Malta debrief 2024
Maltese delegation with Dr John Schoonbee, Dr David Unwin, and Amanda Atkins.
Food For Thought Conference, Swiss Re.
Centre for Global Dialogue,
11th October 2023.
Dr John Schoonbee
Dr John Schoonbee is the Chief Medical Officer of Swiss Re. He qualified from the University of Cape Town in 1995. He has been working in the insurance field for over 20 years, and directly for reinsurers since 2005. John began working at Swiss Re in 2011 and is based in Zurich. He is involved in many aspects of life insurance, including product development, risk and claims assessment, as well as helping with pricing some of the more complex medical life and health products. John became Swiss Re's Global Chief Medical Officer in 2017 and works with a team of over 15 permanent and consultant medical doctors, in addition to focusing on underwriting R&D and key global health topics. He recently initiated a collaboration between Swiss Re and The BMJ to host a seminal event on reassessing Nutritional Science due to the clear link between diet and the catastrophic effect on non-communicable diseases.
Dr John Schoonbee initiated this collaboration with the BMJ which has been developing the knowledge base and making that accessible to researchers, doctors and the general public since 2018. During that period as well as the conferences, the BMJ has commissioned scientific articles, all of which Swiss Re has generously committed to giving free public access. You can access all of these works via this website or directly at the BMJ.
Dr Schonbee is committed to explaining the power of food in controlling the epidemic of chronic disease around the world and would love to develop these themes further in Malta
Dr David Unwin
Having embarked on this venture to take an entire group of people from Malta to Zurich to learn more about the power of food, there was one person Amanda wanted the Maltese delegates to get to know Dr David Unwin.
Dr Unwin is an extraordinary man, willing to listen and learn from his patients and so enthusiastic that his patients are willing to follow where he leads.
Dr David Unwin works at the Norwood NHS Surgery in Southport near Liverpool, UK where he has helped care for a practice of 9700 people since 1986 as a family doctor. To date 129 of his patients with T2 diabetes have achieved drug-free remission. This gives a remission rate of 50% at 30 months duration of those choosing a lower carb diet. This equates to a remission rate of over 20% of the diabetic population of the entire practice. One of the best results for any clinic in the world.
For the past few years, David has been a UK Royal College of General Practitioners expert clinical advisor on diabetes. As a result of his interests in both better communication with patients and Type 2 diabetes he was made Royal College of General Practice National Champion for Collaborative Care and Support Planning in Obesity & Diabetes in 2015.In 2016 he was the proud UK National winner of the NHS Innovator of The Year Award for published research into lifestyle changes; working with patients’ personal health goals as an alternative to drug therapy in type 2 diabetes –so that his GP practice spends £68,000 per year less than expected on drugs for diabetes.
Dr Unwin’s work has been covered by both BBC, C4 & C5 television, The New Scientist, The Times, The Daily Mail and The British Medical Journal.
His teaspoon of sugar infographics has now been translated into seventeen languages. Maltese is on its way!
As part of this he has also published research into improving blood pressure, lipid profiles, renal function and liver function by reducing dietary carbohydrate, especially sugar.
In 2021 one of his papers published in BMJ Nutrition was voted as ‘paper of the year’ by the International Academy of nutrition educators: https://nutrition.bmj.com/content/early/2020/11/02/bmjnph-2020-000072
There are many who have asked - whatever possessed Amanda to embark on this mission?
Amanda Atkins is T2 diabetic controlled by nutrition. By background she is a chartered accountant who spent her career as the CFO of various insurance groups and latterly as CEO of the Afinia companies. Afinia has a variety of interests from distressed debt in the insurance industry through property in Malta and film globally. Her film interests include the drama - Haar which had its world premiere in London on 7th October 2023, The Creeping and Provenance both available on amazon. More specifically relevant to this space is her interest in disseminating nutritional information to the general public via documentary.
With your indulgence, she would like to tell you a story and explain exactly how and why she became involved in this field and the gratitude she has for an unnamed woman in Japan who took part in a study in 2009 by a Japanese team Haimoto et al. It is likely she will never meet any of them and together they saved her life.
That one study changed Amanda's life. She found it on the day she was diagnosed with severe T2 diabetes in 2016 and she understood immediately that the extent of her future with T2 diabetes was simply related to her carbohydrate intake. She changed her diet on the same day. Japan remains her favourite source for looking up science.
That same paper is why 27 representatives from Malta were just sponsored by Amanda to attend this conference series and why Amanda hopes that through that, many others will learn that not all chronic disease has to be chronic and that one can remain happy and healthy even into your old age even despite a diagnosis of T2 diabetes and for many without the need for drugs
So, what was that paper and how did it affect her life?