Doctor in the House: Episode 3 now on BBC iPlayer

graham64 wrote:

Dr Rangan Chatterjee 

The doctor spends time with the D'Arcy family in Shropshire. Mum and dad Dottie and Russ have a love of fast food and shock the doctor with a regular family meal. Dotti discovers she has type 2 diabetes, and Rangan's mission to correct her diet leads him to unravel the root cause of the family's relationship with food. Rangan discovers that Russ's firefighter career is more deskbound than active, so encourages a radical lifestyle change. The whole family's health is interlinked, and the doctor encourages them to transform their health by making simple lifestyle changes - involving every aspect from the moment they wake up to the way they sleep at night.
At the end of his intervention, the family undergo a series of tests to measure just how much impact the doctor's suggested lifestyle changes have had on their health, with incredible results.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06rdtx0/doctor-in-the-house-episode-3

Just catching up with this now

I commend Dr Rangan Chatterjee and the BBC for making this programme. I would even like it to be repeated every week until all diabetics and their professional medical , nursing and dietetic advisors become aware of the methods. Why? For the simple reason that we have been giving inadequate advice to many diabetics for years. If the old advice works for someone - great - but if it does not then a different approach is needed. Dr Chatterjee showed how to clear a kitchen of junk food and how to eat low carbohydrate food for better diabetic control. It is what I and several colleagues have been doing for 18 months. You cannot do it in 10 minutes but thankfully you can do it in Primary Care if your whole team is on board. Dr David Unwin is another GP who works like this and he is 2 years ahead of me in terms of experience.

I would like all readers of these letters to ask themselves if our weight management and diabetes management are actually working for the person in front of us and if not, to try a different approach. I have seen patients follow a low carbohydrate eating plan for 1 week and halve their insulin with lower blood sugars than before, as well as eczema being cured by changing from a diet of junk food to real food. It can be done. We need to know what to advise people and trust that they will be interested and give it a go.

In Sweden they have www.dietdoctor.com, a free site which methods are followed by 20% of the population. I refer to that site and www.lowcarbdiabetic.co.uk. In my experience some people just go away and do these new ways of living. The others need more support and to do that we need to get our whole team on board. Dr Chatterjee showed what can be done . We now need to think of how we can transfer the ideas to our patients via our primary care teams and public health departments, as well as the media including social media.

http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h6325/rapid-responses