Comments on the Fat Summit, Day 6

Published 2.8.2016
These are notes and commentary from presentations given on day 6 of Dr Mark Hyman's Fat Summit. The primary reason for the summit seemed to be to promote Hyman's new book, Eat Fat, Get Thin.

I only listened to a single talk on day 6 of the Fat Summit, the conversation between Hyman, Joe Cross and Carrie Diulus MD. Cross is the guy who made the movie Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead, as well as its sequel. Apparently he's making a third movie too. His website is Reboot with Joe.

I watched both movies a while ago, and thought they were well done. The movie gets slammed a lot as a "juicer commercial" or "unsustainable," but the point of Cross's juicing was to make an extreme change to try and improve his health. In the discussion, Cross said he was an "all in" kind of guy, not the type to make small changes. He realizes that not everyone is like that.

As he'd been eating a lot of fast food and processed food, the most extreme change from that was to eat only plants for a short, defined period. I don't know that he explained precisely how he chose the number of 60 days, but it's interesting (to me at least) that it's roughly 8 weeks— the same length of time required to return pancreatic function in the Newcastle University diet designed by Dr Roy Taylor.

He went with juice rather than eating the vegetables because he knew he wouldn't eat all the vegetables. My guess as to why juice and not smoothies is that to make a smoothie you need adequate liquid to get a smooth texture, which he obviously could have done, but not as easily as with juicing. I think smoothies of vegetables appeal more to people who would eat the vegetables anyway. Juices are an easier sale to people who really would not eat the vegetables.

Cross thinks to heal it should be plants only, then you can slowly add back more foods. Cross notes that people may need to make slow change, others (as he did) dive in head first HIs point: know who you are so you don’t set yourself up to fail. Interestingly, he still has to limit his animal intake. He's not vegan but when he tried to eat more animal products he health regressed. He still off the drugs.

Dr Diulus is a spine surgeon and a type ONE diabetic (T1D) who finds using a higher fat diet makes controlling her blood glucose levels easier. She does this with plant fats, though I don't think she's vegan. She points out that the body will heal many times without a surgery, but people don’t like to wait. She still tries diet before surgery for her patients.

Hyman seems completely unaware of Roy Taylor's work, but in any case Taylor's work isn't on point her because he's working with type two diabetes (T2D).

I tried but failed to listen to the chat with Barry Sears (of the Zone Diet fame), so that's it for the day 6 report.

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