In 1990, Dr. Diana Schwarzbein, M.D. joined a famous diabetic clinic in Santa Barbara, California. She found that the diabetics at this clinic were struggling to keep their blood sugar down and complained that they were often accused of cheating when they were not. She suspected that the FDA diet wasn’t having the desired results with her patients. “After listening to their stories I thought, My God, we are making diabetics worse!” she later wrote in her book, The Schwarzbein Principle.

Making Changes

Dr. Schwarzbein asked her patients to modify the clinic’s dietary recommendations slightly (still in keeping with FDA guidelines), and kept meticulous records of her findings. She found that the more her patients cut their carbohydrate intake, and the more oils and fats they ate, the lower their blood sugar fell and the better they felt. Many of her patients reported feeling better than they had in years, and they lost weight in the bargain!

This research contributes to much new thinking in the dietary world regarding the treatment of diabetes and obesity. Specialists are just beginning to discover that the FDA diet will actually prevent you from controlling your diabetes. You will have to relearn and rethink what you know about your diet if you want your diabetes under control and help with all the other health problems you have, including heart disease and obesity.

With recent strides in the understanding of the mechanisms of insulin in the body, the outlook has never been brighter. If you find this strange and new (or very old), remember that in the words of Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D., "It takes approximately 40 years for innovative thought to be incorporated into mainstream thought." I’d say this is one area where you’d want to be ahead of the pack.

Amid all the controversy, preliminary research findings at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, have confirmed that the Atkins diet can lead to significant and sustained weight loss—in addition to lowering triglyceride levels, both of which will be beneficial to diabetics.

The Trouble With Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates put a tremendous amount of strain on the body’s ability to keep blood sugars low. In an attempt to right the situation, any carbohydrates not used for energy will be converted to fat and stored. To make matters worse, if quality fats and proteins are lacking, the body will be forced to break down body tissue—particularly muscle tissue and bone marrow—to meet supply needs for vital bodily functions. As the body makes vital hormones from the fats and proteins you eat, a low fat/low protein diet could possibly also lead to hormone imbalances and osteoporosis. Ironically, no matter how much nutrition you are lacking, you’ll still be gaining weight.

Another way in which FDA guidelines—for diabetics and others—can affect your health is that when you choose low-fat alternatives (any commercial cooking oil, margarine and butter alternatives), you are choosing oils that have been very highly processed, and which have a high level of trans fatty acids that cause abnormal cells called free radicals to be formed in the body.

Free radicals cause cellular aging in the body and are responsible for most of the visible signs of human aging as well as contributing to the onset of many diseases including diabetes. For more information on this aspect of diet, go to