30.6.11

More fat less carb is best - recent Studies

That Paleo Guy: Low Carbohydrate Diet Review: Shifting the Paradigm

Extract:
"For those of us who have been on board with, and operating under this paradigm for some time now, there is really nothing new at all in this review. However, it does provide a good summary of all of the common issues and concerns around low-carbing, particular those that are often put forward by clinician's themselves. There is the nod, in this review, to the fact that these clinicians are clinging to a wisdom and practise that is protective of their own beliefs and biases rather than focused on the patient. As suggest by the authors, you can advocate all the low glycaemic index breads you like as a way to manage diabetes, for example, but the glucometer doesn't lie.

Is this a game changer? Doubt it. As I mentioned in my introduction, I have had health professionals tell me that they would only consider a change in clinical approach if I could provide a solid meta-analysis or Cochrane review (obviously thinking I couldn't). When such evidence is produced, it still isn't enough and other reasons as to why 'the science' is wrong come to the fore (clinical best practise seems to be a matter of faith rather than physiology and commonsense). However, there will be those clinicians who have perhaps been sitting on the fence with this paradigm and who just haven't had the time to do an in-depth review around all the common issues. This paper is for them, and may just be enough to knock them off the fence and onto the low carb side. More importantly, this paper, with its ease of reading, is for the patient. There isn't a lot in here that would bog a patient down, and for clinicians wanting to take their patient down the low carb pathway (maybe by applying paleo principles), this could be the ideal review to pass on to their patient to give them confidence in that pathway.

This review isn't going to create a seismic shift in paradigm, but it is certainly building pressure and rumbling in the right direction."