5 years ago when I first started experimenting with a low carb diet to control my blood sugars, it was a controversial idea. My doctor and my trainer at the ADA both argued against it, the ADA person quite vigorously. There’s a saying in diabetes management that you should learn to eat to your meter, and my meter was saying this was working great, so I ignored them. Ultimately I won over my physician – he could see how well this was working from my 3 month blood tests. The ADA rep never came around. Anyway I mention all this because the results of a Duke University study confirm what I already knew – this approach works best for controlling sugars.

Ironically, just as mainstream science seems to be catching up to where I was 5 years ago, it’s also starting to conclude that sugar management is not the highest priority, at least not later in life – cholesterol and blood pressure is where the focus should be. My reading of this is that for the medium term, I’m still good to go with my current strategy. I’ll confess though – I’m starting to think I need to cave in and begin taking a statin of some kind. My cholesterol numbers have never been good, despite trying a huge variety of things to balance them over the last 5 years. I’ve avoided statins because when they first put me on them I had huge pain issues, to the point where I was waking up in the middle of the night shouting in pain. Also statins have become like aspirin – physicians are prescribing them at the drop of the hat for a ever broadening definition of who needs them. This has left me feeling like big money pharma is what is pushing the statin use, not actual health issues. I don’t know where I’ll end up on this, my guess though is I’ll try some statin this year to see how things go.