April 17, 2019
Carb watch and cooking classes in diabetes push
South Auckland’s Turuki Healthcare is telling some of its patients to cut down the carbs – if they have a body type that has a risk of diabetes.
GP Lily Fraser says patients who go on the low carbohydrate diet report progress in losing weight or managing their diabetes, as well as an increase in energy and mental health.
It’s not for everyone – it comes down to whether people are insulin sensitive, which means they can process food sugars, or insulin resistant.
"People often blame the person. They say you are fat or you have diabetes because you ate too much and you didn't exercise. We are flipping that around and saying this is about what your body does with food. One person may eat an apple and it gets burned off. Another person eats and apple and it gets turned into fat and stored. You need to understand where you are," Dr Fraser says.
Turuki runs support groups and cooking classes for the community to get the message out as widely as possible.
Meanwhile, Kidney Health New Zealand is describing a new drug as a real game changer for patients suffering from diabetic kidney disease.
Chief executive Carmel Gregan-Ford says trial results presented to a recent international conference in Melbourne show canagliflozin can reduce the incidence of kidney failure in patients with diabetes by a third.
Diabetes is one of the leading causes of chronic kidney disease in New Zealand, with almost half of all patients on dialysis having diabetes as their cause of kidney failure.
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