Discovering low-carb as a new ‘tool-in-the-box’—interview excerpts
| Reference No | Interview excerpt |
| 1.01 | [The patient] came back to see me having gone from an HbA1c of like 90-something, down to 33 I think. And I was like ‘oh wow, well done’, and he gave me Michael Mosley’s book. And that triggered kind of a really obvious connection between food and blood sugar that I hadn’t, embarrassingly [considered]. It’s just so overlooked, isn’t it? (PN03) |
| 1.02 | I was a lot bigger [12 years ago]. I was about 20 stone then, so I started low-carb […] and lost loads of weight. And I had polycystic ovaries and insulin resistance, and I did it for that reason as well. (PN16) |
| 1.03 | I spent two years just reading as much as I could, going to conferences, listening to podcasts. So just immersing myself. It was the most exciting thing I’ve ever done in my career. (GP17) |
| 1.04 | I’ve been diabetic lead for the practice for 18 years. I pushed [patients to manage their conditions] but I watched them get worse, I watched 200 diabetics become 400 diabetics, and I didn’t do a single thing that made a difference. I didn’t reverse a single case of diabetes. Low-fat doesn’t work, full stop. (GP14) |
| 1.05 | Before I came to this, I’d been doing the diabetes clinics for three or four years, and it was all about drugs, and I wasn’t that excited about diabetes. […] When patients would ask me ‘what shall I eat, doctor?’, I’d sort of avoid the conversations, because I didn’t have a good answer, apart from ‘everything in moderation’. (GP17) |
| 1.06 | It blew me away, because all the science is there, all of the biochemistry about sugar and how it leads to fat storage everywhere. (GP04) |
| 1.07 | Before this, I thought there was no way grossly fat people could become slim again. I thought there was no hope, it never worked unless they got their stomach stapled, and even those got fat again. And I also thought there’s no way they can come off all their medication when they’ve been on insulin and so on. [But] you know, people who do this can come off all their medication. (GP12) |
| 1.08 | I had another patient who is diabetic, or not diabetic anymore—she’s in remission. She had non-fatty liver disease as well, and arthritis in her knees. She went for a scan, and [her liver’s] completely clear. And the doctor actually said ‘this is not possible!’ She was like ‘yeah, I’ve done it through diet’. So she’s got no fatty-liver anymore, her arthritis has gone in her knees, and her diabetes is in remission. So, and that’s just through food—it’s amazing. (PN15) |
| 1.09 | My [GP] partner and I have found that this is a completely and utterly joyful way of doing medicine. We used to joke about our exit plan. […] We now tell people how liberating it is to practice medicine like this. You’ve got people coming into your room saying ‘I can’t lose weight’, that’s a heart-sink, ‘I’ve got chronic pain, irritable bowel, I’ve got reflux, diabetes I can’t control’. Now all of a sudden we have this magnificent tool in the box. It’s completely changed our lives as practitioners. (GP02) |