By 74 weeks folks are not looking very well controlled. Certainly not compared to sustained LCHF. Now, if we crop it nicely we get:
Which makes low fat veganism look pretty good, just so long as you limit your study to 12 weeks.
How a bout a macrobiotic diet?
Very low fat, low protein, LOADS of fibre and complex grain based carbs.
Take some diabetics, measure some numbers, feed for three weeks by skilled macrobiotic cooks while teaching macrobiotic cookery, re test at twelve weeks after self preparing food at home for the last nine of those weeks.
Cured?
We don't get HbA1cs in this study but we have the fasting glucose levels, the 2h post prandial levels, the lipid levels and I quite like the blood pressure levels.
Everything improved when you have a real macrobiotic cook serving you. Do it yourself and by twelve weeks things are already starting to fall to pieces:
Two hour post prandial glucose levels are already rising by 3 months. Even Barnard's study preserved glycaemia for longer than this. You might expect triglycerides to be rising too. They are. If you could give a monkeys about cholesterol levels they too are deteriorating:
Blood pressures pre intervention 127/76, 3 weeks 113/69, 12 weeks, ohoh, 118/75.
Of course you could always claim that these folks weren't doing the macrobiotic diet correctly at home.
Me, I think they are metabolically broken and, even before they stop losing weight, they show their broken metabolism by their climbing post prandial (and fasting) glycaemia. By 74 weeks they will be worse off than Barnards failures.
There is no answer for diabetics other than LCHF.
Sometimes things come up in comments which are so good. As Johnny so kindly obliged the person who linked to the macrobiotic study in their request for comments:
"Yes I would like to comment. Please put your keyboard into a potato sack and throw it into the sewer"
Like.
Peter
BTW, if anyone can reconcile Fig 1 and the red line in Fig 2, congratulations!
