The treatments that cure all show one common characteristic.
They lower insulin.
Since type 2 diabetes is a disease of hyperinsulinemia, it is only logical that these treatments are beneficial.
And what do all the treatments that do not cure type 2 diabetes have in common?
They raise insulin.
And in fact, using these treatments worsens diabetes over time.
Again, let’s juxtapose two incontrovertible facts: Fact #1: Type 2 diabetes is a reversible disease.
Fact #2: Virtually all conventionally treated patients get worse.
Unfortunately, there is only one conclusion.
The conventional treatment recommended by virtually every doctor in the world is not correct.
This is terrific news!
Why?
Because it means we can change its natural history.
It means the doorway to a diabetes-free world has just opened.
We can prevent and cure not just type 2 diabetes but the entire metabolic syndrome completely and utterly with knowledge alone.
Not the latest and greatest invention, but the tried and true.
The oldest lifestyle interventions known to humans: a LCHF diet and intermittent fasting.
A world freed from the chains of type 2 diabetes awaits.
Like dreams waiting to be dreamt, a cure beckons.
We need only to take
those first few, brave steps to cross the threshold. The journey toward better health, free of obesity and type 2 diabetes, now begins.
ALBERTO Alberto, 70, had a seventeen-year history of type 2 diabetes and had been taking insulin in ever-increasing doses for nearly ten of them.
His A1C was 7.7% and he was on 160 units of insulin a day, as well as sitagliptin.
Alberto also had a history of chronic kidney disease, hypertension, and sleep apnea.
When he entered the IDM program, Alberto started on a low-carbohydrate, healthy-fat diet with 24 to 42 hours of fasting, five days per week.
Within a month, he completely stopped all his medications, including insulin; his blood glucose was better than ever, with his A1C at 7.3%.
Just three months into the program, Alberto has lost 24 pounds and is well on his way to regaining his health.
LANA Lana was just 18 years old when she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
For thirteen years, she took blood-glucose-lowering medications.
She began taking insulin as well when she became pregnant at age 31.
Even after her pregnancy, her A1C was 7.2% and her doctor continued her on 82 units of insulin a day in addition to metformin.
When Lana entered the IDM program, she started with a seven-day fast.
By the end of that week, her sugars had normalized and she was able to stop taking all her medications; she has not resumed them since.
She then settled into a routine of fasting for 42 hours, two to three times per week.
After a year on the program, Lana has lost 55 pounds, including 33 cm around her waist, and her A1C has dropped to 6.1%.
AFTERWORD
DESPITE THE TITLE of this book and its in-depth exploration of type 2 diabetes, it may surprise you to learn that I do not truly consider this book to be about diabetes. “What?” I can hear you protesting. “Almost every word in this book discusses diabetes!” No, my friend, this book is truly about hope.
I hope we can eradicate type 2 diabetes within a generation.
I hope we can erase all the diseases associated with metabolic syndrome.
I hope we can recover all the associated costs, both in dollars and human suffering.
I hope we can accomplish these goals without drugs and without surgery, using only knowledge as our weapon.
HOW IT BEGAN: MY JOURNEY TO HOPE
IN A SENSE, this book parallels my own journey.
I entered medical school at the University of Toronto just after I turned nineteen.
Once I finished medical school, I trained conventionally in internal medicine and then I spent two years completing my specialty training in kidney disease (nephrology) at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Since 2001, I have practiced clinical nephrology in Toronto, which means that I have now spent more than half of my life in the study of medicine.
During my entire education, I received virtually no training in nutrition and certainly did not see it as my area of specialization.
As a kidney specialist, I know that type 2 diabetes is, by far, the biggest cause of kidney disease.
I have seen many patients with mild forms of the disease and treated them exactly as I, as well as countless other doctors, had been taught.
I prescribed medications to keep their blood glucose low.
When that didn’t work, I prescribed insulin.
When that
didn’t work, I kept right on increasing the dose.
Every medical school and medical association taught, and still teaches, that tight blood glucose control was the key to managing type 2 diabetes.
After treating thousands of patients over decades, it gradually dawned on me that none of these diabetes medications actually made any real difference to the health of patients.
Sure, the medical schools said these drugs improved patient health, but any benefits were imperceptible.
Whether these patients took their medications or not, they still progressed to more and more severe forms of disease.
Their kidneys failed.
They had heart attacks.
They got strokes.
They went blind.
They needed amputations.
Once their kidneys failed, I would start them on dialysis.
I have seen more diabetic foot infections, diabetic ulcers, heart attacks, and strokes than I can count.
Even if they made a statistical difference, the medicines I prescribed made no real clinical difference.
I suspected that we only thought these medicines made a difference because we were being told they made a difference.
Clinical trial evidence finally caught up with real-world experience in 2008.
That year, the results of the landmark randomized ACCORD and ADVANCE studies were released, followed shortly by the ORIGIN and VADT studies.
Confirming perfectly my experience treating patients, the studies proved conclusively that using blood glucose, lowering medications for type 2 diabetes was useless.
Doctors like me were certainly prescribing a lot of medications, but these drugs provided no protection against heart disease, stroke, death, eye disease, or kidney disease.
If anything, insulin seemed to make things worse, not better.
Now it was a proven fact.
This core principle of treating type 2 diabetes, taught in every medical school in the world, had just been disproven.
The entire treatment paradigm of type 2 diabetes needed to change.
We had to incorporate this new hard-won knowledge to gain a newer, more complete understanding.
However, what happened next was unfortunate, even if it was entirely predictable.
Rather than developing new paradigms of insulin resistance, which could lead to more effective treatments, we clung to the old, failed paradigms because it is far easier to ignore an inconvenient truth than to face it.
So we kept on giving the exact same medications, using the same treatments and getting the
same poor outcomes.
Same old thinking, same old results.
Insanity, as Albert Einstein would have said.
Patients continued to get sick and die.
Breaking paradigms is hard work.
We were so intent on treating the high blood glucose that we forgot to treat the diabetes.
If losing weight was the key to reversing diabetes, how could medications like insulin, which causes weight gain, be beneficial?
We made no serious attempts to look for explanations.
The reality was troublesome, so it was easier for doctors and researchers to live in a pretend world where these medications were the correct treatment for diabetes.
NEW PARADIGMS FOR OBESITY
WHILE DIABETES RESEARCHERS may not have been looking for alternatives, new paradigms were forming in the field of obesity medicine.
Interesting studies were being published about the effectiveness and dangers of low- carbohydrate diets.
In the late 1990s, the low-carbohydrate Atkins-styled diets enjoyed a huge surge of popularity.
Health professionals like me and most other physicians were aghast, positive that these high-fat Atkins-styled diets would cause heart disease.
A number of trials were launched in the early 2000s to prove this precise point.
Then a funny thing happened, or rather didn’t happen: anything bad.
Those predictions that the high-fat diet would cause high cholesterol levels and clog arteries were wrong.
Actually, the opposite was true.
Not only did patients lose weight, their entire metabolic profile improved, including their cholesterol levels.
Trial after trial showed that these low- carbohydrate, high-fat diets were safe and effective.
A few years later, in 2006, the Women’s Health Initiative, the largest randomized dietary trial ever done, proved beyond a doubt that low-fat diets did not protect against heart disease, strokes, or cancer.
Worse, the calorie restriction also did not cause weight loss or reduce type 2 diabetes.
The entire foundation of modern nutritional advice was completely shattered.
The entire treatment paradigm of obesity needed to change.
Yet once again, physicians around the world continued to practice as if nothing had changed.
We clung to old, failed paradigms like a life raft.
We continued to preach a low-fat diet.
We continued to advise people to “Eat Less and Move More.” We got the same poor results, and patients continued to become obese and get sick.
Same old thinking, same old results.
Yes,
insanity. Not satisfied with these two deep paradoxes, I started to look for answers starting from ground zero. I made no assumptions about what caused obesity or type 2 diabetes. This was the most important step. Breaking free of all the old assumptions allowed me to see, all of a sudden, how certain facts, hidden in plain view, became obvious.