WARNING: In America, every second adult will have either pre-diabetes or full-blown diabetes. Of those carrying excess weight and have been diagnosed with pre-diabetes, 30 percent of these will become full blown diabetics within 3 years.
PROMISE: But it doesn’t have to be that way. Most people can turn off their pre-diabetic condition within weeks, and most of those on medication for full blown diabetes can disarm their disease and reduce or even eliminate their hypoglycemic medications, such as pills and injections.
Of the 84 million people with diabetes in the U.S., over 4 million have the Type 1 diabetes which requires insulin injection since they have a defective pancreatic tissue. On the other hand, Type 2 diabetes is the most common kind affecting more than 90 percent of the diabetics.
Causes of Type 2 diabetes
Studies have demonstrated a strong relationship to fat—both fat in the diet and fat on the body. The disease is not as common in areas of the world where fat intake and obesity rates are low.
Normally insulin, a pancreatic hormone, enables body cells to use glucose and controls blood sugar levels. But most of the time the problem in Type 2 diabetes is not a defective pancreas unable to produce sufficient insulin, but a lack of sensitivity to insulin. This resistance of the cells to insulin appears to relate directly to obesity, to excess fat in the diet, and to excess fat in the cells of the liver and muscles.
But isn’t sugar the culprit?
James Anderson, M.D., professor of medicine and clinical nutrition at the College of Medicine, University of Kentucky, and a widely respected authority on diabetes, evaluated the effect of diet on blood sugar levels. Just as others had done before him, Dr. Anderson was able to turn lean healthy young men into mild diabetics in less than two weeks by feeding them a rich 65 percent fat diet. A similar group, fed a lean 10 percent fat diet plus one pound of sugar a day, did not produce even one diabetic after 11 weeks when the experiment was terminated.