Jeff O’Connell relates his tale: his once-healthy and athletic father, now emaciated, amputated, and dying of diabetes-related complications in the hospital, his own diagnosis of reactive hypoglycemia, and what he’s doing to keep himself from suffering his father’s fate.
In February 2008, I arrive at a nursing home in the San Fernando Valley to visit the man in that photograph, a man I’ve neither seen nor spoken to in 20 years. Entering his room, I barely recognize the gaunt face. Where his right thigh should be sits a corduroy pant leg, gathered up and bobby-pinned. The spindly arm he extends to greet me is splotched with blood bursts. Once 6’3” and 215 pounds, he’s now a cadaverous-looking 145. The only cheerful note in the room is a balloon tied to the metal bed frame. His 73rd birthday was last week, apparently. It’s a detail I had long since forgotten.
And later in the article…
I wouldn’t be let off that easily, though. A week later I visited my own doctor, who had called me in to review blood work done several weeks earlier for a routine physical. He scanned my numbers and looked up. “Does diabetes run in your family?”
Bad medical news didn’t shock me. Both of my parents survived cancer, and my mother has epilepsy. But I write for Men’s Health. I’ve cowritten a book on sports nutrition. I’ve been the occasional butt of skinny-guy wisecracks in school. Diabetes? Isn’t that for grandmothers in wheelchairs?
The doctor slid the lab report in front of me and began explaining the jumble of numbers. One stood out: 116, which quantified the amount of glucose floating in my bloodstream after a 12-hour fast. Under 100 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl) is good; anything above 126 is diabetes. That meant I was well into prediabetes, a term sugarcoated in more ways than one, since most men eventually lose the prefix.
And he notes the absurdity of that infamous quack-pack, the ADA:
What’s more, the typical advice offered makes you wonder if Americans are being given an antidote against or a prescription for the disease. For example, everyone from my doctor to the American Diabetes Association (ADA) tells people with impaired blood sugar, or prediabetes, to make carbohydrate-rich foods such as breads and grains the foundation of their diets. This despite a growing body of evidence that points to carb reduction as the best anti-diabetes strategy. After all, there’s another term for people who are insulin resistant: glucose intolerant. Meaning they don’t respond well to carbohydrates. The higher the dose of carbs, the more problems those carbs cause.
This year, after decades of resistance, the ADA finally acknowledged low-carb dieting as a legitimate response to diabetes. Which goes to show that if you wait for a health organization to issue a position paper before attacking the disease, you may end up reading that paper from a hospital bed.
So what is Jeff O’Connell doing to successfully control his pre-diabetes? Low-carb. Specifically, Atkins.
Read The Deadly Truth About Diabetes: The Thin Man’s Diabetes.
