When Dr. Gary Fettke an Orthopaedic Surgeon started suggesting to his diabetes patients that they would see health benefits from decreasing their sugar consumption, he never expected that it would end in a 2 year court battle.
https://www.nofructose.com/
https://www.facebook.com/belindanofructose/
https://www.instagram.com/belindafettke/
https://www.isupportgary.com/
Highlights
03:17 The Role of nutrition in Bill and Gary’s recovery from a brain injury
08:22 Gary Fettke taking the initiative to improve his health
20:23 Taking sugar out of the diet according to Bill’s research
23:25 Bill’s health improvement after cutting sugar out
30:42 Belinda Fettke investigates Dietitians sponsored by Corporations
33:51 Gary Fettke being punished for advocating patient health and safety
48:50 Belinda Fettke about nutritional ketosis
01:22:43 Belinda supports low carb diet
Transcript
Bill 0:00
The decision was made that I was going to cut sugar out I went cold turkey. When I did that, I started again noticing that things were leveling off, and my appetite changed. My stress levels decreased, my fatigue started to decrease, and everything started to level off, and started to get better.
Bill 0:18
In that time I became I came in contact with other stroke survivors. And I began to tell them about what I was experiencing. They were looking at me strangely and also getting to the point where they were several people would have stopped talking to me because I told them about what I experienced.
Bill 0:43
And that maybe it will help you just like I would share with any of my friends. I’ve got these pair of shoes they’re really good they don’t squeeze my toes tight. Maybe if you have shoes that are making your toes hurt check out these shoes. It was along those lines. And I didn’t expect to get cut out completely cut out from their lives instantly.
Intro 1:09
This is recovery after stroke with Bill Gasiamis helping you go from where you are to where you’d rather be.
Bill 1:17
Bill Gasiamis here from recoveryafterstroke.com, This is Episode 75 and with me today is Belinda Fettke. Belinda Fettke became an advocate of low carb healthy fat principles after seeing the marked improvement in her husband,
Bill 1:35
Dr. Gary Fettke’s health and that of some of her family and friends. Belinda became outspoken on the role of sugar and processed carbohydrates in our diet and the influence of vested interests shaping our dietary guidelines after watching Dr. Gary become blue in the face talking about the science they are both passionate advocates for health. Hi, Belinda.
Belinda Fettke 1:59
Hi Bill. How are you?
Bill 2:00
I am well thank you so much for being on the podcast. Just to give context to the listeners and the people watching on YouTube. The reason why I contacted you was because in 2012, when I became unwell It was very early days of this massive shift that has occurred in what people are talking about with regards to nutrition and what is good for us and what isn’t good for us.
Bill 2:32
I started off my journey because when I got home from the hospital after a brain bleed the doctor the control of my outcome in my well-being was completely left up to the doctors. And that’s perfectly fine because they’re the only ones that can open your head and fix that kind of stuff.
Bill 2:58
But when it comes to the other part of stroke recovery, I felt like there was not enough help support, or assistance. So I tried to take a little bit of control back and decided that I’d go into an investigation mode to find out what I could do to support myself.
The Role of nutrition in Bill Gasiamis and Gary Fettke’s recovery from a brain injury
Bill 3:17
One of the things that came back was nutrition, I could manage and control my nutrition and greatly improve the health of my brain, even though this bleed was occurring, and it was still bleeding. So when I did that, I started to learn a few things and started to notice some changes in my health and well-being and my body.
Bill 3:42
And I told some people about that. What I didn’t realize was that I was going to get a lot of negative responses. When I told people about the amazing things that I experienced when I changed my diet.
Belinda Fettke 3:58
Sounds like Gary.
Bill 4:00
So your story became something that just spoke to me because I felt that way. And then what I did is I retreated from telling people about the benefits that I had experienced because I’d never been in that situation where I was getting attacked for just sharing my experience.
Bill 4:24
So I’m wondering, Can you shed some light on a little bit of what happened before everything blew up and you and Gary, we’re just going about your daily lives Gary became unwell, so tell me a little bit about what led to that.
Belinda Fettke 4:42
I guess. As you experienced, I just quickly say, that finding this negativity, and this defense, when you start to talk about nutrition is fascinating Bill especially when you can see how much it helps people.
Belinda Fettke 4:59
So go back to our journey, I guess into all of this. Gary was diagnosed with a very aggressive pituitary tumor in 2000. And so like you out of the blue, suddenly he was in the hands of doctors and health professionals who he had to trust in his management.
Belinda Fettke 5:20
And I’m not saying that there was no role like you in specific management for his cancer. He underwent a craniotomy. So he had his scalp taken off and his face pulled down. They operated he had three months of stereotactic radiotherapy where he was bolted into a machine in Sydney.
Belinda Fettke 5:41
We had to relocate because we’re based in Tasmania. So we went up there, Sydney for three months, while we had all this treatment, and it was commenced on chemotherapy. There was never any discussion about nutrition or what you could potentially do to take back control of your health.
Belinda Fettke 5:58
You become defenseless, and the people who are treating, do what they believe to be the best for your health and outcomes, not understanding also that there was a role for nutrition I truly believe it’s not being taught in medical education, up to date.
Belinda Fettke 6:16
So the doctors were doing what they believed. And what Gary and I’ve started the term is band-aiding sick care, and not understanding the role of preventative health, and even the role of nutrition as food, what we say food as medicine, so it was just a big overlooked area.
Belinda Fettke 6:36
Gary was a bit like a stroke patient who had to learn to walk again after his surgery, and he lost a lot of perception, depth perception, and all sorts of things from having his head operated on. And so it does it takes time and it puts you into that very vulnerable position I think.
Belinda Fettke 6:54
Especially with a head injury compared to anything else you can have. With everything else, you can control it much better. But once you have your head, and your brain touched your faculties are affected in such a way from bleeding or tumor or anything else just that surgery, radiotherapy, and chemo.
Belinda Fettke 7:16
All those things do make you very vulnerable, and then you are a patient. So Gary had further surgery in 2004 the tumor was unable to be held with chemotherapy, it would hold it for a while, but then it’ll become active again.
Belinda Fettke 7:38
So his blood markers were always showing some form of activity. And in 2009, he was also gaining more and more weight. He was getting high blood pressure, having a whole lot of complications from more and more medication that he had to have and take for the tumor and the complications of not only surgery but radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and the side effects of more tablets.
Belinda Fettke 8:06
So it was becoming this vicious cycle of medical issues. Mind you he learned to walk and he was back operating and you know, all these other things, but he had terrible headaches and, was having those medications.
Gary Fettke taking the initiative to improve his health
Belinda Fettke 8:22
So by 2012, that same time about you, he was getting very, very sick. And they said there was nothing more they could do. So, Gary took the initiative to go I don’t want to give up I don’t want to not be here.
Belinda Fettke 8:42
I’ve got young children and a family. He’s still had a lot to give. So he started looking into, you know went into the World Wide Web, but who’s talking about other things with management of cancer and stumbled across this nutritional aspect of specifically sugar in the beginning.
Intro 9:03
If you’ve had a stroke, and you’re in recovery, you’ll know what a scary and confusing time it can be, you’re likely to have a lot of questions going through your mind. Like, how long will it take to recover? Will I recover?
Intro 9:16
What things should I avoid? In case I make matters worse, doctors will explain things. But, because you’ve never had a stroke before, you probably don’t know what questions to ask. If this is you, you may be missing out on doing things that could help speed up your recovery.
Intro 9:33
If you find yourself in that situation, stop worrying, and head to recoveryafterstroke.com, where you can download a guide that will help you. It’s called seven questions to ask your doctor about your stroke.
Intro 9:46
These seven questions are the ones Bill wished he’d asked when he was recovering from a stroke. They’ll not only help you better understand your condition. They’ll help you take a more active role in your recovery. head to the website now, recoveryafterstroke.com and download the guide. It’s free.
Belinda Fettke 10:15
Dominic D’Agostino was doing some work in the US, Colin Champ and so he contacted them. Started talking to them about the role of sugar. He read David Gillespie’s book Sweet Poison, but what does a lawyer know about sugar that I don’t know?
Belinda Fettke 10:32
And all these a bit started coming together, I hadn’t considered sugar in his health journey. So he went cold turkey, Right 2012 I’m giving up sugar. This is ridiculous. Why not? And took a little bit longer for him to remember.
Belinda Fettke 10:51
Because when you do a medical degree, you learn about physiology, biochemistry, biology, or Those things in the first year and a half that you asked that you started to take down that road of band-aiding sick care.
Belinda Fettke 11:07
And you forget about the basic principles where energy comes from, you know, protein carbohydrate, fat, fueling all of those things that you learn about the beginning, I suddenly slipped from pharmaceutical treatments of people to surgical treatments of people.
Belinda Fettke 11:26
So he just started going back to basic biochemistry physiology looking at the body and it’s time to go What do we need for fuel? How can I if sugars feed my cancer and go low sugar or cut out all added sugars and very low natural sugars, then going, Oh wow carbohydrates are just glucose when you eat them?
Belinda Fettke 11:53
And for him, he needed to take that extra step and cut out special or refined processed carbohydrates and he eats minimal below-ground vegetables and things like that which also have a carbohydrate content.
Belinda Fettke 12:09
He said his health started to improve massively and when we were doing the MRI and the blood tests things showed that his tumor went into remission so hasn’t gone, but it’s completely in remission and has been since I think 2013.
Belinda Fettke 12:32
By 2014. He came, he was able to be supervised to come off chemotherapy and he’s been off for five and a half years. And that’s something that he could never achieve while he was on a high carbohydrate, high sugar, glucose diet.
Belinda Fettke 12:47
And I don’t know if you found with your bleeding and just the treatment and medications and whatever else you might have been subjected to. But Gary had a real drive for sugar The chemotherapy cancer and part of the complication of his surgery was that he developed what’s called diabetes insipidus.
Belinda Fettke 13:11
This is quite different from sugar diabetes, it’s where you can’t concentrate the urine. So he was told in the hospital, that he would need to drink between eight and 10 liters of fluid a day to keep up with this very high urine output that he got as a complication.
Belinda Fettke 13:27
And they said to him, what is going to be pretty boring, so we suggest you start trying to eat fruit juices. So his sugar content in his normal diet was very, very high when you add all that liquid as well. And the fascinating thing was, he we are five and half years down the track.
Belinda Fettke 13:49
His diabetes insipidus. He’s, not on any medication for it whatsoever anymore. So just the things that you start to see in yourself. Is amazing as you no doubt have also found out with your treatment. So, that was Gary’s health journey.
Belinda Fettke 14:09
And then you started to consider that 20 years ago, he might see someone with a diabetes complication maybe once or twice a year, that required some sort of debriding and amputation was very, very rare for type two diabetes.
Belinda Fettke 14:28
I guess also, it was mostly considered a disease of people who were in retirement, it was a later age disease. So something that wasn’t as feared early on, and so probably took longer for complications to come about.
Belinda Fettke 14:41
Maybe people died of other causes before these complications became very prominent. Now that diabetes type two is becoming a disease of younger and younger people. The complications are coming through so much more early as well.
Belinda Fettke 14:57
In 2012, and 2014 Gary started to see a tsunami of complications of type 2 diabetes. By 2018. He was seeing someone every single week in his clinic, if not two, and having to amputate parts, toes, feet, and even lower legs.
Belinda Fettke 15:21
And he was just horrified. He didn’t go into medicine to work on that stuff. He was passionate about orthopedics to heal people and put people back together after car accidents and all those other areas of orthopedics that are very rewarding into have to deal with people say people in their 40s and 50s who are getting these terrible complications, rotting alterations on their feet.
Belinda Fettke 15:51
It’s a traumatic thing to have, let alone to be looking at you know, to be looking after better to have yourself and the impact on your life, your family, your community, your workplace, all these things plus the health care budget.
Belinda Fettke 16:08
So, Gary went maybe looking at treating people using recommending people reduce sugar if he can he he was one of the first in Australia to recommend reducing smoking and said for people who are having elective surgery for different areas of orthopedics, he recommended that people stop smoking for six weeks.
Belinda Fettke 16:41
Because he could see the improvement in the outcomes and much less complication from doing that. So when he worked out about sugar he thought Well surely I can advocate something like that just as simply he wasn’t taking a dietician role.
Belinda Fettke 16:57
He was just talking about basic science. physiology and biology that he learned as a doctor, and he was helping people’s outcomes. So to be reported to the medical board in 2014, by a dietitian in the hospital, advocating patient safety and health outcomes, he just went quality assurance, I don’t understand.
Belinda Fettke 17:22
And so that’s where our journeys come from Gary getting into trouble for recommending people reduce sugar and processed carbohydrates.
Bill 17:29
Wow, that is just next level. So by 2010, how many years had Gary been a doctor?
Belinda Fettke 17:40
He got his 25-year service badge from the Lung System General Hospital last year. So as an orthopedic surgeon, he’s now so back then was 16, 17 years.
Bill 17:53
Yeah, right. Okay. So he had been around for a long time and what he would have been discovering was that He was achieving nothing as a doctor, other than consoling people and giving them the bad news and hoping to God that something would change.
Bill 18:10
Because of the process that he was going down, which is the process that most general practitioners go down, and back in the day most neurosurgeons and most neurologist endocrinologists, tried this, give it a go, it’s probably not going to work, but try it anyway.
Bill 18:33
And hopefully, something changes in the next however long will prolong your life will try and make you hang around for a bit longer. And if we can’t, well, that’s it, there’s nothing we can do, and therefore, there’s nothing else anyone else can do.
Bill 18:48
So I was
Belinda Fettke 18:50
Very disempowering.
Bill 18:51
It’s extremely disempowering. So I was facing that for about six months, when my doctors came to me and told me look, you’re tumor that’s bled in the brain. So it’s called arteriovenous malformation.
Bill 19:05
Technically, it’s a tumor, the blood vessels within that bled. And that bleed in the brain was in a place, which was difficult to get to. And if we can’t get to it, we cannot operate on it. And if we can’t operate on it, there’s nothing you can do.
Bill 19:19
And I was like, Well, okay, that’s interesting. So, what does that mean? That means that basically, you just go about your life and hopefully the bleed. The next one that happens is not catastrophic. And hopefully, it stops bleeding. And that was the extent of it.
Bill 19:37
So I got quite frustrated, quite upset at that, and then sought out to see another doctor, another hospital, who was prepared to operate if they’d be and what she did was my amazing surgeon, Associate Professor Kate Drummond decided that what we’ll do is we’ll monitor it for as long as we need to up to I think we did up to six months of monitoring.
Bill 20:00
And we noticed that it had stopped bleeding. But then about 18 months after the first bleed, after the second bleed, it bled again. And I was facing surgery for the first time. And now with a doctor who was confident that what she could do is remove the tumor from my head.
Bill 20:21
But that came a long time after the initial six-month challenge of dealing with the emotions and the problems around. There’s nothing we can do about it, and therefore there’s nothing anyone else can do about it.
Bill 20:34
So I was motivated to not be in a space where I felt disempowered. I didn’t like it when people disempowered me whether they meant it or not. So when I did the research, the first thing that I came across was taking sugar out of the diet.
Bill 20:51
That’s the first thing with a light bulb went off and it was like, well, I should do that because what it did sugar was it impacted my blood pressure, it impacted my stress levels, it impacted my sugar levels it impacted my insulin response. It impacted almost everything in one go.
Bill 21:12
And when you look into the rabbit hole of when you eat sugar, it does this to blood pressure and then what does blood pressure due to this and then what does that do to that? And then what does that do to that you get you come full circle when you get to this point where you go, well, it’s really clear to me that I need to stop consuming this.
Bill 21:30
So I can have my body be less impacted by something that I’m doing and keep it in a state that is less stressed, less overworking, etc. But what sugar specifically was doing and I’m sure Gary noticed something similar was it was creating massive fatigue, not while I was eating it.
Bill 21:54
But after my body had dealt with it was putting me into a very fatigued state and stopping me from being able to be productive during my day. And not that after the first bleed, I was very productive but going to even be able to go to the toilet or get off the couch or go outside for a walk.
Bill 22:11
There was always little opportunity to do a lot of that stuff and the medication that I was on early on medication steroid called dexamethasone was increasing my appetite. And I was probably
Belinda Fettke 22:25
Gary was also on dexamethasone.
Bill 22:28
And I was probably eating 4000 calories a day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, I was not sleeping at all. I was you know, had itchy sensations underneath my body. And the intention of dexamethasone, which is good is that it will reduce inflammation in the brain and swelling which is great.
Bill 22:51
But the complications when I read up on the complications that it could due to there was a there was 60 minimum of 60 complications that they could create and I was experiencing around 20 of them. So life went from, you’ve got a bleed in the brain went from normal to you’ve got a bleed in the brain pretty serious to almost immediately completely unable to do anything or be anyone or achieve anything.
Bill’s health improvements after cutting sugar out
Bill 23:25
So the decision was made that I was going to cut sugar out I went cold turkey. When I did that, I started again, noticing that things were leveling off, and my appetite changed. My stress levels decreased. My fatigue started to decrease. Everything started to level off and started to get better.
Bill 23:49
And in that time I came in contact with other stroke survivors. And I began to tell them about what I was experiencing. And they were looking at me strangely. And also getting to the point where a number of them have stopped talking to me because I told them about what I experienced and that maybe it will help you.
Bill 24:16
Just like I would share with any of my friends I’ve got these pair of shoes They’re really good they don’t squeeze my toes tight, I don’t know maybe if you got shoes that are making your toes hurt check out these shoes. It was along those lines, and I didn’t expect to get cut out completely cut out from their lives instantly. And I know standing as Gary.
Belinda Fettke 24:41
Gary found the same thing. You know, a lot of his peers were very threatened by what he was dying to talk about. And say the Dietitians Association of Australia was extremely threatened by it. And this thing why? it’s crazy. I also think patients, people who are experiencing these things are disempowered.
Belinda Fettke 25:05
I think the medical community is disempowered. I think the health system is set up to disempower them as well. They don’t realize the other things that they can do. And in us trying to raise awareness to certainly our medical community and our, you know, the medical people in our local community that had to be stopped by vested interests or the powers that be or the dietitians association of Australia who think that they are the, the be all and end all in nutrition and no one else can talk about it.
Belinda Fettke 25:38
But you realize that the DAA is so highly funded by the food industry. And it makes almost a mockery of dietetic education which is, which is terrible because like Gary’s gone into medicine to heal people and make people better. People who choose to do dietetics go in there believing that food is a very powerful medication go in there believing they’re going to do the right thing.
Belinda Fettke 26:09
And to think that their education has been compromised by vested interest is, again something that they’ll defend because how can you go to university pedagogy university? How can you be taught for all those years and think that what you’ve been taught is compromising or potentially causing harm?
Belinda Fettke 26:30
Which is what Gary’s also found with medicine. And That is, people need to go through a grieving phase with that education as well like the people we’ve come in contact with in this low-carb space all around the world.
Belinda Fettke 26:47
I would say 80 to 90% of them have found low carbohydrates have found reducing sugar found reducing processed carbohydrates, has helped their health it’s not because of anything They’re not read it at you know, if you read it you got well I’m a doctor I, I don’t believe that it’s their health journey that’s taken them down this pathway.
Belinda Fettke 27:08
Or they’ve been open like David Unwin who’s an amazing GP in the UK. They’ve been open to listening to equal stories of their patients, Eric Westman is another example. People have come to them saying, I’ve improved my health by this and they’ve gone well, that makes no sense.
Belinda Fettke 27:28
Let’s look into this. And it’s very few people who can do it without feeling threatened themselves. And without going, it’s a lot of work. I honestly believe some people go I’m 20 years into my medical practice. I know how to look after people they believe safely.
Belinda Fettke 27:52
The whole concept of preventive medicine or looking at something else seems like a lot of work. I think some people go with I’m an orthopedic surgeon, I need to operate on people. This is my living my career, this is everything.
Belinda Fettke 28:07
Gary certainly operates on a lot fewer people now, but he feels empowered because he’s helping people get better and doesn’t need to cut their leg off and doesn’t need to do quite traumatic surgery on some people, because they’ve seen they can make these changes. But Bill like you’ve noticed as well a lot of people can’t make those changes. I’ve had a couple of friends say to me, I cannot give up sugar.
Belinda Fettke 28:34
That’s just too hard for me. But it doesn’t mean that that option should be taken away from those that can. So enabling people to understand that is an option is what Gary and I are now fighting for. So Gary was investigated for two and a half years by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency.
Belinda Fettke 28:57
This it’s an umbrella organization for medical regulation but it also regulates the industry, nursing physiotherapists, like there’s a range of health professionals that sit under this AHPRA umbrella. Interestingly, the Dietitians Association Australia, dietetics does not sit under there.
Belinda Fettke 29:17
When it was set up, I think, nine years ago now, when AHPRA was set up, they deemed diabetics to lower risk to patient safety, to allocate the funds to put them under it. So that was what Gary and I also challenged was AHPRA’s involvement in this when they decided that there’s no risk to patient safety doing dietetics.
Belinda Fettke 29:44
So we believe that outside their scope of practice, because there’s no one, specifically talking about nutrition on Gary’s panel, or his board of investigation, because they don’t have the qualifications. So it was all very weird.
Belinda Fettke 29:58
The expert witness that the medical board brought in in Tasmania understood Gary’s orthopedic surgeon, in Northern Tasmania with a catchment area of 120,000 people. They brought in the biggest nutrition expert in the Southeast Asia Pacific region, which rang a few alarm bells to me.
Belinda Fettke 30:21
Why do they need someone so big like a big gun to come to decide whether an orthopedic surgeon can tell someone to reduce sugar? Like, really? So, when I started investigating this gentleman, I came across the fact that he was working for a sanitarium. sanitarium is a processed breakfast cereal company.
Belinda Fettke investigates Dietitians sponsored by Corporations
Belinda Fettke 30:42
And that was very, very interesting. I thought he worked for them. So I’ve been delving and digging into the internet for five years now. Last year, I came across some documents from the Australian breakfast cereal manufacturing forum outlining a partnership or corporate partnership that they were entering into with the Dietitians Association of Australia.
Belinda Fettke 31:13
They acknowledged this partnership was going to cost them $23,000 for a year. It may have been more with other things, I’ve got no idea, but if it was only $23,000 I would have paid them to keep my husband’s name off the list.
Belinda Fettke 31:28
But anyway, they this Australian breakfast cereal manufacturing forum document stated that cereal sales were diminishing. And they blamed low-carb advocates for part of this issue. Mary and Macy were on the list and 10 people were so interested, that Marian got knocked off the catalyst programs that she was doing, outlining the issues with sugar and carbohydrates as well.
Belinda Fettke 31:56
She also went into the Staten area but yeah, she was almost This list is the Australian breakfast manufacturing forum. My husband, Gary Fetkke, was the only practicing doctor named on this list named on this list for active defense.
Belinda Fettke 32:13
And this partnership with the dietitians association of Australia was to use their members again, do the members have any idea that they were being used by the Cereal industry? By their accrediting and regulatory body, because that’s what the DAA is in credits dietitians so that they can claim money back on Medicare and whatever else in the credits and become a professional body.
Belinda Fettke 32:41
But it’s also their regulatory body and its massive funding by the food industry. So we’ve got this group who’ve agreed and signed off on this $23,000 deal, to influence protect, and actively defend not only cereal and grains but sugar messaging.
Belinda Fettke 33:00
And my husband was on that list within two to three weeks of this document becoming a legal document. The Dietitians Association of Australia CEO at the time contacted the Launceston General Hospital where Gary was working. Twice she wrote effectively demanding that Gary be silenced from talking about sugar.
Bill 33:25
Wow.
Belinda Fettke 33:26
So we only got access to the internal documents that the hospital submitted to the medical board in November 2017. So I found these Cereal industry documents last June about June and then in November, the year before we’d found this document with the CEO of the Dietitians Association, writing to the hospital.
Gary Fettke is being punished for advocating patient health and safety
Belinda Fettke 33:51
The CEO of the LGH Launceston General Hospital after getting the second letter from the DAA sent an email saying, Can we take this further? Maybe my husband’s been punished. He’s been punished for advocating for patient health and safety. Because it didn’t suit the breakfast cereal industry or the Dietitians Association of Australia sponsors.
Belinda Fettke 34:23
That’s phenomenal. That health can be taken away because of that. So Gary was advocating at least an option of a low carbohydrate healthy fat breakfast instead of having breakfast cereal, sugary breakfast cereal. And do you know the diabetes menu at the hospital? I don’t know what the menu for stroke is. But I know the diabetes menu includes pretty much six desserts a day.
Belinda Fettke 34:52
Well three desserts because by the time you have your sugary breakfast cereals and dessert. You look at this menu and you think this is for people with diabetes? This is giving them out-of-control blood glucose as you know, once you have those spikes of sugar in and out and out all day, you’re high and low and high and low.
Belinda Fettke 35:11
Gary wanted to plateau and normalize his patient’s blood glucose, especially when they’re in the hospital because when he’s operating on someone, someone’s extremity their hand, and their feed sugar also constricts it a Vader constrictor compromises the blood flow to the extremities that he’s operated on.
Belinda Fettke 35:32
And he wants as much blood and nutrient to get there all the other issues with people who’ve got diabetes, having high blood glucose, then it means calling and nurturing more monitoring of their blood glucose.
Belinda Fettke 35:42
It means more insulin, and then the low after that. So they’re eating more. I mean, it’s a vicious cycle and he wasn’t allowed. He was not allowed to support his patients to improve their blood glucose while they were in hospital.
Belinda Fettke 36:05
And then it became once AHPRA took over then they were saying he wasn’t allowed to talk. his actual ruling said he was never allowed to talk about nutrition in particular, reducing sugar to his patients to the community or online and the ruling was lifelong and nonappealable. And you got are you kidding me? A medical degree does not allow a doctor to tell people to reduce processed junk food.
Bill 36:39
(Inaudible)
Belinda Fettke 36:42
You go take a look. This is a doctor who’s looked into this area because of his health. And because he’s seen what it’s doing for his patients in the community firsthand, people’s yet also start to improve anyway.
Belinda Fettke 37:03
He just went well, there’s no way I’m abiding by that decision. I’m not going to create harm or cause harm. became off social media so I took over his Gary Fettke, you know fructose Facebook page, which is probably why you started to hear more about me as well.
Belinda Fettke 37:20
So I took over that page so he wasn’t breaking that rule. However, in his medical practice, he refused to acknowledge or abide by the AHPRA medical ruling because he believed it would create harm.
Bill 37:32
The most dramatic case of silencing people and stopping the right of us to have our free will expression etc. and a medical professional who is attempting to help people attempting to make our lives better, attempting to educate people.
Bill 37:52
That is just the worst thing that I’ve ever heard that another organization can do. So your husband, Dr. Gary Fettke, wasn’t selling, or providing the wrong medication. He wasn’t jabbing people with things he wasn’t meant to.
Belinda Fettke 38:12
He wasn’t inappropriately behaving.
Bill 38:14
Yeah, he was just saying, consider that sugar that you’re eating and the amount of it, and you might notice a difference if you decrease that sugar consumption in your health and well-being. And they decided he wasn’t allowed to say that. That is just stunning.
Belinda Fettke 38:35
There’s no case of patient harm and no case of patient complaint. This was that notification was from a dietitian at the hospital. And he ended up with three notifications to AHPRA over three years.
Belinda Fettke 38:52
Two of them from Tasmania and one from Western Australia.
Bill 38:55
I’m curious. You’re great, but I’m fired up now. So what’s interesting is, is that when somebody says that you have to do something, the scientific community says, well, there’s no evidence to support that. That whole issue around gluten consumption and decreasing the lack of gluten consumption for certain people was Pooh poohed for many, many years until celiacs, became a thing.
Bill 39:27
And now actually, it’s generally accepted that it’s okay for celiac people to stop consuming wheat products that contain gluten. And there was no evidence to back up their claim when they were saying you shouldn’t be told to stop eating gluten. There was no evidence backing up their claim that when people stopped eating gluten, they would get worse.
Bill 39:51
No evidence whatsoever. Yet they used to those types of organizations used to do this. Use scientific research as if There’s no evidence for something, you can say that it’s doing this well then, but if there’s no evidence for people coming off of gluten, making them on well, then why do you stop people from coming off of gluten?
Bill 40:12
No evidence shows that decreasing sugar in the diet is risking health and why are they allowed to say that we can’t say the opposite? What’s very strange is that I didn’t realize the extent that an organization might go to and how deeply they would involve themselves with you know, organizations that should know better, especially when they’re involved in the medical industry.
Bill 40:43
To allow that to be allowed them to be influenced by money was, it’s just, it’s just astounding and makes me feel great about my gut feeling to take the journey myself and start to learn about how to heal my brain.
Bill 40:59
By myself because I was asking my doctors, not my surgeon specifically. But when I was asking my doctors leading up to surgery, what can I do to support myself at home? And how can I prepare myself for a bit of surgery for you, there was no information, there was zero information.
Bill 41:16
Smoking is something that people experiencing a brain injury should cease They shouldn’t be smoking anyway, but they should seize that immediately, especially while going, you know, before going into surgery, because smoking does all these things.
Bill 41:31
But if we go back history has shown us that in the 1940s and 50s, the cigarette companies were in with the medical associations, and they were using doctors to promote, you know, a product like cigarettes, that was addictive, causing cancer, decreasing well being and all that type of thing.
Bill 41:51
So it’s no surprise that there’s an involvement by, you know, large corporations to influence people to stop doing something now these large corporations were smart, what they would do is they would invest in the space that supports health and well being, but in the space that support selling rubbish.
Bill 42:10
So I think they’re very, very short, short, narrow-minded about, you know how they can make money out of an environment, which is shifting towards food being medicine and health and well-being of people. But I know that’s the simplistic view.
Bill 42:28
But what is interesting is how when you talk to doctors, and you ask them about what you can do to support my health and well-being I’ll send you to pharmaceuticals. And then when you do challenge them with that, which was what I’ve done, I’ve challenged all my doctors leading up to brain surgery.
Bill 42:46
And then I also challenged myself when I had thyroid surgery, I challenged one of my doctors, by the chronologist just about some of the stuff they were doing. They were deeply offended that I would do that because it was difficult for them to consider that they were perhaps misleading people because they didn’t have all the information and didn’t have the time to look into having better information for their patients.
Bill 43:13
So it was a matter of time, but also their identity was, I thought I was helping. Don’t tell me that I’m not helping you. And for me, I went to my endocrinologist. So I remember and I said to him, these are the things that I want you to test for. Because I think that this is what I’ve kind of said, Where did you come up with that conclusion?
Bill 43:30
Messaged him. I found that on the internet. He said, Why did you do that? That’s, that’s stupid. You don’t just go on the internet to heal yourself. And I said to him, Well, up until right now every doctor that I’ve spoken to hasn’t given me feedback, or a path forward that’s supporting my health and well-being we’re just talking about removing stuff and putting me on drugs and medications for the rest of my life.
Bill 43:53
So until you can give me some further information about where I should go to solve my problem or make myself better or manage my problem better. Don’t tell me that I can’t go to the internet. So you need to ramp up your game and get a better understanding of how to support me, not leave me listening to stories about how thyroxine and tablet, the rest of my life is the solution to a damaged thyroid.
Belinda Fettke 44:22
The other thing is these AHPRA Medical Board doctors and dietitians, the doctors are governed by this regulation. And it’s called guidelines for managing everything. They’ve got the handbooks for managing diabetes and managing stroke and managing all sorts of things.
Belinda Fettke 44:43
The issue is these guidelines have been written by the food industry, and the pharmaceutical industry because they’ve done all the research, they’ve paid for all the research, and very little is done independently. And because they’ve got these guidelines, doctors also have to follow what we call them strict rule books, they’re not guidelines, the rule books because Gary’s found out he got into trouble for guidelines.
Belinda Fettke 45:07
It’s a rule book. So, if you consider these rules, doctors also fear being sued and being deregistered. I mean, if even for Gary to take the stance that he’s taken, the fear of being deregistered was very, very real, and that’s what is threatening.
Belinda Fettke 45:28
And most people got kids to put through school, they’ve spent, you know, 1215 years getting to a specialist position as a doctor, and you lose that, then where you going to go what are you going to do going to start a completely new career so, understanding this is what Gary and I are trying to fight now is making doctors aware that these guidelines these rule books, need to stay flexible.
Belinda Fettke 45:57
They need to be something that is debated and questioned. not blindly followed for fear of regulation or, you know, really are they told if someone comes in with hypothyroidism or hypothyroidism, this is what you do you Band-Aid sick care, that is the rulebook.
Belinda Fettke 46:16
And so starting to understand the differences, if you consider that as Gary said sorry, because, again his journey was so huge. And for the people that he now looks after it is mammoth, so he has apologized. But as an orthopedic surgeon, it’s a little bit easier because you don’t prescribe many medications.
Belinda Fettke 46:42
you operate on people, for doctors, most areas of medicine, medicating, and there hasn’t been a time, the doctors have medicated someone that has caused harm since (inaudible) that they’re aware of, I would say, putting people with type two diabetes on insulin when you could potentially change their diet.
Belinda Fettke 47:09
And then it does not need to be a chronic progressive disease that is causing massive harm and could end up being a very big court case eventually, because it is almost criminal. The doctors are still considering that. But going back to when Gary was dying to question all these things, it wasn’t as widely known as you know, people think they need 130 grams of glucose for the brain to function.
Belinda Fettke 47:39
This has been driven into the Dietitians Association are Dietetics. If you don’t have Ireland that your grams of carbohydrate your brains not going to work or Gary’s is working better than ever and he hasn’t had, you know, he has, I would say less than 50 grams of glucose sugar if not less than 20 every single day. For the last seven years, so that’s a myth.
Belinda Fettke 48:05
But it’s perpetuated in Diabetes Australia, perpetuated by the Dietitians Association of Australia, Heart Foundation Cancer Council, everybody pushes this rule book. And to go outside of it, you do risk a lot, not just your credibility, but your your career.
Belinda Fettke 48:27
And understanding as you’ve learned that our brains function just as well on ketones, which are produced from fat, so our body can also make the glucose that it needs through gluconeogenesis, all of the body has two fuel sources. And some people say, well, glucose is the main fuel source.
Belinda Fettke about nutritional ketosis
Belinda Fettke 48:50
But I read a really interesting article by Angela Stanton only yesterday that kids are in ketosis babies all through pregnancy. When they’re nursing from the mom, they’re in nutritional ketosis, which is fueled on fat, far more than sugar, children go in and out of ketosis so quickly, which I had no idea. This article is really interesting. As I, it’s by Angela’s Staton quote, our kids are in ketosis. And it just explains well how brains thrive on ketosis.
Bill 49:26
Yeah (inaudible) brain has been impacted by a neurological condition. It can do well, on a high-sugar, high-carb diet, it just actually causes a lot more complications, I noticed that firsthand. So when I was potentially not in ketosis to that extent, I didn’t think I was ever really in ketosis.
Bill 49:47
I was just very, very low sugar and complex carbohydrates like bread and wheat and flour and rice and all that type of things. I was noticing that I was just a better version of myself, You know I was able to gain clarity, I was able to gain energy, I was able to become active, I was able to start to consider my health and well-being.
Bill 50:09
Even though my brain had been impacted by this injury, I was still able to use my brain to make decisions. I started noticing myself losing weight, which was not my goal, my goal was to heal my brain. You know, and that was a great bonus.
Bill 50:26
So everything in my life started to improve. And I found that, what I was experiencing, I was telling people about and that we’re getting offended or annoyed or upset, or they thought that I was just on. I’m just telling stories. And then what’s interesting is how the tide has started to turn.
Bill 50:46
So I’ll tell you, the tide in my family has started to turn because people are coming to me and telling me, Hey, I discovered this thing that you can do to lose weight and it’s like, okay, you know, what is that? Oh, well okay, so seven years ago when I mentioned the word, your eyes glazed over Now you’ve just invented you discovered this thing that was just invented.
Bill 51:09
It’s been around for a long time. And it’s like, great. I’m glad that you discovered it you know, go down that path, see what happens. But have you noticed that now, because there are a lot of other people who are very vocal in this space in Australia, specifically, Peter Evans, the chef, who I know loves the hashtag, I support Gary Fettke?
Bill 51:38
I think that what people have got for the first time is they’ve got an opportunity to be if they are curious to be given some information that they can consider about their well being so you guys noticing at that medical level, this turnaround is it starting to happen where people are considering people like Gary is saying,
Belinda Fettke 52:04
I think the concept of sugar is very much being raised. It’s being discussed at the AMA level, you know, as a sugar tax. I mean, I think people’s awareness, public medical, and everyone else is starting to consider sugar. But the dietitians association of Australia still calls low carb, a fad diet.
Belinda Fettke 52:30
And until we can change the leading Dietetic Association of Australia who makes all of the rules until we can change their perception, and can we do it while they’re conflicted? is a very challenging question. And that’s not challenging individual dietitians.
Belinda Fettke 52:54
I know a lot of amazing dieticians who are completely on board and were probably on board before Gary And there would be some who Gianelli, for example, got deregistered by the Dietitians Association of Australia for advocating low carb for people with diabetes that she was helping and improving the health and they never reinstated her.
Belinda Fettke 53:15
So they’re still compromised, I would say because of their sponsors, which is inappropriate would moving them under the umbrella of AHPRA help? Maybe there’s been a little bit of talk about it, but I think nutritional ketosis I think the word keto (inaudible) has done an amazing job in raising awareness about these things.
Belinda Fettke 53:40
But I think also Gary and I just refused to be quiet and say when Gary was silenced, I went, Whoa, they can’t silence me. So I’ve jumped on board and taken over a lot of I can’t discuss the science like he can. And luckily, he was exonerated in September last year.
Belinda Fettke 54:00
After we had to go to the National Ombudsman and the health ombudsman and work through her because as the site we couldn’t go to court was non-appealable, the ruling. And so we had to go to her and the only way it could be reopened was if there was an issue with the process.
Belinda Fettke 54:18
So the actual ruling on whether Gary was right or wrong, she couldn’t comment on. She just had to find it and took her two and a half years to go. I can I think there’s been a problem with the process of how this investigation happened with some of the actions AHPRA did, and how can you possibly make a lifelong ruling that someone can’t appeal so there were some issues, she sent it to an independent medical board.
Belinda Fettke 54:41
So it was taken away from the Tasmanian one who’d spent two and a half years in a star chamber investigation. It was like similar ways all over again and hand washing, it was ridiculous. So went to an independent board, and within six weeks, they completely threw out the entire thing.
Belinda Fettke 54:59
So that was the only way. But I think it was being loud. It was everyone on social media who completely supported us. It was people like Pete Evans, it was high profile people who also shared our story. The ABC took elements of it. We can’t thank the public enough for continuing to support us because that was putting a lot of pressure on AHPRA and the medical board for such a ridiculous ruling.
Belinda Fettke 55:28
It became a bit like what we call the Barbra Streisand effect. Gary was talking about low sugar low carbs, a small catchment area, and his patients, he had about 5,000 people following them on social media at the time was reported.
Belinda Fettke 55:41
And now when I posted to say that he’d been silenced, we had over a million views on Facebook. (inaudible) got it onto the news in the UK. It just went everywhere. So for them wanting to silence something down I think Gary’s story has helped raise the awareness of how ridiculous it is not to talk about sugar and health at this point.
Belinda Fettke 56:09
So, going forward, we would like the diabetes guidelines to be guidelines and allow people or our doctors and healthcare professionals to support people if they choose to do low carb to be supportive in moving that space.
Belinda Fettke 56:29
And the exciting thing is in America, the CEO of the American Diabetes Association has got type two diabetes, and she is looking at low carb. She’s trying low carb herself seeing an improvement in her blood glucose so she could be the catalyst.
Belinda Fettke 56:50
So where’s America let us down this low-fat high-carb guideline? They could also be the ones to take us out with a bit of luck. You’re talking about the sugar Industry before and I was going to mention dietary guidelines have come from America.
Belinda Fettke 57:06
And in 1977, the McGovern Report. So Senator McGovern was looking at diet. He was very swayed to believe that saturated fat was the evilest of all evils, particularly animal fats. And there’s been information come out. Kristen Kearns has done a lot of research into and Gary Taubes looking into this sugar conspiracy.
Belinda Fettke 57:34
But how much sugar funding occurred to the Harvard School of Public Health to Fred stare to different people who influenced that McGovern report to cover up the harms of sugar and blame saturated fat. And if you look at our dietary guidelines now, Gary did a slide for the CrossFit conference that we went to in 2017 It is shotgun with processed food.
Belinda Fettke 58:03
Trying to find meat and dairy on that healthy, straight healthy guide to eating or whatever it’s called, is almost a joke by 1992. If you look back to them, six to 11 servings of carbohydrates per day, were recommended by the Dietitians Association of Australia.
Belinda Fettke 58:21
And back then in 1992, once there were two slices of bread, this whole push has come, I believe, massively from trying to cover up sugar harm. John Yudkin wrote a book about the harms of sugar back in the 70s. So it’s really as you say, it’s been covered up and saturated fat has become the blame.
Belinda Fettke 58:47
People go well, you pour saturated fat down a drain and it clogs. So it must cover arteries. But our bodies are 37 degrees temperature fat doesn’t congeal and 37 degrees. So Gary and a lot of others have looked into the fact that it’s sugar and carbohydrates that are causing the plaques.
Belinda Fettke 59:08
And cholesterol is a marker. It’s like saying will the fireman or the fire so let’s blame the firemen for the fire that’s there, but they’re there to put it out. So I think this whole thing comes down a microscope and finding cholesterol at points of weaknesses at these plaque sites and different things. Scientists have blamed cholesterol as being a problem, when then maybe their cholesterol might just be there to mop up the damage.
Bill 59:35
(Inaudible) To support the soft tissues from becoming continuously inflamed by the cortisol by the high levels of sugar, all that stuff that’s the plaques. The cholesterol goes there and because the diet never changes, it just continues to build up and build up to create a thicker and thicker wall to stop the penetration of those bad, I suppose for lack of a better word, sugary substances.
Bill 1:00:06
Or the cortisol damages the blood vessels and makes them weaker by hardening them and less except rather than having them flexible and moving that can expand and contract and help us with our blood pressure and help send blood to the body’s extremities etc. into the brain and the rest of it.
Diet in hospital
Bill 1:00:30
Interestingly, you mentioned earlier that you weren’t sure about what happens with the diet in the hospital for people recovering from brain injury. Well, you wouldn’t be surprised if when I you know, when I tell you that basically, the first thing they serve you is you know, sugary cereals or bread with honey and jam.
Bill 1:00:49
A team of sugar or coffee with or not, and then you know at lunch there might be a bit of protein with some potatoes or some other vegetables, followed by a dessert of some sort, whether it’s through to the cup, or jello or something along those lines, and then the whole an orange juice and then the same things repeated for dinner as well.
Bill 1:01:14
So when I was in the hospital I asked my parents to bring me food every day so that I wasn’t eating the stuff that I was getting in the hospital because what I realized was that that was going to keep me there longer, it’s going to reduce the ability for the swelling in the brain after surgery and the stitches and the Jura to heal and the blood-brain barrier to heal. Just going to reduce all of that. So I was able to
Belinda Fettke 1:01:41
And you need protein, We need protein to heal you don’t need sugar.
Bill 1:01:46
Yeah, you need protein to create those protein blocks that do the repairing (inaudible) you need all that kind of stuff. So that’s the same deal that applies in that space. Because you know, hospitals are all about doing the cheapest possible service of food to just have people full rather than have people well, if they invested more in their food, they would see that people would be removing themselves from the hospital sooner than they’d be getting home quicker.
Belinda Fettke 1:02:21
They can’t change it though, because it’s the guidelines. Again, go back to the guidelines, the dietitians, right? Or the guidelines, nutritional guidelines of the world, but especially Australia, go to daycares. It goes to schools, it goes to hospitals, it goes to defense, this high carb low-fat dietary guideline, and that ticks all the boxes. It is just ridiculous.
Belinda Fettke 1:02:49
And it’s not helping people at all does help them in their nursing home when they need more protein but certainly doesn’t help anyone in the hospital Having such a high-sugar high-carb, low-fat diet like they’re fat, just doesn’t make any sense.
Bill 1:03:05
For people listening who wanted to get some information about that type of diet. They could look into many books online but one that I got a lot out of was Big Fat Get Thin written a while ago by Dr. Mark Hyman.
Bill 1:03:19
That was one of the first books that I read that shed a lot of light on the benefits really easy way for people like me to understand and consume, what the benefits of a high-fat diet are, and how that’s different from a high-fat diet from a burger that you buy at KFC or McDonalds.
Bill 1:03:41
So, about that kind of high fat, we’re talking about good saturated fats. So as we wrap up, can you give us a bit of an insight into what a low-carb diet is, so that we can get people listening and watching some information to start making them curious about whether they might consider a low-carb diet after a stroke or after brain surgery? So in your mind, what does a low-carb diet look like?
Belinda Fettke 1:04:13
A low-carb diet for us and again, it’s broad principles because there are cultural issues. There’s a religious ideology, there are ethical beliefs and there’s a whole range. So I think below is the great thing about low-carb healthy factors that can support all of those different eating behaviors.
Belinda Fettke 1:04:34
And remember that our mitochondria just want fuel. It’s, it’s our emotions that create this. blockage sometimes to what we eat and what we don’t eat. But for us, it includes animal proteins and fats, but you can do low carb without that as well. We know people are vegetarian vegans harder, but for vegetarians, if they have eggs.
Belinda Fettke 1:04:58
Eggs are a healthy, nutritious protein package. It’s got so many nutrients in it, they’re amazing. So for us, it is some above-ground veggies, we still include those and a little bit of below. But probably would choose to have pumpkin as a vegetable with some greens.
Belinda Fettke 1:05:24
And we have fish, chicken steak, lamb, you know, we go through the range all of those things you don’t need to have a lot but have them with healthy fats as well. Don’t cut the skin off the chicken, you know, leave the skin on your fish as well crisp it up and it’s beautiful. That’s got so many nutrient-dense properties.
Belinda Fettke 1:05:46
We have some nuts and I make some sea crackers, which are lovely with cheese so we don’t have the high-carb biscuits and package processing. I make a seed and nut granola, but again, you should have a little bit with some cream and berries, should you desire those say it depends on your age activity, and metabolic health.
Belinda Fettke 1:06:10
And that’s how you determine how much carbohydrate suitable for a young child who’s active and has no metabolic issues, you’re up to 130 grams of carbohydrates could be as unhealthy not Coca-Cola, but healthy vegetables, carbs, and even some whole grain bread is perfectly okay for them.
Belinda Fettke 1:06:32
In their situation, it’s for people who are going to get metabolic disease, You want to cut out all the processed carbs and that includes whole grain breads, because once your insulin isn’t working very well, it’s really hard to process them. So but Gary with cancer, which has not gone away, it’s still there, but inactive. He doesn’t want to stir that up at all within sugar, which you also wouldn’t want to.
Belinda Fettke 1:06:57
So when you’ve got type two diabetes or you’ve got cancer, you’ve got these other things and you found that low carbohydrate healthy fat principles, supports your health, Gary has to say would be under 50 grams of carbohydrate per day and often under 20 don’t even need to measure them anymore.
Belinda Fettke 1:07:20
An example would be instead of having a bolognese pasta dish at night, we got great zucchini noodles. And I do a big lot at once we grow zucchini and we have eight of them in summer and you can do a big load of the zucchini noodles, wrap them in a towel and squeeze out a lot of the moisture.
Belinda Fettke 1:07:37
Put it into a freezer bag, get the air out you can keep it in the fridge for a week. And just keep adding handfuls into whatever you want to use. And I’ve got a little thing here it cuts the carb content of the meal down from 62.5 grams of carbs down to 5.9 by just altering a vegetable base instead of a pasta base. So that’s how we look at it. And we found it very easy. Because once you change and you make those choices, make them easy choices.
Bill 1:08:10
Yeah, it’s a very big conversation. So I know that we spoke about the controversy behind why there is such a big issue with the low-carb or the sugar-free diet, taking a whole be calling it a diet because I don’t have any better words for it and it’s not a diet it’s a lifestyle.
Belinda Fettke 1:08:33
It’s a lifestyle.
Bill 1:08:34
You know, we were talking about the controversy that was behind stopping people from understanding the health benefits of the low carbohydrate meal plan or meal. And as a result of that, we’ve uncovered some of the things that people might not yet realize about the little conspiracies that go on.
Bill 1:08:59
To keep something that’s been going on for 30 or 40 years to continue going those conspiracies and unable to sustain themselves when good people go ahead and put their name on the line put your life on the line, put everything on the line to just do the right thing and help people.
Bill 1:09:18
So I appreciate the fact that Gary, well, I’m not happy I appreciate the fact that he has gone through that process. And I am aware that the entire time that he was going through that process, he was still recovering from a really serious neurological condition.
Bill 1:09:40
And that, how is it that that is not giving him at least enough credibility that people don’t get curious and his colleagues when I say colleagues, just in a general broad sense don’t go wow. Like if I were in Gary’s shoes. What would I want to happen to me? And would I allow other people to influence whether or not I end up staying on the planet or not?
Bill 1:10:11
And I just can’t believe that even though Gary was a doctor, he was healing his neurological condition. He was then trying to support people who are healing from other health conditions. Even then it wasn’t enough for the medical boards to go.
Bill 1:10:33
This is one of our colleagues. We should talk to him we should bring him aside and ask him questions and find out because if we don’t we’ll start this whole process to achieve the greater good which is to heal people. And if we took the Hippocratic Oath did we forget that first, we should be not harmed?
Belinda Fettke 1:10:57
Amazingly, Bill Gary provided the Medical Board of Tasmania with I think, close to 1000 research papers that he printed out and highlighted all the important parts in it. So it wasn’t even just a big digital document, he would send it to them over two and a half years.
Belinda Fettke 1:11:15
And their ruling stated that even if LCHF which is what we call low carbohydrate, healthy fat principles, even if LCHF becomes accepted, as best practice, you can never talk about it. You know so I cannot believe the I don’t believe the attitude. I can’t understand that these are people who know Gary, because in Tasmania a pretty small.
Belinda Fettke 1:11:37
So most of the people on the board who were investigating him knew him and knew how passionate he was. They’ve known of his story and how he’s overcome all these things. It’s almost beyond words, to try to comprehend the pressure that was on them to silence him.
Belinda Fettke 1:12:00
I’ve got no exact proof I found proof of the pressure from the Dietitians Association onto the hospital. The hospital then provided an 845-page submission to AHPRA. So was it all coming via that? And they were just just believed it.
Belinda Fettke 1:12:20
I tried sending through information where I found this man was working for sanitarium and, you know, different things to the board and they said, We don’t believe you. Or do we believe the expert witness, not you? It was just it was always put away and I think they never expected us to keep going.
Belinda Fettke 1:12:41
I think they made it very, very hard. Very hard on Gary he was trying to work he was still researching. He was talking. They were trying to silence him and they demanded a lot. This investigation process was very traumatic.
Bill 1:12:53
Yeah. Family Belinda.
Belinda Fettke 1:12:57
The family and then you’ve got the Dietitians Association. One of the spokespeople for the Dietitians Association of Australia put on Twitter that Gary was Bill Gibson was just another Bill Gibson and he was making up that he ever had cancer. So he just got you know they tried very hard to discredit him. And I think Pete’s come up against a very similar issue.
Belinda Fettke 1:13:22
He’s a passionate man, he’s changed his health. He’s changed the health of so many others. The AMA doesn’t like it. Gary, I had a discussion this morning. a dietitian said that some of the issues that the dietitians don’t talk about are orthopedics you know, they don’t step over the boundaries so why did Gary step over theirs?
Belinda Fettke 1:13:45
And as we said to each other this morning, his basic degree is in science. He understands biochemistry and physiology, and it’s his best card. He is the overseer, he sends someone to a physiotherapist and says what he wants done as a physio is to come back and say, Well, actually, I think this would be a great adjunct, or I think this would be better.
Belinda Fettke 1:14:14
Gary would accept that and have a conversation. But Gary is the person who has to take responsibility for that patient’s care. And it’s very different to a dietitian coming in saying, well, this is what they need for the nutrition because they don’t understand everything else about the body as Gary does. So anyway, it’s been an interesting place.
Belinda Fettke 1:14:35
And the fact that the DAA continue to defend, and that is to support a vegan diet, which has to be a lot of processed food or a vegetarian diet, but they call eating animal proteins and fats dangerous. So which we’ve evolved to eat. Yeah. And if you go to my website, you’ll see that I’ve uncovered a lot of vested interests, but also an ideology behind this anti-meat messaging.
Belinda Fettke 1:15:05
So it is quite confronting. It’s confronting to me to stumble across it. And then confronting. It’s a challenging space. Gary has more of the science on a website that he started seven, or eight years ago. It’s been a jumble of all sorts of things he was putting on there. And then when he was (inaudible) he hasn’t done anything since.
Belinda Fettke 1:15:26
Because it’s just too hard to manage that and everything else you’ve had to do. But he’s got a lot of science on the called nofructose.com. I think that’s where the science is on my website. It looks more at the vested interests, ideology, and fake news. I call out a lot of stuff. It’s more challenging, a little bit of science on there, but a lot of questioning, and that’s www.isupportgary.com.
Bill 1:15:57
Well, I support you and Gary Because what you’re talking about is my language in that, if I wanted, if I had to go through this again, I would want somebody like you, telling me the things that I needed to know, to heal myself and being control of one part of my recovery, the most important part.
Bill 1:16:20
So thank you so much for doing what you do and for continuing to do what you do for putting yourself and your family through all of that. Thank you, thank Gary for me for doing what he did and stepping up and copping the flag and refusing to give up. And for people that are watching and listening.
Bill 1:16:39
And if you’re not convinced by what we’re saying, do your research, but do that research in an way unbiased. If you want to be convinced one way or another and you’re just looking for that type of research, then you will be but if you’re going to be open you’re going to look into how to best heal yourself.
Bill 1:16:59
Go down the path of checking out the low-carb approach and trying it because it can’t do any harm. If you try a low-carb approach, you might just notice something and feel different and feel better. And you might be able to get off of the roller coaster of the medical model, which is to keep people sick for a long period. Because the longer they are sick, the more money we can make off them when we sell pharmaceuticals.
Belinda Fettke 1:17:30
I think also an important thing to remember is carb addiction is very real. A lot easier for some people to give it up than others. So if you do start to go down the low carbohydrate thing as we had, we started nutrition for life business for a while had we’re employing dietitians, and some people got it straight away and other people took a long time to get it or they say fell off the bandwagon and come back.
Belinda Fettke 1:17:54
But the great thing about it is it’s only you, you’re not answering to anyone else. So never about giving up, just celebrate the times that work well for you and know how good you felt when it happened. And just keep coming back.
Belinda Fettke 1:18:09
And that’s why we call it a lifestyle rather than a diet as well takes a little bit of the pressure off. Even just making a small change to your diet, like getting rid of that cereal in the morning and having eggs instead or something like that. Just starting to make some changes and make it sustainable, and what time it takes.
Belinda Fettke 1:18:30
But can I also say Thank you, Bill, because it is people like you it’s the n equals story that stand up and tell that story and start to influence other people as well? This is how the message is going to grow. And so congratulations on your journey, because it’s huge what you’ve been able to achieve and what you’ve been able to do.
Bill 1:18:51
Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. We’ll leave it at that all the best and I look forward to following your work.
Belinda Fettke 1:18:58
Okay, thanks, Bill.
Bill 1:19:01
Wow. Belinda, I could probably talk to you for hours and hours and hours. At the forefront, you get it. Thank you so much for being on my podcast. I appreciate it. It’s taken a while for me to find somebody that’s at the level that you guys are at. And, unfortunately, you had to get there going through, you know what you went through, but I’m kind of glad you did, but I’m not you know what I mean?
Belinda Fettke 1:19:30
Well, Gary says, If it hadn’t been for all of this, He wouldn’t be here. That he believes his story is changing more lives than he would ever do as an orthopedic surgeon. So he said, yeah, this is amazing. And he’s so well now Bill, like, he’s so well compared to what he was. This is what was meant to be.
Bill 1:19:56
Yeah, that’s beautiful. I’m so glad to hear that. Well, if there’s anything I can do in the future, just please reach out, and get in, touch I’ll edit and put this interview out, and I’ll send you the links. And I’m not sure what you guys do with podcast interviews and all that sort of stuff that you can do with.
Belinda Fettke 1:20:13
I’m starting to collect them on the website, I’m starting to put them all up so then people can say, oh, okay, let’s see who has spoken to us Pete Evans put his up two days ago.
Bill 1:20:23
I’ll have a look at that, Well, I appreciate that if I could send you the links and you could put the link up there. And I just, I’m just full of gratitude. You know, I’m just extremely grateful. I am extremely grateful and I just know that because of what you do, people like me who are experiencing this that are going through what I’m going through now, I’ve got a far better chance of having a better recovery.
Belinda Fettke 1:20:50
Where you are at the forefront in 2012. That’s the same time Gary was starting to work it out as well. Yeah, they said there’s nothing more we can do. You just gonna have to die. And now seven years later, he’s the healthiest. He’s probably been in 20 years so I do know that pushback you get.
Belinda Fettke 1:21:15
Gary’s had so much of it from the medical community and, our friends and family as well. And it’s just, that they can’t comprehend how they can do it. So it’s easier not to have that conversation. I think for a lot of people.
Bill 1:21:31
It’s a real test of the person’s own identity. My identity is based on what am I doing wrong. Tell me so I can fix it. Others are I’m not doing anything wrong. Don’t tell me because I don’t want to know.
Belinda Fettke 1:21:54
Carb addiction is very very real.
Bill 1:21:57
It’s a real thing. So I noticed that it went away and I know that my my wife is addicted to carbs and most people I know are addicted to carbs but my wife runs She’s quite healthy and she doesn’t have any. Thank god she doesn’t have any medical conditions. You know, she’s 48 I’m 49 she’s doing quite well she goes to the gym she exercises she doesn’t smoke.
Bill 1:22:15
She’s a vegetarian, doesn’t eat meat but she eats fish, she eats eggs. So she is well. well-balanced diet, she loves her toasted, you know, toasted bread, you know, and I can’t take that away from her and hopefully she’ll never need to do that because she’ll never get the kind of illness that I got. And therefore, everything will be okay. But one thing that she is, she’s at least willing to appreciate that if something’s not working for me anymore. Don’t do it.
Belinda supports low carb diet
Belinda Fettke 1:22:43
Yeah, I think that’s the same with Gary. I support him. I don’t eat as low a carb as he does but I’m certain I’d be on that 80 hundred grams easily. But we don’t have a lot of stuff In the house, because he was a carb addict, We just don’t have it here, The meals I make a low carb, and as I say when it just becomes part of your lifestyle, then it’s just really easy to do.
Belinda Fettke 1:23:12
You don’t have to think, oh, what am I gonna do here what am I gonna do, I don’t bake all those fake cakes and all of those sorts of things. I do make a granola side we have a tiny, tiny bit and sea crackers occasionally.
Belinda Fettke 1:23:26
But we just ate meat and veggies. And it is cheaper. And it takes, you know, maybe a little bit of time preparing. As Gary said he doesn’t want to be a medical tourist. He’s been a medical tourist. He doesn’t want to be a medical tourist again and go from one appointment to the next appointment first of his life.
Bill 1:23:43
(Inaudible) country was found that way for so many years, didn’t it? And it seems to have been a generation that has been significantly impacted negatively. By the pharmaceutical industry and I’ve seen that firsthand. And my mother-in-law used to take 30 tablets a day, and she passed away from complications to diabetes and blood pressure tablets, you know.
Bill 1:24:12
And every time she understood every time she could get the courage up, to stop taking sugar into decrease her carbs, diabetes numbers would change, you know, her blood sugar levels would change. Things would start to improve she just didn’t have the emotional resilience to continue that so she used to use food.
Belinda Fettke 1:24:33
Or the support.
Belinda Fettke 1:24:36
No medical support?
Bill 1:24:37
No, no, zero. So she used to use food to regulate her emotions, you know, so was a big problem. And my father-in-law currently takes a whole bunch of medication and so does my dad. Not so much my dad, he probably takes one or two tablets, but we’ve seen that as their kids and we thought like, how did it end up like that and do we want to end up like that we want to go down that path.
Bill 1:25:03
Thankfully, I didn’t take any medication and couldn’t be happier, and healthier, because of the decisions that I made early on to be curious about what I could do to help myself you know. Look, it’s just, it’s fascinating. It’s a shame that you guys went through that but I hope that it hasn’t impacted your family, you know, too negatively, and you’re coming out of it now and things are better, you know, so, thanks for putting up with it and doing what you’re doing still. I’m just loving it. I’m just loving that. You guys are out there.
Belinda Fettke 1:25:39
Thanks, Bill much appreciated.
