Not eating your vegetables? The food that takes Yemen by storm doctors worry | Health Issues

Taiz, Yemen For the past few months, the high number of diabetic patients at the Republican Hospital in Taiz has been driven by one thing: they decided to stop taking the medicine they were prescribed and became very sick.

“We put them in the emergency room and they immediately send them to specialist doctors in the hospital to provide the necessary treatment,” Dr Hamza al-Qusais, head of the hospital’s emergency department, told Al Jazeera.

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He explained that the patients were following a diet that is against the wisdom of health that has taken Yemen and the rest of the Arab world by storm: el-tayebat, the Arabic word for ‘those who are good’.

The diet was popularized by Diaa el-Awadi, a former Egyptian doctor who was expelled from his country’s medical community and had two of his clinics closed in March. Egypt’s health ministry listed him as a health risk after his views on food and medicine became known online through his social media videos and website.

El-Awadi’s popularity grew when two months later, after being banned from publishing in Egypt, he died in the United Arab Emirates of a heart attack, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The news led to the spread of conspiracies – although the Egyptian authorities emphasized that there were no suspicious circumstances in his death – and this only increased his popularity – and the number of diabetics who arrived at the hospital in Taiz.

Murad al-Adimi, a 67-year-old construction worker who has battled diabetes for more than 15 years, is one of them.

He used to take his medicine every day until a friend told him to look into El-Awadi’s diet. A former doctor said that diabetics should not take insulin, or their pills, against medical advice. Instead, diabetics could simply continue to eat a more restrictive diet, avoiding foods such as salad greens, citrus fruits, eggs and beans, and eventually recover.

Murad liked the idea.

“The drugs are expensive, and I was happy to hear that simply avoiding certain foods would allow me to stop buying them,” he told Al Jazeera.

One day without his medicine quickly turned into 10. Murad felt better. Happy, he started telling his friends.

Then he fainted.

‘It was a mistake’

Murad rushed to the Republican Hospital, where he is now recovering after being treated by doctors. He walks with difficulty, he is upset.

He said: “My happiness did not last long. “I saved money to buy medicine, but I was about to die, it was a mistake not to follow the doctor’s advice.”

“My advice to all diabetics is that you should not stop taking your medicine without consulting a doctor, or you may encounter rumours,” he said.

But saving money, even with the aforementioned drugs, is interesting in a country that was the poorest in the Middle East before. civil war it started more than ten years ago.

“Many patients who stop taking their medicine are probably the poor who see the food as food finances Sadeq Aqlan, a cardiologist at the Republican Hospital, told Al Jazeera.

“People have the right to follow any diet they like, but patients should not stop taking medicine unless approved by a doctor,” he said.

Dietary restrictions

The popularity of al-Awadi and his methods in Yemen and the Arab world continues to disappoint medical professionals, but perhaps it comes from the promises of the organization, the frustration of having chronic diseases, the side effects of drugs and inhumane medical care.

Processed foods have also caused people around the world to distrust the products they buy.

But social media in particular has allowed unproven medical advice to spread – and the dangers are becoming apparent.

El-Awadi’s argument that insulin is “poison” is an example of that. Insulin is a hormone produced naturally by the body that regulates blood sugar – diabetics cannot make it or cannot use it properly and therefore lose control of their blood sugar. If left untreated, it eventually leads to diabetic ketoacidosis, where the body breaks down fat for energy, leading to severe acid reflux and death.

Depending on the type of diabetes they have, patients may need insulin or other blood sugar-lowering drugs to manage the disease, highlighting the risks behind el-Awadi’s advice.

The el-tayebat diet is probably not dangerous for the diet – even if it restricts healthy foods, such as green vegetables, eggs, lots of fruit and lots of milk.

The popularity of the diet has already caused the price of foods on the “bad” list to drop significantly.

Egg syrup in Taiz which was previously sold for $3.50 has dropped to $1.60. Shopkeeper Nashwan al-Hufa told Al Jazeera that he was only selling a quarter of the eggs he sold two months ago and all the chickens.

“I don’t know much about the el-tayebat food that people are talking about, but I used to sell about 20 chickens a day,” he said. “Now I sell five or less, people tell me it’s not good food, but I don’t believe it.”

There is no scientific basis

Rafat Abdu Yassin, 39, said he has been battling heartburn for more than five years. He explained that the doctors gave him medicine to treat the disease, but the symptoms returned as soon as he stopped taking the medicine.

He learned about el-tayebat last month and decided to stop because he doesn’t take any medicine.

Rafat said: “I felt better after two days. The heartburn was gone and the bloating stopped.”

Yemeni nutritionists like Maram Fuad are now faced with trying to explain to people like Rafat that el-tayebat cannot be the answer to their problems. He said that there are useful things about food, such as fasting. But banning all food groups is difficult, because dieters will be left with less food.

“(Those food groups) provide fiber, vitamins, minerals, and protein.”

Fuad added that there is no scientific basis for dividing foods into “good” and “bad” categories. Instead he emphasized that the drug is unstable and unsafe for healthy people and people with chronic diseases, such as those with diabetes and hypertension.

“Every chronically ill patient needs a healthy and nutritious diet under the supervision of a specialist or nutritionist. El-tayebat diets only prevent them from getting what their bodies need,” he added.

The nutritionist went on to explain that correlation doesn’t mean causation, and that some people who say they feel better after eating don’t mean it’s a miracle cure.

“This change is because they stopped eating other things that cause heartburn, not because depriving their bodies of essential nutrients is beneficial,” he said, adding that the expert advises patients with heartburn to eliminate the things that cause disease, such as white flour and hydrogenated oil, which can cause similar effects, without the serious deficiency that includes el-tayebat food.

“The main problem is that (some) Yemenis do not consult doctors or nutritionists for proper treatment or guidance, instead they chase rumors that spread on social media,” Fuad warned. “Those who currently claim to feel better on these diets may soon experience health problems as their health deteriorates.”

Even with the apparent knowledge, Rafat is already wary of what will happen if he continues to eat. He is worried about the foods he is depriving his body of by restricting himself from eating different foods.

“A doctor recently told me that just cutting out flour would be enough to get rid of heartburn and still allow me to enjoy fruits and vegetables,” he explained. But I have never tried that method.