PCRM’s DVD: A New Approach to Nutrition for Diabetes
I recently watched a DVD from Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM): A New Approach to Nutrition for Diabetes. I would suggest recommending it to anyone you know who has type II diabetes and is eating a mainstream diabetes diet.
The DVD is based on a clinical study PCRM did in which they had good success in treating people with type II diabetes. The thrust of the DVD is that people with type II diabetes can stop counting carbohydrates and calories while at the same time becoming healthier by eating a primarily whole foods vegan diet.
I was happy to see that they strongly emphasized the need to take vitamin B12 if you are on a vegan diet.
I have two suggestions for the DVD.
First, I think they should recommend eating some nuts, at least an ounce a day. Nuts have been shown to have positive effects for type II diabetes, as well as for heart disease and weight loss which are two big concerns for most people with type II.
Second, they recommend avoiding foods with a high glycemic index, but I wish they had made a distinction between glycemic index (how fast a food causes your blood sugar to rise) and glycemic load (how much sugar is absorbed into your blood). In some cases, such as with a carrot, a healthy food without much sugar can have a high glycemic index but a low glycemic load (more info on that here).
But these are minor points in what is overall a very good DVD that could be of great benefit to people with type II diabetes.
September 10th, 2009 at 4:30 am
So much of the information (including the PCRM) on type 2 diabetes is directed at people who need to lose weight – my husband has just been found to have high blood sugar levels, and has been handed a diet sheet which, in addition to being omnivore, caters for 1000 calories a day! He’s not remotely overweight. A friend of ours has just had the same finding, and has started his new diet (he’s an omnivore) – he was stick thin before and now looks positively undernourished – plus, as you say, no-one seems to want to know about nuts…..all too complicated. The British Diabetis Association website gives completely different spins to all the others……..what to do, what to do – there are no vegan doctors in Barcelona, let alone diabetes specialists! Plus it’s hard not to get an odd impression from the PCRM stuff – how disinterested are they?
March 14th, 2010 at 9:20 am
I’m watching PBS with Dr. Barnard’s “new approach…”. Interesting. I lived in California for 30 yrs and was predominately vegan (easy to find good foods there). I was healthy. In 95 I moved to Florida to take care of my parents. For the last 6 years I have been cooking and eating with my mother and have shifted my diet to animal protien, mostly chicken…can’t get her to look at beans, I hate it and feel sick a lot now. I now have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, high sugar, extremely overweight. After watching this show, I am going to switch what I eat separate of cooking for my mom back to plant and vegetable based and see what happens. I must add that trying to buy any decent fruits and veggies here in Florida is terrible. Everything is shipped in and is in horrible condition and very expensive. This makes switching to more vegan diet difficult also. Most vegan recipes call for ingredients that I can’t find here.
While eating predominately vegan, I was diagnosed via blood test as B12 deficient to a point to where I give myself B12 shots every other week to keep it normal and am told I will have to do this the rest of my life. No amount of supplement would help this.
March 27th, 2012 at 6:40 am
Hello and thanks for the comments. However, when I went to look at your info on the glycemic load, it isn’t there. I am interested in that info. Thanks. Please see your comment below.
In some cases, such as with a carrot, a healthy food without much sugar can have a high glycemic index but a low glycemic load. (More info on that here.)
March 27th, 2012 at 8:13 am
Jane,
I updated the link.