Honoring David Mendosa

Diabetes writer David Mendosa died on May 8, only about a month after he was diagnosed with angiosarcoma in the liver. The diabetes community is mourning, with tributes at all the major diabetes sites in the United States and Europe as well as personal blogs.

David didn't want any kind of services. I was thinking of a fitting memorial for him, and I thought of this. He told me that he hoped his legacy would be his promotion of low-carbohydrate diets. He had been following one since 2007, with excellent results.

So one way to honor David would be to follow a low-carb diet for a month, or a couple of weeks, or just a week, if you haven't already been doing so. If you're already on a low-carb diet, you could make sure you're strict with the diet for a period of time to honor David. Let's face it, most of us do fall off the wagon from time to time.

Then, if you find the low-carb diet works for you, if you have better blood glucose levels and you discover that a low-carb diet doesn't mean deprivation, tell your diabetic friends. Ask them to tell their friends. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could see an explosion in the number of diabetic people following low-carb diets in honor of David Mendosa?

A couple of caveats: if  you go suddenly from a high-carb to a low-carb diet, a period of adaptation is needed as your body builds up the enzymes needed to metabolize fat, and some people lack energy for a week or two. It's called the low-carb flu. If that happens to you, don't despair. It's temporary. Also, low-carb diets act like diuretics, so make sure you eat enough salt to retain some water.

Of course not everyone may be able to honor David in this way. For those who would prefer some other kind of donation, Caring Bridge, on which David, and then his friends and relatives, posted about his final journey is accepting donations in his memory, as is Tru Hospice Care Center, the hospice where he spent his final days.