CBC News Online
Diabetes and diet
Reporter: Eve Savory
When your fishing buddies are from the Haida Nation, a great catch is as good as guaranteed, but for Dr.
Jay Wortman, there's more than pride in the 15 kilos of fine spring salmon he's landed. To him, it holds
the answer to the rising tide of diabetes in aboriginal communities.
"The aboriginal diabetes epidemic is the biggest, most serious health
issue that confronts aboriginal communities across the whole country,"
Wortman says.
Wortman is a physician whose work includes speaking to First Nations
people, including those on the Musqueam Reserve in Vancouver,
about health, but it's much more personal.
"I'm Métis from northern Alberta, and both my grandparents, my
mother's parents had diabetes. My mother has diabetes. Some of her
siblings have diabetes, and about 14 months ago, I realized that I had
diabetes," he says.
Until then, he and his wife loved chocolate and candy and other
sugary, starchy foods. He worked long hours at a stressful job and
rarely exercised. Now with his vision blurring, his blood pressure and
blood sugar soaring, Wortman faced a crisis.
"Because I have a knowledge of diabetes – diabetes is a disorder of blood sugar, your blood sugar is too
high my immediate instinctive response was to stop eating any food that causes your blood sugar to rise.
So I basically right away eliminated carbohydrates from my diet….In
four weeks, I lost 18 pounds. My blood sugars normalized, my blood
pressure became normal, and I felt much better," Wortman says. "I
don't know if you're ever not diabetic, but I think for me, I've been able
to reverse the effects of diabetes through diet."
Before 1945, diabetes was almost unknown among natives in Canada,
but as people switched from a low-carbohydrate diet of caribou and
seal, from fish and shell fish and berries to refined carbohydrates,
obesity and type 2 diabetes followed as surely as it has among all
Canadians. But why do First Nations people have three to five times
the rate of the general population and why are native children
developing a disease that normally hits adults?
Wortman fingers evolution.
"In evolutionary terms, it's a blink of an eye. Aboriginal people have
been transformed over a hundred years or 200 years, very few numbers of generations, from a
completely different way of life to what we experience today, and diet has dramatically changed for that
population," he says. "And that very small period of time, there's no possible way their physiology could
evolve to cope with such a big change in something like diet."
So Wortman has become an advocate of a return to the traditional, very low carbohydrate diet. His family
dines on salad and green vegetables, on cheese and berries and cream, on chicken and fish and meat.
So when he dines with aboriginal people, the meal becomes a prop, part of the lesson about returning to
their traditional diet.
"The potatoes, good food, right? No. Not a good food. Believe it or not,
if you eat potato, your blood sugar shoots up faster than if you eat
pure white table sugar," he says.
Wortman says nutritionists don't like his advocacy of what is very close
to the Atkins Diet. So he and some colleagues are designing a study.
They want to put a First Nations community on a traditional diet and
check the results. But personally, he has no doubts: aboriginal people
are designed to eat the way their ancestors did.
MY BIG, FAT DIET
Supersize Me meets Northern Exposure in My Big Fat Diet when the Namgis First Nation of Alert Bay
gives up sugar and junk food, returning to a traditional style of eating for a year to fight obesity and
diabetes.
Alert Bay, B.C.
If you visit Alert Bay off the coast of Vancouver Island, you'll find a picturesque fishing village inhabited by
two cultures, the Namgis First Nation and their non-native neighbours. Here an epidemic is undermining
the health and vitality of community. Like most aboriginal communities across North America, the rates of
obesity, metabolic syndrome, and diabetes here are up to five times the national average.
No one's life is untouched by this problem, everyone is related to someone who is either at risk, or coping
with one of these health issues. Mainstream medical professionals cite sedentary lifestyles and a diet rich
in fat as the underlying reason for the growing epidemic.
Making new food choices
at the local grocery store.
But after two decades of service in public health and a distinguished career, Métis physician, Dr. Jay
Wortman, believes that the western diet which replaced the traditional diet is the primary cause of the
epidemic. "Obesity, diabetes and heart disease were unknown in these populations until very recently. No
aboriginal language has a word for diabetes."
Wortman's conviction comes from personal experience. Four years ago, he discovered that he had type 2
diabetes. "My immediate instinctive response was to stop eating any food that caused my blood sugar to
rise. So I eliminated carbohydrates from my diet. Within four weeks, my blood sugar and blood pressure
had normalized and I began to feel much better."
Dr. Jay Wortman with
one of the diet particpants.
Directed by Mary Bissell, My Big Fat Diet chronicles how the Namgis First Nation goes cold turkey and
gives up sugar and junk food for a year in a diet study sponsored by Health Canada and the University of
British Columbia. Through the stories of six people, it documents a medical and cultural experiment that
may be the first of its kind in North America.
My Big Fat Diet, like Super Size Me, looks at the problem of obesity, through the eyes of a man who
straddles two cultures, Western and First Nations. It also looks at the history and present-day status of
traditional food gathering, and the link between individual health and that of the immediate environment.
Cauliflower became a
new 'favourite' in Alert Bay.
Bare Bones Productions is a collaboration between award-winning, First Nations film-maker, Barb
Cranmer of Alert Bay and Mary Bissell and Christian Bruyere of Vancouver. My Big Fat Diet was
produced by Bare Bones Productions in association with CBC Newsworld.
PLEASE NOTE: The research in this study is still being evaluated. Anyone taking medication for diabetes
or high blood pressure should consult their doctor before starting a low-carb diet.