End the Pandemic With Fat, Fasting, Feasting!

Just three weeks! Experts advise to wear masks, social distance, maybe return to lock down and then the virus could vanish and pandemic end. Maybe so, but epidemiologists, politicians, and bloggers disagree. With new treatments announced almost daily, maybe cures will surface by August. But what will a treatment treat? Covid-19, the infection from coronavirus? Or something else?

Turns out people don’t get severely sick or die directly from the the coronavirus. Instead, for many it is their immune systems overreacting to Covid-19 that causes severe illness and sometimes death. Most at risk are those with chronic conditions resulting from metabolic syndrome (insulin resistance).

This study, COVID-19 and metabolic syndrome: could diet be the key?, discusses why only some get sick enough to be hospitalized, and looks at poor diets and misguided nutrition guidelines:

Hospitalisations were six times higher among patients with a reported underlying condition (45.4%) than those without reported underlying conditions (7.6%). Deaths were 12 times higher among patients with reported underlying conditions (19.5%) compared to those without reported underlying conditions (1.6%).2 Two-thirds of people in the UK who have fallen seriously ill with COVID-19 were overweight or obese and 99% of deaths in Italy have been in patients with pre-existing conditions, such as hypertension, diabetes and heart disease.

The most significant factor that determines blood glucose levels is the consumption of dietary carbohydrate, that is, refined carbs, starches and simple sugars. However, the official dietary recommendations of most Western countries advocate for a reduced (low) fat, high-carbohydrate diet, which can exacerbate hyperglycaemia. These dietary guidelines form the basis of menus in nursing homes and hospital wards where people with COVID-19 and pre-existing metabolic syndrome are undergoing recovery and respite.

For studies and articles on how the epidemic of obesity/diabetes/heart disease, now attributed to metabolic syndrome/insulin resistance, see the Nutrition Coalition website. Fifty years of misguided federal nutritional guidelines plus the processed food industry are blamed.

Recommended is this recent documentary Fat Fiction:

Additional Nutrition Videos
• David Unwin: Sugar is almost a metabolic poison for type 2 diabetes patients (Swiss Re Institute, December 11, 2017)

• Evidence in nutrition research: when should we change our minds? (Swiss Re Institute, June 12, 2020)

• John Ioannidis: The role of bias in nutritional research (Swiss Re Institute, June 20, 2018)

• Fiona Godlee: Panel discussion on “Low carb high fat diets: Public controversies and opportunities” (Swiss Re Institute, June 20, 2018)

• Watch ‘Mission: Reverse diabetes’ (trailer on Diet Doctor)

Debate continues over dietary guidelines and the sources of heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. Many mainstream nutritionist, doctors, and the public health establishment oppose or are skeptical of low-carb claims that most can safely lose weight and reverse diabetes in weeks by eating less carbohydrates (especially sugar and refined grains). Other researchers blame increased seed oils (vegetable oils) and/or fructose in the Standard American Diet (SAD).

Also, Vitamin D deficiency is a major problem. Many online articles and much research, including More evidence on vitamin D deficiency and death rates from COVID-19, (News Medical, July 2, 2020).

John Mackey of Whole Foods Market advocates a plant-based diet and argues against consuming more animal fats. John Mackey and Nina Teicholz debated nutrition in the NYC Junto in 2015 (linked from this page).

Diet Doctor offers a review of How to reverse your type 2 diabetes with sections on What is diabetes? • About blood sugar • Food & diabetes • Improving blood sugar • Science of diabetes reversal • A message of hope.

So… is all this dietary debate and nutrition information relevant to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns? For the great majority of people the coronavirus is not much risk.

• A metabolic handbook for the COVID-19 pandemic (Nature Metabolism, June 30, 2929) reports:

early clinical data on COVID-19 have demonstrated that people with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and other metabolic conditions that compromise overall metabolic health have greater risk of developing a more severe infection course than people who are metabolically healthy before acquiring the infection11.

• Trends in the Prevalence of Metabolic Syndrome in the United States, 2011-2016 (JAMA Network Research Letter, June 23/30, 2020, gated) referenced from: Metabolic syndrome increasing among millennials at ‘alarming’ rate (PhillyVoice, June 24, 2020)

People with metabolic syndrome also may be at greater risk of having severe complications from COVID-19. Recent data published in Diabetes Metabolic Syndrome suggest metabolic syndrome and diabetes play a role in the development of more severe complications.

The study, published as a letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association, included a nationally representative group of more than 17,000 volunteers.

• The Story of Covid-19 (Clueless Doctors and Scientists,May 25, 2020) has helpful overview and links.

• A medical/nutrition site critical of low-carb diets has this helpful post: Modifiable Risk Factors and Comorbidities for Severe COVID-19 Infection (NutritionFacts.org, June 24, 2020)

• Citizen researchers: fighting for truth about treatments (HealthInsightUK, September 12, 2019):

…They are a vital part of the emerging grassroots movement to encourage people to take more responsibility for their health, rather than relying on the official advice which is often aligned with the vested interests of the big food and big pharma. 

It’s no longer such a surprise to discover the official advice you have been following for years to deal with disorders such as diabetes – eat more carbs – or to fend off the likes of heart disease – take statins – is strongly disputed. Furious tweets from people who have just discovered this are common. Reform is badly needed.

Not only what to eat, but when…
Many, many additional studies and journal article document the higher risk of those with metabolic syndrome to infections including Covid-19. But few make clear, in referring to obesity, diabetes and heart disease, the strong nutritional connection. The causal connection is not from people just eating too much then becoming obese and diabetic. It is the other way around. People with insulin resistance (I call it the “distant metabolic gift” in earlier post), experience deeper hunger and cravings because their metabolism is misbehaving, in response the sugars, seed oils, and refined carbohydrates in the SAD. Plus government nutritional guidelines (and shifting cultural norms), are for lots of meals and snacks each day. It used to be families with finish dinner at six or seven and fast until morning time to breakfast.

Jay Richards, reviews and masks the case for a more mindful diet this essay, One Person’s Journey to a Fasting Lifestyle: Week One (Discovery Institute, November 21, 2019)

My book [Eat, Fast, Feast, see below] ties together the spiritual and physical benefits of fasting. In particular, it takes account of what we’ve learned about the human metabolism in the last few decades. Behind all this is my conviction that our spiritual weakness is, in part, the result of abandoning this profound spiritual practice.

The Basic Argument
On the biological side, my argument is (pretty) simple: The standard American diet — with frequent grazing and loads of sugar and refined carbs — makes fasting far harder than it should be. That’s because God designed our bodies to switch between two metabolic modes: sugar-burning (which uses carbs) and fat-burning (which uses fat). Our diet keeps us locked into the first mode. The result is that our bodies tend to be bad at using fat for fuel — whether from our diet or our thighs. And this, in turn, makes it really hard to fast. (It also tends to make us fat and unhealthy.)

At Amazon: Eat, Fast, Feast: Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul―A Christian Guide to Fasting

A friend on Facebook commented: “The problem is this solution is too hard on an individual and takes too long. We would rather have a pill and eat however we want.” Most people won’t make the effort. My reply was to counter that the low-carb diet is less hard: butter, whole milk/yoghurt, bacon, or, on the plant side, avocado, coconut oil, chocolate. Lots of really tasty foods and less bland sugary over-processed low-fat cookies and other snacks. Turns out it is a joy, and a long Christian tradition to eat better and less often.