Each year, November 14 marks World Diabetes Day. The main goal of this event is to bring awareness to all things related to diabetes.
In our world today, diabetes type 2 (and even type 1) is on the rise. In fact, diabetes type 2 has been referred to as an epidemic and is today one of the top 3 lifestyle related diseases, next to heart disease and cancer.
According to the Canadian Diabetes Association, more than 9 million people are living with diabetes or pre-diabetes. According to the American Diabetes Association, more than 80 million people are living with diabetes or pre-diabetes. That is a lot of people, and research indicates, the numbers are only about to get worse.
However as with all else, the amount of mis-information, half truths and biased, false conclusions out there is big and this field is no exception. We are told “diabetes must be battled“, and there is “a fight against diabetes” and that it is incurable, when nothing could be further from the truth.
So let’s step away from the violent talk, as there is no need to fight anything. There is simply an urgent need to learn how to eat and take care of ourselves properly. And to help us do this, we are going to seek out some expert resources who are leading the way in healing diabetes naturally and take a holistic approach for the greatest level of effectiveness and empowerment.
Reversing Diabetes in Days? Yes, It’s Possible!
So the best way to celebrate this day, aside from sharing high quality information with you, is to let you know that diabetes type 2 and in many cases even type 1 is REVERSIBLE. Yes, you heard me correctly, diabetes is not a life sentence and various doctors, researchers and nutritional experts today know that diabetes can be reversed using the most simple, natural and powerful method – your diet.
What you eat, either predisposes you for diabetes, gives you diabetes, prevents you from having diabetes or heals diabetes. The question now is, what do you choose to do with your diet? Will you use it to support yourself or use it against yourself?
The leading researchers on this are doctors and resources as follows:
Dr. Gabriel Cousens – at his Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Arizona, is continuously researching natural health and nutrition, and healing diabetes in the patients that visit the center. His 21+ day diabetes reversal program is one of the most successful diabetes programs in the world.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman – has years of experience and success reversing all chronic and lifestyle diseases in his patients through nutrition, with one of his specialties being diabetes. He is a top health expert for reversing diabetes, through his personal nutritional excellence program.
Dr. Joseph Mercola – is a natural health and nutrition expert who is constantly educating the public and bringing awareness about the amount of misinformation we are told about our food and the state of our health. He is a leader in teaching people how to prevent and reverse diseases, including diabetes.
Dr. Mark Hyman — is another leading health expert and integrative medical doctor who is helping people gain back their health via diet and lifestyle changes. You can get to know his work by starting with his 5 step guide to reversing diabetes and insulin resistance.
Simply Raw – Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days – One of the best places to start to gain information and empowerment about reversing diabetes via your diet is the free documentary film – Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days.
Diet and Lifestyle Changes to Reverse Diabetes
Regardless which source you consult, as you learn about the potential of reversing diabetes naturally, you will find a common foundation of healthy nutrition and lifestyle steps that should be followed.
With regards to the diet, here are some of the main protocols to follow:
- Eliminate refined sugars — This includes all candy and junk foods, as well as the numerous processed foods to which sugars are added.
- Eliminate refined and heavily processed grain products — This includes all flour-based, whether white or brown, breads, buns, and similar products, as well as boxed cereals, cookies, crackers, and cakes.
- Eliminate liquid or sugar calories — This includes all pasteurized juices, fruit drinks, and soda, regardless of whether they are sugar-free or not. This also includes alcohol.
- Eliminate fried and high-fat processed foods — This includes fried plant and animal foods, including french fries, onion rings, burgers, meats, chips, pizza, etc.
- Eliminate dairy — This includes all the various types of milk, cheese, and yogurt, most of which are heavily processed and neither ideal for our health, nor diabetes reversal.
- Eat lots of vegetables, especially raw vegetables — This includes all colors of vegetables from the green and white, through the yellow, orange, red, and purple. Raw vegetables can be fully raw, or gently steamed.
- Eat beans and legumes, including sprouts — These are very high in fiber, healthy carbohydrates, and protein and provide excellent bulk for filling and satisfying meals. You can enjoy them as part of salads, soups, stews, chili, dips or spreads like hummus, etc.
- Eat real, whole grains — This includes whole, unprocessed brown rice, quinoa, millet, amaranth, buckwheat, etc. These grains are high in fiber and healthy complex carbohydrates, breaking down slowly and providing a healthy amount of sustainable energy.
- Eat some raw fruits — Even though most people associate diabetes with an avoidance of fruits, as you will find from the doctors and diabetes reversal programs above, fruits can actually be part of diabetes reversal and healing.
- Eat some nuts and seeds — This includes any tree nuts, like walnuts, almonds, or pistachios, as well as seeds like chia, flax, hemp, pumpkin and sesame. Nuts and seeds are highly advantageous during diabetes healing, but we must ensure that our nuts are raw, not roasted, and not flavored with anything like salt or sugars.
- Drink lots of water — Water is essential always to not only keeping an optimally running system, but especially during times of healing and detoxifying.
With regards to lifestyle changes, here are some of the main protocols to follow:
- Get enough sleep — This means both in terms of quantity and quality. Our body’s best healing takes place during sleep. This is the time your body uses to repair cells, tissues, and organs. Sleep is also necessary to support and balance proper hormone levels, several of which play a leading role in reversing diabetes and maintaining optimal health.
- Engage in daily movement — The easiest and most effective thing we can do with regards to movement is to walk. Schedule into your day and commit to at least one, 10 to 30 minute walk daily. Aside from that, some stretching and resistance exercise is always a good idea for our overall health and weight.
- Avoid destructive or toxic habits — This includes loading into your body on purpose any kind of toxins via things like cigarettes, cigars, alcohol, and other drugs.
- Nurture healthy relationships — Feeling connected to others and having our own support system or community of friends or family is important. The more stable are our relationships, the less likely we are to use food in order to fill any voids we may be filling within.
- Nurture creativity and your passions — When we make time to do things we enjoy, our entire body benefits from a better sense of wellbeing. This also positively enhances our emotional state of being and makes us less likely to use food or other destructive habits against ourselves, which cause imbalance and disease in the body.
Deeper Holistic Roots of Diabetes
On a metaphysical level, diabetes symbolizes losing or not being able to enjoy “the sweetness of life”. Individuals who experience diabetes usually prevent themselves, whether consciously or unconsciously, from enjoying life to the fullest. There may be an underlying current of guilt and thinking along the lines of “all that did or can go wrong” or “that we don’t deserve to enjoy ourselves”. According to Dr. Susan Corso, diabetes is about a soul pattern of emotional isolation—starving for love, and unable to get enough of its sweetness. In her book You Can Heal Your Life, Louise Hay describes the underlying pattern of diabetes as a “Longing for what might have been. A great need for control. Deep sorrow. No sweetness left.”
If you are currently experiencing diabetes, pre-diabetes, or insulin resistance, it will be most valuable and sustainable to address your healing via a holistic approach. This means focusing on the physical—what we eat and don’t eat, as well as exercise and sleep, but also on the mental and emotional. Ask yourself the following questions:
- What are you unhappy about in your life on the deepest level of your being?
- What are you resistant to accept?
- What part of your being is being neglected?
Such an approach can not only provide benefits and healing for diabetes, but also improve the quality of your life immensely, as you begin to take accountability for actively creating that which you wish to experience, while releasing and healing old wounds.
Ultimately, may you always know that your body is an intelligent system that will always work to balance and heal itself, able to overcome almost any dis-ease. Our job is simply to support this system and its functions, rather than work against it via self-destructive habits, causing it and ourselves unnecessary suffering.