I have been logging and monitoring my blood sugar levels, especially through my fasting cycles. As I was entering my blood sugar, I noticed an information button pop up in the app. I clicked on it and read this:

The main target of diabetes management is to normalize your blood glucose levels. Weight control, diet, and physical activity are the most important management components. A healthy diet includes carbohydrate rich-foods such as fruits, milk and yogurt, bread, cereal, rice, pasta, starchy vegetables like potatoes, corn, and beans. Prefer lean proteins including skinless chicken, fish, beans, legumes, peas, lentils. Choose healthy fats, like foods rich in omega-3 (fatty fishes and nuts), canola and corn oils, but avoid trans fats and hydrogenated oils. – Reference: American Diabetes Association (ADA). Position Statement: Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes – 2014. Diabetes Care, 37, S14-S80, 2014.

Are you kidding me? How in the world would eating these foods help control my blood sugar? I’ve eaten a piece of bread before and felt my blood sugar rise. I’ve eaten a baked potato before and I’m crashing ready to go to sleep. How can I manage my blood sugar consuming these things? And you can’t tell me that it would be healthy to eat these things and then control my blood sugar with more medications. That doesn’t make sense. This is exactly what Dr. Jason Fung talks about. The standards of care for diabetes needs to change.

A doctor I worked with had given me some old books he had been collecting. Out of curiosity I went searching for “Diabetes” to see what was listed. I found it listed in The People’s Common Sense Medical Advisor by R.V. Pierce, MD, published in 1895.

Diabetes was treated as an illness that would flare up and be controlled and “cured”. Here is what I found:

Pretty amazing information they had in the 19th century. So what’s the difference between the medical advice between 1895 and 2014? What changed? The main difference I see here is medication. Insulin was created in the 1920s. With insulin, you could “treat” diabetes. But I don’t understand the logic of giving more insulin to someone who is already insulin resistant. Wouldn’t it just be better to take the glucose out of the diet? I am just so amazed at finding this. This is exactly what Dr. Jason Fung was talking about.