November is American Diabetes Month, an observance created to generate awareness about a disease shared by nearly 24 million children and adults in the Unites States. That is not counting the 57 million Americans that have pre-diabetes and are at risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and the other 5.7 million who don’t know they have it. The American Heart Association estimates that 59.7 million Americans 20 years and older have pre-diabetes, a condition that more than doubles the risk of death due to heart attack. The worse part is that the death rates due to diabetes continue to increase since 1987. Here is the good news: Type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes can be reversed with NO DRUGS by getting informed and adopting a plant-based diet.


Heart disease and stroke are the number one causes of death and disability among people with type 2 diabetes. In fact, at least 65% of people with diabetes die from some form of heart disease or stroke. It’s astonishing that the national cost of diagnosed diabetes in the United States is $174 billion, with direct medical costs reaching around $116 billion, and that the total diabetes-related cost could exceed $218 billion (just in the U.S.), while all these can be prevented by your food choices. The most common form of diabetes is type 2, and practitioners like Dr. Gabriel Cousens have confirmed that it can be reversed and prevented simply by eating an unprocessed, vegan, whole foods, plant-based diet with a high emphasis on live (raw) foods. That simple. Diabetes can easily be reversed and your body healed if you change your lifestyle.



So, what is diabetes exactly? Diabetes is a metabolic disorder by which the body does not produce or properly use insulin. Insulin is a hormone that allows the body to use glucose for energy. The body produces glucose from the food you eat. Diabetes can also be described as an ongoing inflammation, which can affect all organs. Research from scientists at the University of California, San Diego, and Switzerland’s University of Fribourg discovered that inflammation provoked by immune cells called macrophages leads to insulin resistance and then to type 2 diabetes. We might want to watch foods that contain gluten (especially the very popular vegan protein seitan, which is pure gluten) because it is pro-inflammatory. In the long term, the development of diabetes can damage your eyes, kidneys, nerves, and heart.



What is the main cause of diabetes? SUGAR. Refined sugar, specifically, white flour, white sugar, and corn syrup, which is included in most of America’s favorite fast meals: processed foods. Check ingredient labels people! You’ll find that many of them will have corn syrup (so, basically, you’re eating the same calorie source over and over again), among other less-than-desirable and hardly-identifiable items for proper weight management, nutrition, and health. The best foods for you are the ones that don’t have ingredient labels – hands down. Here are some examples we hope are already familiar to you: broccoli, spinach, and blueberries. No labels – just food. Other causes of diabetes include cooked meat (meat eaters have four times more diabetes), animal fat, insulin resistance, and (believe it or not) watching television (more than 19 hours per week increases diabetes risk 150%.) According to the American Pediatric Association, babies who are given cow’s milk before the age of three months have an increased risk of getting type 1 diabetes by 11% to 13%. Vaccines given to children are also associated with type 1 diabetes. Studies in New Zealand and Finland also show 147% increase in type 1 diabetes, resulting from children that have been vaccinated. Toxins are also associated with diabetes (pesticides, herbicides, mercury), so buy ORGANIC.



Studies have shown that choosing a healthy lifestyle that includes a nutritionally dense diet and frequent physical activity has dramatically reduced and reversed the progression of type 2 diabetes and is key to controlling type 1 diabetes (a more autoimmune-related form of the disease). Any way you put it, the key to an optimally healthy physical body is eating mostly a live food, plant-based diet. For general health prevention, start by eating an 80% raw foods and 30% cooked foods diet, with all components from the Plant Kingdom, preferably organic, and definitely unprocessed.