Diabetes without Drugs: The 5-Step Program to Control Blood Sugar Naturally and Prevent Diabetes Complications

Suzy Cohen, RPh, has been a licensed pharmacist for more than 20 years and writes the syndicated health column "Dear Pharmacist." She has made guest appearances as "America's Most Trusted Pharmacist" on many network shows, including The View and TheDr. Oz Show, and hosts a medical minute on the syndicated TV health show, Know the Cause. Suzy is a member of the Institute of Functional Medicine, American College for Advancement in Medicine, and The American Association of Anti-Aging Medicine.

Based on breakthrough studies, Cohen's program reveals how people with diabetes can
reduce their need for prescription medication and minimize the disease's effect on the body.

Most doctors consider diabetes a one-way street—once you have it, your only option is to manage the symptoms with a restricted diet, close monitoring of blood sugar, and expensive medications. Pharmacist Suzy Cohen shows that diabetes can be treated instead through safe, natural means, like food and vitamins, rather than strictly relying on prescription drugs. She shifts the focus away from glucose management to a whole body approach, using supplements, minerals, and dietary changes to lose weight, repair cell damage, improve insulin function, and reduce the side effects from prescription drugs, many of which rob nutrients from the body and cause additional symptoms.

This 5-step program uses natural alternatives, such as drinking nutrition-packed green drinks, adding vitamin D and anti-inflammatory supplements, increasing fiber intake, and including minerals in the diet to help restore the body's own supply of insulin. Diabetes without Drugs explains how patients can protect their heart, kidneys, eyesight, and limbs from the damage often caused by diabetes and shows the impact that the right foods and the right supplements can make in reducing blood sugar levels, aiding weight loss, and restoring vibrant health to everyone with diabetes.

CHAPTER 1

It's Not Science Fiction; It's on Your Plate

Some ingredients in your food have the potential to give you diabetes. Surprised? Well, consider the possibility that you've never been given the whole truth about the ingredients in the foods that you love. You've not been told just how bad they are, or how they contribute to disease.

Relax! This isn't going to be a lecture on what you should or should not eat. This is just a story. Let's go on a journey together . . .

Once upon a time, a crop of wheat spent months growing in a serene field in Kansas. The farmer had taken special care before planting the seeds to make sure the soil was tilled and properly fertilized. He sprayed the field with various pesticides, fungicides, and other chemicals to protect the harvest. And there we have our first problem. It shocks me, but 83 of the active ingredients in pesticides are still in use even though studies have shown that they can cause cancer in animals or humans.

After the Kansas farmer's wheat matured and turned a beautiful golden color, he harvested the grain and placed it in a grain elevator until he was ready to sell it. Any time wheat is placed in storage, workers need to keep an eye on it, making sure it stays cool and dry, because rainy, warm weather promotes the growth of fungus. Of particular concern is Fusarium graminearum, a fungus that can infect both animals and people. It can cause vomiting, loss of appetite, diarrhea, staggering, skin irritation, and immune system suppression.

Wheat kernels are typically ground into various types of flour. In my story, the Kansas farmer's wheat is destined to be turned into "all-purpose flour" because demand for this flour is high. And here we have the second problem (actually the third if you count the possibility of fungal contamination).

To make all-purpose flour, wheat kernels must be stripped of their bran and germ layers. This stripping process removes the most nutritious parts of the grain, such as the fiber, minerals, and vitamins. Oddly enough, this flour will probably command a higher price than natural whole wheat flour because it will go through more processing.

The insanity doesn't stop there, though. The flour--which is naturally brown--still needs to be whitened using a chemical that is standard in the flour industry, chlorine gas. The Environmental Protection Agency categorizes chlorine gas as a pesticide and defines it as a flour- bleaching, aging, and oxidizing agent that is a powerful irritant, dangerous to inhale, and lethal. Chlorine gas, when it comes in contact with wheat, also forms another substance called alloxan, which is known to destroy pancreatic function. Did you catch that?

ALLOXAN TOXIN: IT'S IN YOUR BREAD

Alloxan is so good at destroying the pancreas that scientists even use it in clinical trials to induce diabetes in lab animals! It is a well- documented fact that bleached white flour is contaminated with alloxan. Who would do such a thing? Someone (and that someone is probably a megacorporation) who makes a living from turning wheat into flour, that's who.

Let's take a closer look at this toxin. As mentioned above, when flour is processed in modern mills to make white flour, it undergoes a chlorine gas bath (chlorine dioxide). Other chemicals are used, too, including benzoyl peroxide, which people apply externally to zap their zits.

Anyway, chlorine gas reacts with some proteins in the flour and produces alloxan as a by-product. Alloxan is anything but pure, and it's never disclosed on labels of products that use bleached white flour. In animals, alloxan destroys beta cells, the specialized group of cells in the pancreas that make insulin. And insulin, as you know, reduces your blood sugar levels.

So in short, the more alloxan consumed, the more likely the development of diabetes, at least in lab animals. This isn't a secret. Scientists routinely use alloxan to destroy the pancreas of lab animals, usually rodents.

Alloxan looks similar to glucose, so it's readily taken up by beta cells, where it sparks tremendous free-radical damage and kills the cells so they no longer produce insulin. When enough beta cells die, insulin production stops.

Researchers inject the healthy animals with alloxan to induce diabetes. When the animal is sick, they test certain drugs to determine drug efficacy. Does this mean that alloxan can similarly destroy the beta cells in the human pancreas, thereby closing down insulin production and causing diabetes? Do you want to find out by exposing your own pancreas to this deadly substance?

Alloxan is in almost all commercial baked goodies made with white flour. Is it just me, or do you feel like a guinea pig, too?

The U.S. milling industry produces about 140 million £ds of flour each day, and the use of chlorides for bleaching flour is considered an industry standard. Alloxan is a by-product of the bleaching process. Since food manufacturers aren't actually adding alloxan to the flour, it's not going to appear on ingredient labels. But usually between 5 and 15 grams per 100 grams of flour could be contaminated. This means that the next soft white bun you reach for is not only void of nutrition but also contains potential poisons.

If you eat anything made with white flour, you are probably eating alloxan regularly. Believe me, the average American eats far more £ds of baked goodies per year than fruits and vegetables (which weigh more).

And with that much consumption, I'm guessing you may be one of the people who eats a lot of alloxan without even knowing it. Shocked? I hope so, because I want you to remain motivated to avoid foods that spike your blood sugar and potentially damage your pancreas.

The Textbook of Natural Medicine calls alloxan a "potent beta-cell toxin." It's a shame that the FDA sanctions the use of this chemical in products that people eat every day. I honestly don't think you have a death wish, because you are reading my book trying to get well and are clearly willing to make changes. I'm so proud of you for taking this step.

It's a wonder to me that white bread and other products made with white flour can put a person at risk for diabetes and all of its complications, such as diabetic coma, amputation, blindness, kidney failure, nerve pain, and eventual death. A man named Jack used to come to the pharmacy where I worked in the late 1990s, and he had diabetes. I told him to give up white flour goods and gluten-containing foods. He didn't want to. I saw him last year--unfortunately, he had given up his right leg instead. As a complication of diabetes, that leg had to be amputated. I'll never know for sure if my suggestion would have helped him, but I think it could have. I'm going to teach you in subsequent chapters how to cook with flours that are not contaminated with toxins such as alloxan.

Turning naturally dark, nutrition-packed wheat into white, nutritionally empty flour happens as a result of the strong demand from consumers to eat muffins, pastries, breads, and biscuits that are white, not brown. I have always been puzzled at the name "all-purpose flour" because to me, it doesn't even serve the primary purpose of food, which is to provide nutritional value, so I think it should be renamed "no-purpose flour."

Many people buy wheat germ to add to their baking recipes or to supplement their diet. If you buy wheat germ, guess what you're doing? You're paying a lot of money to buy the nutrients that were stripped in the process of making all-purpose flour. You have to realize that wheat germ is where most of the essential nutrients in wheat are concentrated, including vitamin E, folate (folic acid), phosphorus, thiamin, zinc, magnesium, essential fatty acids, and fiber.

VITAMIN E PROTECTS YOU

The toxin alloxan, which is found in most white flour, can damage the pancreas. But even if you've been eating white flour goodies for decades, there are still things you can do to help minimize the problem. First of all, stop eating white flour from this day forward. Whole grain flour is better (so long as you are not gluten intolerant), and almond flour, rice flour, or quinoa flour are even better alternatives. Those are the ones I use in my house.

If you've been eating a lot of white bread, buns, and biscuits all your life, there's something you can take to help reverse the damage--vitamin E. In animal studies, this potent antioxidant protected lab rats from alloxan damage.

I know we're not rats, but we are mammals (just like rats), and I think taking a powerful antioxidant, such as natural vitamin E, could be beneficial for you, especially if you have consumed a diet high in white flour products or you have a history of diabetes in your family. Try taking 400 IU of mixed natural vitamin E tocopherols daily.

HOW SWEET IT ISN'T

Now let's return to the story I was telling you before I went into my rant about white flour. Let's turn our attention to another farmer. This farmer lives in Florida and grows sugar cane in his semitropical fields. His sugar cane will eventually be pressed to produce molasses, a healthy sweetener. There are three grades of molasses: mild or first molasses, dark or second molasses, and the most intense, dark form, blackstrap molasses. And as you guessed, I'm all for your choosing blackstrap molasses, as it contains energy-producing iron, bone-building calcium, and a wealth of other healthy minerals.

Now here comes the real head-scratcher. Most of the molasses that comes from sugar cane does not end up on grocery store shelves as molasses. Instead, molasses is stripped of its life-giving vitamins, minerals, and fiber as it is processed into white sugar crystals, the kind you find in big bags at the supermarket.

So most sugar cane--which can produce nutrition-rich molasses--instead becomes nothing more than an alien substance that is never found in nature. Hey, but it tastes good, right?!

Nutritionally naked sugar crystals are very sweet. They are also bleached because Americans think white sugar is pretty. (I know; it doesn't make sense to me either.)

RECIPE FOR DIABETES

Now let's conduct an experiment. We'll combine the white all-purpose flour with white sugar and add some white table salt. Add a pinch of baking powder, a little baking soda, and some yeast (which is a form of fungus). Now add some liquid, such as cow's milk, which may be linked to diabetes, but more about that in Chapter 4.

Heat this goopy substance to about 350°F. It will rise and expand. When it cools off, we'll deep-fry it in refined vegetable oil loaded with trans fats that don't readily dissolve in your bloodstream and therefore cut off blood flow to your heart. Now let's cool off the deadly time bomb. And to make it attractive we'll paint it pink with a sticky mixture made from red food coloring, white sugar, and some more greasy trans fats. This is a good time to tell you that the red food colorant comes from boiling and crushing cochineals, insects also known as beetle bugs. Ewww!

Does what we made sound appetizing to you?

Would you eat it or serve it to your kids?

Could I get you to eat it for a hundred dollars?

How about if I serve it with coffee and call it a doughnut?

A PILL FOR EVERY ILL

That story may have been hard to swallow, but if you eat bagels, muffins, hamburger buns, or any other product made from white flour, the story line remains pretty much the same. The American diet is laden with dangerous chemicals that promote diabetes. Even people who think that they eat healthy have kitchens full of canned, boxed, or processed foods.

People think wheat flour is good for them when they see it on the label, but wheat flour it just another way to say white flour. Think of it this way. When a recipe reads "add 1 cup of flour," don't you just automatically pour into your measuring cup regular all-purpose white flour that you buy from the grocery store in those big bags? It probably doesn't dawn on you to use any other kind.

That's what wheat flour is, and though you may think it's healthy, it's really not. As you saw in our story, it has been heavily refined and then bleached white. This type of junk flour looks nothing like the beautiful, nutrient-dense grain it was made from.

We are trained to think that flour comes one way, and we follow our taste buds like zombies in the dark. I promise that in the chapters to follow you will learn all about eating healthy, nutritious, tasty foods without compromising your health.

Now do you believe me when I tell you that you are not given the whole truth about the foods you eat? Twenty-five years of nutritional advice from brain-dead health officials has only made us fatter and sicker.

Our life expectancy at birth in America is now estimated to be around 77.9 years. In 1995 it was 75.8, and in 1955, it was 69.6 years, according to a report from the National Center for Health Statistics. So far, it all sounds pretty good, right? But the report also contains the fact that in 40 other countries, life expectancy is higher than it is the United States. By the way, the top place goes to Andorra, a tiny country in the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain, whose citizens' life expectancy is estimated to be 83.5 years. Japan is number two. Macau, San Marino, and Singapore rank third, fourth, and fifth.

We have been seriously duped. Ah, but no worries, doctors can prescribe lots of pills to bring your blood sugar level down. And more drugs to lower your cholesterol, some to reduce your blood pressure, and, of course, for all that belching and indigestion, there are acid blockers. You may need insulin shots by now, too. It's the American way, a pill for every ill.

When the medications stop working for you--and eventually they will--you might wind up with a bad infection, so bad that antibiotics fail to help you. Then doctors might need to cut off your limbs, one at a time. You'll have to take more drugs for the excruciating pain, depression, and insomnia. You might wind up in a nursing home because family members cannot care for you any longer.

Gosh, sorry. This story is suddenly taking a dark turn. This doesn't have to be your fate, however--not if you carefully follow the dietary and lifestyle advice presented in this book. But unfortunately this will be the horrific fate for many, since 24 million people in the United States struggle with diabetes and an estimated 221 million battle the disease worldwide. Back in 2000, the World Health Organization proclaimed there was a "global epidemic of obesity," and the numbers of people with diabetes have been climbing ever since. It doesn't have to be that way. Open your mind. You can heal yourself.