Dr. Neal Barnard’s Program for Reversing Diabetes

“Now, at last, we’re on the cusp of real change. I’m talking not just about a bold new idea, but about an entirely new approach to diabetes that has been tested and proven.

In a series of research studies conducted with Georgetown University and George Washington University in Washington, D.C., our research team has proven that many people with diabetes can think beyond delaying the inevitable decline and improve their health dramatically. They can cut their blood sugar, increase insulin sensitivity, and reduce or eliminate medications, and they can do this with a simple set of diet changes. Unlike with medication treatments, the “side effects” of the menu change are good ones: weight loss, lower cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and increased energy. …

In a careful analysis that kept exercise and medication use constant, we found that the new diet controls blood sugar three times more effectively than the previous “best” diet. It also accelerates weight loss and controls cholesterol better than the old gold standard. Other investigators have shown that this kind of diet also has dramatic benefits for the heart and leads to a healthy drop in blood pressure. It allows many individuals to take charge of their lives again and to return to health and vigor.

This book translates these scientific breakthroughs into tools that you can use, including an easy-to-follow plan with simple diet guidelines, menus, and recipes.”

“The point is this: Some genes are dictators, and others are not. The genes for hair color and eye color, for example, really are dictators. If they call for you to have brown hair or blue eyes, you can’t argue. But the genes for diabetes are more like committees. They do not give orders; they make suggestions.

If our genes call for diabetes, we do not necessarily have to listen to them. We have more control than you might imagine.”

“Your pancreas, an organ in your abdomen, produces insulin. As you know by now, insulin is a hormone, and the pancreas sends it into your bloodstream to travel to the various sites of the body. Like a key sliding into a lock, insulin attaches to a receptor on the cell’s surface and causes the cell membrane to permit glucose to enter. Insulin does the same thing for the next cell, and the next, and the next. It attaches to a receptor on the cell’s surface, opens the door, and ushers glucose in.

In type 2 diabetes, this system does not work properly. Your pancreas makes insulin, and insulin travels to each cell, but when it arrives, it has trouble opening the door. It is as if the lock has somehow become jammed, and the key no longer works. This is insulin resistance. Yes, the insulin “key” is there, but it has trouble doing its job. Glucose cannot get into the cells, and it builds up in the bloodstream.

Imagine the workings of a lock on a typical door. What if someone were to jam chewing gum into the lock? There is nothing wrong with your key and really nothing wrong with the lock except that it is now filled with gum. To make it work again, we need to clean it out.

The new approach to diabetes is based on cleaning out your biological clocks. Our goal is to help your insulin “key” work the way it is supposed to.”

“To reverse the course of diabetes, “clean the gum out of the locks,” and allow the heart and blood vessels the best chance of reversing any existing blockages, there are three guidelines.

1. Set aside animal products.
2. Keep vegetable oils to a minimum.
3. Favor foods with a low glycemic index.

Now, there is no need to panic. I know this sounds like a tall order. I am going to walk you through each step to show you the whys and hows. For now, I just want you to understand the principles.”

“Dairy fat. Cow’s milk derives, believe it or not, 49 percent of its calories from fat. That is a lot by any standard. You may imagine that 2% milk is much lower in fat. Not so. That 2% figure refers to fat content by weight, which is deceptive because it is thrown off by milk’s water content. When you drink a glass of milk, your body absorbs the water. What matters for your health is how much fat you are left with. Nutritionists look for the percentage of calories that come from fat because that figure is unaffected by water content. It turns out that for 2% milk, about 35 percent of calories come from nothing but fat.”

“The glycemic index (GI) is a handy tool that was invented by David Jenkins, MD, PhD, DSc, a physician and researcher at the University of Toronto. It is simply a number that indicates how rapidly any given food releases sugar into the bloodstream. A food with a high GI releases sugar into the blood quickly.

One example is white bread. If the molecules of carbohydrate in bread were greatly magnified, they would look like strings of beads. Each bead is a molecule of sugar (glucose). In your digestive tract, these beads separate and pass into your bloodstream.

With white bread, this process is quick. The string of beads rapidly disintegrates, and the individual glucose molecules race into your bloodstream. If you were to check your blood sugar after eating the bread, you would see the result. White bread has a high GI, meaning it has a pronounced effect on your blood glucose.

In contrast, pumpernickel bread has a low GI. Its string of beads comes apart more slowly, passing into the bloodstream bit by bit. It has much less effect on your blood sugar.

In a nutshell, high-GI foods tend to have a greater effect on your blood sugar, and low-GI foods have less effect.”

“If certain foods act like drugs, it pays to treat them like drugs. In other words, avoid them. Just as it is harder for a smoker to cut down than to quit and harder for an alcoholic to drink wine moderately than to quit drinking altogether, it is very tough to tease yourself with foods that have you in their clutches. It is actually easier to leave them alone completely and do your best to forget about them. If you have not had one of these biologically active foods in a few weeks, you crave it much less than you would if you had it yesterday.”

“In our most recent research study, half the volunteers were assigned to a low-fat vegan diet, and the other half were instructed to follow a diet based on American Diabetes Association (ADA) guidelines. Since it was to be an unbiased test, the diet assignment was done by computer. The process was random, and neither the volunteers nor we had any influence over who got which diet. Nonetheless, I was curious about how the volunteers felt about the two diets, so I asked them. If there had been an opportunity to choose one of the diets, which one would they have chosen? I expected most to say they would have chosen the ADA diet—it is familiar to most people who have been diagnosed with diabetes, and I thought the volunteers might feel a bit of trepidation about giving up meat and dairy products.

As it turned out, their preferences were just the opposite. The volunteers actually preferred the vegan diet by about two to one. The reason, I learned, was that many of them had already been on the ADA diet and found it dull and not very effective. Many of them had heard about the advantages of a vegan diet. Others had relatives who followed a vegetarian or vegan diet, and they wanted to give it a try.

Both groups embraced their assignments, and as you have read, some did well on the ADA diet, and some did not. The results with the vegan diet, however, were powerful and consistent.”