Revolutionising Health with Real Food: 2nd Annual Scottish PHC Conference
In a nutshell
Obesity, T2D, heart disease, and mental illness are symptoms of a high carbohydrate diet
Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) help people manage individual symptoms
A ketogenic diet has been shown to help with those conditions
The Public Health Coalition (PHC) is a UK-based charity working to improve public health and save the NHS money with sustainable lifestyle changes. I attended their main annual conference earlier in 2024.
This article is a summary of their second annual Scottish meeting in Glasgow on 2nd November 2024.
I find these small meetings useful for three reasons:
I get a sense of the prominent issues associated with diet and health
I learn about the practitioners active in those areas of research
I improve my knowledge of the areas of research coveredProminent issues associated with diet and health
Prominent issues associated with diet and health
A couple of major themes have emerged from this and the past two conferences I’ve attended. Certain symptoms of poor health are discussed again and again, and the subject of the gut microbiome has surfaced a couple of times.
Consistently discussed symptoms of poor diet
I consider these to be symptoms of consuming too much industrially processed carbohydrates and seed oils. They are typically referred to by the misnomer “chronic disease” and are as follows:
Obesity
Type 2 Diabetes (T2D)
Heart disease
Mental illness
Gut microbiome
David Unwin addressed this. Essentially his position is that the microbiome, and the gut microbiome in particular, is an area of considerable interest to him and he actively monitors the academic literature. However, he is of the opinion that our knowledge of the gut microbiome and how it interacts with the host is insufficiently advanced at this stage to influence the way he treats his patients.
This is similar to the message from Prof. Benjamin Bikman delivered at the London PHC conference in May, and it’s the cautionary position I now take myself. At the time, I summarized his position on the gut microbiome as follows:
“…we should continue to conduct basic research into its function but it is still too early to manipulate it therapeutically to affect human health. It is presently a very low yield thing to worry about.”
Active practitioners
Updating my knowledge
Obesity
Obesity is always discussed as a condition associated with T2D, heart disease and mental illness, and so it was at this conference. Based on what I heard, I decided to add a little to the way I think about constantly eating carbohydrates and summarise it here.
Type 2 Diabetes
David Unwin provided several case studies that highlighted the excellent results he’s getting with his diabetic patients by giving them continuous glucose monitors (CGM) to see for themselves which types of food raised their blood glucose. He also discussed measures of blood glucose such as HbA1c which measures a 3-month average and time in range (TIR) that are useful measures of metabolic health.
I’ve written more about his talk here.
Heart disease
Malcolm Kendrick is a Scottish doctor that I credit with the theory that the heart disease of plaque build-up is caused by blood clots, not excess cholesterol. I also ascribe to this theory and have written about it as the cause of my own heart disease here and here.
Malcolm reminded the audience of the fact that plaque buildup is found only in arteries and not in the lungs at all. He also reminded us that clots in human arteries are not unusual and will repair naturally when the body is healthy and allowed to follow its normal course of events. Problems arise when the natural healing process is overwhelmed by the thing causing damage and clots form repeatedly.
I’ve summarized these principles and the new things I learned from the conference here.
Mental illness
When I started trying to understand the cause of my heart disease, I very quickly realized that things like obesity, high blood pressure, Type 2 Diabetes, polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) were likely also actually a symptom of malnutrition. The subject of mental illness did not appear for me until I read Chris Palmer’s excellent book and attended the annual PHC conference and the First Annual Keto Brain Health Conference. The book and first-hand accounts of mental health I’ve heard have now convinced me that poor diets do indeed result in symptoms which we describe as diseases of the brain.
Sessions on mental health were led by Patrick Holford and Moira Newiss. Holford is a well-known public speaker, author and TV personality. He founded The Food for the Brain Foundation.
Moira is a registered nutritional therapist and wellbeing coach who draws from her personal experience of resolving mental health issues.