J Makes Waves

Time went on after the hypo incident, and a meeker, more cautious Juliet continued offering low carb support to a small handful of carefully selected patients. They say that time heals all wounds, and sure enough, after a while I was ready to facilitate a short low carb course again (we had run two courses previously, but the setback had led me to stop and regroup for a while). My courage returning, I even rewrote the course booklet, producing what I thought was an awesome resource full of all the most important information I wanted to share with our patients. But right before launch of the third course, a curve ball came out of nowhere... The clinic's indemnity insurer said no - they weren't happy for anyone except a registered dietitian to provide education that differed from the Australian Dietary Guidelines. And not just no - it was HELL NO. We tried all the avenues we could think of - I sent through a record of all the extra training I'd done on the subject (I was al...

When I was new to this low carb journey, I was full of excitement and zeal because I could see the positive results it was having with a handful of patients I was supporting. Life was technicolor - diabetes was being reversed before my eyes - something that was almost unheard of back in 2015. But then, as in all my fave chick-flicks, trouble struck. Two troubles, actually. First, a man who I'd very gently introduced the concept of carbohydrate reduction to received my suggestions with great joy and went home and promptly cut all carbs out of his diet ( Not what I was going for). Unfortunately he was on insulin, and had a hypo that night as a result. That was a huge wake-up call to me - even though I'd been careful with my language, it was not careful enough - I had not warned him to make adjustments slowly and beware of hypos. (For those who don't know, hypos are a drop in blood sugar. They can be mild and cause some symptoms like shakiness or sweating, or they may be se...