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Originally posted by G-Mom
Insulin wasn't discovered until the early 1920s. Before that diet was the only real option for the management of diabetes. Yes, there were herbal home remedies that have blood sugar lowering properties, but by far, diet was the way to manage the disease.
There were several diets. However the one that became the standard was the diet by Elliot Joslin, MD (yes, the doctor for whom the Joslin Centers are named). His diet was a 100 gram carbohydrate (or less depending on the degree of severity of the diabetes) per day. His diet decreased the diabetic death rate from 27% to 4% at Massachusetts General Hospital between the years of 1913 and 1919.
Joslin's attitude towards insulin was that it (insulin) would allow diabetics a greater variety in their diet, but the controlled carb diet was still the mainstay of management. So what happened?
2 Things (well 3 if you subscribe to my boss's ideas...)
1. Insulin became more readily available. It was still expensive because in the early years it had to be purified from pig pancreas, but it was alot more available. Today, insulin is synthetic (no pigs are harmed in the synthesis now).
2. There were preliminary studies done in the 1940s and 1950s that showed fiber had little effect on blood sugar. (If you look through the articles Atkins has in his book about fiber and blood sugar, the reference other studies, that reference studies dating to the 40s and 50s).
So....if insulin can control blood sugar, then a diabetic can eat a piece of white bread, right? Because if the white bread raises their blood sugar too high, the insulin can keep it within normal limits. Also, if fiber doesn't have much of an effect on blood sugar, then a diabetic can eat something like a banana (which Joslin in his books said diabetics should avoid unless they can tolerate the amount of sugar in the banana), right? Okay so if a diabetic can eat white bread and bananas because of insulin and fiber, then a diabetic can eat banana bread or banana cake, right? See the line of thought at work here.
Therefore, the focus of diabetic management shifted from controlling diabetes/blood sugar levels primarily with diet and secondarily with medications (if they are needed at all) to controlling it primarily by medications and "oh yeah, diet isn't a bad idea too (but be sure you take your medications)". Which leads to my boss's idea that the pharmaceutical companies won't profit from a diabetic if their diabetes can be controlled by diet alone or by diet and a reduced dosage of the medications....
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