Over 400 million people around the world have been diagnosed with diabetes. Before the discovery of insulin, diabetes was treated through diet, from eating purely meat to the reliance on fats, and repeated fasting. 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, including the occasional ice-cream, leaving the job of controlling the disease to insulin therapy. However, this guiding principle has been accompanied by an explosive rise in diabetes over the last fifty years, and the expectation that sufferers' health will deteriorate steadily over time.
In this ground-breaking book, award-winning science writer Gary Taubes explores the history of the treatment of diabetes, elucidating the way that badly conceived research influences the guidance that doctors offer today, at the expense of patients' long-term well-being. Passionately argued and deeply researched, Rethinking Diabetes reimagines diabetes care with diet at its centre, and is hugely persuasive in its questioning of the established wisdom that may have enabled the current epidemic of diabetes and obesity.
Gary Taubes is an American science writer. He is the author of Nobel Dreams (1987), Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion (1993), and Good Calories, Bad Calories (2007), titled The Diet Delusion (2008) in the UK and Australia. His book Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It was released in December 2010. In December 2010 Taubes launched a blog at GaryTaubes.com to promote the book's release and to respond to critics. His main hypothesis is based on: Carbohydrates generate insulin, which causes the body to store fat.
Taubes studied applied physics at Harvard University (BS, 1977) and aerospace engineering at Stanford University (MS, 1978). After receiving a master's degree in journalism at Columbia University in 1981, Taubes joined Discover magazine as a staff reporter in 1982. Since then he has written numerous articles for Discover, Science and other magazines. Originally focusing on physics issues, his interests have more recently turned to medicine and nutrition.
Taubes's books have all dealt with scientific controversies. Nobel Dreams takes a critical look at the politics and experimental techniques behind the Nobel Prize-winning work of physicist Carlo Rubbia. Bad Science is a chronicle of the short-lived media frenzy surrounding the Pons-Fleischmann cold fusion experiments of 1989. [wikipedia]