BamaBoy

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Fuquay Varina, North Carolina, United States
A guy finding out if life really does begin at 50.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Want to be Super Rich and Lose Weight?

As a type 2 diabetic, and one of the lucky ones that was told early, I've been able to manage my diabetes with diet and exercise. I test my blood each morning, but I don't have to take insulin. My 'sugar' is now normal. My A1C is 5.6 for the last two years, down from 6.5 at first. Granted I attended the 'Living with Diabetes' education, I lost 45 pounds by dieting, and started exercising. I still found this Men's Health article interesting. It talks about the obvious - that since carbohydrates raise blood sugar, then don't eat them. Eat a low carb, high fat and protein diet to 'cure' your diabetes. It does explain that the long term effect of a low carb diet is somewhat unknown. It also states that American Diabetes Association (ADA) worries more about heart disease since that is often the big killer of people with diabetes so the ADA is totally against a low carb high fat diet.
So why would the ADA (and the AHA) want you to go the low fat high carb route? Ask yourself why does anyone ever do anything? Money. It costs $2500 a year on average to 'manage' diabetes (I read that somewhere). 10 million Americans at $2500 each is a nice easy 25 BILLION dollar a year just for insulin, test strips, and syringes. Plus they’ve hit the jack pot "What once was 'adult-onset' diabetes -- a condition mostly of overweight, sedentary, middle-aged adults -- is now an epidemic in children under the age of 10." They used to just literally bleed us diabetics for the last 20+ years of our lives as they empty our pockets. With kids they have life long customers. They'll still be able to sell those kids supplies for 50 or 60 years.
I realize my conclusion seems over simple and sounds like a 'big business' conspiracy. But IF the ADA (and AHA) where truly interested in CURING diabetes and heart disease surely they would be objectively running long term studies to find out if a high fat diet low in carbs could help? The fact they are so strongly against it means they probably know something they don't want us to know. Like maybe it's TRUE! The LAST thing they want is to cure heart diseases and or diabetes. They'll be out of a job and will be tossing BILLIONS away. Your local health care professional will gladly prescribe insulin (shots or pills), syringes and test strips, along with pills for your blood pressure - all of which you will have to take the rest of your life. Yes they'll tell you to eat right and get more exercise too. And sadly most people won't or aren't able to follow that advice. So your local health care professional will be equally happy to cut off your foot, put in stints, let you be on kidney dialysis etc for the rest of you life. But they'll never consider telling you a high fat low carb diet might we worth a try. Worst they'll never prescribe a diet pill (amphetamine) because you could get addicted and have to take 'speed' the rest of your now much longer live - since you were able to increase your activity which helped you lose weigh on your high fat low carb diet.
What the ADA doesn't tell you is that a lot of people with diabetes still die of heart disease even with a 'low fat high carb diet'. Those who "Dodge early death and you could still end up impotent, blind, in kidney failure, or, most likely, minus a foot. (A gangrenous limb or digit is amputated every 6 minutes in the United States.)" Hummm. Die of Heart Disease (maybe) eating a high fat low carb diet or (maybe) die of a low fat high high carb diet. Or worse get not so lucky and avoid the early death of heart disease and you get die (poorer) slow death eating low fat foods. I've seen an uncle loose his foot, and a mother on kidney dialysis begging to just let her die. No thank you, I'll risk heart disease, and eat fat.
Oh. Almost forgot to tell you how to get rich. Invent a blood tester that does not use those $1 each test strips. Sell them for a few hundred bucks a piece. New customers are being born every day. Or if you can't do that just figure out how to make test strips for 2 cents each. The US only uses 50 MILLION test strips a day. You'll never have to work a day, or worry about producing them. Because you'll just call the ADA and tell them what you've done, and they'll make you an offer you can't refuse.

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