Why Sleep Matters to Your Overall Health
(Health Secrets ) Like many modern diseases, diabetes is a disease of metabolic breakdown. A diagnosis of diabetes is actually the last stage in the process and is the outcome of a long line of disease that was sub-clinical. In this article, we shall discuss preventing and healing diabetes with this in mind.
First, let us discuss origin and prevention. Diabetes is a disease of abundance, occurring when people have become able to have plenty of unnatural stressors in life and in diet. Processed foods are freely found and excessively partaken of. Inflammation (probably due to unnatural stressors, possibly due to strange infections of microorganisms suited to digest the residue from unnatural eating) creeps in and begins to create metabolic breakdown. This all happens very early on.
Natural healers have long encouraged simpler diets of exclusively whole foods, mostly raw. The basic diet rules are: Have fruit until noon (if anything), then the complicated meal at midday. This midday meal avoids combinations of protein and starch, and does not involve any eating of fruit. Dinner should be early and simple. Animal flesh is kept to 1-2 times per week, always at midday. Eggs are reserved for those who prove they can digest them well, and dairy is kept away entirely (except for butter). This is the basic plan.
Additionally, grains and beans and all seeds that can easily be sprouted are always eaten in the form of sprouts and never eaten in the dry, storable state. This program is valid for prevention of every modern day disease. The only other provisos are to chew well and eat only when relaxed, never when stressed. The details of this program, along with the best tasting and widest-ranging recipes utilizing it, are found in Traci’s Transformational Health Principles.
Second, let us go into the specific diabetes diet. Generally, I ignore the fact that diabetes is a problem with insulin and blood sugar (which are only the last results of the problem), and I go straight to food that I know will ultimately be healing and dis-burdening for the diabetic. While it may distress some who ascribe to conventional diabetic thinking, I have yet to see a problem with it. Further, I am totally nonplussed by conventional diabetic diets which continue to offer the same prognosis of the disease, if delayed. I want a program that offers a different prognosis! This means we have to calm the body down, reduce inflammation and remove burden on the gut. We need to put the person on a diet that is calculated to let the body heal, not just maintain blood sugar.
When I put a diabetic on a diet, I am thinking about the ease of digestion and elimination as well as resting the gut as often as possible. Most diabetics are already aware of how to monitor blood sugar by the time I get them and I encourage them to do so while following my program. The amazing thing is that they consistently have a decrease in blood sugar levels with an increase in stability on my program.
Because of the goals mentioned in the last paragraph, I want to have the person eat very simple meals, always conforming to the basics of the natural healing and preventative diet mentioned above. Additionally, diabetics I work with are usually encouraged to go mostly or all raw. I have them eat meals consisting of only fruit, and have them skip dinner and have fresh vegetable juice instead. Midday they are allowed a sprouted bean dish with salad and mid afternoon, when many of them have little crashes, they are allowed some dried fruit and soaked nuts together.
Besides this, no refined sweeteners, no dairy, bread or chemicals are allowed under any circumstances. Those who wish to continue consuming animal flesh are required to be assessed a couple times by me to make sure that they are digesting the animal flesh or eggs very well. If not, they are told to give them up. This is important, since undigested food residues, particularly animal flesh, create a lot of stress on the pancreas and liver.
Processed carbohydrates and non-foods are to be avoided entirely. When the person is strong enough, the diabetic is encouraged to actually give total gut rest, which means whole days of water fasting, during which time they do visceral organ massage with castor, olive and wheat germ oil. Natural deep heating ointments and other essential oil preparations are used to stimulate the vital organs by massaging them through the gut wall. The colon, the liver, the spleen, stomach and pancreas are all massaged well this way.
Some research exists that suggests that fat, even the healthiest of it, is counterproductive to healing diabetes. Sugar uptake and the cleanliness of the pancreas itself is affected by fat, and lower levels is better. I am very much against low-fat dieting and do not feel that it even approaches the real problem, but in the case of diabetes, there is valid cause for considering it.
Third, let us take a look at herbs and medicines that show promise or that have a history of helping with diabetes. Dr. John Christopher spent years looking for a diabetes remedy that worked like he thought it should. He usually found that herbs simply offered support, not healing. He found cedar berries by accident and his modern Herbal Pancreas Formula was born. This formula actually shows promise for rebuilding the pancreas and for disinfecting it, which appears to be part of the problem in many cases.
I know of no herbs that will work in spite of you if you have modern diabetes. Generally, the inflammatory and burdensome processes in the body of a diabetic are plenty powerful enough to overcome any simple remedy. Diabetes is a lifestyle disease, not a lack of any herb, vitamin, mineral or amino acid. Having mentioned that, though, a few of each of those categories come to mind:
Herbs: Bitter melon is perhaps the world champion of blood sugar control. Nopal cactus and cinnamon are nice, so are golden seal, cayenne, cedar berries, ginger and numerous bitter tonics. Of these all, though, bitter melon has shown the best performance in my practice. These herbs are not cures (as Dr. Christopher’s Pancreas Formula was intended to be), but are herbs for managing blood sugar naturally.
Vitamins: All B vitamins for stress and vitamins A and D for control of sensitivity of mucus membranes and overall inflammatory response, are useful, albeit not curative for diabetes.
Minerals: I use manganese, magnesium, selenium and zinc with my diabetic clients if they test even slightly low in any of them. I usually give minerals in high doses for two weeks, then take 4-6 weeks off of them. If you cannot get the body what it needs of minerals in that length of time, you are on the wrong track anyway. Wherever possible, I have the person juice or eat something high in those minerals I feel they need.
Amino Acids: The use of L-Arginine has been showing the best promise of any amino acid supplement that I know of for regulating blood sugar. I have my clients find a formula without any refined sweeteners whatsoever and take every day for 30 days to see how it works for them.
Fourth, let us take a look at exercise plans for diabetes. This topic is fun for me as there are two aspects to it that are nearly universally ignored, but which are very powerful to know.
Most people think that exercise works best when you find a groove and do it every day or three times per week or whatever. The only thing is, the human body is very smart and will adapt to expend the absolute minimum amount of energy on whatever is regularly done. This means that exercise will stop giving much value within a few weeks of doing basically the same thing regularly.
What works far better is to surprise the body about one time every 5 days. This causes the body to restore plasticity and to heal and adapt to a state of constant rejuvenation. This type of exercise can take one or both of two approaches.
First, we can do exercises that increase HGH (human growth hormone). This is best done by one very specific type of load-bearing exercise which is one where you have enough weight that you can only do fewer than 8 reps with it. A different exercise may be chosen each time and the body will respond beautifully to this. Fewer than 8 reps should lead to complete fatigue.
Second, we can do intense exercises that put random stress on the body in an intense, short burst. Of course, some may not be able to do much safely and this is an occasion to err on the side of conservation, rather than hurt yourself. Usually, for this second type, we do sprints, climbing, jumping and turning. This should be done in full gravity (not on a trampoline) and should be very intense for about 20 minutes. That is all. Regularity is actually avoided for this program, as it leads to something other than body plasticity. Regularity will lead to absolute minimum adaptation, which is a great goal for marathon runners, but not for diabetics.
Finally, it is important to understand that the body with diabetes has been overstressed and exposed to excess in every part of life. If we want to get well, we have to figure out the spiritual incongruities, the energetic discontinuities, the unnatural mental focus, and the emotionally affectionless parts of our lives as well as the unnatural, excessive burdens on us physically, if we want to get well. You cannot get those things from an article; you can only get tools from an article. Whether you really are willing to heal when you are exposed to what healing really means, is a matter entirely up to you.
