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Prof. Dr. Timothy Noakes, MD, PhD

Professor Tim Noakes was born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1949. As a youngster, he had a keen interest in sport and attended Diocesan College in Cape Town. Following this, he studied at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and obtained an MBChB degree in 1974, an MD in 1981 and a DSc (Med) in Exercise Science in 2002.

Prof. Noakes has published more than 750 scientific books and articles. He has been cited more than 19,000 times in scientific literature, has an H-index of 71 and has been rated an A1 scientist by the National Research Foundation of South Africa for a second 5-year term.  He has won numerous awards over the years and made himself available on many editorial boards.

In 2012, Tim founded 'The Noakes Foundation', a Non-Profit Corporation founded for public benefit which aims to advance medical science’s understanding of the benefits of a low-carb high-fat (LCHF) diet by providing evidence-based information on optimum nutrition that is free from commercial agenda. The foundation has also started the Eat Better South Africans campaign, which allows South Africans in even the poorest communities to adopt a high-fat, low-carb, extremely healthy diet for just three dollars per day.

Books by Dr. Timothy Noakes, MD, PhD

Video Presentations of Dr. Timothy Noakes, MD, PhD

It's the Insulin Resistance, Stupid! (Part One)

Professor Tim Noakes was born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1949. As a youngster, he had a keen interest in sport and attended Diocesan College in Cape Town. Following this, he studied at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and obtained an MBChB degree in 1974, an MD in 1981 and a DSc (Med) in Exercise Science in 2002.

Prof. Noakes has published more than 750 scientific books and articles. He has been cited more than 19,000 times in scientific literature, has an H-index of 71 and has been rated an A1 scientist by the National Research Foundation of South Africa for a second 5-year term.  He has won numerous awards over the years and made himself available on many editorial boards.

In 2012, Tim founded 'The Noakes Foundation', a Non-Profit Corporation founded for public benefit which aims to advance medical science’s understanding of the benefits of a low-carb high-fat (LCHF) diet by providing evidence-based information on optimum nutrition that is free from commercial agenda. The foundation has also started the Eat Better South Africans campaign, which allows South Africans in even the poorest communities to adopt a high-fat, low-carb, extremely healthy diet for just three dollars per day. 

It's the Insulin Resistance, Stupid! (Part Two)

"The Cholesterol Hypothesis: 10 Key Ideas That the Diet Dictators Have Hidden" - Prof. Tim Noakes

"LCHF for Elite Athletes" - Prof. Tim Noakes

"Medical Aspects of the Low Carbohydrate Lifestyle" - Prof. Tim Noakes

"Hiding Unhealthy Heart Outcomes in Low-Fat Diet Trials" - Prof. Tim Noakes

Challenging Conventional Dietary Guidelines - Dr. Tim Noakes

Sports Applications of Ketosis and Beyond - Dr. Tim Noakes

An impressive body of scientific evidence over the last 15 years documents long term benefits of carbohydrate-restricted, especially ketogenic, diets. We now understand molecular mechanisms and why they work. Popular books and articles now challenge the advice ‘carbohydrates are good and fats are bad.’ Circa mid-19th century urinary ketones were identified in diabetics sealing their toxic label for the next 150 years. Despite work four decades ago showing ketones were highly functional metabolites, they are still misidentified as toxic byproducts of fat metabolism. The vilification of fat by regulatory and popular dogma perpetuates this myth. But the nutrition-metabolic landscape is improving dramatically.

A growing number of researchers have contributed to what is now a critical mass of science that provides compelling clinical evidence that ketogenic diets uniquely benefit weight loss, pre-diabetes, and type-2 diabetes. In the last five years, basic scientists have discovered that b-hydroxybutyrate (BHB), the primary circulating ketone, is a potent signaling molecule that decreases inflammation and oxidative stress. BHB has been suggested to be a longevity metabolite, with strong support from recently published mouse studies showing decreased midlife mortality and extended longevity and healthspan. Although type-2 diabetes is often described as a chronic progressive disease, emerging evidence indicates that sustained nutritional ketosis can reverses the disease. There is growing interest in studying potential therapeutic effects of ketosis on cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. There are even reasons certain athletes may benefit from nutritional ketosis and ketone supplements ─ debunking the long-standing dogma that high carbohydrate intake is required to perform optimally. 

Tim Noakes on Trial

In 2014, Professor Tim Noakes was reported to the Health Professions Council of South Africa for giving unprofessional dietary advice. He was advocating a low-carb, high-fat diet… in a tweet.

What followed was a four-year legal process of Kafkaesque proportions. Should a top-level scientist have his life and legacy ruined by a tweet? And is there anything wrong with a low-carb diet in the first place?

Fortunately, Professor Noakes is a fighter, and he was certainly not about to give up.

Here’s the story of Noakes’ fascinating multi-year struggle, with interviews of people who participated, and video from the court case, in a Diet Doctor mini documentary.

Challenging Conventional Dietary Guidelines - by Prof. Tim Noakes (PHC Conference 2018)

Filmed at the Public Health Collaboration Conference 2018 at the Royal College of General Practitioners in London.

UCT Faculty of Health Sciences Centenary Debate - Prof. Tim Noakes

Tim Noakes, director of the UCT/Medical Research Council (MRC) Research Unit for Exercise Science and Sports Medicine and Discovery Health professor of exercise and sports science shares his views during the "The Great Centenary Debate" at the University of Cape Town's Faculty of Health Sciences. The debate was a showdown between Noakes and Dr Jacques Rossouw on the topic "Cholesterol is not an important factor for heart disease and current dietary recommendations do even more harm than good.

Full Timothy Noakes interview from Carb-Loaded documentary (38 Min)

Several years ago we had the distinct privilege of sitting down with the renowned sport medicine doctor, Prof. Timothy Noakes. The resulting nearly 40 minute interview changed the way we think about nutrition…especially as it relates to athletes. 

You can also watch the full film on iTunes, Amazon...etc.

Learn more about the film at www.carbloaded.com

Scholarly Articles from Dr. Timothy Noakes, MD, PhD

Hiding unhealthy heart outcomes in a low-fat diet trial: the Women’s Health Initiative Randomized Controlled Dietary Modification Trial finds that postmenopausal women with established coronary heart disease were at increased risk of an adverse outcome if they consumed a low-fat ‘heart-healthy’ dietThe Women’s Health Initiative Randomized Controlled Dietary Modification Trial (WHIRCDMT) was designed to test whether the US Department of Agriculture’s 1977 Dietary Guidelines for Americans protects against coronary heart disease (CHD) and other chronic diseases. The only significant finding in the original 2006 WHIRCDMT publication was that postmenopausal women with CHD randomised to a low-fat ‘heart-healthy’ diet in 1993 were at 26% greater risk of developing additional CHD events compared with women with CHD eating the control diet. A 2017 WHIRCDMT publication includes data for an additional 5 years of follow-up. It finds that CHD risk in this subgroup of postmenopausal women had increased further to 47%–61%. The authors present three post-hoc rationalisations to explain why this finding is ‘inadmissible’: (1) only women in this subgroup were less likely to adhere to the prescribed dietary intervention; (2) their failure to follow the intervention diet increased their CHD risk; and (3) only these women were more likely to not have received cholesterol-lowering drugs. These rationalisations appear spurious. Rather these findings are better explained as a direct consequence of postmenopausal women with features of insulin resistance (IR) eating a low-fat high-carbohydrate diet for 13 years. All the worst clinical features of IR, including type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in some, can be ‘reversed’ by the prescription of a high-fat low-carbohydrate diet. The Women’s Health Study has recently reported that T2DM (10.71-fold increased risk) and other markers of IR including metabolic syndrome (6.09-fold increased risk) were the most powerful predictors of future CHD development in women; blood low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol concentration was a poor predictor (1.38-fold increased risk). These studies challenge the prescription of the low-fat high-carbohydrate heart-healthy diet, at least in postmenopausal women with IR, especially T2DM. According to the medical principle of ‘first do no harm’, this practice is now shown to be not evidence-based, making it scientifically unjustifiable, perhaps unethical. The publication makes use of data already published in the scientific literature.
Evidence that supports the prescription of low-carbohydrate high-fat diets: a narrative reviewLow-carbohydrate high-fat (LCHF) diets are a highly contentious current topic in nutrition. This narrative review aims to provide clinicians with a broad overview of the effects of LCHF diets on body weight, glycaemic control and cardiovascular risk factors while addressing some common concerns and misconceptions. Blood total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol concentrations show a variable, highly individual response to LCHF diets, and should be monitored in patients adhering to this diet. In contrast, available evidence from clinical and preclinical studies indicates that LCHF diets consistently improve all other markers of cardiovascular risk—lowering elevated blood glucose, insulin, triglyceride, ApoB and saturated fat (especially palmitoleic acid) concentrations, reducing small dense LDL particle numbers, glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) levels, blood pressure and body weight while increasing low HDL-cholesterol concentrations and reversing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). This particular combination of favourable modifications to all these risk factors is a benefit unique to LCHF diets. These effects are likely due in part to reduced hunger and decreased ad libitum calorie intake common to low-carbohydrate diets, allied to a reduction in hyperinsulinaemia, and reversal of NAFLD. Although LCHF diets may not be suitable for everyone, available evidence shows this eating plan to be a safe and efficacious dietary option to be considered. LCHF diets may also be particularly beneficial in patients with atherogenic dyslipidaemia, insulin resistance, and the frequently associated NAFLD.