SA faces diabetes tsunami – Noakes

WITHIN 10 years South Africa would face a “diabetes tsunami” if the bulk of the population continued to consume a high-carbohydrate diet, says UCT professor Tim Noakes.

And the Department of Health estimates that 40 percent of South Africans are unaware they have diabetes or are at risk of developing diabetes.

Noakes believes the single most important health condition South Africa faces is insulin resistance, which he says is getting worse as people eat more carbohydrates.

Speaking at the launch of his new book on child nutrition, Raising

Superheroes, Noakes said he had once promoted a highcarbohydrate, low-fat diet, which he had been taught at medical school was the healthy way to eat.

However, although it had been conventional medical wisdom for decades, there was no evidence a low-fat diet prevented heart disease, he said.

Noakes said patients with type 2 diabetes, who had changed to a lowcarbohydrate, high-fat diet, had managed to reverse the disease.

But these cases had been dismissed as anecdotal by the medical profession. “People don’t want to open their eyes.”

Noakes said he had been taught that type 2 diabetes was irreversible. One of the first studies the Noakes Foundation would undertake, once it had sufficient funding, was to show that diabetes was indeed reversible by adopting a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet.

Asked if the World Health Organisation (WHO) agreed that type 2 diabetes could be reversed through a lowcarbohydrate diet, Dr Gojka Roglic, of the department for the management of noncommunicable diseases, said the organisation had no official position on this treatment.

“However, the topic is increasingly taken up by researchers, with very interesting and seemingly promising results in newly diagnosed patients. Eventually, WHO will make a formal assessment of the evidence at one of the periodic updates of management guidance.

“In the meantime, we are following the growing body of research,” Roglic said.