About diabetic friendly supplemental drinks

On 04/05/2012 6:02 PM, Dogman wrote:
On Fri, 04 May 2012 17:44:47 -0300, James Warren
wrote:

[...]
The case for low-carb diets couldn't be more solid.

Yes it could actually. I would like to see it.

The Internet is a wonderful place!

And there was far more more evidence that Atkins was right than there
was that a low-fat diet was the way to go. Going back to Banting's
great book, "Letters on Corpulence," in the mid 19th century.

These days we require higher standards of evidence. The randomized
clinical trial is today's gold standard.

If it actually was, we wouldn't be in this mess. Ditto for the idea
that cholesterol causes CHD, or that diabetics should eat a high-carb,
low-fat diet.

These studies were correlational and, as I recall, not especially
well done. They did not consider the possibility that the truth could
be opposite to their expectations.

Of they did! But correlational or not, they're essentially today's
perceived conventional wisdom.

Very few studies today are especially well done, unfortunately.

[...]
You bet. And that's what a lot of us are trying to do regarding diet
and health.

Me too. But I would like to see strong evidence.

So would I. But I'm not going to risk my life waiting around for one.

I'm going to settle for what I consider to be the strongest case for
or against something.

That is reasonable and sensible. But good solid evidence is still desirable.
Why not remove as much doubt as possible?


[...]
It would be a difficult job to blame death from obesity on artificial
sweeteners.

Why? If it makes you want to eat more than you should, and you
eventually acquire diabetes or metabolic syndrome, and die of a stroke
or heart attack, why couldn't it be the root cause of your death?

Who is to say that artificial sweeteners are the cause?

As I said previously, there are scientific studies pointing to
artificial sweeteners as even more addictive than sugar, and that
cause people to overeat.

Look 'em up.

I'm partial to well controlled studies published in reputable journals.


I still have yet to see
a good study in a reputable journal showing harm in humans from expected
levels of consumption of aspartame.

Then drink up!

I drink 2-3 diet drinks per week and will continue to do so until I
see evidence of harm.

It's just a hunch, but I don't think any kind of evidence would be
good enough for you, because you're probably already addicted.

Addicted to what? Surely not artificial sweeteners.

Exactly. You can look that up, too.

Your claim. Show me the evidence.


Eat REAL food, and stay away from refined, processed, or artificial
foods.

You'll be glad you did.

Probably. But good evidence would be even more convincing.


Got any?

No!

I'm not making it any easier for the Grim Reaper than I have to.

I hope you are right.

I'm betting my life that I am.


I am too but I would like to see the issue resolved in a good scientific definitive
study.

On 04/05/2012 6:09 PM, Dogman wrote:
On Fri, 04 May 2012 17:47:52 -0300, James Warren
wrote:

On 5/4/2012 5:35 PM, Dogman wrote:
On Fri, 04 May 2012 17:03:54 -0300, James Warren
wrote:

[...]
Did he do that? Atkins himself didn't have a lot of evidence
did he? He had reasonable plausibility arguments but the evidence didn't
come until fairly recently.

The evidence has been there for hundreds, maybe even million of years.

The evidence was mainly of an anecdotal or correlational nature. The
randomized clinical trial is the modern gold standard in medicine.

Find me the randomized, double-blind clinical trial that proves that
statin drugs prevent heart attacks.

I could but not right now.

No, you couldn't. Take all the time you want.

[...]
I started eating low carb about a year ago. I lost 35 pounds
and dropped one of my meds since then and my BS is well controlled.
However, I am but a sample of one. I am an anecdote.

No, you are a clinical trial consisting of n=1. And it has obviously
worked for you. So it's not an anecdote.

Yes it is. A trial with n=1 has no statistical power.

It does to YOU! And you've proved it! You've lost 35 pounds, already
dropped one of your meds (and can probably drop them all eventually),
got your BS under control -- what the hell do you want?

A good study. It might all be due to something else I did that coincided
with the diet. Also, these beneficial effects might be offset by very bad
effects that I don't know about. A good study would go a long way to clearing
up these doubts.


I would like
to see a large clinical trial to sort out exactly what the benefits
and risks to low carb eating are. There is already fairly good
evidence from small studies that the benefits outweigh any harmful
effects, but the evidence is not yet strong enough to overthrow the
entrenched establishment.

Yet you still eat a low-carb diet!

What are you, some kind of quack?

No. The evidence is strong enough to give it a try but it is not
nearly as strong as I would like to see and not nearly strong enough
to influence the medical establishment.

Only $$$$ influences the medical establishment. That's why they have
so little interest in disease PREVENTION.

The $$$$ is in TREATMENT, not prevention.


I agree that the elephant is hard to move. But it will move if the evidence is
very strong. The more entrenched a bad idea is, the stronger the evidence against
it must be to create a change.

On 04/05/2012 6:11 PM, Doug Freyburger wrote:
Dogman wrote:
James wrote:
Dogman wrote:

What "strict evidence requirement" did he have to cause him to imply
that Dr. Robert Atkins was a quack?

Any doctor who defies the mainstream of the medical community is a
quack, at first whether they are right or wrong. Working within the
system is thus incremental. Atkins was right in many/most of his
stances but he was regularly labelled a quack because he defied the
mainstream of the medical community.

As a general rule defying mainstream medicine is a strong sign of
quackery. But sometimes it is not. That is when mistakes are made.


Don't I recall Mercola pushing a radical low fat vegan diet plan for a
lot of years? He's since come partially over the the light side of the
force but he sure took his time of it..

Dean Ornish pushed, and still pushes, such a diet.


Did he do that? Atkins himself didn't have a lot of evidence
did he? He had reasonable plausibility arguments but the evidence didn't
come until fairly recently.

Atkins used studies that came before the rush to push low fat. His
evidence was pretty good at the time. The original fat fast study, his
tables of long term results of prescribing low fat to heart patients and
so on.

The evidence has been there for hundreds, maybe even million of years.

Obesity is a relatively new phenomenon.

Actually an obesity rate of around 10% has been with us for centuries
maybe even millennia. Somewhere after the invention of argiculture 10K
plus years ago it was probably worse but selective evolutionary pressure
has been working on us ever since to make us okay with non-refined
grains as a part of our diet. The process never did run to completion
before the invention of refined grain and refined sugar other than
honey.

The difference is today's obesity rate is far over 10%. And the number
who are morbidly obese is vastly greater. Set your mental wayback
machine to 1970 and remember walking in the mall. People weighing 300+
pounds were so rare people stared at them. Hardly anyone not a viking
or amazon giant was that heavy and few of those were very fat. Now
at the mall it takes 400+ to draw stares. The folks 300+ pounds are so
common there's danger of walking into them because you're watching for
the bigger folks.

To this day, the American Diabetes Association recommends that
diabetics eat a high-carb/low-fat diet.

That's like telling alcoholics to drink more beer.

If any organization belongs on Quackwatch, it's the ADA.

Exactly.

On 04/05/2012 6:46 PM, Dogman wrote:
On Fri, 4 May 2012 21:11:43 +0000 (UTC), Doug Freyburger
wrote:

Dogman wrote:
James wrote:
Dogman wrote:

What "strict evidence requirement" did he have to cause him to imply
that Dr. Robert Atkins was a quack?

Any doctor who defies the mainstream of the medical community is a
quack, at first whether they are right or wrong.

That's pretty much true, Doug. And it applies to all of science, not
just the medical community.

Even so, the percentage of those who defy mainstream science, and turn out
to have been right, is very low. Defying the mainstream may be romantic but
is not a sure sign of correctness.


Which reminds me of an old saying, “The pioneers take the arrows, the
settlers take the land.”

[...]

On 04/05/2012 8:44 PM, Susan wrote:
x-no-arachive: yes

On 5/4/2012 3:07 PM, James Warren wrote:

I don't recall seeing Atkins on his list. Atkins was vindicated but
at the time he didn't have a lot of evidence for his ideas.

That's not so. It's been out there in the literature for many more years than Atkins was advocating LC.

Susan

There may have been evidence from many decades before but that evidence
was of a fairly low quality by the standards of the 70s and 80s.

On 04/05/2012 9:47 PM, Walter Bushell wrote:
In ,
James wrote:

On 5/4/2012 4:33 PM, Dogman wrote:
On Fri, 04 May 2012 16:09:05 -0300, James Warren
wrote:

On 5/4/2012 3:59 PM, Dogman wrote:
On Fri, 04 May 2012 15:33:44 -0300, James Warren
wrote:

[...]
He might well be overzealous and have strict evidence requirements
for claims. But isn't this a good thing?

What "strict evidence requirement" did he have to cause him to imply
that Dr. Robert Atkins was a quack?

Did he do that? Atkins himself didn't have a lot of evidence
did he? He had reasonable plausibility arguments but the evidence didn't
come until fairly recently.

The evidence has been there for hundreds, maybe even million of years.

The evidence was mainly of an anecdotal or correlational nature. The
randomized clinical trial is the modern gold standard in medicine.


Obesity is a relatively new phenomenon.

To this day, the American Diabetes Association recommends that
diabetics eat a high-carb/low-fat diet.

They do. It is what I was taught in diabetes school 18 years ago.


That's like telling alcoholics to drink more beer.

If any organization belongs on Quackwatch, it's the ADA.


Maybe someday they will be!

I started eating low carb about a year ago. I lost 35 pounds
and dropped one of my meds since then and my BS is well controlled.
However, I am but a sample of one. I am an anecdote. I would like
to see a large clinical trial to sort out exactly what the benefits
and risks to low carb eating are. There is already fairly good
evidence from small studies that the benefits outweigh any harmful
effects, but the evidence is not yet strong enough to overthrow the
entrenched establishment.

If the low carb diet has not been tested, then necessarily the high
carb diet has not been tested either, but the establishment has no
qualms about recommending this untested diet.


That is because it has not been definitively overthrown. A large clinical
trial could do that. There have been several small clinical trials that were
not especially well controlled that show that LC and Meditarian diets are better
than HC diets. But they are not good enough to be definitive.

On 04/05/2012 10:30 PM, Dogman wrote:
On Fri, 04 May 2012 22:15:31 -0300, James Warren
wrote:

[...]
I'm going to settle for what I consider to be the strongest case for
or against something.

That is reasonable and sensible. But good solid evidence is still desirable.
Why not remove as much doubt as possible?

Because it's usually not possible to remove all the doubt, that's why
I'm usually comfortable going with the *strongest* case (in my
opinion).

Of course, what may be the strongest case today may not be the
stongest case tomorrow, so I try to keep up with the literature.

I call this evidence based belief. I subscribe to that. But when the best
evidence is not as good as it could be, it is desirable to improve it
or submit it to a strenuous testing to clarify the matter.


[...]
As I said previously, there are scientific studies pointing to
artificial sweeteners as even more addictive than sugar, and that
cause people to overeat.

Look 'em up.

I'm partial to well controlled studies published in reputable journals.ies may

Me too, but what some of them consider to be well-controlled studies
may not be what I consider to be well-controlled studies.

You need to be critical for sure.


Peer review isn't what it used to be.

Can we do better?


See: "global warming"

[...]
Addicted to what? Surely not artificial sweeteners.

Exactly. You can look that up, too.

Your claim. Show me the evidence.

Google: artificial sweeteners and addiction.

No doubt I will get a lot of bull****. Since you made the claim how about
show me the good stuff.


Eat REAL food, and stay away from refined, processed, or artificial
foods.

You'll be glad you did.

Probably. But good evidence would be even more convincing.

Evidence that settles the unresolved issues and passes critical scrutiny.


Define "good."

Got any?

No!

I'm not making it any easier for the Grim Reaper than I have to.

I hope you are right.

I'm betting my life that I am.


I am too but I would like to see the issue resolved in a good scientific definitive
study.

I can't speak to how "good" the evidence must be to meet your high
standard, but if you'll google what I asked you to google, you'll find
enough "good" evidence for me.

Your mileage may vary.

And it is your life, not mine.

It is. Tat is why one should be very critical. A true claim with good evidence will survive even
the most withering of attacks.


--
Dogman

On 04/05/2012 10:35 PM, Dogman wrote:
On Fri, 04 May 2012 22:20:02 -0300, James Warren
wrote:

[...]
It does to YOU! And you've proved it! You've lost 35 pounds, already
dropped one of your meds (and can probably drop them all eventually),
got your BS under control -- what the hell do you want?

A good study.

You've got one. Yours.

Not good enough. I am just an anecdote.


It might all be due to something else I did that coincided
with the diet.

What else did you do?

I don't know.


Also, these beneficial effects might be offset by very bad
effects that I don't know about.

For example?

LC implies high fat. There might actually be long term bad effects from a
high fat diet. I have my doubt about this but I would rather have solid
scientific evidence.


A good study would go a long way to clearing
up these doubts.
[...]

It would probably only create more questions.

It usually does. So what do we do? Refuse to do studies?


There comes a point where you have to go with what makes the most
sense to YOU. Period.

I agree. But better information almost always leads to better more
informed decisions.


--
Dogman

On 04/05/2012 10:38 PM, Dogman wrote:
On Fri, 04 May 2012 22:26:46 -0300, James Warren
wrote:

[...]
As a general rule defying mainstream medicine is a strong sign of
quackery. But sometimes it is not. That is when mistakes are made.

If you truly believe that, compare the Physician's Desk Reference (the
standard of care) from, say, 1950 to the current one.

So Medicine has improved since 1950. That is to be expected. Going with the
best evidence in 1950 was the best bet for the time even if it subsequently
turned out to have been wrong. One can never use future knowledge today.
You can only do what looks best today.


Don't I recall Mercola pushing a radical low fat vegan diet plan for a
lot of years? He's since come partially over the the light side of the
force but he sure took his time of it..

Dean Ornish pushed, and still pushes, such a diet.

Yes, and he may have had a hand in the death of Steve Jobs.

How is one to know. Jobs died from cancer. How did Ornish affect the
outcome. Jobs refused surgery for fear of invasion of his body if I
read it correctly.



--
Dogman

On 04/05/2012 10:45 PM, Dogman wrote:
On Fri, 04 May 2012 22:29:23 -0300, James Warren
wrote:

[...]
Even so, the percentage of those who defy mainstream science, and turn out
to have been right, is very low.

Actually it's pretty high.

Actually it is pretty low.


That's what the scientific method is all about, in fact. Questioning
conventional wisdom. Trying to falsify a theory or hypothesis.

Correct. A good theory will survive attacks.


If a hypothesis can't be falsified, it's not a scientific hypothesis.
Correct.


When you hear scientists saying that there's a "consensus," it's a
clue that they aren't really scientists.

False. Scientist often are in majority agreement about their theories
exactly because they have been well tested and survived many
falsifying attempts. What else would you expect them to do in such a
case?



--
Dogman