BY INVITATION. Eat right and reverse your diabetes!

India is perceived as being on its way to becoming the diabetes capital of the world! A testimonial of the wrong lifestyle we lead. But this can change if we are willing to alter that lifestyle.

When people get diabetes, they are given medication along with a list of foods to avoid, but has anyone got better with this? Over a period of time, people only get worse. More medicines, worse lab reports. Medicines never cure!

Animals don’t get sick as often as human beings do and visit doctors, and that’s because they eat right! Not only are we the only species who drink the milk of another species. We also eat meat, which is not natural to our anatomy, besides processing and adding chemicals to our food! Is it any wonder that we are falling sick more now than ever before!

Diabetics are usually asked to change their eating habits. Yet minimising sugars and carbohydrates does not rid us of diabetes for good. The reason: the cause of diabetes is fat, not sugars or carbohydrates, according to leading researchers like Dr Neal Barnard, author of the best selling Dr Neal Barnard’s Program for Reversing Diabetes. Fat in the muscle cells clogs insulin receptors resulting in insulin resistance, which is the cause of type 2 diabetes. And learning to control fat intake can hold the key.

Take, for example, Moorthy a diabetic since 1999, who I had met four years ago. Over the years, his medicines kept changing and increasing. And he had become resigned to taking medications lifelong. He did not believe his friend who said there was a way out because he had been told that diabetes was incurable.

As a diabetic, you are forced to think a hundred times before eating anything. It can be a depressing existence. In 2012, Moorthy decided to try and change his eating habits and lifestyle for a month and has not looked back since.

Now, he is able to have as much fruit as he likes, and the quantities are not limited. Although difficult at the start, he has adapted to the new habits. And, in just seven months, he was off all his medication and had normal blood sugar levels. Incidentally, he even liked the “new” foods he ate and has since been cooking for others!

Want to give it a try? Reduce the fat in your diet. This means cooking with minimum or no oil, removing all animal products, including all forms of dairy and foods made from them. Animal products are loaded with fats and contain no fibre. But, all these items can easily be replaced. Whole plant diets are not just delicious but the side effects are pleasant – no more constipation or acidity, loss of weight, lower blood pressures and no cholesterol.

What is important is to check vitamins B12 and D levels and supplement them if they are low. It’s always better to eat chemical-free organic foods. And like Moorthy, you too can reduce, even eliminate, the dependence on medicines, by just eating right.

The writer is founder of SHARAN, a trust that works towards a Diabetes Free India. Views are personal.

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