fully and told me I waslow at particular times of the day and told me what I had to do to cover the valleys as well as the peaks.
Insulin.
I never wanted to take insulin.
My father did it, and the idea just brought back horrible memories.
My other doctor would say, 'All else is failing, now you have to go on insulin.'What Bernstein says is, 'I want you to take insulin in orderto coveryour peaksand to keep your pancreas from burning out.' This seems to me a much more sensible approach. "My wife is very perceptive about the whole thing, and she said what I really needed was a coach, and Bernstein is very much like a coach.
Having read up about him and knowing that he was an engi neer, you can see the difference in his approach.You can see less of the medical model and more of an engineering model: he's putting you back together,taking your components and manipulating them in or der to accomplish something.
He's a diabetic himself, he knows the thing insideand out, and so you getthe sense that he'smuch more ac tively involved.
Now I measure my blood sugars 5 times a day, but in stead of just jotting them down and saying come back in three months, he adjusts the medication, using it to tweak the peaks and val leys,to get the most optimum response.
Now I have excellentcontrol. "The diet takes some getting used to.
Most diabetics, I would sur mise, love to eat.
Especially if you come from a culture where food is the coin of the realm.
People ask me now,'What do you eat?' I say, 'I have turkey, some salad, and a Diet Coke.' I used to be a big pancake eater.
Talk about your carbohydrate!
Every Saturday and Sunday morning for years I would make pancakes for my wife.
Now I make them for her and for my daughter and don't have any , or occasion allystealjust a bite , and I miss it, but I am so much more in control now, and I feel so much better.
I've seen so much of my family go down the slippery slope,it seems a small sacrifice for good health. "Since the time I started seeing Dr.
Bernstein, I've lost close to 30 pounds.
My blood sugars have dropped by about 35 percent, but my weight loss was not on a weight loss diet, just on Dr.
Bernstein's meal plan.
I still havea way to go,but for the firsttime I feel like I'm in control."
J.A.K. isa sixty-seven-year-old business executive whohadhad type2 di abetes for twenty-four years, and had been taking insulin for twenty, when hestartedon ourregimen. He writes thefollowing:
Beforeand After 21
"I visited Dr.
Bernstein on the recommendation of some good friends, as I had just lost the central vision in my right eye due to sub- retinal bleeding. "It took hours of instruction, counseling, and explanationto make me clearly understand the relationships between diet, blood sugar control,and physical well-being.
I washoping for the possibilitythat I might experience an improvement in my already deteriorated physical condition.
I have diligently followed up on what I was taught, and the results are obvious
• I no longerhavecrampsin my calves and toes. • The neuropathy in my feet has normalized. • Variousskin conditions havecleared up. • Tests for autonomic neuropathy(R-R intervalstudy) totally nor malized in only two years. • The difficulty I had with digestion has cleared up completely. • My weight dropped from 188 to 172 pounds in six months. • My originalcholesterol/HDLratio of5.3 put me at increasedrisk for a heart attack.
With a low-carbohydrate diet and improved blood sugars, this value has dropped to 3.2,which puts me at a lower cardiac risk than most nondiabetics of my age. • My daily insulin dose has dropped from 52 units to 31 units, and I no longer have frequent episodes of severe hypoglycemia. • My overall physical condition and stamina have improved con siderably.
"All these improvements occurred because I learned how to control my blood sugars.
As a matter of fact, my glycosylated hemoglobin (a test that correlates with average blood sugar during the prior four months) dropped from 7.1 percentto 4.6 percent,so that I am now in the samerange asnondiabetics.
I havedeveloped full confidencein my abilityto managemy own diabetes.
I understand what is happening.
I can adjust and compensate my medications asthe need arises. "If I haveto miss a meal, for whatever reason, I can adjust accord inglyand am not tied to aclock, asI wasbeforeI learned these new ap proaches to blood sugarcontrol. "I would saythat not only hasmy physical condition improved, but my mental attitude is far better today than it was ten or fifteen years ago.
My only regret is that I did not learn how to be in charge of my di abetes years earlier."
22 Before andAfter
Lorraine Candido has had type 1 diabetes for more than twenty years and has been mypatient for ten.
She is in her sixties, and she and her husband, Lou, her "copilot," work together to keep her blood sugars nor mal.
Like a lotof happily married couples, Lorraine andLou sometimes almost speak as one.
When Lorraine comes infor treatment, Lou is with her.
When shecalls on the phone, Lou ison the other line.
They talk about howstarting theprogram changed their lives: Lorraine: "I had a lot of complications.Bladderinfections, kidney infections , and then my eyes.My feetwere numb up to my heels.As a matter of fact, one day I waswalkingbarefoot and I wasn't aware of it but I had a thumbtack in my foot all day long.
I had neuropathy of the vagus nerve.
I had an ulcer from medication.
My mother had had eye problems,and so when I went to an ophthalmologist,he said, 'You have some of your mother's problems.We'll keep an eye on you; come back in a year.' And I thought, 'Uh-oh.'When Dr.
Bernstein examined my eyes, he said, 'Oh, I'll make an appointment for you.' Right away I had laser surgery." Lou: "I firmly believe that if she hadn't gone to Dr.
Bernstein, she would've been blind.
Her last two visits to the eye doctor she got ex cellent reports.
As a matter of fact, he said he had no idea where the fluid in one eye had gone, but it was all gone." Lorraine: "I was elated.
He said my left eye had made great progress and I was doing well. "When I first met Dr.
Bernstein, I had no idea what I was getting into.
All I knew was that I wasn't feeling well and I was going nowhere.
I was kind of scared, didn't know what I was getting into, and didn't know if I wanted to.
It was plain and simple.
I liked Snickers candy bars.He said,'No.' I couldn't haveanything I liked and wanted, and we kind of butted heads , but then I realized, 'Hey, come on, is there reallya candy bar worth dying for?' "He's a very gentle gentleman.
I think he's extremely caring; you're not treated like cattle, you're treated as a person, and he answers all your questions.
Between the two of us, atthe beginningwe had a lot of questions.
Really, I don't know if I could livewithout him. "We found him , it's kind of embarrassing, but our son used to have a newsstand, and Lou would go help him out on Sundays, and Lou would bring me home the papers to read.
Well, in one of those horrible tabloids , you know, when they run out of weird stuff, they run unusual medical stories reprinted from somewhere else , the headline on this was'Diabetic Heals Himself,' and you know, we didn't
Before andAfter 23
think that much about it.
But I wasn't feeling well, and so we made some inquiries.
Now of course we're in a different state and nobody I knew had ever heard of him, but we called his office.
I didn't talk to a nurse or someone, he got on the phone himself and he offered us ref erences.
Well, that settled it rightthere.
I mean,how many doctors do youknowof who'd offer youreferences?
So Lousaid, 'Pack up,honey, we're going.'" Lou: "She had a doctor up here in Springfield, Massachusetts, she was seeing and I was getting pretty concerned about it.
Her feet were getting numb, she had kidney problems.
I don't have diabetes, but I happened to have the same doctor as my internist, and I said to him, 'Isn't there something you can do for my wife?' He had a son who worked at the Joslin Clinic, which we had heard was very good. 'Can we take her to the Joslin Clinic?' But he said, 'What can he do for her up there that we can't do for her here?' We got sort of scared.
They were running her the standard way they treat diabetics , standard but safe.
Safe for them, but not much help for Lorraine. "At Dr.
Bernstein's, to start, it was a 10-hour training period, two 5-hour sessions that she had to take at the start." Lorraine: "It was my husband, me, and the doctor.
No waiting room for hours.
Now, to be honest, when we walked out of there , it's a 2-hour drive between our house and there , I didn't want to do it.
But on the drive back home after the first session, we talked.
We talked constantly, and I knew I didn't want to do it, but I also knew I was going to do it.
Common sense just dictated it.
I wanted to live,and I wanted both feet and both eyes.
It was plain and simple.The feeling in my feet has come back almost 100 percent, by the way." Lou: "We found out about the diet on the first visit, and it took about a month to get her blood sugars into the target range.
She had been running 300,400 mg/dl blood sugars prettyregularly." Lorraine: "I was kind of reluctant to start with.
It was clear that Dr.
Bernstein's program wasn't a ride in an amusement park.
In some re spects,it was a whole new way of living,and we had to changeall our grocery lists , but I had a supportive friend here in Lou.
When I startedon the diet, we pretty much ate the same food.
He didn't have to, but he did.
He would have a few extras here and there and I wouldn't, but it was years before I could go into the supermarket, be causeit felt like I couldn't have anything there.
It was very hard to get used to.
I resented being told what to do and how to do it." Lou: "It's very difficult.
You have to understand something.
When
24 Before and After