Real food is medicine! We have been helping our patients improve their health and optimize their weight with prescribed lifestyle change. We redefine healthy nutrition and teach patients about the relationship between unhealthy refined and processed foods and chronic illness. The science of carbohydrate and fat metabolism, insulin resistance, inflammation and chronic metabolic disease is revealing.
Dietary carbohydrates are the optional fuel and most people consume too much. Natural dietary fats were never unhealthy. Teaching patients how to make better food choices based on the carbohydrate content controls hunger, promotes weight loss and improves health.
Dr. Gerber has years of experience treating patients using carbohydrate restriction with Ketogenic, low-carb high-fat (LCHF), Ancestral, Paleolithic and Primal diets as primary interventions. He maintains a database following patients weight, cardio-metabolic markers, and other health parameters, demonstrating the benefits of carbohydrate restricted diets. The PURE study, Meta-analysis here, here, here and critical reviews here, here and here demonstrate the benefits of carbohydrate restricted diets. Here is a comprehensive list of low-carb studies. We hope to see more research looking at nutrition and the long-term effect on health.
Nutrition and its effects on health have always been areas of interest. Obesity and overweight are truly the resultant symptoms of chronic metabolic disease, ultimately caused by the many inflammatory foods in our diet. Blaming behavior (that we eat too much and exercise too little) for Why We Get Fat is a short-sighted explanation, especially when considering our present day understanding of metabolism.
The federal dietary guidelines (once described as a “vast nutritional experiment”), now decades old, still advise replacing saturated fat with often highly refined and processed carbohydrates, sugars, grains, and polyunsaturated vegetable oils. During those years we saw a steep rise in the occurrence of chronic disease including obesity, exactly the opposite of what was expected. Meta-analyses and re-evaluation of the data looking at decades of research show that replacing saturated fat with the aforementioned foods have no favorable effect.
The “nutritional experiment” has been a complete failure as saturated fat alone was never the problem. Read more about food politics, John Yudkin and The Sugar Conspiracy. Read more about food industry’s influence: Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research.
Obesity rates have doubled in adults and tripled in children and adolescents since the official USDA dietary guidelines for Americans were released in 1980. We are one of the heaviest countries in the world. Presently two-thirds of adults are overweight and or obese and one-third of children and adolescents are overweight and or obese. Although Colorado remains the thinnest state in the country overweight and obesity remain significant health issues.
Within our lifetimes we are witnessing these epidemics for which we can only blame a shift in nutrition over the past century. The production and sale of manufactured and industrial food has steered us away from consuming whole, unprocessed and nutrient dense foods. Consumption of sugars, high fructose corn syrup, grains such as corn, wheat and rice, starchy vegetables, legumes and industrial vegetable oils are to blame. Profitable to the food manufactures these refined and processed foods, containing mostly carbohydrates and or manufactured oils, wreak havoc on metabolism, health and make us hungrier.
The science of insulin resistance (a condition now afflicting more than half our population) helps us to understand the epidemics of overweight, obesity and type II diabetes in our country. Fueled by dietary carbohydrates, insulin resistance promotes inflammation and leads to many other chronic diseases, including the metabolic syndrome, lipid and cholesterol disorders, hypertension, atherosclerosis, heart attack, stroke, premature aging, cancer, dementia, depression, liver disease, gastrointestinal disorders, leaky gut, adrenal fatigue, thyroid disease, arthritis, impotence, PCOS and infertility, just to name a few.
We know that early civilizations and primal man were healthy and ate much differently, a diet based on whole and unprocessed foods such as animals including fish, seasonal nuts, roots, vegetables, fruits and natural fats. Ancestral Health teaches us about the relationship between whole foods and wellness throughout the ages.
Dr. Gerber speaks frequently about these important issues to patients, the community and other healthcare professionals.
