A September 15, 2014, report shows that 50 percent of all adults in America have pre-diabetes or full-blown diabetes. This is indicative of a pandemic situation.
According to the National Diabetes Statistics Report, 2014, the number of Americans with diabetes skyrocketed to 29 million in 2012, with women comprising more than half of the cases. Researchers estimate that the diabetes population and related costs are expected to double in the next twenty-five years. Study after study has confirmed what many of us in the alternative medicine community have known for years: moderate exercise and changes in diet can significantly reduce the risk of this serious disease.
Diabetes is closely associated with heart disease, and the incidence of both conditions increased when Americans began to change their dietary patterns. The Saccharine Disease, written more than four decades ago by Dr. T. L. Cleave, provided some observations that are relevant today. Among them, said the late Dr. Robert Atkins, is the law of twenty years, “which says that after you intro-duce refined carbohydrates into a culture, two illnesses emerge two decades later, diabetes and heart disease. We know that a Third World diet without refined carbohydrates leads to no heart disease and no diabetes. When one illness emerges, so does the other. Studies of this sort have linked diabetes with heart disease.”
Under normal circumstances, insulin is released by the pancreas in response to elevated levels of sugar in the blood. It promotes the transport and entry of glucose to muscle cells and various tissues, thus lowering blood sugar levels. In a diabetic, part of the process is interrupted as a result of a deficiency in, resistance to, or insensitivity to insulin.
For many years, it was thought that diabetes was purely and simply a deficiency syndrome in which the body did not produce sufficient quantities of insulin for proper glucose metabolism and assimilation. More recently, it has been learned that many diabetics do produce enough insulin, but their cells do not take it in. The problem, then, is due to insulin insensitivity or resistance.
Insulin enters cells at points known as receptor sites. When the receptor sites are plugged because of fat, cholesterol, inactivity, and obesity, insulin cannot enter. As a result, glucose stays in the blood and creates hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar. This excess sugar is diagnosed as diabetes. In such cases, there is no need to increase insulin production but rather a need to enhance insulin sensitivity.A person with diabetes needs to work at making his or her own insulin more effi-cient, and simply increasing the amount of insulin will not do that.
Insulin resistance is a phenomenon that is closely related to insulin insensitivity. With insulin resistance, there is also a sufficient or even overabundant supply of insulin, but allergic responses prevent insulin from doing its job. Usually allergies to specific foods suppress the activity and efficiency of insulin. Different factors may be responsible for a disordered carbohydrate metabolism in different people. Wheat, for instance, may create symptoms of high blood sugar in one woman, whereas corn may affect another. Offending substances can be determined on an individual basis with food allergy tests.
Type 1 diabetes is the most serious form of the disease. It used to be called juve-nile diabetes, because for many years it was believed that it only occurred in the childhood or teenage years. This form of diabetes is characterized by a true insulin deficiency. It results when the pancreas is damaged from some exotic viral infection or even a highly toxic state. The disease may also be a genetic condition. In type 1 diabetes the beta cells in the pancreas that produce insulin are destroyed. Since type 1 diabetics have an insulin deficiency, they have to take insulin by injection daily, and generally for life.
Type 2 diabetes, also known as non-insulin-dependent or adult-onset diabetes, is more of an acquired disease. It is often precipitated by chronic excess weight from poor diet and/or lack of exercise. It may also be brought on by overconsumption of stressor foods or other allergens that are insulin resistors.
Type 2 diabetes accounts for some 90 percent of all diabetes cases in the United States. It occurs most frequently in adults over age 40, and more often in women than men. In type 2 diabetes, the beta cells in the pancreas still produce insulin, but for a variety of reasons there may be insufficient production or the body may not be adequately using the insulin that is produced. Thus this form of the disease is characterized by complications of insulin resistance and insulin sensitivity rather than, in most cases, a true deficiency of insulin.
Type 2 in children was practically unheard of until recently. Now, nearly 4,000 children are diagnosed every year. Research reported at the 2012 annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association showed that from 2001 to 2009, the incidence of type 2 diabetes among American children and teens rose by an alarming 21 percent.
Some nondiabetic women develop a type of diabetes called gestational diabetes during pregnancy, usually in the last trimester.
Often there are no symptoms present, especially in the beginning stages of type 2 diabetes. Obesity is sometimes a sign of a prediabetic state, especially when the excess weight is concentrated at the waistline and just above the waistline. Classic diabetic symptoms are more often experienced by type 1 diabetics and include frequent urination, especially at night, great thirst and hunger, fatigue, weight loss, irritability, and restlessness. Progressively, the eyes, kidneys, nervous system, and skin become affected. Infections and hardening of the arteries commonly develop. In type 1 diabetes, coma from a lack of insulin is a constant danger.
Before the development of insulin in the 1920s, diabetic patients had a bleak prognosis. Sufferers saw the condition rapidly go from bad to worse as complications such as blindness, gout, and gangrene developed. Overall life span was drastically shortened.
Initially, insulin appeared to be a miraculous drug, and it probably was. The life span of diabetic children was extended from months to decades. Today, many of these children live normal, productive lives.
Insulin is still the primary therapy for type 1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetics generally take insulin at least once a day, frequently several times a day.
While some type 2 diabetics require injections of insulin, many are given oral hypoglycemic medications. Many type 2 diabetics incorrectly believe that these pills are simply a form of insulin, but that is not the case. None of the oral medications used to treat type 2 diabetes contain insulin. They are designed to help your body use the insulin that is in your pancreas more effectively, or to stimulate better insulin production. Consequently, oral medications can only be used by diabetics whose pancreas still makes some insulin. In addition, some type 2 diabetics can control their diabetes entirely through diet and exercise.
In recent years, a number of new drugs have been introduced to treat type 2 diabetes. Some of these drugs are being rushed through the approval process without adequate review of their safety. The popular drug Avandia has been linked to several side effects, including heart attacks, and its use was severely restricted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2010. (The restrictions were lifted in 2013.) Actos has been linked to an increased risk of heart failure and bladder cancer. Rezulin, another diabetes drug, was pulled from the market in early 2000. Some 500,000 Americans had been using the medication, which was approved for use by the FDA in 1997. The FDA asked the manufacturer to withdraw Rezulin after it was linked to eighty-nine confirmed reports of liver failure, including sixty-one deaths.
Although diabetes can cause a wide variety of complications, from kidney and eye problems to nerve damage, some can be reduced considerably by controlling blood sugar. For many years doctors assumed that diabetics whose blood glucose levels were as close to normal ranges as possible reduced their risk of serious complications. About twenty years ago, the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT), one of the largest studies ever conducted, confirmed that diabetics in the intensive control group, with glycohumaglobin rates that averaged 7.1, reduced their risk of eye disease by 76 percent compared with the less aggressively managed group, with glycohumaglobin rates of 8.9 percent. Across the board, diabetics in the intensive control group had a 50 percent reduction in all serious diabetic complications. Although the trial was conducted only on type 1 diabetics, experts believe that the findings of the study apply to all diabetics.
Eating the right foods can help maintain proper blood sugar levels, as well as helping to boost your immune system. In the past there was one standard diet prescribed for all people with diabetes. Now the American Diabetes Association recommends that people work with experts in diet and nutrition to individualize their plans.
Complex carbohydrates are not the problem they were once thought to be. Emphasis is now put on the total amount of carbohydrates in a meal, rather than the source. People with diabetes are frequently taught to count carbohydrates and to match medication requirements to carbohydrate intake. This is especially true for insulin-dependent cases.
Unlike simple sugars, complex carbohydrates are beneficial. Although both are broken down into glucose, the latter do not go directly into the bloodstream. While simple sugars immediately enter the blood, complex carbohydrates go through a long process of digestion and only very gradually release sugar into the blood. Therefore, they do not contribute to the high blood sugar levels, as do simple carbohydrates. Instead, they stabilize and improve health.
Fat and protein are carefully monitored. Overweight people are told to keep fat intake to no more than 20 to 25 percent of total calories. Large amounts of protein may be related to accelerated kidney damage. This is because protein must be immediately processed by the body; it cannot be stored. This puts a great stress on the nephron cells, which filter the body’s toxins. Many people suffer from kidney deterioration as a result and must receive dialysis or a kidney transplant. Studies show that the elimination of meat from the diet is often enough to reverse kidney damage.
Despite its severity, diabetes need not be as debilitating as it usually is. While there is currently no cure, there are ways of enhancing the body’s natural defenses through nutrition, avoidance of allergy-producing substances, and exercise. A healthy lifestyle and alternative approaches to treatment can decrease the amount of insulin or oral medications needed by some people, although type 1 diabetics will need to continue taking insulin for life.
The goal of treatment can and should be to build up the body’s ability to function as independently as possible. When changing to a more holistic approach it is important not to immediately discontinue any of your medications. Instead, a preventive-medicine physician should assist in the gradual transition. With a doctor’s guidance, medication may be reduced or eliminated over time. Complete elimination, however, is not always possible.
While type 2 cases respond most dramatically, even people with type 1 diabetes may be able to reduce their insulin dependency. More important, they may alleviate many of the insidious complications that have come to be thought of as intrinsic to diabetes.
Years ago, Dean Ornish laid out a heart-right diet that was targeted at eliminating the foods that make one liable to develop heart disease. Since diabetes and heart disease are closely related, many physicians have recommended that people with diabetes follow this Ornish program. The central tenet of Ornish’s diet is to cut down on dietary fats. For him, the best diet would be one that emphasizes highfiber vegetables, eaten raw, steamed, baked, or stir-fried with little or no oil.
Other recommendations include chlorophyll drinks, lentils, peas, quinoa, steel-cut oatmeal, whole grain pasta, brown rice, soy, and fish. Bean pod tea tonifies the kidneys and adrenal glands.
People who have a true insulin disorder will not fare well on a high-carbohydrate diet. “It is important to know who needs carbohydrate restriction versus who needs fat restriction,” the late Dr. Robert Atkins said. “To determine that, there are a variety of tests, including a cholesterol profile in which we look at the ratio between the triglycerides and the HDL [high-density lipoprotein]. When a person has a blood sugar disorder leading to a lipid disorder, the ratio is extremely high. To be really safe, the number should be approximately the same, or the HDL should be higher than the triglycerides. It is perfectly appropriate to spend five or six weeks on one diet and then get all of your parameters checked again, and then spend five or six weeks on the other diet and get them checked again. In that way, you can make an intelligent decision.”
An exercise regimen is crucial for burning calories and normalizing metabolism, and is especially important for overweight adults, who are often inactive. Exercise also heightens the body’s sensitivity to insulin. By lowering cholesterol, it lowers triglyceride levels in the blood, making cells more available for glucose assimilation. This is why the insulin requirements of diabetic athletes always drop while they’re engaged in swimming, soccer, and other sports. Athletes also notice an increase in their insulin requirements when they cease doing their physical activities for an extended period of time.
Athletes are not the only ones who benefit from exercise. Ten to twenty minutes of light exercise after each meal helps reduce the amount of insulin necessary to keep blood sugar levels under control. A brisk walk gets the body’s metabolism working a little faster so that food is more easily absorbed. That prevents blood sugar from rising too high.
An exception to the rule involves patients with diabetes and heart disease. In these cases, exercising after eating may precipitate an angina attack because of the transfer of blood from the intestines to the legs and other parts of the body.
Testing for food allergies can determine which foods are responsible for insulin resistance. Clinical experience has shown that this approach to treatment is the most useful way to get to the root of adult-onset diabetes and reverse the condition. Patients can usually be weaned from insulin, since an insulin deficiency is not the cause of the problem. Eliminating allergy-producing foods may also foster weight loss. This occurs because people crave foods when they are allergic to them. When these foods are taken out of the diet, the desire for them eventually stops.
To determine whether a specific food is causing hyperglycemia, a doctor can monitor a patient’s blood sugar before and after that food is eaten. Foods that raise the blood sugar cause allergic reactions and should be eliminated.
In addition to diet and exercise, the following supplements may be helpful, among others: alpha-lipoic acid (ALA), chromium, zinc, omega-3 fatty acids, polyphenols, garlic, magnesium, ginseng, and vanadium. Enzymes useful in controlling insulin-dependent diabetes are digestive protylase, amylase, and lipase.
Plants containing phytochemicals with antidiabetic properties include chicory, Indian snakeroot, thyme, safflower, Indian fig, dandelion, rice paper plant, jack bean, flax, barley, evening primrose, oats, and alfalfa. Plants containing phytochemicals with insulin-sparing properties include coconut and the common plantain. Also helpful may be prickly pear cactus, aloe vera, fenugreek, and bitter melon.
Ulceration at various locations plagues many patients with diabetes and causes a condition that is often serious enough to warrant amputation. This tragedy may be averted with a simple solution. According to clinical studies, raw, unprocessed honey is an ideal dressing agent for almost every type of wound or ulcer. It sterilizes the ulcerated area, and often works even after antibiotics fail.
Mucokehl (made from the fungus Mucor recemosus), which was originally developed in Germany, may actually reverse diabetic neuropathy. People using this remedy get feeling back in their extremities, and their eyesight improves. Many practitioners also recommend chelation therapy for reducing diabetic retinopathy and healing foot ulcers.
People with diabetes and those who wish to prevent diabetes can do a great deal to monitor themselves. It’s important to look for the presence of antibodies that attack some of the body to defend against an ingested allergen. This is easy to see if the symptoms are blatant, but not if they are subtle. The thing to look for is a general lowering of the body’s immune response.
The best way to see this is to go five days without eating the food (or any of its relatives) you wish to test. If you want to test milk, abstain from cheese, ice cream, and all other dairy items or processed foods that contain milk as an ingredient. After five days, eat a meal consisting of just milk and eat generous amounts of it. Then tune in to your body’s response. If you experience headaches, stomachaches, pulse rate changes, increased heartbeat or blood sugar, depression, lethargy, dizziness, or even delusions, you can see that your body has reacted negatively to this substance. In other words, you have an allergic response to it. You will have to back off from it. Leave it alone for twelve weeks initially. When it is reintroduced into the diet, it must be rotated with other foods. Eat it in modest amounts no more often than once every four days.
“Of course, there are a lot of good things about that four-day basis,” says Dr. William Philpott, a prominent diabetes researcher and clinician. “You will eat thirty or forty kinds of foods instead of the half dozen you’ve been eating. This is a very wholesome thing. To have the necessary nutrition you will have a wide range of foods.” It is a good idea to try introducing new foods into your diet, ones that you have never thought to eat. Try not to eat any foods more frequently than twice a week.
Dr. Philpott recommends that you invest in some diabetic equipment so that you can monitor your blood sugar an hour after each meal. “At least 90 percent is optimum,” he says, “and 140 or beyond is high blood sugar. Before the next meal, test your blood sugar again to make sure it is at least 120 before starting your next meal. If it is not, wait and exercise. Get it down before your next meal. Monitor your pH from saliva; it should be 6.4. If it is below 6.4, you are having a reaction to the food. Measure your pulse; if it varies drastically, you are reacting to the food. Blood pressure is more significant. Physical symptoms, mental symptoms, and blood sugar are the most important. They are absolutely essential. It will take about thirty days to do this.”
Out of every 100 pregnant women in the United States, three to eight develop gestational diabetes, usually in the last trimester. Gestational diabetes is diagnosed with an oral glucose tolerance test. In many cases this type of diabetes can be controlled with diet and exercise. Although gestational diabetes disappears after delivery, as many as 50 percent of women with gestational diabetes will develop diabetes later.
Dr. Susanna Reid, a naturopathic physician at the Center for Natural Medicine in Connecticut, says that diet and exercise are key to controlling gestational diabetes.
Dr. Reid advises women with gestational diabetes to learn how to eat on the low end of the glycemic index. The glycemic index was developed some thirty years ago by Dr. Sullivan, who gave people glucose and then measured the rise in blood sugar levels. He then established that level as 100 percent of the glycemic index. He repeated the experiment by giving people various foods and measuring how high their blood sugar would go just as he had with glucose, and then assigned each food a percentage.
Dr. Reid says that foods we don’t normally associate with sugar may still be high on the glycemic index. “A baked potato and puffed rice are both 100 percent on the glycemic index, which means that they raise your blood sugar significantly. This is bad for your body; it goes into a state of alarm when your blood sugar rises so quickly and significantly, and it produces more insulin. Since the rate of rise is so rapid, the body tends to overproduce insulin, and people get what is called reactive hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). Then they have to eat sugar to get their blood sugars back up again. Therefore you need to eat foods low on the glycemic index to avoid either hypoglycemia or reactive hypoglycemia.”
She explains that the position of some foods on the glycemic index may seem counterintuitive. These include fruits, nuts, and legumes. For example, peaches, plums, grapefruit, and cherries are between 20 and 29 percent on the glycemic index. But potatoes and even carrots and parsnips and rice are at the top level. She says, “When you eat foods that are high on the glycemic index, you need to have a healthy fat with them. Doing this seems to prevent the rapid rise in blood sugar. If you had a baked potato, for example, you’d want to have olive oil in it.”
Foods you may think would be low on the glycemic index, such as vegetables, are often among the highest. “Peas are between 50 and 59 percent on the index and corn is between 60 and 69 percent. Yams are very high, but sweet potatoes are much lower on the index than yams. Brown rice and all the grains tend to be very high.”
Dr. Reid also tells her patients about the importance of exercise. By exercising regularly, we can often keep our blood sugar levels within the normal range. “When a person exercises, it improves insulin’s ability to remove glucose from the blood and also decreases insulin resistance. If you exercise sixty minutes a day at 60 to 70 percent of the maximum heart rate, then usually after just one week of exercise you’ll see an improvement in the glucose tolerance test. But be careful not to overdo it and cause your blood sugars to drop too low.”
Dr. Reid warns that a woman should not attempt to become a world-class athlete while pregnant. “But she should continue and enhance her current exercise program. There are some things she needs to be careful about. She should not lie supine and attempt to lift weights, she shouldn’t get too warm, she should maintain adequate hydration, and she probably shouldn’t take up a new sport in which balance is a main requirement because she is having to adjust daily to changes in the shape of her body and her orientation in space. She wouldn’t want to do anything where she might fall, such as inline skating at top speed.”
Dr. Reid’s favored exercises are running and walking. “Women need to feel free to move when they are pregnant. It is not a pathological state. They are not ill.”
Dr. Reid cautions against using some herbal supplements during pregnancy. “Most of the herbs are contraindicated in pregnancy, so one has to be cautious in treating gestational diabetes. For example, traditional herbs we would use to treat non-insulin-dependent diabetes, which gestational diabetes usually is, are bitter melon (Mamordica charantia), fenugreek, elecampane (Inula helenium), and garlic and onion supplements. All those are contraindicated in a pregnant woman. Ginkgo and Jerusalem artichoke are not contraindicated, and in all of the research that I’ve done I can’t find a contraindication for Gymnema sylvestre, which is an herb that seems to increase the pancreas’s ability to produce insulin, which would be advantageous in patients with gestational diabetes.”
My baseline wellness protocol can be found in Chapter 16. The following chart summarizes additional supplements I recommend for individuals who suffer from, or are specifically concerned about, diabetes. If you are concerned about conditions discussed in other chapters, consult with a health professional about how you can safely impact multiple conditions. As always, if you are taking medication—whether prescription or over-the-counter—or have any food restrictions, consult with your doctor before beginning the supplement program. Your health care provider should always be up-to-date on all vitamins, supplements, and herbal or homeopathic remedies you are taking. Supplement overdoses are rare, but possible, and certain combinations may affect individuals adversely.
| Supplement | Dose |
|---|---|
| Chromium picolinate | 200 mcg 2–3x/day |
| Vitamin C | 1,000 mg 5x/day |
| Biotin | 500 mcg |
| VitaminB6 | 100 mg |
| VitaminB12 | 1,000 mcg |
| Vitamin E | 400 mg gamma tocopherol 2x/day |
| Calcium citrate | 1,000 mg |
| Magnesium citrate | 1,000 mg |
| Potassium | 200 mg |
| Manganese | 15 mg |
| Zinc | 30 mg |
| Selenium | 200 mcg |
| Quercetin | 1,000 mg 2x/day |
| EFAs | 3,000 mg/day |
| GLA | 500 mg 2x/day |
| L-Carnitine | 500 mg 2x/day |
| Inositol | 500 mg |
| L-Glutamine | follow directions |
| Vanadyl sulfate | follow directions |
| B Complex | 50 mg |
| Garlic | 1,000 mg 2x/day |
| Bitter melon | 100 mg |
| Gymnema sylvestre | follow directions |
| Ginseng | 100 mg |
| Aloe vera | 3 tsp/day |
| Alpha lipoic acid | 600 mg |
| Grape seed extract | 200 mg 3x/day |
| NAC | 500 mg 2x/day |
| Coenzyme Q 10 | 300 mg 3x/day |
| Turmeric | 100 mg |
| Dandelion extract | follow directions |
| Evening primrose oil | 1,000 mcg |
| Sea vegetable powder | follow directions |
| Maitake complex | follow directions |
| Proteolytic enzymes | follow directions |
| Fiber Complex | Your diet should have 30–50 g of fiber a day; if not, have 15 grams with a beverage at night |
| R-Lipoic acid | 210–420 mg daily |
| Carnosine | 500 mg 2x/day |
| DHEA | 15–75 mg early in the day, followed by blood testing after 3–6 weeks to ensure optimal levels |
| EPA/DHA | 1,400 mg EPA and 1000 mg DHA daily silymarin containing900 mg silybum marianum standardized to 80 percent silymarin, 30 percent silibinin, and 4.5 percent isosilybin b |
| Green tea extract | 725 mg decaffeinated green tea extract (minimum 93 percent polyphenols) |
| Ginkgo biloba | 120 mg daily |
| Bilberry extract | 100 mg daily |
| Cinnamon extract | 125 mgCinnamomum cassia standardized to.95 percent trimeric and tetrameric a-type polymers (1.2 mg) 3x/day |
| Black cumin seed oil | 2 teaspoons daily |
An increasing body of evidence is showing the benefits of natural modalities to overall health and well-being. Following is a sample of recent peer-reviewed scientific studies relating to diabetes.
In the Townsend Letter (2014), Dr. Mona Morstein described numerous studies in which micronutrients and botanical agents, including zinc, cinnamon, chromium polynicotinate, gymnema sylvestre, berberine HCL, and resveratrol, were found to offer the best chances of meeting treatment goals in diabetic patients without the side effects of hypoglycemia from overmedication of glucoselowering agents. A 2014 report in Nutrition Journal reviewed clinical trials of the effect of fenugreek on markers of glucose homeostasis. Significant effects on fasting and two hour glucose were found in studies that administered medium or high doses of seed from the plant in people with diabetes. According to a 2010 study published in BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, curcumin supplementation may improve diabetes-induced endothelial dysfunction associated with decreased vascular superoxide production and PKC inhibition. Another 2010 study, in the Journal of Nutrition, reported that dietary bilberry extract (BBE) given to type 2 diabetic mice significantly reduced the blood glucose concentration and enhanced insulin sensitivity.