Dr Richard K. Bernstein - Type One Diabetic

Born in 1934, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1946. He had a poor quality of life for the next 20 years, but he trained as an engineer and he married a medical doctor, and had a family.

Because his wife was a doctor, he was able to buy an instrument to test his own blood glucose levels. He began to do this 5 times a day, later 8 times a day. He kept records of the food he ate.

Fine tuning his diet he was able by experimentation to get his blood sugars fairly close to constant, and only use 15% of the insulin previously used.

His health improved, he put on weight, he used his careful records to write a paper for a medical Journal, in 1973. The New England Journal of Medicine turned him away, and so did all the others. They questioned his expertise.

In 1977 he decided to enter medical school, graduating in 1983.

He continued to improve his management of diabetes with is own patients for the next 20 years. He wrote “Diabetes Type II: Living a Long, Healthy Life Through Blood Sugar Normalization ” (1990)

Type 1 diabetics have a life expectancy of about 70. Bernstein is 82. He's still working, he's not obese, he still has his eyesight and his limbs intact. He has to be doing something right.

He recommended a very low carbohydrate diet, to allow much tighter blood sugar control; 12gm of carbohydrate per meal.

He is a fellow of the American College of Nutrition, the American College of Endocrinology and The College of Certified Wound Specialists.

Dr Bernstein openly challenged the Dietary Recommendations of the American Diabetes Association.

They disapproved of him, but even in the USA, they have not taken the option of mounting a legal case against him. He was still a registered doctor, and he conducts monthly "Ask Dr. Bernstein" Teleseminars, about the treatment of diabetes.

Dr Bernstein says that the ADA, originally adopted the low fat diet, on a recommendation from the US Department of Agriculture, "that fats in the diet caused heart disease."

If you avoid fats you are forced to eat carbohydrates. The ADA found that there were many producers of carbohydrate foods willing to sponsor the ADA's activities.

That trapped them in a difficult situation when new current science showed that it's the carbohydrate that's damaging, and that fats, and particularly saturated fats are good for you.

The ADA is still telling people to eat carbohydrate, but much less than previously recommended. They say that "some people" may do better on much less carbohydrate.

If you look at the recipes the ADA promote they are still chock full of the sponsors products.