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In part 1 of this Exclusive Interview, Catherine Champagne discusses assessing the state of the patient when determining how to help with dietary changes in a talk with Diabetes in Control Publisher Steve Freed.
Catherine M. Champagne, PhD, RDN, LDN, FADA, FAND, FTOS is a professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University.
Transcript of this video segment:
Freed: This is Steve Freed here at the American Diabetes Association 78th Scientific Sessions, where they do presentations on new and exciting ideas and technology. You want to know anything about diabetes, you need to be here — and I know most people can’t be here so that’s why we’re doing this interview. We have with us one of the presenters who presented a standing room only conference. The title was “Myth or Science?” Current Fads and Evidence in Diet and Nutrition.” And maybe you can tell us a little bit about yourself. She is Catherine Champagne. And that’s a great name, Champagne. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about yourself and your practice and what you do.
Champagne: I have been an assistant professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center almost for 29 years right now. I do research primarily in weight loss, nutrition related topics, to weight and nutrition related topics, to chronic disease conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Freed: Before we get into the topic of fad diets I think that just because of your background – involved with diets and diabetes obviously over the years because you’ve been doing it for a while – now, you know you must have picked up some great information, that some readers from our newsletter have only maybe started a year or two or three years ago and they’re going to have to learn all that. All that time to learn what you learned, so maybe you can share with us some things that you’ve picked up that you think that other medical professionals should know, and save 20, 25 years.
Champagne: Well that’s kind of a really tough question but I’ll give it a shot. Over the years, I know that my career has evolved into one where I have been listening more to the patient and looking at what they want and sort of trying to merge that with the changes that I think that are needed to be made in their diet to help their disease conditions. For instance if someone comes into the clinic and they’re not really wanting to lose weight, then I think it’s not a good time to begin. And so I think you need to know where any patient is in terms of their willingness to make change before you can actually enjoy a degree of success.
Freed: That’s great information. Really boils down to what the new information is and that’s personalization. In order to do personalization you have to ask questions.
Champagne: You do have to ask questions and of course you know that the nutrition landscape is constantly changing. So some things that we thought were like absolutely necessary years ago may not be necessarily appropriate depending upon that that patient.
Freed: It’s interesting about nutrition. One of the things that keeps coming up for me even here, there’s people that are for it, people that are against it, there’s not really one statement that says, this is the exact science for people with diabetes. That’s low carb diets. It took years for the American Diabetes Association to say it’s OK for some people; prior to that they were against it, flat out denial.
Champagne: And I would have been against it too. But I have seen a significant amount of literature that suggests that for some people and for people with diabetes it is probably a good way to go. But I guess there’s always some concern about long term use. So I would like to see a lot of long term data on a lot of these diets such as the ketogenic diet.