# Roy Taylor has a book



## Eddy Edson (Apr 16, 2019)

Coming out in December. I guess it had to happen but in some ways I feel a bit conflicted - *not* having a book might have made the approach stand out more from all the crap.

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/...aylors-guide-reversing-type-2-diabetes-965416

Hype-sensors tingling ...

_Indie publisher Short Books will publish Life Without Diabetes by Newcastle Diet creator Professor Roy Taylor. 

Publisher Rebecca Nicolson acquired world English rights for Life Without Diabetes from Jaime Marshall at JP Marshall Agency. It will be published in December 2019. North American rights have been sold to HarperOne.

The book is the culmination of four decades of research and medical practice by Taylor, who created what has become popularly known as the Newcastle Diet. He explained his aim was to “help people understand the ultimate simplicity behind how diabetes works, so that they truly understand how to rid themselves of it and regain complete health”.

He said: “Over my four decades of medical practice, I cannot recall how many patients have asked me not only 'What do I do?' but also 'What has happened to me--and why?' This book will be the answer, and I am delighted to be working with the excellent people of Short Books to share it with everyone.”

Nicolson added: "We are thrilled to have bought the world English rights to Professor Roy Taylor's book, Life Without Diabetes. It is the definitive book on type 2 diabetes by the doctor who has found the key to reversing the world’s fastest growing disease.”_


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## Northerner (Apr 16, 2019)

I hope there's some sort of disclaimer that it won't necessarily work for everyone.


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## Docb (Apr 16, 2019)

No doubt there will be in the book but it won't get mentioned in the hype.


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## Eddy Edson (Apr 16, 2019)

At the simplest level, the title and the blurb should make it clear that this is just for T2D. Simply misleading without that.

It's interesting to look back at the 24 months DiRECT results from a few weeks ago: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(19)30068-3/fulltext

One aim of the intervention is to get weight down by at least 15kg (in the obese subjects of the study) and maintain it down there.  Just 11% of the intervention group had sustained that level of weight loss at 24 months. Still way better than the control group, but anyway showing the limitations of the approach as a universal panacea for weight-loss. 

24% of the intervention group maintained at least 10kg weight loss, ditto comments.  

I'd just have questions about whether and for whom the 800 calorie short term intervention actually delivers better sustained weight loss versus just chipping away at weight over a longer period or some other less drastic approach. (And of course what the comparative health economics might look like.) According to Taylor et al, it's the weight loss over say 12 months which is important for T2D remission, rather than the method of getting there.

The remission rate a 24 months for 10kg+ losers was 64%, versus 36% for the intervention group as a whole.  A fantastic result, but in practical terms the big questions I would have are: How much weight do I need to lose to achieve what kind of probability of remission; and what are the best ways of getting there?

There are others touting miracle cures and books and hyping up 3-person "trials" based on weight-loss approaches. Hopefully this book and the publicity surrounding it are more nuanced.


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## Northerner (Apr 16, 2019)

Eddy Edson said:


> Hopefully this book and the publicity surrounding it are more nuanced.


I hope so. I have nothing against the 'buying and trying approach', but it is the inference that if you fall into the third of people for whom it doesn't work then you may feel like a failure, when in fact it was never going to suit your own particular version of diabetes, plus the inevitable reinforcement of the public narrative that diabetes (Type 2) is entirely weight-related and you only have yourself to blame because of your 'lifestyle choices'. Of course, if we could get two thirds of people into remission then that would be great.


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## Docb (Apr 16, 2019)

Totally agree Northerner.  You can bet your life though that when the professor turns up on the media circuit to sell the book his publishers PR people will move hell and high water to make sure he does not add any caveats to the message that you can cure diabetes by buying the book.  Trouble is that it is important stuff and does provide a route for some to avoid the downsides of having to live with type 2 diabetes. I only hope, probably forlornly, that a proper perspecive is put on the issue.


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## trophywench (Apr 16, 2019)

So - what do you do if you aren't 10kg overweight to begin with !


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## Madeline (Apr 16, 2019)

trophywench said:


> So - what do you do if you aren't 10kg overweight to begin with !


Was wondering that too.


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## Eddy Edson (Apr 16, 2019)

trophywench said:


> So - what do you do if you aren't 10kg overweight to begin with !



There's no one-size-fits all concept of "overweight" in Taylor's work. Everybody has, in concept, a "personal fat threshold" beyond which you start accumulating fat in your tripes and initiating the whole merry T2D cycle. For different individuals this might be equivalent to a BMI of 38, 22, 32, whatever.  (FWIW, mine probably seems to have been at around BMI = 23.)

Obviously, this concept doesn't fit very easily with one-size-fits-all 15kg or whatever weight loss targets. But I guess they need to keep the metrics simple until the can firm up the physical basis for the "PFT" concept and develop methods for determining what it would be for a given individual.


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## mikeyB (Apr 17, 2019)

Its not just the fat, though, is it? Thin people get T2, but don’t tell me their insides are loaded up with fat. PFT? Not enough f’s in that.


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## Eddy Edson (Apr 17, 2019)

mikeyB said:


> Its not just the fat, though, is it? Thin people get T2, but don’t tell me their insides are loaded up with fat. PFT? Not enough f’s in that.



Oh, pshaw to your pfft! He might go too far in messaging that implies that this is the *only* cause of T2D, and the whole concept might be wrong, but not being a moron, he has in fact anticipated the obvious avenues of attack on it.

The concept includes variability amongst individuals in how much fat in the liver & pancreas are required to start screwing things up, as well as variability as to at what BMI levels this fat starts to accumulate.  

He seems to have addressed most of the obvious objections to the concept eg in this paper from a while back: http://www.clinsci.org/content/128/...cc43b6e86686f493a35d3168&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha 

The actual main thrust of that paper is that there's no clinically relevant difference between T2D's with different BMI levels.  Includes a chart on individuals from the UKPDS study which he says has never been presented in this way before:


On this concept, those few bods diagnosed with T2D at say BMI < 20 were unfortunately extremely sensitive to liver/pancreas fat.  

He says in more recent post-DiRECT stuff that everything so far supports the PFT concept, and that a major goal of the new ReTUNE, non-obese study is to validate it:

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/909934?src=110319_perspective_taylor_diab&faf=1

_Separately, we need to see what happens to people who have type 2 diabetes but have actually got a normal BMI, or near normal BMI. And so we're running a study called ReTUNE, also funded by Diabetes UK, really to try and determine [what happens with] type 2 diabetes in people of normal weight - is that behaviour really the same? And particularly, we want to chase a concept that I introduced part of this way along the journey: the personal fat threshold.

Some people can run along perfectly happy with a BMI of 35, metabolically normal. Put it up to 37, 38, they get diabetes; bring it down to 35 [again, and] they're fine.

If I put my BMI up to the dizzy heights of say, 22, I might be at risk of diabetes, because I'm not built to be at 22. So we've got to realise we're individuals. Now that's a crashingly simple thing to say. And it's woeful, that I have to point it out. But a lot of the guideline-based medicine, evidence-based medicine, is all about imagining that the population consists of uniform people who are all sitting on the average line, and it's not like that. So in the new research, ReTUNE, we're going in search of the personal fat threshold and I hope that will be illuminating._


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## mikeyB (Apr 18, 2019)

So he’s burrowing down to what should be staring him in the face - the difference is the genetics, not the diet, in skinny people.


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## HOBIE (Apr 20, 2019)

It might help someone ?.


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