A cure for diabetes.


I can feel the ‘quack watchers’ sharpening their talons as I type but this is not the tag line of a faddy new year diet book I am trying to flog, but in fact the findings of research from Newcastle university. The small scale study found that after just one week on a severely calorie restricted diet individuals with type 2 diabetes demonstrated normal fasting blood sugar levels and after 8 weeks all participants had reversed their diabetes, presented normal insulin levels and had completely regained normal pancreatic function.

Unfortunately, the study discussed above required individuals to adhere to a strict 600 calorie diet made up solely of low starch vegetables and specially formulated drinks, but does it demonstrate what natural healthcare professionals have believed for years - in most individuals, diabetes is not only preventable but completely curable?

A small but growing group of US physicians, including Dr Cass Ingram and Dr Gabriel Cousens, believe wholeheartedly that, like so many other chronic diseases, diabetes (even type 1 diabetes), you simply need to switch on the body’s natural self healing mechanisms and give them a hefty kick start using plenty of nutrients, removing the junk and addressing questionable lifestyle habits. In fact, each of these doctors boldly state that many of their patients’ blood sugar levels improve dramatically on their protocols, not just in months….but in days (3 or 4 to be precise), and that the condition can be eradicated completely in as little as 3 weeks. That’s fighting talk but these practitioners are so confident of their results they are certainly not holding back (and all wrote the book telling you how it is done!).

Too good to be true? Well, as someone who loves to see healthcare boundaries pushed as far as possible and who is convinced of the profound healing powers of the body then no, anything is possible. However, as a realist dealing with individuals in their real lives, with real stresses, commitments, dietary addictions/attachments and psychological barriers to change then very probably. At present the reversal of diabetes involves juicing, detoxification, a plethora of raw food, a vast amount of fibre, a good supply of herbs and supplements and very little in the way of the food diabetics really want to eat (and which contributed to getting many sufferers to that point in the first place). But is that a good reason to dismiss this as just another unrealistic health food fad?

I think not. Approaches like this are not for everyone, but they do offer choices. Some will choose to ignore these findings as they do not suit their lifestyle but that doesn’t make them go away or the hope they represent to those willing to give juicing a go! Even if many individuals would not be prepared to go to the lengths required to reverse this condition, these findings demonstrate the vast, often untapped, capacity of the body to heal given the required resources. More importantly it also highlights that, if we all just took a bit more responsibility for our health and followed more of the guidelines given more of the time and if we didn’t constantly push our bodies to the brink with a desire to have our cake and eat it, chronic debilitating diseases such as diabetes could be a rarity rather than an epidemic.

Article - A cure for diabetes….in just a week? By Suzanne Laurie, Academic Director of the Institute of Health Sciences.