Read The Obesity Code, by Dr. Jason Fung, MD.
From the foreword by Dr. Timothy Noakes, as published on the Noakes Foundation website:
Dr. Jason Fung is a physician specializing in the care of patients with kidney diseases. He practises his speciality in Toronto where his key responsibility is to oversee the complex management of patients with end stage kidney disease requiring renal (kidney) dialysis. …
In treating patients with end stage kidney disease, Dr. Fung learned two key lessons. First that T2DM is the single commonest cause of kidney failure. Second, that renal dialysis is, however sophisticated and even life-prolonging, in truth just treating the final symptoms of an underlying disease that has been present for 20, 30, 40 or perhaps even 50 years. Gradually it dawned on Dr. Fung that he was practising medicine exactly as he had been taught – treating reactively the symptoms of apparently complex diseases without first trying to understand or correct their root cause(s).
He realized that to make a difference to his patients, he would have to start by acknowledging a bitter truth: That our venerated profession is no longer interested in addressing the cause(s) of disease. Instead it wastes much of its time and many of its resources attempting to treat the symptoms of disease. His analogy is treating infection by focusing on the fever, whilst ignoring the infection causing the fever.
So he resolved that he was not about to waste his medical life treating symptoms. Instead, if he were to make a real difference to his patients (and his profession), he would need to understand the true causes of those conditions, for the treatment of which patients sought his (presumed) expertise. …
Dr. Fung’s novel contribution is his insight that treatment in T2DM focuses on the symptom of the disease – an elevated blood glucose concentration – rather than its root cause, insulin resistance. And the initial treatment for insulin resistance is to limit the carbohydrate intake. [U]nderstanding this simple biology explains why this disease may be reversible in some. And conversely why the modern treatment of T2DM, which does not limit the carbohydrate intake, worsens the outcome. …
In The Obesity Code Dr. Fung has produced perhaps the most important popular book yet published on this topic of obesity.
Its strengths are that it is based on an irrefutable biology, the evidence for which is carefully presented; it is written with the ease and confidence of a master communicator, in an accessible and well-reason[ed] sequence. So its consecutive chapters systematically develop, layer by layer, an evidence-based biological model of obesity that makes complete sense in its logical simplicity. It includes just enough science to convince the sceptical scientist, but not too much to confuse those without a background in biology. This in itself is a stunning achievement that few science writers ever achieve.
By the end of the book, the careful reader will understand exactly what has caused the obesity epidemic; why our attempts to prevent the obesity and diabetes epidemics were bound to fail and what, more importantly, are the quite simple steps that those with a weight problem need [to] do to reverse their obesity.
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Join us next month for a discussion of Waterlogged, by Dr. Timothy Noakes.
The Obesity Code