The Usual Channels
We have accepted that your regular networking channels for health may offer some relief, but they won’t offer you anything approaching a cure. For example, If you are looking to reduce your dependency on medications? Avoid any ‘lifestyle information’ that has the seal of approval from pharmaceutical companies.
If you have diabetes and might try to reduce your carbohydrate, Diabetes Australia tells you to eat to the Australian Dietary Guidelines like the rest of the population (45 to 65% of calories from carbohydrates) when it is common sense that pharmaceutical use rises the more carbohydrates you eat. Eli Lilley supports the awards for diabetes educators in Australia and so is it a curious coincidence that their educator gave advice to me to eat more carbs?
We saw that Sanofi has a website to send you to chemists that they have educated to use their product. Dietitians Associations have breakfast manufacturers as partners. They continually tell you not to skip breakfast and to eat whole grains like it is a religion. Despite this, in Australia, your doctor will refer you to dietitians, and the government pays your fee to see them!
Unchain Yourself
You don’t need to chain yourself completely to this mess. Just accept that it is full of possible conflicts and corporate marketing and interests. You would go crazy trying to get to the truth while understanding this is just the chronic health industry that you want to leave behind.
Our quest to get some low carbohydrate dietetic advice looks bleak. Can it really be hard and dangerous to do it yourself? Worse than any danger from a short-term dietary change would be to do it incorrectly, not see any benefit and miss out on future good health.
Health Networking

So the big hint that came out of our PCOS analysis was that we saw in the Facebook comments on the DAA press release that there were Facebook comments from people who were doing low carb and who did not agree with the press release.
However, before we go there it is critical to understand the Macrofour principle:
The experts are dead!
If you don’t get that, then go back and re-read my blog from the beginning. Without that understanding, you may be seduced by all of the rhetoric of the people who have not walked a mile in your shoes. When they say ‘build your health team’ it really means ‘learn how to depend on us’. When they say ‘learn how to manage your disease’, it means ‘learn how to get comfortable with our products and services for life’. There is no conspiracy here. It is all just good business. After all:
There is not profit in healthy people and there is no profit in dead people. The chronically sick are the most profitable.
So as I said before, take the best that system can offer to buy you time, but do not accept that it is your best solution.
Finding the Right Experts
When I say the experts are dead, it doesn’t mean that all experts are useless and all expert knowledge is useless. Quite the contrary. The solution to your problem is likely to be underpinned by science and experts. They are just not the experts that would have you manage your chronic condition until you die. Equally, you need to avoid the snake oil salesmen who dishonestly offer you a product or cure. It seems a difficult road to navigate but there is a solution.
The Internet and Facebook are part of your ‘Health Team’
Social media is social networking. Social media health groups are health networking. If a better solution is being practised somewhere in the world, then somewhere on the internet is a forum or group that is exercising it and sharing the knowledge. You just need to find it.
Start by talking to people. Were they like you? What have they done? What worked and what didn’t work. Remember, your N=1 is not their N=1; but it might be N=2!
Dietitians Examples
Back to getting dietetics advice. A recent change in Australia is the formation of a group of independent dietitians. They were set up to form a register of consultant dietitians who had no other conflicting commercial interests. There are similar organisations of dietitians through Facebook groups. In the very next days, dietitian Matthew O’Neill is running an online seminar on low carb aimed at reconciling mainstream dietetics advice. They may still not be the experts you are looking for, but the reason that I know of these options is through social networking on Facebook, Twitter and the Internet.
In a similar fashion, we saw that Dietitian Franziska Spritzler favours a low-carb approach for PCOS and other ailments. Feng-Yuan Liu had an article written about her on Foodmed.net and Metro Dietetics where she works, understands the therapeutic low carb approach and has better information (based on my analysis) than the DAA for PCOS.
If you have diabetes and need intensive help, then Jennifer Elliott has a program that can be undertaken with doctor support. While being deregistered from the DAA might seem a bad thing, in the opinion of the low carb community on Facebook, she is very competent and knows her stuff. Especially when we have examined the DAA’s poor PCOS press release, it may be that being deregistered from the DAA is actually a badge of competence and innovation.
Of course, if you are in Tasmania, you could probably not go past the Nutrition for Life Team. Started by ‘silenced’ orthopaedic surgeon, Gary Fettke and run by his wife, Belinda. It seems that being deregistered, banned or silenced is almost a pre-requisite for credibility. We may look at that more closely in the future.
The point is that I know about these dietetic resources from networking in the low-carb community.
Where Else?
This is not exhaustive. There are these and many other resources. You can discern the worth of these by using your extended health team and the wisdom of crowds. You need to learn from people who have walked a mile in your shoes and hopefully have achieved a better outcome.
In a coming post, I will collate a list of Facebook groups and other resources for people to examine. These may have dated by the time you read this blog, but others will have taken their place. You will need to find them.
If you have low carb services or run a facebook group or other forum and may not be represented in the channels I may use or want to check that you are included, then please contact me. To be perfectly clear I do not accept payment for mention in my posts and any inclusion is at my complete discretion after having regard for your standing in the low carb community.