Reversing Diabetes

This article is a continuation of last week’s article on Type 1 diabetes. All of the information on diabetes is provided by the Weimar Institute. (http://reversingdiabetes.org) They travel the country presenting seminars on how to reverse diabetes. They are going to be in Colorado Springs in July. (1-800-525-9192)

For children with a recent diagnosis of diabetes, there is some very good news. In the last few years it has been discovered that if the children are taken off all dairy products and given niacinamide, a remission of the diabetes can occur in close to 90% of the cases. Niacinamide (not niacin) is a vitamin that can be obtained in any health food store. The dose is 12.5 mg of niacinamide per pound of body weight every day. [For a child this would be about 100 to 200 mg per day and for an adult the dose would be about 1500 to 2000 mg per day.] Apparently, there is a time period (perhaps a few months) when the beta cells are mortally wounded but not dead yet. If these beta cells can be revived before it is too late, we can save these children from a lifetime of insulin injections as well as all of the complications that shorten a diabetic’s life.

What if the diabetes has been going on for a while? Insulin injections are important to maintain the blood sugar levels in the normal range. The best diet and exercise plan to help normalize these sugar levels is a simple whole plant food diet and regular daily exercise. Three meals a day should be adequate. The diabetic diet consists of fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes and nuts. No refined free sugars are allowed. It is a low fat (10-15% of calories), low protein (10% of calories) and high complex carbohydrate (75-80%) diet. This diet will supply all needed nutrients for growth, repair and maintenance of the body. Snacks between meals should not be necessary if you are getting sufficient complex carbohydrates and fiber in your meals. If the sugars are still dropping between meals, you are on too much insulin. Exercise is a powerful medicine and if you get a jump in your sugar level consider additional exercise to bring it down instead of increasing the insulin dose.

Type 1 diabetics who adopt this diet and exercise program typically see a reduction in their insulin dosages and stabilization of their sugar levels making it much easier to stay within the normal range. Surprisingly about 10% of the type 1 diabetics who have treated at Weimar Institute’s Newstart^® lifestyle treatment center with this diet and exercise program actually are able to discontinue their insulin completely and still maintain a normal sugar level with diet and exercise alone. That is very good news for type 1 diabetics.

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Adult onset, Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of diabetes, affecting over 15 million Americans who are walking down a seemingly inevitable road to disability and early death. These patients are at increased risk for retinopathy, neuropathy, nephropathy with renal failure, coronary artery disease and myocardial infarction, stroke, peripheral vascular disease, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and obesity. There are three ways to make a diagnosis of diabetes:

1. If you have the symptoms of diabetes (passing a large amount of urine, drinking a large amount of water and unexplained weight loss) and your glucose level (blood sugar) is greater than 200, you have diabetes. We call this a random or casual glucose level because it can be tested at any time of day without regard to the last meal.

2. If you have a fasting glucose level greater than 126, you have diabetes. You are at a fasting level when it has been at least eight hours since you have eaten anything.

A third way that a diagnosis may be confirmed is with a glucose tolerance test. After fasting, you drink glucose (75g) and then your glucose level is tested after two hours. If it is greater than 200, you have diabetes.

HbA1c is not used for diagnostic screening because of variability in the methodology and the lack of universal standards for the assay.

Usually Type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle disease. The typical American lifestyle of inactivity and eating too much is the major factor in bringing on this disease. True, some have inherited a genetic predisposition to develop diabetes. Genetics is like a loaded gun; it doesn’t hurt anyone unless you pull the trigger. It is our couch potato lifestyle together with our high fat, junk food diet that pulls this trigger, bringing on diabetes.

Imagine sitting on a couch following a heavy meal. All of the calories you just ate are being absorbed into your blood. As your blood sugar level rises, insulin is released. The insulin goes around from cell to cell trying to get all of this sugar out of your blood and into your cells. The leg muscle cells are still full of sugar from lunch. So they tell the insulin, "We are full and we aren’t going for any exercise tonight; we don’t need anymore sugar. Perhaps you could take some to the finger muscle. He will be busy working the TV control." How much sugar can a finger muscle use? Eventually all the muscle cells are filled and don’t want any more sugar.

That is a problem because the sugar doesn’t have anywhere to go. It just backs up in your blood and your sugar level gets higher and higher. Stay tuned for treatment next week. The good news is that type 2 diabetes is reversible!

All of the information on diabetes is provided by the Weimar Institute. (http://reversingdiabetes.org) They travel the country presenting seminars on how to reverse diabetes. They are going to be in Colorado Springs in July. (1-800-525-9192)