DISCLAIMER: Nothing contained in this article is meant as medical advice, as I am not competent to give it. It is a record of my dealing with diabetes and is a personal journal that may only apply to me. If you decide to follow the same course, consult your doctor and a dietician first to get their opinion.
I am a diabetic. I have been for some time, but was diagnosed in January. My wife treated me to a check-up for my birthday, and 
my fasting blood sugar was 296. I found this out after a long discussion between the doctor and my wife, three days after they drew blood. My wife returned from the phone call, sat down and told me the news.
“Is this why I feel so cruddy all the time?” I asked the doc two days later. He didn't answer me, but told me I had to avoid potatoes, beans, sugary stuff and starchy foods. I could eat meat, vegetables, and salads, and he referred me to a dietician at Mercy Hospital, who would fill me in on the diabetic routine. His assistant showed me how to use the glucose monitor and stuck my finger with the little contraption and measured the result: 246. My wife gasped, but the tech told her I wasn't fasting, so it wasn't that bad. The doctor gave me a prescription for oral meds, Januvia, and told me to test my blood every morning before eating, and take the medicine with breakfast.
On the drive home, Lourdes was visibly upset, but it hadn't sunk in for me yet, other than the idea that my future was full of restrictions. No more ice cream, chocolate cake, french fries, 
hamburgers, fried chicken, fried anything. No more tater tots smothered in ketchup. No more Snickers bars, or candy. Goodbye Baby Ruth, and potato chips and French bacon dip! No more pizza! I began to be depressed.
My dad was a diabetic. He didn't handle it too well. He'd check his blood sugar once a week, and if he wanted to eat a piece of pie, he'd inject more insulin, thinking that would fix it. He had a heart attack when he was 62, which is just four years away for me. At 65, he had triple-bypass heart surgery. “I can't go down that road,” I thought, as I began researching diabetes on the web. I googled the term, and the first result wasn't too encouraging.
Diabetes is a chronic (lifelong) disease marked by high levels of sugar in the blood. Symptoms: High blood levels of glucose can cause several problems, including: Blurry vision; Excessive thirst; Fatigue; Frequent urination;...
I looked at the various sources. Disgusting. I started eating salads. Grilled chicken salad with oil and vinegar. Not too bad, but this would get old soon. I checked my blood sugar the next morning, a Thursday. It was 184. The doc had told me my target was to get it to between 150-200 to begin with, so I was inside the bounds of that. The next day I was 178, so I was going in the right direction, but Sunday morning I was up to 194 after eating a salad from McDonalds on Saturday evening. This was confusing.
I went online to Amazon and did a search for my condition. The third result was Dr. Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes: The Scientifically Proven System for Reversing Diabetes without Drugs by Neal D. Barnard. It said it was a twenty-year study underwritten by the National Institutes of Health. This was what I wanted. I wanted out! It had a Look Inside feature, so I looked inside. It was promising. I bought the Kindle version, so I could read it right away. I went over the first several chapters, and reread it a few times for good measure. The thesis of the book is that the traditional way of approaching Type 2 diabetes, which I have, is wrong. It treats it like a disease with diet and oral medication at first, and then when the pancreas gives out, insulin replaces the orals. The problem, according to Barnard, is that the course of treatment addresses only symptoms, which eventually leads to all the wonderful problems listed in my Google result: blurry vision, excessive thirst, fatigue, frequent urination...even amputation of legs and blindness.
This program for reversing diabetes treats it as a symptom of a lifestyle, which leads to Type 2 diabetes. The diabetes is the result of overeating and weight gain, the fast-food culture we are embedded in. I can extract myself from this culture and build a new one for myself. The theory says that I am insulin resistant, which means that insulin can't transport glucose (sugar) into my cells, so it remains in my blood, causing it to thicken like molasses, which doesn't help your circulation. The pancreas reacts by producing more insulin, which doesn't work, but causes it to become overworked and the result is faulty production of insulin, which leads to even more sugar in the bloodstream. Diabetes meds either seek to reduce the amount of glucose in the blood by suppressing the release of it from the liver, or spurs the pancreas to produce more insulin. It is paired with a diet that restricts carbohydrates and sugar, so it doesn't end up as glucose in the blood in the first place. The problem is the uneven results. According to Barnard, “researchers and clinicians have long lamented these lackluster results.” (Barnard, Chapter 1, pages 6, 10) In short, the diet is difficult to follow, and people abandon it. I know two diabetics well. Both of them are off the diet and their diabetes is unchecked.
The root cause of Type 2 diabetes is what causes insulin resistance: overstuffed cells, full of fat. The fat blocks the insulin from opening a pathway into the cell for the transport of glucose into it for use as energy. This is not an isolated symptom, but is caused by a diet high in fat and refined sugar, so much so that the body stores the excess as fat in the cells. Remember, at one time famine was not uncommon in the west, as it is still not uncommon in many places in the world. The body reacts to overeating as an opportunity to lay up stores of energy for lean times. Bears do it every year, and come out of their den in the spring lean and needing to gorge on whatever food they can find. This is natural, but in the west, with the abundance of food we have, it leads to obesity and the current epidemic of Type 2 diabetes. I'm not alone in this. Native Americans have the highest instance of diabetes of any ethnic group in the nation. I inherited my father's propensity to diabetes. My older brother is overweight, but his blood glucose is normal. He got my mom's gene and I got my dad's. I don't want my dad's gene for a heart attack and triple-bypass heart surgery, but if I have this one, I might have the others too.
Dr. Barnard's solution is to eliminate all animal fat and most vegetable fat from the diet. Go vegan. According to him, a diet of animal fat is the root cause of obesity, and going vegan is the answer to significant weight loss, which is the cure for Type 2 diabetes if, and only if, one is not insulin-dependent yet. After one goes on insulin, the symptoms can be lessened, but not erased. The idea is to make the fat in the cells the natural source for energy, therefore burning fat and emptying the cells, returning them to an insulin sensitive state. Weight loss is gradual, but after three to six months, one is supposed to lose about thirty to forty pounds and just maybe get off the oral medication altogether. That puts one into remission. One is effectively no longer a diabetic. (Barnard, Chapter 2)
Well, I couldn't pass that up. I went to the grocery store and loaded up on soymilk, chick peas, black beans, lentils, sweet potatoes, tofu, cinnamon, old-fashioned oatmeal, veggie burgers, green tea, pumpernickel bread, the whole nine yards. I bought raw spinach, tomatoes, onions, strawberries, apples, bananas, orange juice, jalapeno peppers, carrots, and cucumbers. I read the nutritional labels on packaged food, looking for sugar and cholesterol, since cholesterol is what warns one that there are animal products in the food. I went home and ate a salad with spinach, tomatoes, onions and chick peas, topped with balsemic vinegar. I stuffed myself.
The next morning, my blood sugar was down 55 points, from 194 to 139. The next day, it went down to 125. The following day to 115. 111. 105. Something was going on. I was still taking the Januvia tab every morning, and will until my doctor says to stop. But after a few weeks in which I might eat something that had some fat in it (not animal fat, but vegetable fat, like olive oil) and get a spike in my blood sugar, I started to maintain an average glucose reading each morning between 101 to 104. My reading has been 100 the last two days. My lowest reading in this period is 90.
Another thing was happening. I was eating all day long and losing weight. It is March 22, and since the first of February, I have gone from 248 pounds to 233. I am losing about two pounds a week. The first several weeks the weight loss was easy. During spring break (I'm a high school teacher) I hit a plateau, and stopped losing weight. I did some research and added some interval walking to my routine. It appears my metabolism had slowed down to compensate for the weight loss. It reacted to my reduction of calories and fat as starvation. Simply walking quickly for five minutes, then walking normally, then fast, then cooling off for the last five, a total of twenty minutes, increased my metabolic rate again, and I am back to losing weight. My target is to get back to the weight I was when I left for grad school in 1987, which was 195 pounds. I wasn't skinny, because I was a weight lifter and spent my grad school years unloading trucks for Utrecht Art Supplies in Manhattan. For me, 233 pounds is fat, even at 6’3”. I need to shed another 40 pounds. I took a Before picture for this little project, and when I reach my After weight, I'll put it on the site, so everyone can see the results.
What is important is this is working. The proof is in the pudding, though I need to find a sugar-free recipe for that. I'm also regaining my chops as a cook, which got rusty after being happily married for seventeen years. The product of a happy marriage is usually a few extra pounds. I've learned how to make a mean sugar-free strawberry jam, with only five calories a serving.
Here's the key to going vegan and reversing diabetes: it isn't carbs and starches that is the problem; it is the glycemic index and glycemic load of different foods. Glycemic index and load means the way food is transformed into sugar in the digestive process. A high glycemic index means the food is mostly refined sugar or breaks down too quickly and loads your body with glucose that it can't handle. That was the problem in the first place, too much sugar. A low glycemic index means it breaks down into sugar more slowly, and the body can metabolize it more readily. Most fruits have a low glycemic index, which is below 55 on a scale of 100. I can eat anything below that number, including whole grain spaghetti cooked al dente with homemade sauce. I can't eat potatoes, because they have a high index number, but I can eat sweet potatoes because they have a low one. I can't eat quick-cooking oatmeal because it is cut up into small bits, which is to say it is already partly digested, but I can eat old-fashioned oatmeal. I eat veggie sausage for breakfast. Seventy calories. I can't eat watermelon, which is really high on the index. Pineapple is out, but I can drink pineapple juice. Go figure. (Glycemic Index, web)
Some legumes are high on the index, while things like chick peas and black beans are low. Mahatma Enriched Long Grain Rice is low, while most other varieties and brands are high. So I can eat black beans and rice. Most bread is high on the index, but pumpernickel and rye bread are low. So is whole grain bread. Tastes great. I can bake pumpernickel bread.
Cow's milk is off my list, but there are more varieties of milk out there than you can imagine. Soy. Coconut. Almond. You can make milk out of them, and they taste a lot better than moo juice. Soymilk tastes like a milkshake.
Eggs aren’t necessary. I can make scrambled tofu with spices like tumeric that tastes like a western omelet. Chicken embroyos aren’t required for baking, since their only purpose is to bind and moisten recipes. A banana will do the same thing. Ground flaxseed does the trick too.
There are side effects to this diet I never dreamed of. I used to live on acid reducers, for I was plagued with heartburn daily. I thought it was the students driving me crazy. Not anymore. I haven’t had heartburn since I went vegan, and I eat jalapeno peppers like they were candy, after being forced to give them up for what they did to my stomach. I used to fall asleep everywhere, even driving. I don’t do that anymore either. I get tired, but not groggy, slipping into unconsciousness in mid-morning and mid-afternoon. I was doing this for the last twenty years. I thought I was getting old prematurely. I was pre-diabetic.
I’m at the beginning of this journey. All is going well so far. My goal is to get my boyish figure back, and to avoid the complications that dogged my dear departed father. Completely foregoing animal products and the fat and cholesterol that goes along with it should give my heart, arteries, and brain a new jolt of life. I wish I knew all this when he was alive, so I might still have Dad with us.
Works Cited
Barnard, Neal. Dr. Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes: The Scientifically Proven System for Reversing Diabetes Without Drugs. New York: Rodale Books, 2007. Kindle 3. Electronic book. March 22, 2011.
