The Diabetes Code: Prevent and Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally

by Jason Fung

The optimum strategy is to limit or eliminate breads and pastas made from white flour, as well as white rice and potatoes.

You should maintain a moderate, not high, intake of protein. When it is digested, dietary protein, such as meat, breaks down into amino acids. Adequate protein is required for good health, but excess amino acids cannot be stored in the body and so the liver converts them into glucose. Therefore, eating too much protein adds sugar to the body. So you should avoid highly processed, concentrated protein sources such as protein shakes, protein bars, and protein powders.

To put less sugar into your body, stick to whole, natural, unprocessed foods. Eat a diet low in refined carbohydrates, moderate in protein, and high in natural fats.

fasting is the simplest and surest method to force your body to burn sugar.

To burn off sugar, a popular strategy is to fast for 24 hours, two to three times per week. Another popular approach is to fast for 16 hours, five to six times per week.

In 2013, an estimated 11.6 percent of Chinese adults had type 2 diabetes, eclipsing even the long-time champion, the U.S., at 11.3 percent.

This number is even more shocking when you consider that only 1 percent of Chinese had type 2 diabetes in 1980. In a single generation, the diabetes rate has risen by a horrifying 1160 percent.

DIABETES, UNLIKE VIRTUALLY every other known disease, has the unique and malignant potential to devastate our entire body.

DIABETES IS THE leading cause of blindness in the United States.

DIABETIC NERVE DAMAGE (neuropathy) affects approximately 60–70 percent of patients with diabetes.

Diabetes greatly increases the risk of developing atherosclerosis.

HEART ATTACKS, KNOWN medically as myocardial infarctions, are the most well-recognized and feared complication of diabetes.

Sixty-eight percent of diabetics aged sixty-five or older will die of heart disease, and a further 16 percent will die of stroke.

The links between Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes have grown so strong that many researchers have suggested Alzheimer’s disease can be called type 3 diabetes.

As a result, diabetics have a fifteen-fold increased risk of lower-limb amputation, and account for over 50 percent of the amputations done in the United States, excluding accidents.

WHEREAS MOST DISEASES are limited to a single organ system, diabetes affects every organ in multiple ways. As a result, it is the leading cause of blindness. It is the leading cause of kidney failure. It is the leading cause of heart disease. It is the leading cause of stroke. It is the leading cause of amputations. It is the leading cause of dementia. It is the leading cause of infertility. It is the leading cause of nerve damage.

For example, an average man standing 5 foot 10 inches (70 inches) should strive to maintain a waist size of 35 inches or less.

Obesity is a hormonal imbalance, not a caloric one. The hormonal problem in undesired weight gain is mainly excessive insulin. Thus, type 2 diabetes, too, is a disease about insulin imbalance rather than caloric imbalance.

Reversing the high insulin levels also reverses insulin resistance. Exposure creates resistance. Removing the stimulus also removes the resistance.

Metformin reduced diabetes-related death by a jaw-dropping 42 percent and the risk of heart attack by a whopping 39 percent, greatly outperforming the more powerful blood glucose–lowering agents. In other words, which specific type of diabetic medication you took made a huge difference. Metformin could save lives where the others could not, but its benefit had little or nothing to do with its blood glucose–lowering effect.

Simply put, most diabetic patients die of cardiovascular disease.

AS OF 2012, more than 50 percent of the American population has diabetes or prediabetes.1

Biguanides work by blocking gluconeogenesis and thereby preventing the liver from producing glucose. This effect lowers the risk of hypoglycemia and weight gain because it does not increase insulin levels in the body.

Acarbose, SGLT2 inhibitors, and GLP-1 analogs all lower glucose but also lower insulin and cause weight loss. Since type 2 diabetes is a disease characterized by elevations in both blood glucose and blood insulin, these medications would be predicted to have the best outcome. And sure enough, that is the case. In a disease of too much insulin, lowering it creates benefits. These three categories of medications could easily be called the good (lowers insulin, body weight, and complications), the bad (neutral), and the ugly (increases insulin, body weight, and complications).

Studies now conclude that eating eggs, even daily, does not raise the risk of heart disease.15 In fact, consuming lots of eggs reduces the risk of diabetes by 42 percent.

Bread raised blood glucose more than table sugar.

What about artificial sweeteners? I advise patients to avoid all sweeteners, whether they contain calories or not. The logic is simple. If non-caloric sweeteners could truly reduce diabetes and obesity, then we would not have an epidemic on our hands. We have used these chemicals extensively in our food supply for decades and the empirical evidence is clear: artificial sweeteners are no better than sugar. Avoid them all.