Kiriakou's type 2 diabetes
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Kiriakou's type 2 diabetes is the illness John Kiriakou has described as running in two rounds, the first ending in a substantial weight loss and the second in the surgical removal of his stomach.

The desk job

He dates the onset to leaving the CIA. A case officer, in his account, gets a great deal of exercise, "a lot", and the job he moved to afterwards was a desk job, on which he put on weight. Deciding he had to diet but not knowing how, he went to a nutritionist, and was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at about the same time.

The nutritionist's regime was 2,000 calories a day, up to 200 grams of carbohydrate, up to 20 grams of saturated fat, and as much protein as he wanted within those limits. He cut out lamb and most beef in favour of turkey, chicken and tofu. It took a year, and he lost 70 pounds, 32 kilos.

The second round

The diabetes then slowed his metabolism, he says, and the weight returned little by little. By 2021 the disease was bad enough that his doctor put him on insulin, four injections a day, five at weekends, on top of the maximum dose of every diabetes medication available, and he ballooned, "fatter than I've ever been in my life."

When he returned to the doctor insisting he was barely eating, the explanation he was given was the insulin itself: starting it had brought his metabolism "almost to a stop", which was why he could not burn fat. His A1C at that point was 12.1, against a normal range he gives as four to six, a level he describes flatly as uncontrolled.

Direction of cause

Pressed by his interviewer that the causation usually runs the other way, that weight drives diabetes rather than diabetes driving weight, Kiriakou accepted the general rule and defended the exception in his own case: "In the beginning I got fat, and that led to diabetes. The second round was the diabetes made me fat again," because of what the treatment did to his metabolism.

After the gastrectomy he reported the disease gone and his A1C normal.

See also

- Kiriakou's gastrectomy
- Kiriakou's post-gastrectomy complications
- The glyburide incident
- Kiriakou On Diet And Nutrition
