‘Good food fights type 2 diabetes’ says North Bay pharmacist
By Kelly Anne Smith
NORTH BAY—With November being Diabetes Awareness Month, a Northern Ontario pharmacist wants you to know how to get healthy without drugs.
In Ontario, over four million people are affected by diabetes. Diabetes Canada says 80% of Indigenous Peoples are at risk, comparing with Canadians who are 50% at risk.
A 2016 Canadian Diabetes Association report on Ontario states that Indigenous Peoples face multiple barriers in the prevention and management of diabetes, “such as food insecurity, high food prices, high prevalence of risk factors that contribute to type 2 diabetes, poor access to programs and services, lack of proper infrastructure and a wide range of poor social determinants of health such as low income, low education, and inadequate housing.”
Erin Pitkethly wants to help you check out your own level of risk for diabetes and get medical direction on making healthy choices. Pitkethly is a nutritionist/pharmacist that offers a personalized medical low carb program at Robinsong Health.
As a pharmacist for 20 years, Pitkethly saw firsthand the damage diabetes can do. She trained as a nutritionist and now is changing attitudes on diabetes from managing diabetes to focusing on stopping the disease.
Pitkethly says low-carb therapeutic nutrition is excellent for diabetes, weight loss, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), fibromyalgia and pain.
“It has now been accepted from the American Diabetes Association as a treatment for diabetes. They say it’s the only approach, nutrition wise, that works,” says Pitkethly.
Type 2 diabetes progresses when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin and if the body does not properly use the insulin it makes.
“All the other treatments that I’ve been offering for 20 years that I’ve been a pharmacist, are to delay the inevitable which is progression of diabetes. It just slows it down. Nothing else treats it, in the sense of reversing it and making it be better, whereas this approach does.”
Pitkethly advises caution with changing to a low-carb lifestyle.
“They have to be careful. If they make any changes, their blood sugar levels will change significantly very quickly. I’ve had people come off of insulin in two to three weeks. So that’s a very quick process for some people so they have to be really vigilant about their medication and do it with supervision. Work with your doctor, possibly your pharmacist or nurse practitioner.”
There are two main points to consider says Pitkethly.
“One is what you are eating, so how much carbs. And being cognizant of where they are, as in the complex carbohydrates and sweets.”
“We all know about sugary candies but things like yogurt, which we all think of as a healthy food, is loaded with sugar. Granola bars are loaded in sugar, too. A lot of people who are trying to be healthy are eating those.”
The pharmacist/nutritionist/personal trainer suggests, it’s not just what you eat. It’s also how often you eat. “Don’t eat six times a day. Every time you eat, you release insulin. Every time you release insulin, you increase your insulin resistance, if you are insulin resistant, which is what diabetes is.”
“Every time you eat anything with either protein or carbs, you’re releasing insulin. The more insulin releases you get during the day, the less time you have to resensitize to insulin.”
She says the opposite of insulin resistance is insulin sensitivity.
“We want people moving towards sensitivity, away from resistance. What’s on a normal diet that we have in North America, and if you are eating six times a day, you’re having six releases of insulin and almost no time with no insulin – so no time to resensitize. That’s why we are developing this insulin resistance.”
Pitkethly is pleased when people are happy with the changes. But she says people have also been frustrated that no one told them before about the low carb alternative to mainstream diabetes protocols.
“When you start eating low-carb, people think, ‘I’m going to be hungry’. They are hungry now. The reason they are eating six times a day is that they are hungry,” explains Pitkethly. “Definitely, low-carb people shouldn’t be hungry. When you are eating fewer carbs – insulin drives hunger – less insulin, less hunger. People, when they move to low carb, will often spontaneously stop eating one meal a day. They don’t even need the three meals. They certainly don’t need six.”
Pithkethly recommends watching the CBC documentary My Big Fat Diet, about a Métis doctor who lost weight with a traditional diet, and exploring virtahealth.com for further information. There is also a link to an informative article on traditional food nutrition called The Inuit Paradox, showing that at least half of the diet of a typical Nunavik Inuit’s is from fats from wild animals.