At this time of year the thoughts of most people turn to making resolutions to change. For people with diabetes these resolutions are often that we will lose weight in the year ahead. Almost all of us — myself included — put on a few pounds during the holiday season.

And now for our reading pleasure comes along The New Yorker in its January 5, 2009, issue. The issue’s best article is one by Amy Ozols who writes for the TV show “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.” We couldn’t do worse than to follow her nine-step program for “Looking Your Best.”
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Nobody ever compared whether a low-carb or a low-glycemic diet works better to control our blood glucose levels. Until now.

Both diets improved A1C levels and helped participants in a 24-week study to lose weight. But the low-carb group did a lot better.

Five doctors at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, just reported their results in the journal Nutrition & Metabolism. Led by Eric Westman, M.D., the study, “Effect of a low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diet versus a low-glycemic index diet on glycemic control in type 2 diabetes mellitus,” appeared on December 19.
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Dr. Richard K. Bernstein knows how to cure diabetes, and researchers are ready to start the research. All they need is money. Does anyone have enough money and care enough about curing diabetes to fund this research? Do you?

Even if you have type 1 diabetes, you almost certainly still have some of your beta cells. If your body stops killing them, they will replicate and produce insulin — and then you will possibly have a cure.

When I talked with Dr. Bernstein a few days ago, he told me that he knows how kill the specific killer T cells. Most famous as the leading proponent of a very low-carb diet, Dr. Bernstein is a diabetologist with a practice near New York City. He was also an engineer before he got in M.D. degree in his 40s.
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Ever since 1995, when the first international tables of glycemic index appeared in print and on my website, they have been the gold standard for determining the glycemic index of as many foods as researchers had tested at that point.

Now, in the third revision of the international tables you can find the glycemic indexes of many more foods.

The 1995 tables listed the glycemic indexes of 565 foods from 79 studies in the professional literature from around the world. Professor Jennie Brand-Miller, PhD, of the school of microbial biosciences at Australia’s University of Sydney was the lead author of those and subsequent updates of those tables.
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About 10 years ago I proposed to a website that I was writing for that we run articles pro and con on the value of low-carb diets for people with diabetes. I suggested that Dr. Richard K. Bernstein, the leading low carb advocate and author of Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution, write the article in favor of low-carb diets.

At that time a low-carb diet interested me, although I didn’t follow it myself. And nothing came of my proposal.

But recently the people at Diabetes Self-Management had the good idea of running a “point/counterpoint debate” almost exactly as I had proposed. But they asked me instead of Dr. Bernstein to write the article in favor of low-carb diets.
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When I recommended here a month ago that we all get vaccinated against influenza this year, I had no idea how much controversy it would stir up. Some of the concerns are legitimate, but we have alternatives. Other concerns stem from irresponsible rants on the Internet that I’ve traced back to a totally discredited South Carolina doctor.

My article here last month jumped the gun. I knew that the flu authorities at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) wanted to talk with me so that I could help get the word out. But since CDC and the Health Central Network weren’t able to work out the arrangement in time, I wrote then because the flu season was already upon us.
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Maybe it won’t cure diabetes. But a compound slated to begin a new Phase 2b clinical trial early next year stands a good chance of knocking diabetes back into remission.

Almost never do I write about new drugs unless they are at least in in the final stage of development, a Phase 3 trial. The odds are against them.

Of 100 drugs for which developers submit investigational new drug applications to the Food and Drug Administration for approval, about 70 will successfully complete Phase 1 trials and go on to Phase 2. About 33 of the original 100 will complete Phase 2 and go to Phase 3. And 25 to 30 of the original 100 will clear Phase 3.
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Those of us who have diabetes clearly have special dietary needs. Because of our compromised immune systems, we’ve got to get better nutrition than most people. Besides that, each of us have different strategies for meeting our needs. Some of us choose to eat low-carb, some low-glycemic, some low-calorie, some organic.

What hasn’t been clear until now is how we can meet those needs when we buy prepared food. Nowhere is this a bigger challenge than that mainstay of both between-meal snacks and trail food known as nutrition bars.

Sometimes known as energy bars, almost all of the nutrition bars that we can buy in stores are simply candy bars by a more marketable name. Most are loaded with the worst kind of sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup.
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A character in a Woody Allen play says, “It’s not that I am afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Until recently those were my sentiments exactly.

But I have just begun to realize how my whole life has revolved around experiencing it. Since death is the final experience, I do want to be there when it happens.

A friend of mine, Jeff, who is working on an advanced degree, interviewed me last month. After reading my online autobiography, he structured the interview around how much my life has changed — how much I have experienced. I’ve always made sure to do interesting things — maybe because I have never thought of myself as being an interesting person.
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