Why were "starvation diets" promoted for diabetes in the pre-insulin period?
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Level 5 by design analogy; historical narrative review without modern clinical trial data.
OpenAlex W2150646273 · doi:10.1186/1475-2891-10-23
What was done
A historical analysis evaluating the scientific rationale and contemporary evidence used by Frederick Allen and Elliott Joslin to promote severe fasting and undernutrition ("starvation diets") for diabetes in the pre-insulin era.
What was found
The abstract reports no quantitative data or numerical outcomes. It found that the claim that starvation therapy was directly derived from robust animal experimentation was exaggerated, and contemporary clinical experience did not indicate that severe undernutrition produced superior outcomes compared to standard low-carbohydrate diets.
Why it matters
It re-evaluates early 20th-century diabetes history, demonstrating that extreme starvation regimens were adopted despite weak preclinical and clinical justification compared to other dietary approaches of the era.
Limits
The study is a qualitative historical commentary based on early medical records rather than a modern clinical study. The abstract does not specify source selection criteria, document counts, or quantitative measures of clinical outcomes.
Cited by
- supports Carbohydrate restriction was used at the Joslin clinic in the 1900s and early 1920s to treat type 1 diabetes before insulin was developed.