Joel Fuhrman - Eat To Live

Eat to Live 159

Patients are told to learn to live with their diabetes and to learn

to control it because it can't be cured. "No, no, and no!" I say.

"Don't live with it, get thin and get rid of it, as many of my patients

have!"

There are basically two kinds of diabetes: Type 1, or childhood

onset diabetes, and Type II. or adult onset diabetes. In Type I, which

generally occurs earlier in life, children incur damage to the pan-

creas — the organ that produces and secretes insulin — so they have

an insulin deficiency. In Type IT, the most common type, the individ-

ual produces near-normal levels of insulin, but the body is resistant

to it, so the level of blood sugar, or glucose, rises. The end result is the

same in both types — the individual has a high glucose level in his

or her blood.

Both types of diabetes accelerate the aging of our bodies. Dia-

betes greatly promotes the development of atherosclerosis and car-

diovascular disease, and it ages and destroys the kidneys and other

body systems. Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in adults and

is the leading cause of kidney failure. We witness today a huge number

of Type II diabetes patients with terrible complications such as ampu-

tations, peripheral neuropathy (painful nerve damage in the legs),

retinopathy (the major cause of blindness in diabetics), and nephropa-

thy (kidney damage); it is just as bad as those with Type I diabetes.^33

Diabetics, regardless of type, have higher levels of triglycerides

and increased levels of LDL cholesterol than the general population.

Diabetics have more than a 400 percent higher incidence of heart at-

tacks than nondiabetics. One-third of all patients with insulin-

dependent (Type I) diabetes die of heart attacks before age fifty. This

acceleration of the atherosclerotic process, and the resulting high

mortality rate, is present in both types of diabetes.^34

By simple logic, you would expect that any dietary recommen-

dations designed for diabetics would at least attempt to reduce the

risk of heart attack, stroke, or other cardiovascular event. Unfortu-

nately, the nutritional advice given to diabetics is to follow the same

diet that has proved not to work for heart disease patients. Such a diet

is risky for all people, but for the diabetic it is exceptionally haz-

ardous— it is deadly. The combination of refined grains, processed

foods, and animal products guarantees a steady stream of available

customers for hospitals and emergency rooms.

When Type I patients take a more aggressive and progressive nu-

tritional approach, they can prevent many of the complications that