How to worsen diabetes: follow the worst of the ADA and CDA advice

If you have a new diagnosis of type 2 diabetes, or have been dealing with the condition for years, where’s a natural place you might go for support and information? Well, you’d think the national diabetes associations, right?

Wrong! Unfortunately, listening to advice from the Canadian Diabetes Association (CDA) and American Diabetes Association (ADA) is not guaranteed to help you. In fact, it may harm you. Let me explain.

First, here’s some simple incontrovertible facts on which just about nobody disagrees.

• People with type 2 diabetes are often overweight and have a high blood glucose.
• Refined grains (white flour) are among the worst foods in the world for raising blood glucose.
• Eating sugar causes weight gain, and also raises blood glucose.
• Neither refined grains nor sugar contains any nutrients of value.

Sugar and flour raise glucose, so don’t eat it, right?

Aha! So, the conclusion seems rather pedantic and logical. If eating flour and sugar raise blood glucose and my glucose is already too high, then I should eat less flour and sugar. Also, so self-evident that I hesitate to even point it out, if eating flour and sugar makes me gain weight, and I weigh too much already, then I should eat less. Super, super obvious, right? Well, not to the CDA and ADA who have been busy exhorting a generation with type 2 diabetes to eat MORE flour and sugar. 

Cookies and cakes loaded with sugar and flour!

So, I’m in the public library, and I decide to check out what the CDA feels is a perfectly acceptable dessert – it’s Canada’s 150 Best Diabetes Desserts – from the CDA. I randomly look at a recipe – oh, look – Lemon Lime Cookies. Scanning through the ingredients, there are 3½ cups of highly refined white flour and 1¼ cups of sugar. This is one of Canada’s 150 Best Diabetes Desserts? This is the best advice from the Canadian Diabetes Association? All that sugar and flour is going to raise blood glucose more than 99% of other foods. How can this possibly qualify as one of the CDAs best desserts?

But what about the American Diabetes Association? So, I pick up a book from the ADA – Ah – here we go – Diabetes Meal Planning Made Easy. Let’s see what they tell us about sugar and sweets.

Blood glucose not the reason to ax sugars and sweets??!

“People with diabetes no longer have to avoid sugar and sweets”!!?? Could this be serious? It is pretty obvious to most that eating sugar is NOT good for type 2 diabetes. Yet here is the ADA telling everybody who wants to listen that people with diabetes don’t need to avoid sugar. AND, they’ve been saying that since 1994! Eat more sugar – it’s good for you! Thanks, but no thanks ADA!

Let’s see what else the ADA tells us. Oh, right – carbohydrates, which are chemically composed of chains of glucose, are our bodies’ preferred source of energy and people with diabetes should eat about 1/2 of their calories from carbs. Let’s think about this. In T2D, there is too much glucose in the blood, so we should preferentially choose foods that are composed primarily of glucose!!!?? And look here – it is OK to eat up to 25% added sugars in our diet! This is exactly what we should NOT be doing. Everyone, the ADA especially, should recognize that eating more sugar and grains will make blood glucose WORSE, not better.

Here’s more delicious recipes from the ADA. Oh, cheesecake, with graham crackers, stevia and sugar. Wow. Just wow. This is acceptable? This is what the ADA recommends?

Sorry, diabetes associations won’t help you heal

So, if you would really like to help yourself with regards to type 2 diabetes, then the first step is to question very carefully what the CDA and ADA are telling you.

I wonder why the ADA would give such seemingly backwards advice? Well, let’s take a look at their ‘Banting Circle Elite‘ group of supporters. A complete list includes – AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Janssen, Merck, Novo-Nordisk and Sanofi. The Canadian Diabetes Association receives lots of money from – Janssen, Abbott, Sanofi, Novo-Nordisk  and AstraZeneca. All drug companies that have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to make the most money possible, not to improve the health of type 2 diabetics! Lucky for them, not so lucky for you if you choose to listen to the diabetes associations. 

What’s the better solution? As I covered in my book, The Diabetes Code, it’s really very simple. Type 2 diabetes is a reversible disease. We’ve proven that over and over again, but you can prove it to yourself. If a friend is diagnosed with T2D, then proceeds to lose 50 pounds, what do you think happens to that T2D? It frequently disappears. Tom Watson, (above) deputy leader of Britain’s Labour party figured that out himself, and now is committed to tackling the disease throughout the UK, and indeed the world. But why did he need to figure this out himself, DESPITE the health care professionals, not BECAUSE of the health care professionals? If it is reversible, why do so few people reverse it by listening to the ADA? 

Let’s put together some fun, incontrovertible facts:

• In type 2 diabetes, blood glucose is too high
• If you don’t eat (fasting), blood glucose will fall. Therefore you may need fewer (or no) medications to lower blood glucose.
• If you continue with intermittent fasting, you will lose weight
• As you lose weight, type 2 diabetes generally improves.

So, here’s a solution that is free, available to anybody in the world, that is 100% natural, and saves people time. Fasting is literally the oldest dietary intervention in the world, having been used for millennia.

Here’s the bottom line to take control of type 2 diabetes, which contributes to heart attacks, stroke, kidney disease, blindness, amputations, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. This is a reversible dietary disease, so you need to use a dietary solution – one that happens to be free, available and simple (although not easy). You can cure this disease with KNOWLEDGE, not drugs!

Trust yourself. Arm yourself with knowledge. And reverse your disease.

—
Dr. Jason Fung

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Intermittent fasting for beginners

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Dr. Fung has his own blog at idmprogram.com. He is also active on Twitter.

Dr. Fung’s books The Obesity Code, The Complete Guide to Fasting and The Diabetes Code are available on Amazon.