eslazeno: Jan had the honour to talk to Shashikant Iyengar as part of the dLife.in podcast series. We discussed a little bit of history of low carbohydrate diets in the Czech Republic (former Czechoslovakia, and before 1918 a part of Austrio-Hungarian empire) and the most recent developments, eg. the amendment of clinical guidelines for Gestational Diabetes or the 2020 Abbott patient leaflet/ebook offering low carbohydrate and ketogenic diets as healthy options for Type 1 Diabetes (T1D), Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) and Gestational Diabetes (GDM).
Content:
- Introduction
- Jan’s health journey (psoriasis, asthma, drug-free remission)
- The traditional Czech diet and the rise of ultra-processed food products
- Prof Thomayer’s 1909 comments on Rollo’s “strict meat diet” for curing diabetes
- Prof Charvat’s 1920s whole food low carbohydrate low calorie diet for diabetes and obesity
- A pilot project for prediabetes and T2D remission launched in March 2021 in collaboration with General University Hospital (Prague, CZ)
- A new study on low carbohydrate diets in children with T1D ongoing at Motol University Hospital (Prague, CZ)
- How “minimum carbohydrate intake in pregnancy” was removed from the GDM clinical guidelines in 2016 (credit to Lily Nichols, Hana Krejci MD et al)
- The Abbott leaflet/brochure/ebook for patients with T1D, T2D, GDM
- How Neslazeno.cz tried to create a source of quality information on low carbohydrate diets
- How Russell Wilder came up with a ketogenic diet for epilepsy based on his clinical experience with ketogenic diets in diabetes
- The legal aspects of prescribing low carbohydrate diets – the issue of contraindications
- A message to India
- Q & A (pregnancy, children, measuring insulin, “keto shortens life”)
Ieyngar-Vyjidak (2021) On LCHF & keto diets in the Czech Republic
Useful links:
Neslazeno.cz (2019) References on carbohydrate restriction
Vyjidak (2021) Beating Diabetes with Food – Abbott ebook
Jan’s short bio
Jan Vyjidak is a solicitor, medical lawyer, and management consultant, focusing on patient outcomes and quality of care in the UK, Czech Republic, and Slovakia. He works with clinical teams in hospitals and with nutrition organizations on projects aiming to improve quality of care and health/patient outcomes and builds bridges between data, people, and medical practice.
In 2018 and 2019, Jan co-authored two Czech review papers – a comprehensive paper on low carbohydrate diets in the treatment of diabetes, and a paper on industrial food processing and its role in the prevention and therapy of chronic diseases. He has also translated “Real Food for Gestational Diabetes” an excellent book by Lily Nichols which led to an amendment of Czech clinical guidelines for Gestational Diabetes and helped set up the Czech translation of “Diabetes Solution” by Richard Bernstein, which should be published anytime soon.
More recently, Jan has built a new evidence-based methodology for a large Czech company offering nutrition advice to people with metabolic syndrome, obesity, and other health issues. As a result, many Czech people seeking nutrition advice are informed about various dietary options including higher protein, low carbohydrate/ketogenic, and whole-food plant-based diets.
He has delivered lectures and talks on various issues, including legal and ethical aspects of prescribing low carbohydrate diets for The Nutrition Network based in South Africa, low carbohydrate diets in sport, and remission of Type 2 Diabetes, including the history of low carbohydrate diets.
Collaborating with medical doctors, registered dietitians, and also patients with diabetes, Jan has developed educational materials such as the “What to Eat” website published in six languages in 2019 or the 2020 Abbott ebook for patients with diabetes, which inform healthy people and patients about major healthy eating patterns and the role of ultra-processed food products. He also published popular magazine articles on diet in Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes.
Jan has been privately researching energy metabolism, including carbohydrate restriction and fasting, for more than 10 years and has been involved in work on obesity, diabetes, autoimmune, neurological, and other chronic diseases. His goal is to help improve the teaching of nutrition at medical schools in the Czech Republic and elsewhere. Jan is particularly interested in psoriasis, having suffered from a mild form between 1996 and 2009. He has been able to achieve a drug-free remission after adopting a low carbohydrate diet proposed by Wolfgang Lutz, an Austrian family physician.