits, vegetable and whole grains.
REALLY?! This was supposed to be an accurate description of a healthy Paleo diet according to INR? Sadly, most of the people attending this seminar were probably none-the-wiser and believed it. I guess the Paleo message has grown in popularity to the point that these conventional wisdom medical education outfits like Institute for Natural Resources feel like they have to redefine the terms to keep people from experiencing the REAL benefits that low-carb/Paleo nutrition has to offer them. If Dr. Ratliff wanted to be honest about it, here’s how she should have described it:
Lower-carbohydrate nutrition with a specific limit on the intake of industrialized foods and especially refined carbohydrates, avoid low-fat foods and soy, and a heavy promotion of a diet high in pastured and grass-fed animal-based proteins and saturated fat and green leafy vegetables.
Ahhhh, that’s better! Too bad these seminar attendees didn’t get to hear the truth, though. My reader noted that Dr. Ratliff refused to allow any questions from the audience because she had so much information to cover in a short period of time. She noted that this was the first time since she’s been attending conferences over the past three decades that audience members were not allowed to interact openly about the information being discussed. Hmmmm.
This became all the more disappointing when the last two hours of the lecture–one-third of the entire lecture–was a long-winded promotion of the pharmaceutical answers to diabetes, heart disease and obesity. For my reader who suffered through the painful torture of enduring such nonsensical blabbering from an obviously biased point of view on the subject, there was one thing conspicuously absent from this entire talk that was blaring in her head the entire time.
Not one word about low-carb diets.
You and I know that carbohydrate-restriction is at the heart of treating diabetes, obesity and heart disease. And yet here’s a seminar dedicated to educating medical professionals on how to help their patients and clients dealing with these issues–AND THEY DON’T EVEN MENTION LOW-CARB DIETS! What a crock of you know what. These people need to listen to the great Dr. Stephen Phinney explain why low-carb is so vital in a discussion of these important health concerns and pick up a copy of his new book about how to do it.
The irony of this predicament wasn’t lost on my reader. She said Dr. Ratliff could have easily listed the drugs in the syllabus and had everyone Google the side effects later on which would have freed up those two hours for a quality Q&A session where genuine learning could have taken place. My reader who was in attendance was chomping at the bit to combat the misinformation that was spewing forth unchallenged at this workshop meant to educate.
I am sure my blood pressure was high because I had a plethora of questions that were exploding in my brain that could not be asked since the start.
Unfortunately, my exasperated reader believes all those medical professionals attending the INR seminar got the exact WRONG message and went back to their patients with a clear-cut set of marching orders.
I looked at the audience at the end and I know what they walked away with in this seminar–drugs are the answer.
Although my reader said she did learn a few things she didn’t know, overall she was “pretty bummed out at the end.” It can be frustrating trying to take the message of livin’ la vida low-carb to the world, but we face an uphill battle. We need to stay strong in the face of adversity because this battle has not been won. The science supporting a high-fat, moderate protein, low-carb lifestyle approach is continuing to grow and will become mainstream in our culture when people realize they’ve been bamboozled by the low-fat, high-carb lie that was thrust upon nearly four decades ago. It’s gonna take time, but we must keep our heads held high knowing we have the truth on our side. Our day of reckoning is coming soon. Just you wait.
