Are you aware of the startling fact that Americans with obesity, diabetes, heart/cardiovascular disease, and other diet-related diseases are about three times more possible to suffer severe outcomes from Covid-19 disease, including death?
Nina Teicholz, in her Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article (May 30-31, 2020), offers convincing research on a healthy low-carbohydrate diet to solve this problem. Teicholz states that “To combat this and future pandemics, we need to talk about not only the masks that go over our mouths but the food that goes into them.”
Teicholz warns us that while pills and surgery can treat symptoms of these diseases, diet-related issues should require diet-related solutions. The terrific news from one recent low-carb health study revealed that changes in diet started to reverse negative diabetes conditions in a matter of weeks. For this University of Indiana controlled Type 2 diabetes study using a very low-carbohydrate diet, 56% of 262 adults changed their diagnosis, with the help of a mobile app, in just 70 days. More than half of the study population has remained free from a diabetes diagnosis over the next two years. In 2018 and in 2019, tremendous improvements in diabetes 2 cholesterol (higher HDL) and blood pressure readings have been reported, as well, from the use of low-carb diets. The American Diabetes Association, as recently as 2018, acknowledged that the low-carbohydrate diet helped keep blood sugars greatly under control.
Other low-carb studies have produced substantially rapid improvement in cardiovascular risk factors, including hypertension (a major factor leading to a worsened corona virus outcome). A research study performed in 2011 and revealed in the journal, Obesity, saw blood pressures drop rapidly and remain low for years. In 2014, The National Institute of Health funded a one year trial that found a low-carb diet to be “more effective for weight loss and cardiovascular risk factor reduction” than a low-fat control diet.
To encourage healthier eating this month, an expert government committee will issue their Five Year Federal Guidelines Report. First published in 1980, the guidelines, however, have stood in the way of providing the viable low-carb diet now needed by the 60% of citizens with at least one of the above mentioned chronic diseases. The problem is that in 1990, when Congress ordered the federal guidelines to address the “general public,” most Americans did not have diet-related health problems. Our WSJ authoress explains the committee, then and now, called for a diet high in grains, with more than 50% of calories coming from carbohydrates. These same recommendations are used today in school programs, and by the poor, the military, and the elderly. The high grain diet is promoted, often, by doctors and dietitians to their patients/clients.
Teicholz explains, “One reason that the committee missed these multiple (low-carb) studies is that it decided to exclude all trials on weight loss, even though two-thirds of Americans (today) are overweight or obese.”
To correct this situation, The National Academics of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) gave a warning in a 2017 Congress mandated report that “it will…be essential for the (dietary guidelines)…to include all Americans whose health can benefit by improving their diet…Without these changes, present and future dietary guidance will not be applicable to a large majority of the general population.” Even, our military, in a 2010 retired generals’ published report, have been named as “Too Fat to Fight.” Let’s hope that health organizations’ conversations and actions become numerous and successful in helping make U.S. citizens more fit to fight this and all future pandemics that might come our way.
