Joel Fuhrman - Eat To Live

160 Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

befall diabetics. They can expect a normal life span, because it is the

interaction between diabetes and the disease-causing modern diet

that results in such dismal statistics, not merely being diabetic. Type

I diabetics will still require some insulin, but often 1 find my Type I

diabetic patients requiring about half as much insulin as they did

prior to adopting my lifesaving program. Their sugars don't swing

wildly up and down, and since they are using less insulin, they have

less chance of developing potentially dangerous hypoglycemic episodes.

Type II diabetics adopting this approach can become undiabetic

and achieve wellness and even excellent health. They can be dia-

betes-free for life! Almost all my Type II diabetic patients are weaned

off insulin in the first month. Thanks to their excellent nutrition,

these patients have much better (lower) blood sugars than when they

were on insulin. The horrors of diabetes about to befall them are

aborted.

I have also observed patients who came to me with diabetic

retinopathy and peripheral neuropathy gradually improve and even-

tually resolve their conditions. Dr. Milton Crane reported similar

findings in his patients: seventeen out of twenty-one patients who

adopted a plant-rich vegan diet obtained complete relief from their

peripheral neuropathy.^35

Insulin for Type II Diabetes Makes Things Worse

Insulin works less effectively when people eat fatty foods or gain

weight. Diets containing less fat improve insulin sensitivity, as does

weight loss.^36 An individual who is overweight requires more in-

sulin, whether he or she is diabetic or not. In fact, giving overweight

diabetic people even more insulin makes them sicker by promoting

weight gain. They become even more diabetic. How does this process

work? Our pancreas secretes the amount of insulin demanded by the

body. A person of normal weight with about a third of an inch of

periumbilical fat will secrete X amount of insulin. Let's say this per

son gains about twenty pounds of fat. His body will now require

more insulin, almost twice as much, because fat on the body blocks

the uptake of insulin into the cells.

If the person is obese, with more than fifty pounds of additional

fat weight, his body will demand huge loads of insulin from the pan-

creas, even as much as ten times more than a person of normal

weight needs. So what do you think happens after five to ten years