Rethinking Diabetes

What Science Reveals About Diet, Insulin, and Successful Treatments

By: Gary Taubes

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

An eye-opening investigation into the history of diabetes research and treatment by the award-winning journalist and best-selling author of Why We Get Fat • "[Gary] Taubes’s meticulous, science-based work makes him the Bryan Stevenson of nutrition, an early voice in the wilderness for an unorthodox view that is increasingly becoming accepted."—Neil Barsky, The Guardian

Before the discovery of insulin, diabetes was treated almost exclusively through diet, from subsistence on meat, to reliance on fats, to repeated fasting and near-starvation regimens. After two centuries of conflicting medical advice, most authorities today believe that those with diabetes can have the same dietary freedom enjoyed by the rest of us, leaving the job of controlling their disease to insulin therapy and other blood-sugar-lowering medications. Rather than embark on “futile” efforts to restrict sugar or carbohydrate intake, people with diabetes can lead a normal life, complete with the occasional ice-cream cake, side of fries, or soda.

These guiding principles, however, have been accompanied by an explosive rise in diabetes over the last fifty years, particularly among underserved populations. And the health of those with diabetes is expected to continue to deteriorate inexorably over time, with ever-increasing financial, physical, and psychological burdens. In Rethinking Diabetes, Gary Taubes explores the history underpinning the treatment of diabetes, types 1 and 2, elucidating how decades-old research that is rife with misconceptions has continued to influence the guidance physicians offer—at the expense of their patients’ long-term well-being.

The result of Taubes’s work is a reimagining of diabetes care that argues for a recentering of diet—particularly, fewer carbohydrates and more fat—over a reliance on insulin. Taubes argues critically and passionately that doctors and medical researchers should question the established wisdom that may have enabled the current epidemic of diabetes and obesity, and renew their focus on clinical trials to resolve controversies that are now a century in the making.

Outstanding

Gary Taubes has produced an excellent work of the medical history about diabetes, T1 and T2. Anyone with diabetes or who has a family member with diabetes should read/listen to this book.

Brilliant!

This extraordinarily well-researched and in depth t look at the history of diabetes research and treatment throughout the last century will teach you more than you will learn in medical school.
It should be required reading for every physician.
It is not light reading but will teach you everything you need to know to make sound judgments about how to eat for optical metabolic health.
A must read for anyone with diabetes or prediabetes.

Another fantastic book by Gary Taubes

This is an excellent and very comprehensive book about the unconventional treatment of diabetes. Hopefully more people will read this, and question the conventional approaches to the treatment of diabetes.

Dr. Peter Attia and HA1C test

I remember from an Attia podcase, maybe 4? years ago, where he has red blood cells that age more than 3 months. That gave him an HA1C reading close to being diabetic. With other tests he was fine. Attia said that the HA1C test will be replaced with something more valid, but the book did not comment on this.

Chapter 9 is a must read. I just finished the book and will be going back to chapter 9 as a start of reviewing parts of the book again. Excellent and eye-opening work about both how medicine can be shaped by who is in fashion, even if wrong, and how social media is a great equalizer for showing the truth about what works.

Thorough. Clear. Persuasive.

Taubes makes an excellent case simultaneously for: 1) a low-carbohydrate approach to diabetes care; and 2) real science that asks the hard questions.
I’m grateful for his research and his insights.