#170 Reverse Diabetes with Dr David Unwin

Dr David Unwin is on the podcast with Sakina today. Many of you will recognise him as the GP from the Norwood Surgery in Southport, who is a strong advocate of lifestyle medicine and a low carb diet. 

To date 110 of his patients have achieved drug free remission of their T2 Diabetes. He is the RCGP National Champion for Collaborative Care and Support Planning in Obesity and Diabetes and a RCGP Clinical Expert in Diabetes. 

His work on diabetes has been published in multiple journals and it is pretty impressive. But Dr Unwin’s work is unconventional and doesn’t come without criticism from many academics who fear that a low carb strategy is not an appropriate diet longterm.

What I like about Unwins approach is the simplicity of it and how achievable it has proven to be for many of his patients. I also believe he genuinely cares about this huge problem.

What I feel this conversation lacks is a deep dive into mechanisms behind low carb diets, the applicability of it to the wider population, the pitfalls and where people can slip up. For example I know many patients who start a low carb approach on a Monday and fall back to high sugar consumption later in the week which is a dangerous combination of high fat, high sugar and is essentially a standard American diet.

We’ll have to get Dr Unwin back on the pod at some point in the future but for now I’m sure you’ll enjoy listening to him talk about how he started getting interested in nutritional interventions and how we could start using them today.