[LMB] Rise of the Medications was OT: if civilization fell

[Patricia A. Swan]

At 04:01 PM 2/4/2008, quietann wrote:
>I personally would be one of the dead ones, as I am a Type 1
>insulin-dependent diabetic.  I suspect a lot of the Type 2s, as long
>as they didn't have a lot of diabetes complications, would do fine,
>and maybe better in a situation where physical labor would be a
>necessity.
>
>quietann at gmail.com

One of the things that Dr. Dean Ornish confirmed as sort-of a 
side benefit of the extremely low fat vegetarian diet he studied 
for reversing heart disease is that diabetes control and kidney 
health improved.  I can confirmed that it did so in Mother's 
case as well until I became ill enough myself that I was unable 
to cook for us and stopped the Ornish diet.  Her health 
deteriorated noticeably after that point.

It's the type of diet that is the subsistence food stuff for 
most of the non-wealthy people of the world both past and now. 
Beans, whole grains, vegetables.  Most of the problems with 
people dying on these diets is not the diet itself, but either 
changing to processed versions that stripped vitamins so that 
there are deficiency diseases, or sheer lack of adequate 
calories in an area with any problem that destroys crops or 
causes them to fail entirely like drought does.

Pat in North Carolina