The End of Diabetes (9 page)

With millions of high-protein, low-carb enthusiasts around the world grasping at straws to justify eating a diet rich in animal products, I hope this information serves to counter health claims by these people and perhaps saves a few lives or reduces suffering. Keep in mind that there is a similarity here between my recommendations and those of the high-protein, low-carb advocates: the low-nutrient, high-glycemic junk that most Americans consume is dangerous. However, with the nutritarian diet, the low-GI benefit that a high-protein diet offers is still achieved but with an emphasis on very high-fiber vegetables, beans, and nuts, which avoid the disadvantages that come from eating too many animal products. Because the nutritional quality of the entire diet is so high, with so much fiber and so many micronutrients per calorie, the GI of the whole diet is favorable overall, and triglycerides and blood sugar fall dramatically.

The main point here that I cannot overemphasize is the benefit of nutritional excellence. In describing the bad science utilized to promote low-carb diets, let's always frame it with what a healthy diet should look like. When you eat a truly health-supporting diet, you can expect not only a drop in blood pressure, a decrease in cholesterol, and a reversal of heart disease, but also a resolution of headaches, constipation, indigestion, and bad breath. Dietary excellence enables people to reverse diabetes and gradually lose dependence on drugs. You should not only achieve a normal weight without counting calories and dieting, but you can also gain robust health and live a long life free of the fear of heart attacks and strokes.

Understanding the differences in various dietary choices is critical for the health seeker. Longevity and disease prevention are the ultimate goals of dietary changes. Obviously, weight loss is not the only goal. You can lose weight by smoking cigarettes or snorting cocaine. When you settle for second-class nutritional advice, you doom yourself not only to a shorter life but also to a poor quality of life, suffering from medical problems that could have been avoided.

Not a month goes by that I do not see at least one diabetic patient whose health has been damaged by following a high-protein fad diet. It's sad to tell people like this that the diet they chose has caused permanent damage, such as a heart attack or kidney disease.

But I am able to offer them good news too. Because I am a specialist in nutritional medicine and see many overweight diabetic patients every day, I have the experience to assure patients that they can quickly get off their insulin and other drugs and, in most cases, become completely nondiabetic with this program of dietary excellence. They do this without incurring the risk of a diet burdened with a dangerously high amount of animal products. Not only is dietary excellence safe and overall health promoting, but the amount of weight loss achieved and the reversal of diabetes are dramatic—results that could not been achieved with a high-protein diet.

 

How Much and What Type of Animal Products Are Permitted?

Nutritional excellence does not have to exclude all animal products. But it has to be very rich in high-nutrient plant foods composing well over 85 percent of caloric intake. The minimal amount of animal products in your diet that may still permit optimal health is not a fixed or determined number, so it can be adjusted for individual differences or needs within the guidelines offered here. However, if you have had diabetes a long time or have heart disease or high blood pressure and are significantly overweight, you'll achieve better results with fewer animal products, not more. Most people do fine with two or three small servings of animal products a week, but for some, even this small amount of animal protein can cause their cholesterol to go into the unfavorable range. In this book, because I am designing the optimal diet for reversing diabetes, I recommend a maximum of only one or two (two- to three-ounce) servings of animal products a week. Of course, I emphasize that if you use animal products on a regular basis, the serving size should be small, such as a condiment to flavor a vegetable dish, stew, soup, or salad, not as a caloric contributor to the meal. I recommend one or two servings of fish per week—such as salmon, sardines, squid, flounder, scrod, or trout—or one or two servings of fish plus one small serving of white meat fowl, totaling less than six ounces per week. No other animal products are recommended.

More than two servings of fish per week are associated with significantly higher incidence of type 2 diabetes.
13
Following almost two hundred thousand individuals for fourteen to eighteen years, researchers found that the risk of developing diabetes rose as fish consumption increased, resulting in a 22 percent increased incidence of diabetes when participants ate fish more than five times a week compared to those who ate fish less than once a month. Researchers are unsure exactly why more fish in the diet worsens the risk for diabetes, but whether it's an effect of the fish fat, the concentrated protein, or the toxins like dioxin or mercury found in fish, it is clear that a fish-heavy diet is not appropriate for diabetics or people at risk of developing diabetes. I want to make it clear that there is no significant benefit from using fish in your diet at all. The healthful omega-3 fats can be ingested via a supplement (even a vegan DHA/EPA supplement). The allowance for this small amount of animal product is discussed here as some people are insistent on not going all the way to a vegan diet.

Red meats are to be avoided completely. Studies on diabetics and meat eating indicate a 50 percent higher incidence of heart disease in people with high red meat intake.
14
Researchers believe this is not associated with the higher level of saturated fat in red meat but instead with the heme iron it contains. It is increased consumption of both processed foods and animal products that is linked to increased mortality, diabetes, and heart problems.
15
Large-scale studies of the metabolic syndrome have linked the incidence of high glucose, abdominal fat, high triglycerides, and high blood pressure in Western societies with red meat, processed meat, fried food, refined grains, and diet soda.
16
When multiple dangerous foods are consumed, it creates a deadly combination. The metabolic syndrome is a cluster of cardiovascular disease risk factors associated with increased risk of diabetes and mortality. Studies invariably show that the most protection, prevention, and reversal of, and lower risk of, heart disease occurs when the diet style is high in vegetables, beans, fruits, and nuts and is very low in animal products.
17

We have to dramatically reduce both processed foods and animal products if we have a significant medical issue and expect the body to recover. Too often diet proponents want to make just one or the other the villain. One of the most interesting studies emerging this year was the negative effect of eggs on diabetes. Researchers found that people consuming seven eggs a week had a 58 percent higher risk of developing diabetes than those who did not eat eggs.
18
Furthermore, egg and dairy intake are also linked to heightened risk of heart failure, up to a significant 23 percent higher risk.
19
Neither eggs nor the frequent intake of dairy are appropriate for diabetics. They worsen glucose control and increase heart disease risk, which is dangerous for diabetics, who already have heightened heart disease risk.

Again, the preferred animal products are small amounts of fish just once a week, or fish once a week and white meat fowl once a week, keeping the total under six ounces per week. That's it, because this is too important to let anything slow your progress and increase any disease risks.

 

Reviewing the Facts About Eggs and Diabetes

1. The Nurses' Health Study, Health Professionals Follow-up Study, and Physicians' Health Study reported that diabetics who eat more than one egg a day double their cardiovascular disease or death risk compared to diabetics who ate less than one egg per week.
20

2. A Greek study of diabetics reported a five-fold increase in cardiovascular death risk in those eating one egg a day or more.
21

3. A recent study evaluating atherosclerotic plaque in the carotid arteries found that subjects eating more than three eggs a week (compared to less than two eggs a week) had significantly more carotid plaque area—even after statistical controls for multiple potentially confounding factors, including serum cholesterol. The data related that someone who had eaten five eggs a week for forty years would have two-thirds the amount of plaque as someone who smoked one pack of cigarettes a day for forty years, other factors being equal. This indicates that eggs may increase atherosclerotic plaque development in ways unrelated to elevating blood cholesterol.
22

4. Eating five eggs a week or more is also associated with an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, not to mention prostate cancer.
23

 

The inevitable conclusion of all the data is that eggs are more harmful to cardiovascular health than earlier studies suggested. They are particularly unsafe for populations at risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

 

Get Protein from Your Vegetables

Most of my patients tell me that the typical question their friends or family members have about this plant-based diet is how you get enough protein with so few animal products. Many people are still tied to the myth that a diet needs animal products to be nutritionally sound. To add to the confusion, diet books and magazine articles promulgate the myth that more protein is favorable for weight loss and carbohydrates are unfavorable.

If you are overweight, you have consumed more calories than you have utilized. Micromanaging the percent of fat, protein, or carbohydrates you eat isn't going to change the amount of calories much. You need to consume less calories. Therefore, almost all overweight individuals need to consume less protein, less fat, and fewer carbohydrates—the sources of calories. Don't worry about not consuming enough. With the exception of anorexics, it is very rare to find an American deficient in fat, protein, or carbohydrates.

Inhabitants of modern Western societies generally consume more macronutrients, especially protein, than needed. Protein is ubiquitous; it is contained in all foods, not only animal products. It is almost impossible to consume too little protein, no matter what you eat, unless the diet is significantly deficient in calories and other nutrients as well. Protein deficiency is not a concern for anyone in the developed world. Americans already get too much protein, and it hurts us. When you eat a diet rich in green vegetables and beans, you are actually on a diet fairly high in protein because they are protein-rich foods. And of course when your diet is mostly plant protein, you get your protein packaged with protective fibers, antioxidants, and phytochemicals—a horse of a different color.

But should we carry around little pocket calculators and track everything we eat to make sure we don't accumulate more than 10 percent of our calories from fat? Do we have to watch what we eat to make sure we get enough protein? The reality is that the precise ratio of these nutrients doesn't matter much. What matters is that you are not deficient in any needed macronutrient, that you are not consuming excess calories or excess of anything else that may be harmful, and most importantly, that you meet all your micronutrient needs without overconsuming calories. Simply put, the goal of a healthy diet is to get the most micronutrients, both in amount and diversity, from the fewest calories. And fewer calories means less protein too. The real concern should be getting too much protein, not too little.

The focus on the importance of protein in the diet is one of the major reasons the American public has been led down the path to dietary suicide. We have equated protein with good nutrition and tend to believe that animal products, not vegetables and beans, are the most favorable source of protein. We bought a false bill of goods, and the dairy- and meat-heavy diet has brought forth an epidemic of heart attacks and cancers.

When we hear something over and over, starting when we're young children, we accept it as true. For example, the myth that plant proteins are “incomplete” and need to be “complemented” for adequate protein is repeated over and over.
24
All vegetables and grains contain all eight of the essential amino acids (as well as the twelve other nonessential ones), although some vegetables have higher or lower proportions of certain amino acids than others. When eaten in an amount to satisfy our caloric needs, however, a sufficient amount of all essential amino acids are provided. Because digestive secretions and sloughed-off mucosal cells are constantly recycled and reabsorbed, the amino acid composition in postprandial (after-meal) blood is remarkably complete in spite of short-term irregularities in the dietary supply of amino acids.

In North America about 70 percent of dietary protein comes from animal foods. Worldwide, plants provide 84 percent of calories. It wasn't until the 1950s that human protein requirement studies were even conducted. These studies demonstrated that adults require 20 to 35 grams of protein per day.
25
Today, the average American consumes 100 to 120 grams of protein per day, mostly in the form of animal products—much more than necessary. People who eat a vegetable-based diet have been found to consume 60 to 80 grams of protein a day, still well above the minimum requirement.
26

 

Advantages of Going Vegan or Very Close to Vegan

Even though eating an occasional small amount of animal product as flavoring or a condiment won't likely have a major effect on your diabetes control, there are other beneficial reasons to going all, or almost all, the way to a vegan diet. The main reason is that, for many people with diabetes, even a relatively low amount of animal protein in the diet could raise a hormone called insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). This is the main reason I am restricting intake to only six ounces per week.