Cure your diabetes in 30 days!! Part Two

Ok, so to follow-up on Part One of this post, here is my interpretation of this "phenomenon." As a reminder, diabetes is conventionally thought of as a chronic illness--ie one that will never be "cured" but rather "managed" through proper diet, physical activity, and medication compliance. The belief (and what decades of sound medical research supports) is that people with good glycemic control can become resistent to a hormone called insulin that is produced by an organ in our body called the pancreas. When we eat, the carbohydrate in our food is converted to glucose, which is absorbed into our blood and supplies the necessary energy to our body. In order to bring the levels of glucose back down to normal, the pancreas produces insulin. Sometimes, as we get older and/or gain weight, our bodies don't use the insulin as efficiently--this condition is called insulin resistance or pre-diabetes. If this condition is addressed early on with diet and exercise (and sometimes medication), it can be reversed. BUT if it is not addressed, it can progress to full-blown diabetes. Once you become diabetic, your pancreas is so diseased that as far as we know it cannot suddenly heal and start working properly again. This is what makes diabetes incurable and a therefore qualify as a chronic illness.

First and foremost, the main problems I have with this film are with the claims these Raw Food people make of "reversing" and "curing" this disease--I believe them to be extremely misleading and potentially very dangerous. There is no evidence to my knowledge of the pancreas suddenly regenerating beta cells and producing more insulin--this is giving scared vulnerable people false hope. NOT GOOD.

Second, the people in the film were told to reduce their medications by half right off the start. As any physician/health care professional knows, it's generally not a good idea to drastically reduce a medication. Normally patients are weaned off their meds, as this provides the body more time to adjust and doesn't provide as much a shock as as drastic dose reduction would provide. So right there I became concerned.

Third, they were started on an vegan raw-food diet, which for all of them involved a complete swing of the dietary pendulum. I'm sorry, but anyone who goes from eating McD's twice a day to eating a diet of organic produce and sprouted grains is going to see a health benefit. But cure an illness in 30 days?! That seems a little far-fetched. As any nutrition professional knows, just getting people to follow any diet is nearly impossible long-term--imagine what it feels like to only be "allowed" to eat raw food! Talk about compliance issues, people. Tooooootally impracticle. On a side note, I went on a raw food diet for a week as a class assignment, and wrote about my experience. As you can imagine, I normally eat a healthy diet, so this wasn't such a huge switch for me, but let me just say I felt like CRAP and could barely stand it for 7 days. And I'm a nutritionist with fairly reasonable access to this food--how is the average person supposed to handle this?! Don't get me started...

Featured in the film were the numerous health benefits of this raw food diet that were aside from curing diabetes--blood lipids (think cholesterol) all decreased, blood pressure decreased, energy increased, and guess what--they people lots tons of weight! Something that averaged out to between 4-5 pounds/week. ASTONISHING! So many things wrong with this, where do I start!? First, if you want to be healthy and lose weight, losing 1-2 lbs/week MAX is what is recommended for sustained weight loss. Second, I recall some research done with obese diabetic patients who underwent bariatric surgery (think stomach-stapling). Miraculously after they lost 40, 50, 60 pounds within the first month or two post-surgery, their blood sugars were so improved that they seemed to have reversed their diabetes! So this would be my guess as to why the people in the film had improved glycemic control all of a sudden--it has nothing (or very little) to do with the raw food diet, but instead with the fact they lost so much weight in such a small amount of time. Something important to mention--the post-bariatric surgery patients' glycemic control returned to baseline (before the surgery) after a few months, so no cure for their diabetes. Interestingly enough, there was no follow-up with the patients in the film to see if they had still remained "cured."

Last but never least, the credentials of the people who spoke at this event in Oakland were wonky at best. The "doctor" was actually a "board-eligible chiropracter" who is "certified" in digestive disorders or something like that. "Board-eligible"...REALLY?! And this guy gets paid to counsel people!? Incredible. He flat-out told the audience that the pharmaceutical industry CAUSED their diabetes. CAUSED! He said the vaccines we received as kids CAUSE diabetes, and he quoted from this far-out British publication called What Doctors Don't Tell You. Fantastic stuff, and everyone paid $20 to attend. Plus $50 for the DVD of the film with its bonus footage, and $15 for some raw food to eat, plus $10 for the most wretched zero glycemic "chocolate" that was NO JOKE beign sold by a man in a head-to-toe pleather rainbow suit WITH matching top hat.

Need I say more?

Cure your diabetes in 30 days!! Part One

A patient of mine emailed me about an ad she heard on the radio--a claim that you can reverse your diabetes in 30 days! A cure for diabetes!? How is that possible?! We've been told it's a chronic condition!! Well, she seemed so excited about it and was curious to know what I thought. The ad was for an event in Oakland that upcoming weekend that focused on the raw food diet and how it will cure illnesses like diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol...pretty much anything you can think of! With this being the first I had heard of the movement, I was determined to go check it out. $20 later, I had my ticket!

The event took place at the East Bay Church of Religious Science on March 21st. It was centered around a documentary called "Simply Raw: Reverse Your Diabetes in 30 Days" which was co-produced by Supersize Me's Morgan Spurlock. The film chronicles 6 "average" diabetic Americans who were sent to the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Arizona headed by Dr. Gabriel Cousens. While at the camp, the 6 were fed a very strict vegan raw-food diet for 30 days. Four of the six had type 2 diabetes, two had type 1, and all were on insulin therapy. The type 2 diabetics were also taking oral medications.

The first day at the camp, the 6 were instructed to cut their insulin shots by one-third, with the promise of being off all (or nearly all) medications by the end of the month. The camp's doctor was monitoring their progress as these 6 brave souls who had all been accustomed to the typical American diet of fast food embarked on their raw food journey. As one would guess, the food wasn't easy to tolerate for the first few days--keep in mind there was nothing cooked and no dairy was allowed (all vegan foods). Just A LOT of fresh fruits, vegetables, and sprouted grains...yummy!! The only saving grace was that the food was prepared by vegan raw food chefs.

After one week on the diet, nearly everyone had reduced their medications by half and saw miraculous results with their fasting glucose levels! Even without meds, their fasting glucose had dropped several hundred points on average in only one week! Incredible! As the weeks progressed, the diet seemed to be tolerated much more easily and all of the people saw drastic reductions in their fasting glucose. Where their fasting glucose had been in the 400's or 500's, they now had levels less than 100, which is normal for someone without diabetes.

By the end of the month, all of the people who had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes had discontinued all medications, and had consistently normal fasting glucose levels. One of the type 1 diabetics reduced his insulin from 70 units/day to just 5, and the other type 1 stopped using insulin altogether. According to his lab tests, his pancreas even started to produce its own insulin, something that we scientists didn't think was possible!

Pretty convincing evidence, right???