Franklin House Discusses His Book
Interview With a Co-Author of The 30-Day Diabetes Miracle
Here is an interview with Dr. Franklin House, MD, in which he discusses diabetes mellitus, the Lifestyle Center of America, and his experiences with writing a book
Franklin House, MD, is involved with the Lifestyle Center of America in Sulphur, Oklahoma, and Sedona, Arizona, where diabetic patients can manage diabetes through lifestyle modifications. He has also co-written a book, The 30-Day Diabetes Miracle.
In an exclusive interview with Suite101, Dr. House talks about diabetes, the Lifestyle Center, and his book. He also discusses diabetes and health writing in Franklin House Discusses Writing.
Anthony Lee: What can you tell me about your interest in diabetes mellitus?
Franklin House: My passionate interest in diabetes mellitus has been kindled by my employment for the past eight years by the Lifestyle Center of America (LCA), first as its President/CEO and now as Chairman of the Board. Thousands of diabetes sufferers have come to us discouraged and in despair over the course of their diabetes and have returned home with renewed hope and a sense of assurance that they can not only stop the progression of the disease but, in many cases, actually reverse the process using tools learned during their residential stay at the LCA.
Anthony Lee: Should physicians and healthcare organizations look at the Lifestyle Center as a model for management of diabetes?
Franklin House: Most of our U.S. healthcare system is designed to deliver care for acute medical conditions (trauma, surgery, infections, etc.). 78 cents of each dollar spent for healthcare is spent in search of chronic disease care. Excellence in chronic disease care requires education and patient-directed behavior change. Seven minutes of face-time per visit with a physician is a poor environment in which to deliver chronic disease care. Diabetes is a chronic disease, a disease of choices. New health behavior choices in three lifestyle areas are vital to success: nutrition, physical activity, and attitude.
A pharmaceutical approach to “managing” diabetes focuses on maintaining blood sugar levels within a narrow, desirable range which, if successfully accomplished, can delay the onset of the devastating complications of diabetes such as blindness, amputation, and kidney failure. Though we acknowledge the benefit of a pharmaceutical approach, we acknowledge that there is a better first step. Our experience over the past twelve years leads us to conclude that complications need not occur at all if the patient can be educated and nurtured through a process of change in the three lifestyle areas mentioned above (nutrition, physical activity, and attitude).
We consider our approach “conservative”; I observe that others might label it “radical." I sense an industry-wide bias that dominates current treatment standards and strategies. When verbalized, the bias would go something like this: “The average patient won’t change. The economic cost of behavior modification as a therapeutic approach is unrealistically costly and therefore unsustainable.”
My perspective is that, had we as an American culture funded the “lifestyle” approach (health behavior change) with as much creativity, enthusiasm, and budget with which we pursued the pharmaceutical model, we would likely be practicing different diabetes treatment standards today.
Anthony Lee: What can you tell me about co-writing The 30-Day Diabetes Miracle?
Franklin House: The first goal of the three authors was to extend the benefit of our twelve-year, twenty-five million dollar experiment in lifestyle change as a powerful first-line diabetes therapy to a general diabetic audience in book form. The second decision was to address the book to the average American diabetic consumer in a format and syntax that would be interesting, informative, thorough, and understandable.
As the senior author no longer in active practice, I contributed the historical/philosophical/economic perspective. I contributed as well some scientific concepts and instructional detail.
Dr. Stuart Seale, the Medical Director of the Ardmore Institute of Health, our parent organization, and actively practicing physician on Lifestyle Center of America’s Sedona, AZ, campus acted as the major scientific contributor. His experience and extensive knowledge of current diabetes science and practice were essential to the writing effort.
Ian Blake Newman was vital to the writing process from several perspectives. He has conquered the advance of type 1 diabetes mellitus as our patient since 2005. He is an experienced writer, journalist, and professor at SUNY Rockland Community College in New York. He accepted the major task of communicating the message as you now read it in print. Without Ian, the book would likely never have happened.
Anthony Lee: As a co-author, what challenges did you face sharing the responsibilities of delivering material from two points of view?
Franklin House: The challenges that we faced and that any three people would face is how to divide up the responsibilities, how do you communicate effectively, who has the final editing responsibility, and how do you agree who is the intellectual content expert. I’ve never worked with any other two people as harmoniously as I have with them.
The technical process involved a lot of e-mail and a significant amount of interview time between each of the participants. Basically, a whole lot of phone activity back and forth. (I’m in Oklahoma, Dr. Seales is in Arizona, and Ian is in New York.)
Because Ian is an experienced writer and journalist, we gave him total authority to strategize the flow of the content and the syntax. We talked a lot about who is our audience and how do we want to address them. We came to the conclusion that we wanted the science to be very well annotated, and yet we wanted the conversation with our audience to be understood by an average high school reader. So to satisfy this, we included plenty of material in the end notes to verify what we were saying.
Stuart had complete authority over the scientific content and I had more of a contribution to make in the area of philosophy of medicine, economics of medicine, history of medicine, and the acute distinction between acute healthcare and chronic healthcare. We all gave each other complete authority to edit with abandon so that we could change anything we wanted to, as long as all three of us had the chance to go back and read it and determine that the change was made for the best.
(Dr. House discusses diabetes and health writing in Franklin House Discusses Writing.)
