By Marsha Allen
One in four people in the U.S. has type 2 or prediabetes. That number is expected to rise to one in three by 2020. It has increased by 50% in the last decade.
One in seven qualifies as an epidemic.
Type 2 diabetes used to be considered an old person’s disease. No more, we now have 10-year old children developing it.
It also is the third largest cause of death in this country.
“WHY,” is the big question. EASY ANSWER: Lifestyle and Drugs.
We have become a society where everything has to be effortless, fast and convenient.
We don’t want to take the time to cook or exercise. We fill our lives with work, T.V., video games, and social media.
Obesity is a huge problem in this country. 77% of men and 67% of women are obese. Obesity leads to type 2 diabetes which leads to heart disease, strokes, blindness, kidney disease, limb amputation, and Alzheimer’s disease.
The media has brainwashed us into thinking this is the new normal. Everything we do today is centered around fast food and electronics. We have fitness centers everywhere, but people just use them for short periods. We do not get consistent exercise.
Diabetes is a metabolic disease, not a sugar disease. Our cells become insulin resistant because of too much fast food and too little exercise. Our bodies cannot burn the energy we take in, so we produce more insulin to try to use it or store it but in time the receptors get overloaded so the sugar just keeps building up in our red blood cells and our pancreas just tires out. Your A1c is just a measurement of the percentage of sugar coating our red blood cells. They become caramelized with sugar. They become brittle like a caramel apple and don’t carry oxygen and nutrients to the cells properly. Boom! Disease. This is a simple interpretation of the studies in the New England Journal Of Medicine.
We want our Doctor to fix it. Easy, remember? He gives us medication. Our A1c goes down. Fixed right? And I don’t have to change anything. Perfect?
Drugs get rid of some of the sugar in two ways either through the kidneys which just overloads the kidneys resulting in kidney problems. The second way is to push the sugar out of the blood and into the organs which causes things like fatty liver and heart disease.
All drugs have side effects and do not arrest or reverse diabetes. They do not even do a good job of controlling it, but they are good at giving us a false sense of security and make our doctors happy while the disease moves on.
When you are first diagnosed with diabetes your doctor tells you to lose weight and sometimes sends you to the dietician. Then he tells you the next step is medication to lower your A1c. This is a course to disaster. This is the gateway to all your other diseases.
First, let’s start with the diabetic diet. Whole wheat bread they say: 2 slices of whole wheat bread raise your insulin level as much as a Snickers bar. Yum. One medium potato for dinner. Turns to ½ cup of sugar in your stomach. Who are we kidding here? How is that going to control our diabetes? It doesn’t. It leads to drugs. Drugs make our A1c seem normal, so we think we can just keep on doing the same old thing and we will be fine. Our doctor is telling us that, so it must be, right? What other way is there?
There is a better way and it works. The doctors don’t even know about it. My husband, a thirty year diabetic on the maximum dose of metformin and insulin four times a day with steadily declining health, reversed his disease to no metformin and insulin only once a day.
It’s simple. Diet, exercise and, believe it or not, regular chiropractic adjustments.
The diet removes all processed foods, gluten, dairy, and sugar. It uses healthy substitutes, so you never miss those harmful ingredients. You eat whole foods, so your body is well nourished. Therefore, you never feel hungry or deprived. The diet is recommended by our chiropractor/pharmacist.
I wrote a cookbook using the diet to help other people who wanted to control their disease. My husband named it: Spoiled Rotten On A Diet. People still felt they needed more help, so I developed a six-week program. It is packed with information on how to identify hidden sugars, how to read labels, what nasty foods to get rid of and what to replace them with. It has a pantry list and a fridge list. Then it gives them four weeks of healthy meal plans, recipes, and shopping lists. It lays it all out for them in an easy step by step guide. I have helped many people with this program turn their disease around. You can find it and my book on my website www.yoursugarwitch.ca.
As the saying goes: If it is to be, it’s up to me. You now have options.
**The thoughts and opinions posted here are the author’s only, and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of anyone at Crown City Network.