The doctor and diabetes diet controversy (Part 2)
An experiment of one
Not all animals are human, but all humans are animals. Richard Bernstein hoped that what was true of other animals might be true of human animals as well.
What he had found to be true of other animals through his search of the medical literature was that diabetic complications had been repeatedly prevented and even reversed in animals by normalizing blood sugar. The medical consensus at the time was that it is impossible to normalize human blood sugar. Bernstein set out to prove this medical opinion wrong.
As a human animal, he became the subject of his own experiment. He had the hypothesis – that blood sugar can be normalized in human beings. He had the tool to measure that blood sugar – a new blood sugar meter that he was the first patient to own. He had the human being to use it on – himself, a type 1 diabetic.
He spent a year checking his blood sugar five to eight times each day. He learned he could tolerate very few carbohydrates, and that if he kept his carbohydrate intake low, it was possible to keep his blood sugar steadily in the 80s and 90s, the range of a healthy non-diabetic. Within a year, he had refined his insulin and diet regimen to the point where he had essentially normal blood sugars around the clock.
The results
Almost overnight he was no longer tired. His gray complexion was gone. And like the animals in the experiments he had read about, with the normalization of his blood sugars, his complications started to reverse.
After years of sky-high readings, his triglyceride and cholesterol levels dropped to the low end of the normal ranges. He was at last able to build muscle and was no longer a 115-pound weakling. His insulin requirements dropped to about one-third of what they had been a year earlier. With the subsequent development of human insulin, his dosage dropped to less than one-sixth of the original. His digestive problems (chronic heartburn and belching after meals) vanished. The protein in his urine that had so worried him vanished; his kidney function tests were all normal. The macular edema reversed. He was finally the master of his own metabolic state; he was the boss of his body and no longer its victim. He had done what medicine believed to be impossible.
If you can’t beat’m, join’m
He felt obliged to share his newfound knowledge. Millions of other diabetics were probably suffering needlessly, as he had been. So he wrote an article detailing his discoveries. He submitted it and its revisions to many medical journals over a period of years. What he learned from the rejection letters is that people tend to ignore the obvious if it conflicts with the orthodoxy of their early training. Not having had that orthodox training had been an advantage to him in making his discoveries: he hadn’t believed in their impossibility. But not having had that orthodox training was a disadvantage in making those discoveries known. With an M.D. after his name, his writing might be published. So he decided to give up his job as an engineer and become a physician. In 1979 at the age of 45, he entered medical school.
The first edition of his book, “Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution; A Complete Guide to Achieving Normal Blood Sugars,” was published in 1997; the second, in 2003. His book and his diet were the subjects of an article in the July 14, 2003, issue of U. S. News and World Report, entitled “Diabetes Diet Wars.” Bernstein demonstrated in his life and in his book that it is possible for diabetics to keep their blood sugar in the normal range by means of a low carbohydrate diet and thereby to prevent diabetic complications.
What is this diet that has wrought such miraculous results? This question will be answered in next week’s column. The subject will be the specifics of Dr. Bernstein’s diet.
Mary Lou Williams, M. Ed., is a lecturer and writer in the field of nutrition. She welcomes inquiries. She can be reached at 267-6480.