Reversing Type 2 Diabetes - Is It Possible?

In the long-term, diabetes causes very serious medical problems such as heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, nerve damage, neuropathy, glaucoma, cataracts and retinopathy, a weakened immune system, and digestive problems.

Though these medical conditions develop slowly, eventually they can be devastating. Persons who let their diabetes get out of control risk going blind, experiencing a variety of infections, having a foot or leg amputated, requiring kidney dialysis or a transplant, or becoming incapacitated or dying from a stroke or heart attack, among a host of other serious outcomes.

Thus taking steps to beat diabetes is critical. It's not that hard - so it can be done.

Diabetes and your genes

There is a persistent myth that diabetes is all about poor diets, unhealthy life-styles and obesity.

While it may be true that most people who are diabetic are overweight, some thin people also get diabetes. And some people who have an unhealthy lifestyle manage to avoid the disease. Why so?

It is because genetics plays a part in the onset of diabetes. This can be seen from the fact that diabetes seems to run in families.

However, unlike other kinds of genes, the diabetes gene does not 'dictate' that you will get diabetes. It only makes it likely that diabetes will develop under particular circumstances.

For example, if the gene that controls the colour of your eyes says that you eyes will be blue, then your eyes will be blue and there is nothing you can do about it. The same goes for the type and colour of your hair. If your genes decree wavy, brown hair for you then that's what you get.

The kinds of genes that govern diabetes are different. They merely state that if certain conditions come about then you will get diabetes, ie they predispose you to getting the disease.

For example, if your parents were diabetic, it is likely that you inherited the genes that predispose you for type 2 diabetes. So, if you eat the same food as your parents, you are likely to develop diabetes. But if you change your diet and lifestyle, you can probably avoid your parents' fate.

The big question is, once your diabetes has developed, can it be cured?

The short answer is NO. There is no cure.

But you can beat your diabetes - ie prevent the horrendous consequences mentioned above from developing - by eating a plant-focused diet and taking up exercise.

This is relatively easy to do. If your diabetes is not too far advanced, you should be able to stop taking your diabetes medications.

You may also be able to reverse your diabetes - ie revert to your state of health before you ever had diabetes at all - by eating a vegan diet and following an extreme exercise regimen.

Beating Diabetes

To beat your diabetes, you must reduce the excess amounts of glucose and insulin swirling around in your bloodstream.

To do so, you need a diet that is: (1) low in sugar, (2) low in fat, (3) low in salt, (4) high in fibre, and (5) digested slowly. Your diet must also exclude all dairy products and eggs.

The easiest way to devise such a diet is to concentrate on natural, unprocessed foods that are mostly plants. You also need to drink plenty of water, to aid the absorption of the fibre you eat.

You should also take a range of supplements in order to cover any possible dietary deficiencies you might encounter by avoiding dairy products.

This is the basis of the diet I am using to beat my diabetes, so I know it works.

And it is easy to put into practice. All you need to do is to learn how to read food labels so that you can buy the most appropriate food products.

Because you have diabetes, you are likely to be quite overweight if not obese. Once you have been following a beating-diabetes diet like this for three or four weeks, you will notice your weight beginning to drop rapidly.

This is due to the reduced fat and sugar in your diet. You weight will drop until it has reached its natural level with a BMI (body mass index) of less than 25.

Exercise

I got my blood glucose under control by following the kind of diet outlined above without doing any extra exercise. So it seems that exercise is not necessary in order to beat your diabetes.

However, I have since discovered that exercise does help. For example, I eat the same breakfast every day and check my blood glucose two hours later. Normally I get very similar results. But I have noticed that if I go for a 20-minute walk before checking my blood, my glucose reading will be up to ten percent lower than it would be without that walk.

My experience with diabetes and exercise is borne out by recent studies.

In one recent study, people with type 2 diabetes exercised for 175 minutes a week, ie 15 minutes a day for seven days a week and ate a low calorie diet. Within one year, ten percent were able to give up their diabetes medications or had improved to the point where their glucose readings could be classified as pre-diabetic rather than diabetic.

These average results were much better for those who has less severe or newly diagnosed diabetes or who lost the most weight. Among these people, 20% were able to give up taking their diabetes medications.

I feel that if the subjects in this study had been put on the sort of diet I outlined above, rather than a diet that merely restricted calories, most of them would have been able to give up their medications entirely as I have done.

Reversing diabetes

Properly-conducted clinical trials (published in 1990) showed that a vegan diet along with changes to a patient's lifestyle can reverse blockages in arteries.

This diet excluded all meat, fish, dairy products and eggs, so that all animal fat and cholesterol was eliminated from the diet.

Each patient had an angiogram when they first joined the trial and again after one year. An angiogram is a an x-ray technique that uses a special dye and a steady stream of x-rays to take pictures of the blood flow in an artery or vein in the head, arms, legs, chest, back, or stomach.

The results of these trials were impressive. The patients' chest pains ceased and their average LDL (or 'bad') cholesterol level fell by 40 percent.

In addition, comparing the angiograms at the start of the trial with the angiograms taken after one year showed that blockages in the coronary arteries (the arteries that lead to the heart muscle) were starting to shrink and that these arteries were opening up again.

The difference could be seen clearly on the angiograms of 82 percent of patients after one year on the special diet and exercise programme - with no heart bypass operations, angioplasties (artery-widening techniques) or cholesterol lowering drugs.

Given the strong connection between heart disease and diabetes - two-thirds of diabetics eventually die of heart disease - it is likely that such a diet can reverse diabetes to the point where the patient is as healthy as he or she was before their diabetes developed, provided the diet is leavened with a rigorous exercise programme.

Conclusion

It seems to me that you can beat your diabetes, ie prevent it damaging your body beyond repair, by following a plant-focused diet along with some exercise. This is a relatively easy thing to do (as I found out for myself) and, provided you avoid all dairy products and eggs, should enable you to give up taking your medications for diabetes.

Reversing your diabetes, so that you revert to the state of health you were in before you developed diabetes, would be a much harder thing to do. But I believe it can be done, by eating a strictly vegan diet (no meat products of any sort at all) and an extreme exercise program.

Take Action against Diabetes With The Help Of These Best Foods For Diabetes

The food you eat is one of the things that can get you into trouble with diabetes. If you are pre-diabetic or have diabetes, one of the ways to cure, control or prevent diabetes is to focus on foods that can help cure or reduce your risk of developing this chronic condition. It may seem like a monumental task to try to change your eating habits because let's face it, many bad foods are quite delicious. Despite this, you can make a change. Some of the best foods for diabetics are delicious too.

Before considering the best foods for diabetics, you need to consider what type of diabetes you have as well as what goals you are aiming for when making dietary changes.

Type I diabetes is not preventable and cannot be cured and requires daily insulin injections. Using diet to control type 1 diabetes is done in order to ensure that complications both long and short term are minimized by blood glucose levels normalization with the help of diet.

Type II diabetes on the other hand can not only be prevented but in some cases can be cured or the reliance on medications or insulin injections by the patient can be significantly reduced.

Making dietary changes for type II diabetes (and increasing daily physical activity levels) is with the aim of helping with weight reduction and help the patient maintain normal body weight. While the causes of type II diabetes are varied, one significant area that increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes is being overweight or obese.

Best Foods for Diabetics

1. Carbohydrates

The body needs carbohydrates that it turns into glucose which is the source of the energy or fuel required by the cells in the body. Carbohydrates are present in most foods except for meat, poultry and fish.

The two types of carbohydrates used by the body are derived from complex carbs (starches) such as beans, pasta, rice, etc. The second type of carbohydrates are known as simple carbohydrates which refer to sugars derived from fruits, vegetables, honey, white table sugar, etc.

If you are a diabetic, you should become well versed in carbohydrates. Diabetics should eat a diet that is higher in carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates in particular than any other type of food. Simple carbohydrates raise blood sugar levels much more quickly than complex carbohydrates (grains, beans, peas, peanuts, soybeans, potatoes, etc) which raise blood sugar levels very slowly.

Simple carbohydrates may not be entirely off limits for diabetics but this is something for you to discuss with your doctor as many "forbidden foods" such as white table sugar many not be completely off limits.

Carbohydrate counting is probably prudent for each diabetic. After a discussion with your doctor on how many carbs you need in a day, you can then decide what your daily mix of carbs will include. You may then be able to enjoy a candy bar here and there as long as you consider how much the candy bar will affect your daily allowable carbohydrate requirements in much the same way you would consider a cup of beans, cup of pasta, etc.

2. Fiber

The reason that complex carbs and whole grains are crucial for a diabetic is mainly because of the fiber content which is why refined "foods" are usually forbidden for a diabetic because they do are usually stripped of fiber and raise blood sugar levels very fast because foods are digested very quickly when they do not contain fiber.

Fiber has many health benefits including relieving constipation, reducing the risk of heart disease, lowering cholesterol, it can help with weight reduction, etc. Fiber rich foods are one of the best foods for diabetics because fiber can help to control blood sugar levels, so adopting a fiber rich diet is a must for anyone wanting to overcome or prevent diabetes.

There are two types of fiber and each of them is very important. The first type is known as soluble fiber and the second is known as insoluble fiber.

Soluble fiber

Soluble fiber which is found mainly in beans, oats, certain fruits and vegetables, etc, dissolves in water and turns into a gel in the stomach. The gummy consistency of insoluble fiber helps to slow down the digestion process. This slowing down helps to prevent spikes in blood sugar which is a very powerful role for diabetes cure or management as it helps to stabilize blood sugar levels by preventing glucose from being absorbed too quickly into the blood.

Spikes in blood sugar levels means that there will be excess amounts of glucose in the blood which the body may have trouble transferring to the various cells in the body or storing which could lead to complications and even death if very severe.

Another benefit of soluble fiber is that if you are dealing with insulin resistance which is a common feature of type 2 diabetes development, soluble fiber can help to increase the sensitivity of the body's cells to insulin so that the insulin is able to remove more glucose from the blood and distribute it to the various cells in the body.

Insoluble fiber

Insoluble fiber does not dissolve in water and passes through the body intact and helps to speed up the movement of food through the intestines which helps prevent constipation.

The insoluble fiber that is derived mostly from whole wheat as well as certain fruits and vegetables has been linked to a lower risk of diabetes.

Various studies have shown that those who consumed fiber rich ( or complex carbohydrate rich) diets were able to achieve and maintain normal blood sugar levels by as much as 90 percent for those with type 2 diabetes and 30 percent for those with type 1 diabetes.

An important feature of a high fiber diet is to ensure that you increase your water intake. Fiber needs a significant amount of water to move through the body and do what it needs to do. Increasing your water intake will also keep you well hydrated which is important for general health and wellbeing.

Consuming more fiber is also a great way to prevent developing diabetes if you have been diagnosed as being pre-diabetic.

3. Healthy fats

No two diabetic diets are ever the same. While one person with diabetes may be advised to consume less fat, another may be required to eat more fats (the healthy kind).

The amount of healthy fat content is something to discuss with your doctor but it has been discovered that some who ate less healthy fats and more carbohydrates may have unwittingly increased the levels of triglycerides in their bodies which has been linked to a greater risk of heart disease in diabetics. This is because fat and protein when compared to carbs, do not raise blood sugar levels quite as fast as the latter and this helps to reduce the levels of triglycerides.

If this is a risk for you, increasing your intake of healthy fats such as olive oil will not only lower blood sugar levels but will also reduce your heart disease risk. Healthy fats like those found in olive oil, avocados and various nuts, are also loaded with antioxidants which are also important for diabetes management as discussed below.

4. Vitamins and minerals

There are many complications that can arise from diabetes that can affect the nerves, eyes, blood vessels, etc, and certain vitamins can help promote healthier eyes, blood vessels, nerves, etc.

Foods containing vitamins C and E as well as the mineral zinc are some of the best foods for diabetics as these vitamins and minerals are known as antioxidants which help to prevent free radical damage to the cells in the body. Damage to the cells from free radicals can increase the risk of developing diabetes related complication such as nerve damage and heart disease. Antioxidants help to protect the cells from free radicals.

Many diabetics have also been found to be deficient in the mineral magnesium and this deficiency can increase the risk of diabetes related eye problems as well as heart disease. Magnesium deficiency has been linked to retina damage so increasing your intake of magnesium can help protect your eyes and your heart from any complications.

Chromium is another mineral that many people with diabetes are deficient in. Chromium is important because it can help the body better manage blood sugar levels. This mineral is found in broccoli, fortified breakfast cereals, grapefruit, etc.

Vitamins and mineral deficiencies are a common issue with people with diabetes so if you are not getting enough of these nutrients from your diet, a good supplement may work.

An important aspect of using food to cure, manage or prevent diabetes naturally is about finding a meal plan that works for you which combines these various elements - fiber, vitamins, minerals, fats, etc - in order to help control blood sugar levels either directly or indirectly.

Another aspect of trying to find and incorporate the best foods for diabetics into your diet is to ensure that instead of eating a few large meals a day, you need to instead eat several small meals each day in order to make it easier for your body to manage the glucose in your blood. Shoot for three small meals - breakfast, lunch and dinner - as well as two or three healthy snacks between these small meals. This will not only help with diabetes management but also weight control. For more on fighting diabetes naturally, visit here