Low carb & keto
for clinicians

1. Introduction

Are you a clinician curious about how low-carb nutrition can help your patients? Look no further. Or maybe you’re a clinician who has heard about low-carb nutrition, but some outlandish claims have given you a reason to doubt its scientific foundations. We sympathize with that perspective too.

Our main goal at Diet Doctor is to make low-carb diets simple for people who could benefit from them and to do so in the most trustworthy and reliable manner possible.

About Diet Doctor

This includes making it easy for clinicians to learn about low-carb diets. Carbohydrate reduction expands the options clinicians can offer patients. As these hundreds of success stories show, many individuals find low carb to be a life-changing discovery.

But there’s another important change that can occur: Not only can low carb transform patients’ lives, it can transform your clinical practice. Rising rates of metabolic diseases have highlighted just how ineffective our tools for dealing with these conditions are.¹ Some clinicians are frustrated with constantly juggling risk factors, medications, and side effects for patients with chronic disease.

We think all clinicians would like to see their patients become healthier. They’d like to remove medications instead of always adding them. Many clinicians who have started using carbohydrate reduction as a therapeutic tool have been able to do just that. As a result, they’ve found more enjoyment, satisfaction, and patient engagement in their daily work.

We can help that happen for you too, by giving you the tools to assist patients in working to reverse, rather than just manage, chronic conditions like obesity, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome.²

While carbohydrate reduction is not a “cure-all” and there are many conditions for which no proof of benefit exists, studies have shown carbohydrate reduction can help improve these common conditions:

• Dozens of studies show that low carb is an effective weight loss tool.³
• Many studies demonstrate its effectiveness in reversing the clinical signs of type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes and helping patients reduce their use of diabetes medications.⁴
• Beyond weight loss and glycemic control, it improves other features of metabolic syndrome including blood pressure and dyslipidemia.⁵
• Several studies show it helps manage epilepsy.⁶
• Preliminary evidence shows it can reverse PCOS.⁷
• More preliminary findings indicate that low carb may be a beneficial option for people with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), Alzheimer’s, and other conditions.⁸

5. Continuing medical education activity

The CME activity, Treating metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and obesity with therapeutic carbohydrate restriction, was designed by and for clinicians. This course provides clinicians with the information and tools they need to use therapeutic carbohydrate restriction with their patients and includes a comprehensive review of the science of carbohydrate restriction as an option for helping patients improve their health.

If you would like your colleagues or your own healthcare team to know about this course, you can use our CME informational flyer to print, email, link, or post on a bulletin board.

If you are a physician, physician’s assistant, nurse practitioner, registered nurse, or registered dietitian, you can apply for a certificate that indicates you’ve completed our CME course and meet the criteria specified by Diet Doctor regarding ethical and appropriate clinical practice.

You can also join our map by filling out this online form and sending a high-resolution head-shot photo to anne.mullens@dietdoctor.com.

After you finish the course, we encourage you to look around the rest of our website.

7. Patient education resources

When it comes to helping your patients with recipes, meal plans, and practical tips for getting started and long-term maintenance, we have all the tools you need for providing low-carb care to patients who will benefit. These printable pdfs will educate patients on how to effectively adopt a low-carb lifestyle.

• Brochure
• Sample menu
• Shopping list
• Meal planning
• Substitutes for favorite foods
• Simple meals and planned leftovers
• Patient resources
• Target protein ranges

In addition, you can send your patients to DietDoctor.com to learn more. The most important resources on the site are freely available to everyone.

9. Find a low-carb doctor

On our “Find a low-carb clinician” page, you’ll see the names, faces, and stories of clinicians who use low-carb and keto diets with their patients.

This page also has a map of over 600 physicians (and growing!) you can use to connect with colleagues. If you’d like to put yourself on that map, you’ll also find a form and instructions on that page for joining this directory.

11. Patients’ stories

You may also be inspired by the stories of individuals who have improved their health and lost weight using carbohydrate-restricted diets.

As Dr. Èvelyne Bourdua-Roy noted, “Perhaps low carb isn’t for everyone, but everyone deserves to know it’s a therapeutic option, and that it is safe and evidence-based.” Don’t you think your patients deserve this option as well?