One of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject of low-carbohydrate diets for controlling diabetes is none other than my friend and low-carb researcher Dr. Jay Wortman. I first became exposed to the great work of this amazing physician from Canada (who became passionate about low-carb diets after his own personal diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes at the age of 52) when his entertainingly funny and informative documentary film My Big Fat Diet released in 2008 about an entire First Nation village returning to the native diet of their ancestors. It was very well-received on CBC-TV that year becoming the most-watched documentary in Canada and I was privileged to feature both Dr. Wortman and the filmmaker Mary Bissell in Episode 137 of my “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show” podcast. In fact, when they showed this film to a group of bariatric physicians in Phoenix, Arizona at the American Society of Bariatric Physicians meeting in 2008, the doctors were extremely impressed by what they saw and gobbled up every copy of the DVD in just a matter of minutes. Additionally, we showed this film on the Low-Carb Cruise in 2009 and the people who watched it ate it up!
Needless to say, Dr. Wortman has built quite the reputation for speaking out in support for low-carb living because he has seen it have a tremendous impact on his own health as well as the many study participants he has put on this very effective nutritional treatment option for diabetes. And you will not find a more genuinely kind and gentle human being in the low-carb community with a wickedly funny sense of humor and love for life than this man. Unfortunately, not everyone in the diabetes world is thrilled with Dr. Jay and his ardent enthusiasm for livin’ la vida low-carb.
As he shared in a series of blog posts in late April 2011 (read them here, here, here, and here), the top diabetes web site in the UK located at Diabetes.co.uk have taken an aggressive stance against anyone espousing carbohydrate-restriction for people dealing with diabetes. They actually banned Dr. Jay for what was described as “troll like behaviour” by sharing the truth about low-carb diets for diabetics on a specific forum thread devoted to this specific subject. As a practicing physician treating Type 2 diabetics with a high-fat, low-carb diet, he wasn’t just sharing his opinions about low-carb nutrition–he was sincerely attempting to help struggling diabetics who were seeking out quality information about their disease with trustworthy advice backed by the science. Unfortunately, the moderators at this forum were having none of that.
Describing the information he was posting as “dangerous ideas” by encouraging the consumption of saturated fat on a low-carb lifestyle change, Dr. Jay was admonished by the Diabetes UK moderators and summarily “banished from the forum.” His greatest concern is the fact that while the moderators at the forum claim to support low-carb nutrition for diabetics, they are “very fearful of what it means to do a truly low-carb diet” with plenty of dietary fat as is promoted by well-respected diabetes practitioners like Dr. Richard Bernstein, Dr. Mary Vernon, and Dr. Eric Westman.
Getting all philosophical about this ordeal, Dr. Jay wrote the following about this on his blog:
I think this is, above all else, a cautionary tale. There are lots of people out there who will lead you astray when it comes to diet. Everybody is different and there is lots of individual latitude in terms of carbohydrate tolerance but one thing is clear – if you have insulin resistance you have developed a carbohydrate intolerance. You need to restrict carbs to avoid the conditions associated with insulin resistance and the multitude of medications used to treat those conditions. If you go low enough to get below your individual threshold of tolerance, you can avoid the problems and can usually get off all the meds, too. There are big vested interests who benefit from selling those meds. Are they actively trying to subvert the movement to low-carb? I don’t know. But I do know this – they would be crazy not to.
Indeed they would. Dr. Jay shared with me about a diabetic friend of his from the UK named Eddie Mitchell from “The Low Carb Diabetic” who was also banned from the Diabetes UK forum for advocating for a high-fat, low-carb diet for people with Type 2 diabetes. Eddie has been working behind-the-scenes helping as many people with both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes as he could and was removed from the forum for daring to “spread the low carb word.” Dr. Jay put me in touch with Eddie to discuss the aftermath of this sudden turn of events at one of the world’s largest support web sites for people with diabetes.
Listen to my interview with this 61-year old Type 2 diabetic Eddie Mitchell:
So what can YOU do? You could join the Diabetes UK Forum for yourself and share your high-fat, low-carb diabetes success story. If enough people posted their real-life examples of how livin’ la vida low-carb radically changed their lives, then how would the moderators be able to keep up with them all? It’s just a thought. You could also contact them through any number of methods found here. I don’t think it’s right for them to be prohibiting the genuine message of low-carb living for diabetics (the fact that it is a high-fat, moderate protein, low-carb nutritional approach) from reaching the masses. What will YOU do to respond?
5-26-11 UPDATE: Well, within 24 hours of posting this blog post online, the Online Editor for Diabetes.co.uk named Benedict Jephcote started following me on Twitter and sent me a message thanking me for sharing about this issue. As you will see in the full-length e-mail he sent to me today, Benedict was unaware of what was happening on his forum by his moderators and the way they were treating people like Dr. Jay Wortman, Eddie Mitchell and other supporters of high-fat, low-carb diets for controlling diabetes. Here’s what he wrote:
Thank you for the invitation to email you Jimmy. The first I knew about the situation was yesterday. Upon hearing it, I wanted to find out when and how Dr Jay had been banned. After some investigation I saw the posts (dated around 25 April) which Dr Jay had posted along with those of the moderators.
I felt our moderators had acted out of order-–essentially misinterpreting what Dr Jay had said and taking it as a personal attack on their credibility. They responded in, what I felt to be, an overly defensive way.
The main issue stems from the fact that they didn’t agree with what Dr Jay was saying about needing a baseline amount of calories from fat. They have followed a simultaneous low carb and low fat diet for a number of years. However, the way in which they responded was to make allegations in response to Dr Jay which was unacceptable, not allowing him to voice his own opinions. They issued a temporary ban and when they saw Dr Jay’s blog post, banned him permanently.
Sadly, the moderators didn’t notify any of the team at Diabetes.co.uk at the time. I also had previously warned the moderators that we should refrain from calling anyone trolls, which clearly they didn’t take heed of.
I started to low carb after being inspired by and joining the Diabetes.co.uk forum 2 years ago–which had a dedicated low carb forum. I joined in September and follow a low carb diet. I have Type 1 diabetes and find it an excellent way to achieve good control and eat both a healthy and varied diet. Prior to this I was on the classic low fat, high carb diet–which wasn’t doing me any favors.
The general ethos behind diabetes.co.uk is to allow freedom of expression. In all honesty, this freedom was steadily becoming shackled by the moderators and I rather feel I was late to take decisive action with regard to them.
At diabetes.co.uk we have our newsletters which each have an unsubscribe feature and we’re not breaking any rules as to acceptable mailing procedure. We have advertisements on our site similar to the way dLife have. In that respect we’re not too dissimilar. The website does make money, but it does also allow discussion and, as Eddie pointed has been very successfully giving a voice to people for a number of years-–which is something we wish to preserve.
We have let the moderators concerned go and I personally hope that the forum will recover well from this, particularly as it has helped me and many others who live a life with diabetes.
With the best of regards and happy low carbing too,
Benedict Jephcote
Online Editor Diabetes.co.uk
I have invited Benedict to be interviewed in the same way I spoke with Eddie to help clear the air about this issue. If he agrees, then I’ll post that to YouTube and here at my blog for you to hear. THANK YOU to everyone who made your voice heard on this. It seems you all made a HUGE impact on this and you are to be congratulated for a job well done in defending high-fat, low-carb living on such a prominent diabetes web site.
