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Today I'm going to talk about how to reverse type 2 diabetes using just your diet, and it's coming right up. In 2019 the American Diabetes Association published a consensus report on Nutrition Therapy for adults with diabetes. What this means is that they got all their top scientists together, and they hammered out what they considered the best scientific evidence for diet. This is what they recommended. They recognized that a variety of eating patterns are acceptable for the management of diabetes. There are certain principles, such as emphasizing non-starchy vegetables, minimizing added sugars and refined grains, and choosing Whole Foods. But another key recommendation from these scientists is that reducing the overall carbohydrate intake for individuals with diabetes has the most evidence for controlling type 2 diabetes. In other words, the low carbohydrate diet is perhaps the most effective diet, according to these experts, for managing or even reversing your type 2 diabetes. I'm going to show you exactly how to do that.
In order to understand how the diet works, you have to understand a little bit about why people develop type 2 diabetes. One of the important things is that type 2 diabetes is actually a reversible dietary disease. In fact, places like Diabetes Canada say it's a chronic progressive disorder, but most people understand that if you lose weight, then almost always that type 2 diabetes gets better or even goes away. The disease of type 2 diabetes is very simple to understand. Essentially, there is simply too much sugar in your body. That is both glucose, which is found in starchy foods (starches are actually chains of glucose), and also fructose, which is found in simple sugars like table sugar or fruit. So when your body has too much of this sugar, both glucose and fructose, and you can't store any more of it, then it's going to spill out into the blood. When your blood glucose starts to rise, that's when your doctor makes the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. It's simply an overflow problem. Therefore, the rational strategy, if you have too much sugar in your body, is to reduce the amount of sugar going into your body. A low carbohydrate diet makes a lot of sense because you're switching from eating foods that contain a lot of sugars, which are glucose and sometimes fructose, to eating more foods that contain protein and fat. While these have calories and other nutrients, they don't have a lot of glucose, and the problem is too much glucose. That's how a low carbohydrate diet can be very effective in reducing type 2 diabetes or even reversing it.
Recently, Dr. David and Jen Unwin in the United Kingdom published a very interesting study of how they use low carbohydrate diets in their practice in the UK to reverse type 2 diabetes. Drs. Unwin are brilliant clinical innovators who have been honored by their society there. What they did was note that in their practice, from 1987 to 2018, there was an eight-fold increase in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes. So, since 2013, they started to offer low carbohydrate diets as an alternative to using medications. Not everybody took this advice. They found that 27% of those people took the advice. In their practice, they gave people a very simple-to-understand sheet with dietary advice for low carbohydrate intake, as well as a simple infographic, and simply monitored them over time. The results, when they analyzed them, were nothing short of stunning. Over the time that the people took this low carbohydrate diet, they lost an average of 8.3 kg, which is more than 18 lb. They were able to reduce the overall medication use, and a stunning 46% of type 2 diabetics actually reversed their disease so that they were no longer considered diabetic. In pre-diabetes, the results were even better: 93% of people who used this low carbohydrate diet advice actually became non-diabetic. They were able to reverse their type 2 diabetes and reverse their pre-diabetes. Remember that if you are on medication, please be sure to check with your doctor first and also follow up during this process.
This is the simple one-page sheet that patients were provided, which told them what kind of diet to follow. The rules are very simple. First of all, sugar: just cut it out altogether. The other thing is starchy carbohydrates. Remember that when they get broken down, they're often broken down into glucose, which is a type of sugar, so things like brown rice and potatoes should be reduced significantly. Other green vegetables are all fine; you should eat as much as you want. Turn the white stuff into the green stuff so that you get a nice big dinner. Fruit is a little bit trickier, because some fruits tend to be very sweet and therefore have a lot of sugar in them, while others, like berries, tend to be much better, and you can be a little more relaxed with those. Eat lots of healthy protein, such as meat, eggs, fish, oily fish, and full-fat yogurt, which is a good breakfast item as well. Fats in moderation are fine. Make sure you stick to natural fats, things like olive oil, butter, coconut oil, or fats that are found in nature; they're unprocessed. Beware of low-fat foods, as they can often have a lot of sugars and sweeteners. Cheese is fine only in moderation, because it can be very easy to overeat it. The other thing is to make sure you avoid snacks, because they can be very habit-forming, and it's very easy to eat them without thinking and therefore overeat. In essence, you're eating lots of vegetables with proteins and healthy fats, and that leaves you feeling properly full in a way that lasts, so you do not need to snack all the time. Finally, about sweeteners: just cut them out. They trick your brain into thinking that you're hungry and make it even harder to lose weight. That's fairly simple, standard advice that almost anybody can follow. They also gave an infographic demonstrating how much equivalent sugar is in certain foods, just to drive home how much sugar can be contained and why it needs to be avoided, especially very starchy foods. That's really all there is to it. If you can switch over to cutting down the carbohydrates, emphasizing green non-starchy vegetables, proteins, and healthy fats, then you stand a good chance of reversing type 2 diabetes. Again, remember that type 2 diabetes is not that hard to understand. It's like a rain barrel: if you are filling it up with too much water, it's going to spill over, just as the sugar spills over into our body. The best thing is not to get lots of mops and clean it up all the time. The best thing is to turn off the tap. When you do that, you can stop filling up the body with sugar, the blood sugar falls, and then you stand a good chance of reversing type 2 diabetes.
Thanks for watching, everybody. I hope you learned something. If you did, maybe share it with a friend; you might help them too. And if you could do me a favor and hit that like button so that people will be able to find this video, thanks very much. We'll see you next week.