American Indians have highest diabetes rate, experts say: American Indians and Alaska Natives suffer from diabetes more than any ethnic group and the disease is increasingly affecting young Indians, government health experts told Congress. "In some communities, the prevalence rate is as high as 60 percent among adults," Charles Grim, the head of the Indian Health Service, told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee last Thursday. Grim said that agency statistics show that diabetes increased 128 percent among teens ages 15 to 19 between 1990 and 2004. The disease increased 77 percent among young people younger than 15 during the same time frame, he said. (The following fact was originally found reported in Diabetes In Controller Newsletter.)
If you spend a bit of time browsing at D-solve you will realize that I am a big proponent of a paleolithic diet. My two cents on the above situation is that Native American's were living a very natural diet of high fat with protein and a small amount of carbs up until Europeans showed up. For an interest read on this topic I have linked to the following write up: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: A Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects
Suffice it to say that I beleive Native American's probably have a superior set of "thrifty" genes that are well equipped to handle periods of starvation much better then genes from cultures that have little starvation in their recent past (although I beleive we all have loads of this trait in our distant past). This great trait becomes a weakness in today's modern society with mass doses of refined sugars unless they control their diets and ultimately keep them in line with their ancestors (which probably included bursts of intense physical activity with intermitent restful periods). All in all, I am not a doctor but it makes common sense to me (and various others I have linked to on my site here) that groups like these (as well as Aborigines of Australia and other recent converts to modern societies diets) ought to go back to their dietary roots of 70% fat (of all types of meat from all parts of the animal), 25% protein, and 5% carbs from rough greens predominantly with nuts and berries tossed in here and there as well.
Dr. Mike Eades of Protein Power has the following blog entry with this great commentary in line with what I beleive to be my own pragmatic and common sense deduction based observations--I especially love his quoting of Dr. Donaldson:
"Given the above facts, it’s pretty clear that early man ate a fair amount of meat. After all, it takes only a couple of 16 ounce fatty steaks to provide 3000 kcal, which is a whole lot easier to down than 3 gallons of blackberries. It would then stand to reason that as a species we would perform better on a meat, or at the very least, a higher protein, lower carb diet since that’s what we had to eat for a few million years. In one of my favorite quotes, Dr. Blake F. Donaldson, a crusty old physician from New York who wrote a book called Strong Medicine, says:
"During the millions of years that our ancestors lived by hunting, every weakling who could not maintain perfect health on fresh fat meat and water was bred out."
Well there you have it--my two cents. Eat fat (70%), eat protein (25%), and eat your greens (5%).
No comments:
Post a Comment