Concerned About Diabetes? You Need to Read This…

Dear Natural Health Solutions Reader,

It’s November, and you know what that means. It’s American Diabetes Month!

OK, so you didn’t know. I don’t blame you. Our national penchant for linking months with diseases is a little weird.

The fact that September is Head Lice Awareness Month probably isn’t on your radar either.

So here’s the deal: The American Diabetes Association wants the media to focus on the causes and cures of all forms of diabetes during November. Particularly Type 2 diabetes — that’s the kind that’s largely due to lifestyle factors, especially diet.

Fair enough.

So let’s begin by being clear about the true, scientifically irrefutable cause and cure of Type 2 diabetes.

In a landmark, comprehensive research review published in January of this year in the journal Nutrition, a distinguished group of 26 physicians and nutrition researchers mince no words.

“Diabetes is a disease of carbohydrate intolerance,” says study author Barbara Gower, Ph.D., professor and vice chair for research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Nutrition Sciences, quoted at the website ScienceDaily.

“Reducing carbohydrates is the obvious treatment… The resistance of government and private health agencies is very hard to understand.”

Gower’s study summarizes decades of research, all of which hammers home her assertion that excessive carbs definitively cause diabetes.

Now I’d like to show that, as she suggests, the government is indeed “resistant” to this fact.

Consider these official dietary recommendations from the National Diabetes Education Program (NDEP).

According to its website, “NDEP is a partnership of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than 200 public and private organizations.”

In other words, what follows is officially sanctioned diabetes management advice from the U.S. government.

Each bolded point is straight from the NDEP’s Web page, followed by my take, and then by my recommendation in italics.

1. Eat a variety of colorful vegetables and fruits

This is one of the few pieces of advice from the NDEP that makes sense.

Now, I’m radical enough to point out that eating colorful fruits and vegetables isn’t essential for preventing, treating, or curing Type 2 diabetes. For example, Native American tribes ate relatively little vegetable matter, instead relying on animal meat, fat, and nutrient-rich organs for most of their calories. Researchers found that Type 2 diabetes among these people prior to the introduction of modern Western diets was “almost unknown.”¹

But no need to be too curmudgeonly here. Vegetables in particular are high in nutrients and low in carbohydrates. This one is a good idea.

Yes indeed, eat a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables.

2. Choose whole grain foods — whole wheat bread and crackers, oatmeal, brown rice, and cereals

The most vigorous myth in American nutrition — perhaps because it gets exercised daily by groups like the NDEP — is that there is a vast difference between the healthfulness of whole-grain foods and those made from white flour or white rice.

It’s just not true. According to Harvard Medical School’s website, the glycemic index — a measure of the ability of a given food to raise blood sugar — of a piece of “white wheat flour bread” is rather high, at 71.

That’s precisely the same as the index of whole wheat bread.

Both of these are not far from the GI of white sugar, which is 80.

Generally, the difference in glycemic index between whole and milled versions of grain-based products is either nonexistent or inconsequential.

Eat as little grain-based food as you possibly can, preferably none. Instead, along with abundant vegetables and fruits, eat grass-fed, grass-finished beef; organ meats such as liver; free-range pork; free-range chicken; and pastured eggs.

3. Lower fat intake — broil or bake poultry, meats, and fish instead of frying

There are three macronutrients: protein, carbohydrate, and fat. As Dr. Gower noted, Type 2 diabetes is almost entirely a consequence of eating too much carbohydrate.

Conversely, as the Nutrition article makes clear, diets high in protein and especially fat are protective.

So which macronutrient has the NDEP chosen to demonize? You guessed it — fat.

Dietary fat is not the cause of Type 2 diabetes; it is the solution.

Increase fat intake, especially of saturated fat such as coconut oil, lard, butter, and olive oil. These will help satisfy hunger without spiking insulin.

4. Lighten your recipes by using nonfat or low-fat milk, yogurt, cheese, sour cream, cream cheese, or mayonnaise. Use cooking spray instead of oil

More fat-bashing! The nutrient that can save you is blamed for killing you!

Avoid processed food generally, especially if the processing consists of removing fat. If you can tolerate dairy products, always choose full-fat versions.

5. Avoid getting too hungry by eating a healthy snack between meals

Not just wrong, but precisely backward.

As a recent Swedish study² makes clear, an exceptionally effective therapy for Type 2 diabetes is intermittent fasting, allowing yourself to get hungry at least a couple of times a week. Snacking between meals keeps insulin levels consistently elevated so that cell receptors lock it out (a condition called insulin resistance).

This is an excellent way to get and worsen diabetes.

Get hungry by missing a meal at least twice a week and by avoiding snacks between meals.

6. Do not keep chips, cookies, or candy in your home. Instead, for snacks, have raw vegetables, fruit, low-fat or nonfat yogurt, or a handful of nuts, pumpkin seeds, or sunflower seeds

The first sentence makes sense — though one wonders why the NDEP now seems to be worried about sugary cookies and candy when every other bullet point on the list focuses on fat.

The second sentence, however, is the same protein-and-fat-phobic idiocy listed in the points above, expressed in a slightly different way.

7. Choose water to drink

Great idea, but it would be useful to point out that drinking coffee has consistently been shown to lower diabetes risk.³

Drink water and, if you find the effects agreeable, unsweetened green tea and/or coffee.

Bottom line: On the whole, the NDEP’s recommendations are good for those odd souls who wish to develop Type 2 diabetes.

If your aim is to prevent, treat, or cure it… not so much.

These recommendations are yet another manifestation — as if we needed one — of Big Food’s lobbying efforts to keep Americans eating cheap, high-profit commodity grains.

Don’t fall for it. Spend your November extracting grains from your pantry and filling your freezer and refrigerator with healthful, nutrient-dense vegetables, animal-based foods, and some high-fat nuts such as macadamias or almonds.

That’s the best way to “celebrate” American Diabetes Month.

Brad Lemley
Editor, Natural Health Solutions

Citations

1. Available here. Accessed October 25, 2015.
2. Feinman RD, Pogozelski WK, Astrup A, et al. Dietary carbohydrate restriction as the first approach in diabetes management: critical review and evidence base. Nutrition. 2015.
3. Fernemark H, Jaredsson C, Bunjaku B, Rosenqvist U, Nystrom FH, Guldbrand H. A randomized cross-over trial of the postprandial effects of three different diets in patients with type 2 diabetes. PLoS ONE. 2013;8(11):e79324.
4. Bhupathiraju SN, Pan A, Manson JE, Willett WC, Van dam RM, Hu FB. Changes in coffee intake and subsequent risk of type 2 diabetes: three large cohorts of US men and women. Diabetologia. 2014.