Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC)

Dr David Unwin FRCGP works at the Norwood NHS Surgery in Southport near Liverpool, UK where he has cared for the same population since 1986 as a family doctor. To date 93/188 of his patients with T2 diabetes have achieved drug-free remission. This gives a remission rate of 49% at 30 months duration of a lower carb diet, one of the best results for any clinic in the world.

For the past few years he has been a UK Royal College of General Practitioners expert clinical advisor on diabetes. In 2015 he was made Royal College of General Practice National Champion for Collaborative Care and Support Planning in Obesity & Diabetes. 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 £50,000 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. Further recognition came recently when David was invited to become an ambassador for the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on diabetes.

Dr McCormack was a GP for 30 years and was a GP partner in Warrington up until April 2015. She was also a GP Trainer, and was the Named GP for Safeguarding Children for an area of 300,000 people. Over the past 30 years she has seen the incidence of diabetes go up five fold in her town, something that has been echoed nationally. Dr McCormack wants to do what she can to reverse that trend.

A GP in Cheltenham, Dr Lake has had a long term interest in preventive medicine. After seeing the lack of dietetic advice in the NHS he set up a weight management research project in primary care in collaboration with Tescodiets. The project used practice nurse weight management expertise combined with TescoDiets online nutrition support. It produced results comparable with all of the best current commercial providers, and was commissioned by the local PCT cluster. The project won the GP Awards Clinical Team of the Year, Nutrition award in 2012. Dr Lake was also involved in getting cycling on prescription commissioned in his local area.

Dr Jen Unwin was the former Chair of the UK Association for Solution Focused Practice and the winner of the British Psychological Society, Karen Ehlert Lifetime Achievement Award in Clinical Health Psychology.

Dr Unwin has spent her professional life interested in the role of hope in chronic disease and how it can be used to bring about behaviour change and improve quality of life. Her insights teamed up perfectly with Dr David Unwin’s interests in bringing about drug-free type 2 diabetes remission. For nine years they have been running group sessions in primary care to achieve just that, so far for over 100 patients, saving considerable amounts on de-prescribed drugs. Both doctors were featured in a BBC TV documentary ‘The truth about carbs’ that was seen by 3.7 million viewers.

Since retiring from the NHS, she has devoted her time to learning about, researching and helping others with sugar addiction. She has published a book called ‘Fork in the Road: A hopeful guide to food freedom’, the proceeds of which are for the Public Health Collaboration.

Trudi is Chief Executive of the registered charity X-PERT Health, which specialises in the research, development, implementation and audit of structured education for the public and healthcare professionals internationally. Trudi’s first degree in Nutrition and Dietetics was obtained in 1993, followed by a teaching qualification in 1998 and a doctorate in diabetes in 2004.

As the founder X-PERT Health and the author of the portfolio of X-PERT Programmes, Trudi has trained over 1,000 healthcare professionals to become X-PERT Educators, which has permitted the delivery of structured education to over 200,000 people at risk of, or diagnosed with, diabetes. She has published widely and has demonstrated that implementation of the X-PERT Programme is a cost saving strategy that not only results in statistically significant improvements in all clinical and quality of life indicators but also reduces the requirement for prescribed medication.

Her ambition is to further develop professional and patient education systems that increase competences to enable people to successfully manage their long term condition, improving health and well-being, and saving healthcare costs.

Dr. Murdoch is a GP in the South West of England. He has a special interest in metabolic health. Campbell is also a quality improvement clinical adviser and trainer for the NHS Sustainable Improvement Time for Care Programme, and a clinical adviser and entrepreneur for the Royal College of General Practitioners.

Dr Ali Ibrahim is a child and adolescent psychiatrist specialising in eating disorders. He trained in world leading centres, including Oxford and SLAM. He has worked with patients and families of all ages, including children, adolescents, and adults, as well as those suffering from severe and complex eating disorders. Ali is passionate about research and has published several high-impact peer-reviewed articles, two of which were recognised with prestigious national awards in the field of eating disorders. He is particularly interested in exploring metabolic and neurobiological underpinnings, as potential therapeutic targets, through dietary and lifestyle interventions. Ali is also a keen sportsman, who is fascinated by how physical pursuits, can help develop a mindset that takes us past perceived boundaries and limitations. He has taken part in the Zerofive100 and Zerofive500 fasted endurance events.

Now retired, Dr Morrison was a senior practising GP and a senior partner in a medical practice in Ayrshire. Her son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes 10 years ago, and since then she have worked extensively with people living with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes for 12 years, helping them achieve good blood sugar control. She is also the co-author of two important papers explaining the improvements in metabolic results, weight and glycaemic control for low carbohydrate diets in metabolic syndrome and diabetes.

Dr Bob Gill is a general practitioner working in Kent since 2000. Having qualified from Sheffield University in 1993 he worked in Yorkshire gaining his MRCP then pursued a career in primary care. In 2008 he became a GP trainer gaining a PGCert in medical education in 2012, the same year he became an active campaigner against NHS privatisation.

In 2014 and 2019 he produced ‘Sell Off’ and ‘The Great NHS Heist’ respectively, both documentaries detailing the threat to universal healthcare in England. He remains a passionate advocate for the NHS as a truly public service not the current repurposed and Americanised system it has become.

Private healthcare is concerned primarily with maximising profits and not best outcomes for patients. The bureaucracy and waste generated is immense and represents an opportunity cost which should be used to transform medicine with a greater focus on lifestyle and prevention of disease. Countering the excesses of the medical-industrial complex offers huge potential for enhancing the health of the nation while reducing cost and burden of illness.

Dr Abbi Lulsegged is a consultant physician with a specialist interest in endocrinology and diabetes. He undertook his undergraduate training at Guy’s Hospital Medical School, qualifying in 1994. He completed specialist training in diabetes and endocrinology, in London Teaching hospitals. He was appointed a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

He has trained in functional medicine and has a interest in the management of unexplained illnesses and practices holistically, merging conventional with functional medicine.

Dr Lulsegged developed the endocrine service at PRUH, part of Kings College Hospital. He has co-authored papers on innovative treatments of bipolar disorders using high dose thyroxine and lectured nationally and internationally on the subject.

He has lectured at international conferences, grand rounds, academic half-days, GP talks and on MRCP courses. He wrote questions for the postgraduate examinations in Endocrinology for the Royal College of Physicians and reviewed clinical papers for medical journals.