Diabetes Reading - Essential Reading

Understanding diabetes and pre-diabetes is the key to curing it yourself through diet, and while this is NOT to be construed as medical advice, it is the latest research amalgamated into a simple to use guide, and several people I know have used this information very successfully and others are in the process of using it with excellent results to date.
Doctors are taught one thing and this is “to get the patient to accept the diagnosis” as the main priority so they can be started on medication and this is will usually be Metformin as this is a cheap drug to produce and is prescribed in huge numbers around the world, but it has some serious side effects and people need to research them for themselves. Why are doctors taught to get people to accept the diagnosis? Why aren’t doctors taught to deal with the problem at source and not simply cure the symptoms? Again this is MONEY as the pharmaceutical industry knows Metformin has a limited effective life and once it begins to be ineffective the patient will have to go onto other, more expensive medication for life, particularly as Metformin is addictive and needs replacing after a few years with more powerful drugs. Metformin also has some pretty drastic side effects.

Insulin is the substance which controls the body’s blood sugar and this is produced by the pancreas and when the body takes in high levels of sugars the pancreas produces more insulin to control the sugars in the blood to bring the sugar levels down, the bodies muscles can become resistant to insulin and this is when the body stops burning off surplus sugars and this surplus sugar is stored as fat cells in the body and you gain weight. Other factors hamper the body’s production of insulin and these are body fats which are not in the normal areas such as around the gut for men, or on your bottom and thighs for women; this alone shows that not all diabetics or pre-diabetics are obese as many are of normal appearance and of normal weight; it is internal fats which build up around the pancreas and liver which hamper insulin production.

Lowering your body weight is the key then, no, actually the key to successful diabetes control and total elimination of diabetes is to control the accumulated fats around the pancreas and liver which are the key to curing diabetes yourself and this is done by better eating and not necessarily going on a weight loss diet as most such diets don’t work as people often lose weight and put it back on again, and the public message of switch to low fat foods is another red herring as your body needs fats, but of the right sort. Low fat foods have one major problem and this is that they have lower fat levels and to bring back the taste of these foods they add sugars and salts of various types as well as a range of chemical cocktails which are not good for the body.
Actually the real key is to also cut down on the carbohydrates as the body turns them into sugars and this rather defeats the object of lowering your body sugars if you are introducing carbohydrates which are turned back into sugars by the body as you are getting sugars from another source which is as bad as not cutting out sugar in your meals or drinks and drinking the mass produced soda type pops from the large manufacturers.

So, what do you need to cut out to bring you below diabetic levels or pre-diabetic levels? The obvious ones are the soda type pops and the highly processed foods and ready meals, the low fat foods and switch to normal fat foods, and things such as highly processed fats such as margarine and processed meats are a good start. Eating better foods are the main key and any green vegetables such as peas, beans, cabbage, broccoli, peppers, all the onions, kale, and one of the claimed super foods; spinach is a good start, eat full fat foods with naturally produced fats such as butter and cheese in moderation as well as tomatoes and carrots which are also claimed to be super foods and excellent for diabetics.
Forget the white breads and go for a wholemeal type but watch the sugars and carbohydrate levels in them, high sugar fruits such as pineapples and switch to two of the best which are apples and pears, oranges are also very good but have high sugar levels and should be moderated, and mangoes and cherries are also classed as the super foods which can be introduced when in season. Fish high in omega 3 such as tuna is excellent but use only tuna in oils such as sunflower oil and avoid the tuna in brine as this has a very high salt content, you can use most fish and mackerel is an excellent one as it is a high fat fish with the right fats and virtually no carbohydrates. Drain the oils from them before eating them.

Eggs have been much maligned and as a food, but for diabetics or pre-diabetics they are excellent in any form, fried eggs, boiled eggs, hard boiled eggs, poached eggs, scrambled eggs, and even as omelettes they are an excellent food. Similarly, most salad foods are excellent with tomatoes at the top followed by lettuce and onions of any type, peppers are also an excellent food along with mushrooms and most of these can be eaten raw or cooked with virtually no difference, so salads make an excellent choice for diabetics.

What about meats? Cut down on the red meats but don’t eliminate them, eliminate the processed meats totally, and buy a larger joint for Sunday and ensure it is organic and save some and use this throughout the week, chicken or turkey is also a good choice and you can do the same with these by cooking a whole one and serve it throughout the week. Any wild meats are excellent if you shoot and wild rabbit or hare are both natural meats which you will have to gut and skin, but if you don’t mind this then by all means you can eat these along with wild venison if you know a deer stalker or culler and have access to it. Wild salmon is an excellent fish if you can obtain it.

What about the condiments? Avoid the sauces such as tomato or brown sauce as they are full of sugar, as are commercial salad creams or mayonnaise, mint sauces and jellies and many apple sauces, if you can buy or grow mint then you can make your own mint sauce without sugars and preservatives, similarly you can make small batches of mayonnaise which is eggs and olive oil, you can make apple sauce very easily my using a blend of sweeter and tart apples for a sweeter apple sauce. What about salt and vinegar, switch to sea salt as this is full of minerals and use less, but you can have as much vinegar as you like as this is actually good for you; but if you can get or make apple cider vinegar this actually lowers your blood sugar levels and you’re blood pressure so it is an excellent choice and it is particularly good to cook with.

TOP TIP – Take a teaspoonful of apple cider vinegar at night before you go to bed and this cures many other ailments while you sleep, then take another teaspoon full at dinner time and this keeps your blood sugar and blood pressure down during the day.

What about the breakfast cereals? In reality you can cut most of them out as they are generally high in sugars and carbohydrates so you get the sugar from the cereals and the sugars from the carbohydrates which are turned into sugar, so you get a lot more sugar; porridge is a good breakfast cereal but it has to be the correct type. Most porridge is of the highly processed type and this contains a lot of nasties, but make your traditional porridge from pure unprocessed oats such as that your mother or granny would make is much better as this uses “steel cut” oats which are pure, unprocessed oats with no additives.

Beers and wines have to pretty much go as by their very nature they contain sugars which are fermented into alcohol and by the very nature of fermentation, you cannot convert all the sugars into alcohol and this leaves a considerably high sugar level in these products.

Take away’s have to go as most burgers have high levels of sugars in the buns and in the numerous dressings they lather on them to make them taste better, and a recent survey from a major burger outlet found their healthy options were actually less healthy than their standard products despite the company marketing them as healthier for you, so they actually mislead people for sales and profits while poisoning you. Most of these outlets also only use processed cheeses on their burgers as well as highly processed bacon and they serve everything with chips.
Fish and chips also have to go, but if you take out the chips and have fish and peas instead you have removed a lot of the problems and you can use sea salt in small doses and lather them with vinegar, particularly as with apple cider vinegar you can improve them considerable, and take the batter off the fish if you want to improve them even more, and eat them in moderation.
Chinese and Indian take away’s are also bad for you and again it is mainly the sauces they use which are the problem as many are bought in wholesale and most are the plastic, synthetic sauces which are full of sugars and salts as well as a wealth of chemical cocktails to allow them to be stored for long periods as well as be portioned and reheated.
Kebabs are one of the worst offenders as most kebab shops buy in the kebab meat which is very high in processed fats and it also contains a lot of offal and this is before we add in the breadcrumbs and other binders they add to keep the kebab meat in shape while it is on the skewer and of course there are the chemicals they add to flavour and preserve the meat; and this is before we add the commercially produced pitta bread and the array of sauces they offer.

What about the bread, pastas, and potatoes? Avoid bread with high levels of carbohydrates and sugars and this is both white and a lot of brown bread, and opt for some with seeds and nuts in it as this reduces sugar levels, as for pasta, eliminate it and eat it in small portions periodically, and by changing from chips and roast potatoes to jacket potatoes in moderation, with butter and not margarine or other low fat, highly processed spreads you can reduce your carbohydrate levels.

What about cooking food in oils? Avoid the sunflower, vegetable, and nut oils and use only virgin olive oils, rapeseed oils, and butter in small quantities! Butter? Yes as it is a non-processed natural fat, but use it in moderation. Never overheat these oils and put food into them before they smoke for oils, or when butter bubbles and before it turns brown, introducing food earlier to them keeps their cooking temperatures down.

Understanding how our body uses food is vital, we already know that sugars are bad for diabetics and that high carbohydrate foods turn the carbohydrates into sugars which require more insulin production to control them, and that body fat is not the key as it is fat around the pancreas and liver which is of much more concern.
If we take a motor car as an example: we fuel up the car and the fuel sits in the tank until we start the engine and drive the vehicle, the fuel injection system delivers the correct amount of fuel to the engine depending on its load and driving conditions, and our bodies are exactly the same; we need to put the correct amount of fuel (food) into our bodies and store it in another fuel form other than fat. To do this we need to put in just enough fuel to sustain our bodies until our next meal with just a little surplus and no more, and just like a car we need to put in the correct fuel as putting in diesel to a petrol engined car, or petrol into a diesel car means the car will not run correctly, and this analogy is perfect to understand the basic principles behind diabetes control.

Take an average scenario: someone gets up in the morning and pours a bowl of cereal, within a short time they are on a sugar high from the sugary coatings, while they are on this high their body is converting the high levels of processed carbohydrates into sugars which prolongs their sugar high with added sugars from the carbohydrate conversion into sugars. After this high they hit a huge low and they feel this low and they replace the fuel by eating snacks as they feel hungry during this low and this adds even more unnecessary fuel to their bodies and they begin producing more insulin to combat this and this can overload the pancreas.

Our main objective is to reduce the peaks of the sugar highs by taking in less sugar and carbohydrates to prevent or minimise the highs as these highs put the pancreas into overdrive and overwhelm it and its insulin production, and sugar lows can lead to diabetic comas in some cases, so we cut the peak from both the sugar highs and lows to give a more consistent sugar level.
Energy also needs understanding as we need enough energy to sustain sufficient energy levels until our next meal and this energy level depends upon several factors, the physical nature of our life determines this and someone doing a manual or heavy job will require more energy than someone sitting in an office all day, so it is somewhat of a balancing act which means every individual needs to find their own energy requirement. Food or eating consistency is essential to find this balance and to do this we need to understand when we eat to determine what we eat, if you eat breakfast at 6.00am and begin work at 7.00am and have your lunch break at 12.00 pm you need to fuel your body for 6 hours and no more. If you eat lunch at 12.00 pm and work until 5.00pm and eat your dinner at 6.00pm you can work out your approximate energy requirements for the day.

If someone goes to the chip shop or other fast food outlet at lunchtime and eats their food the process of eating sugary and high carbohydrate food begins the whole cycle again and you have another sugar high, followed by another sugar low and you tend to eat another snack which is bad for you. Now we have a working day where we have a morning sugar high and low and we eat a snack, an afternoon sugar high and low and eat yet another snack, and this is just during a working day, and then we go home and have dinner and another sugar high and low, invariably followed by another snack to compensate for the sugar low.

So; the objectives are simple:

Cut down the sugars we take into our bodies through coatings or as carbohydrates.
Lower the sugar high peaks and sugar low peaks to form a more consistent sugar average.
Take out the peaks and lows and this takes away the need for regular snacks.
Fuel our bodies with the correct type and amount of fuel.
Use the fuel you have by burning it off using the muscles and not producing large quantities of fatty cells as body fat.
Eat the correct types of foods with sufficiently high energy levels, without the sugars and processed carbs.

Hydration is essential and the best thing to drink is water, to understand this we need to understand that our bodies are 80% water and that as we work we lose hydration through a variety of means and this can be through natural bodily functions such as urination or sweating or it can be through any number of reasons, but it needs replacing. Water is the best replacement as it is replenishing the body but what type of water do we need? Tap water is full of nasties and regular subscribers to this site do not need telling this, but as a minimum you need to put tap water through a water filter to remove all these toxic elements from the tap water as water filters are very effective. Bottled water has to be treated with suspicion as this often varies in quality and can be many times worse than pure tap water, but if you have a water distiller you can drink distilled water.

How much do I drink per day? This is an interesting question and one with varying answers, if it is hot you will sweat more, if you have a heavy or manual job you will sweat more, if you undertake vigorous exercise you will sweat more, so drink more water. I would suggest you drink as much water as you feel is appropriate and listen to your body, as an average I would suggest working around 2 litres per day as a starting point and see if you want more or less water.
Learning how to drink water is essential, WHAT? Surely everybody knows how to drink don’t they, yes they do, but very few people know how to drink water properly; it’s very easy to get a bottle of water and drink it all in one go and this is the wrong thing to do as to drink water properly you need to drink small quantities, often. By drinking a large quantity of water in one go you create a surplus of water in your body and you urinate more and sweat more easily, and more often; but by drinking less quantity in one drinking session and having many more drinks you can prevent the excess urination and sweating while still getting the benefit of water, one is that it stops you feeling hungry.

Most coffee and tea is fine but do not overload on it and if you can switch to a green tea you can get the detoxification benefits switch some of your coffee and tea to water if you drink a lot of tea or coffee. Many other hot drinks are out, particularly hot chocolate and vending machine drinks as these are generally powdered concoctions to which hot water is added, these are chemical concoctions and generally use unfiltered water straight from the mains water supply.

Many flavoured waters are to be avoided, so check very carefully before you buy them as many contain chemical concoctions and high levels of sugar in a variety of forms so read the labels very carefully.
Many bottled waters are not pure water either and like the flavoured waters you have to read the labels and research them as many are actually worse than plain tap water, so look closely as many contain confusing labelling.

Dilute pop or juice as it is misleadingly called is generally a no, no and while this is the case, researching these products carefully is to be recommended as most are full of chemicals, E numbers, and much of the fruit content or claimed fruit content is from concentrates, chemical compositions, and preservatives. There are a few such drinks that are fine and these need searching out for local availability.

Fruit juices are generally another no, no as most are not pure fruit juice and are made from frozen fruit juice, concentrates, and many have additives which are synthetic chemical compounds; if you can get pure unadulterated fruit juice then drink this in moderation as fruits contain a sugar called fructose which is still a sugar and is absorbed into the body as sugar.

Beers and wines are not to be recommended as they contain high levels of sugar which is converted to alcohol, but a lot of it is not converted to alcohol and remains in the drink as sugar; many manufactured drinks also contain additives such as preservatives and other chemicals. If you are a heavy drinker than cutting this out significantly reduces your blood sugars.

Exercise is crucial and for many people it is as simple as walking alone every day burns a lot of calories, if you do a lot of travelling, or sit in an office all day then you do not get much exercise, so instead of driving to work you replace this with walking. You could get a dog as they need walking every day and people tend to walk them in all weathers, so a dog may be another possibility, how about joining a gym? Possibly, but most people drive to them and they cost a lot of money so why spend money doing something you can do for free.
Many gentler exercises exist for those unable to take normal exercises and gardening is another good one, you winter dig which is heavier work, plant and tend your crops, and this involves a lot of walking and bending, so you are doing stretches for free, you move soils and composts for composting, and of course you pick your crops. Then of course you have the watering, the weeding, the dead heading, and all of the regular tasks you do, this is much gentler exercise than high intensity gym work, but it is done over a much longer period and you get the benefits of fresh and nutritious food at the end of it, so the full circle of exercise and healthier eating.

You may take up a hobby such as cycling or walking, but many other gentler pastimes are available, rowing is a gentler pastime in kayaks, and while this is really a summer activity you can swim outside in the summer and indoors during the winter, so the list is endless but the key is to begin gently and build up.

The real key is to burn off the fats with a combination of exercise and the correct diet and food in the correct amounts to sustain your exercise regime, this burns off more body fats and reprograms your body to accept less food and burn off more fats, and this kick start also burns off the fats around the pancreas and liver. It is all about the balance between the exercise we do, and the types of fuel we need to do them.


I would suggest reading the following:

Dr Michael Mosley – he is a doctor and someone who had diabetes and cured it himself and he shatters the common doctors approach of eat a low fat diet and do more exercise, as he does not recommend a low fat diet and explains how a low fat diet does not work, he also explains the difference between the healthy, unprocessed fats which people CAN eat, and the highly processed TRANS FATS which people should not eat.

Professor Roy Taylor – he is an expert in diabetes and works at Newcastle University, he explains much of the science behind Michael Mosley’s finding and goes much deeper into the science, he explains how the traditional medical profession ridiculed him and his findings, and he collaborates with Michael Mosley on research and books on diets which work, and the follow on regime.

Together they have found a lot of different options for eating and devised a lot of diets, they shatter the medical professions offerings and back it up with hard proof, and the medical profession which once laughed at them now take them very seriously.

Dr Clare Bailey – she is the wife of Michael Mosley and a GP who has shunned the traditional medical advice and followed a lot of her husband’s research and offered it to her patients with a massive success rate, and many people have cured their diabetes themselves and even after decades, they are still diabetes free. As most women do, she has done the cooking of her husband’s foods and helped in his research, she has written a recipe book for diabetics and the recipes contain many foods people which the medical profession say are taboo for diabetics, she has collaboration from another doctor.

Dr Sarah Schenker – she is a dietician and nutritionist and has collaborated with Dr bailey to formulate a series of recipes which are healthy and cure diabetes, and sustain this cured state, and between them they have a success rate of 87% which is huge when less that 6% of people can successfully lose weight and keep it off.

Two books are worth reading, they are both available from the Google book store and can be downloaded for free as samples or are cheap enough to download as full books, they are:

The 8 week blood sugar diet

The 8 week blood sugar recipe book

In addition to this they all offer a range of proven diets which are flexible and range from the standard diet to the Mediterranean diet, the 5:2 diet in which you only diet 2 days a week and eat normally for the remaining 5 days, and even fasting.