We are told that this is a chronic and progressive disorder.

That means that once you develop type 2 diabetes,

you're going to have it for life and there's nothing you can do about it.

You're going to be on medications, you're going to be on insulin

and then you're going to develop the complications.

Blindness, nerve damage, amputations, heart attack,

strokes, kidney damage, dialysis...

The whole works... it's inevitable.

But is it really?

Imagine a world where type 2 diabetes is a simple reversible disorder

where a simple dietary maneuver can reverse your diabetes in a matter of weeks.

The American Diabetes Association of course disagrees.

They say right on their website that it's a fact

that for most people type 2 diabetes is a progressive disease.

So you might as well forget about it.

Don't even try to get better, it's hopeless.

They're telling you there's no hope.

But we can look at certain examples

and we can see that this is actually not true at all.

Let me give you some of these examples - bariatric surgery.

Bariatric surgery is also called weight loss surgery or stomach stapling.

What they do is they take your stomach and they cut it to the size of a walnut,

so you really just can't eat.

Because you're not eating, you're going to lose a lot of weight.

But what happens to the diabetes?

Well let's look at this study here.

In this study they randomized two groups of people.

One group of people stayed on their medications

and got the best medical therapy available.

The other group got weight loss surgery.

On the horizontal axis is time over 12 months.

On the vertical axis is the number of medications that these people were taking.

You can see that the number of medications that people took

while doing the best medical therapy available, really didn't change.

They kept taking the same number of medications,

they're really no better than they were when they started.

Than they were at the end.

But look at the weight loss surgery group.

Very quickly within a matter of months

they're coming off all their medications and it keeps going.

By 12 months many of these people are off of all their medications

and their blood sugars are completely normal.

That's amazing!

Wasn't this a chronic and progressive disorder?

Wasn't this a disorder where there's no treatment

and there's nothing you can do, it'll get worse?

Well not really, not according to this study.

It looks like diabetes is a disease that's reversible.

But better than that, it's quickly reversible.

And even other types of weight loss surgery, such as gastric banding,

have the same benefits.

Gastric banding is a procedure where they put a belt inside your stomach

and tighten it so you can't eat.

And again what you see here

is that the diabetes very quickly reverses and it stays gone.

So this is not a chronic and progressive disorder, this is a reversible disorder.

I'm not saying that gastric banding or weight loss surgery is the answer for everybody,

but it simply points to the fact that the situation is different

and this is a reversible disease.

Let's look at another example.

We can look at fasting.

Fasting is a dietary maneuver

where you don't eat anything for a certain period of time.

I had this patient here, Richard, who came to me for treatment of his diabetes.

He had been diabetic for 10 years, he was taking about 70 units of insulin

and he was developing complications.

He was getting eye disease, he was getting kidney disease.

So we changed his diet, we put him on a low carbohydrate diet

and we gave him some simple tips

and we included some intermittent fasting in his regimen.

Over a period of months he lost about 50 pounds.

And his diabetes got incredibly better.

We took him off all of his insulin, we took him off all of his medications

and his blood sugars are normal.

Even two years out now he is still on no medications

and his blood sugars are doing amazing.

So in fact this is a reversible disease.

Fasting seems to lead to a reversal of his diabetes.

And this is not a new finding.

In fact, if we go back almost 100 years,

Dr. Elliott Joslin, perhaps the most famous diabetes specialists in history,

wrote this in the Canadian medical journal...

"That temporary periods of under-nutrition are helpful in the treatment of diabetes

"will probably be acknowledged by all

after these two years of experience with fasting."

So what happened was that he had been using fasting for two years

and he thought it was so amazingly great

that it's going to be obvious, everybody is going to know this.

There were a few problems of course.

At the time he didn't differentiate between type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

Well, it's very beneficial for type 2 diabetes, it really doesn't impact type 1 very much.

And with the discovery of insulin a few years later

all focus shifted to insulin

and everybody forgot about these dietary therapies.

Recently in the United Kingdom

Dr. Taylor performed a study called "The counterpoint study"

and there he put people on very low calorie diets.

Well, it's not fasting, it's very close.

And look at these results.

In this group the blood sugars went from 9.6 to 5.9 in seven days.

Seven days!

His sugars have gone back to normal.

What happens with this idea that it's chronic, it's progressive,

you'll always be on medication?

It's simply not true.

There's another example we can give.

We can look at the example of very low carbohydrate diets,

or so-called ketogenic diets.

Let me give you a case -

I had a 27-year-old graduate student, she was actually studying physiology

and she was recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

Her hemoglobin A1c was 10.4%.

This is a three-month average of her blood sugars.

The diagnosis of diabetes happens at 6.5%, so 10.4% is very high.

Her doctors were very concerned of course

and started her on three medications right away.

Being only 27 she didn't want to stay on medications for the rest of her life.

So she looked on the Internet and decided that she would follow a ketogenic diet.

Well, she very quickly lost about 20 pounds

and at her three-month checkup, her hemoglobin A1c was 5.5%.

Well within the normal range and clearly not diabetic.

Better she had taken herself off of all the medications as soon as she started.

So in this case it looked like her type 2 diabetes was essentially cured.

Wow!

That's not what we are told. Right?

But we all know this is true.

We all know that the type 2 diabetes is completely reversible.

For example if somebody comes up to you and says, "You know what?

I lost 50 pounds and my diabetes went away."

You'd say, "Wow, that's great! Terrific, good for you!"

You wouldn't say to them, "No, you're lying to me.

"The American Diabetes Association says it's chronic and progressive.

Get back on your medications!"

No, of course not.

So, it's immediately obvious that this is just a lie.

Type 2 diabetes is not chronic and it's not progressive.

It's reversible.

But what about all the cases about people on medications?

Do you ever hear people say,

"I started my insulin or I started my medications

and now I'm so much better, I took myself off"?

No, not really.

If you take medications, you're generally on it for life. Right?

But what about the standard low-fat diet?

Nobody ever comes up to me and says,

"You know, I went to my dietitian, I started a low-fat diet

and now I'm so much better, I'm off all my medications."

I've seen thousands of patients and that doesn't happen.

So in those cases the diabetes is not cured.

So actually there are treatments that lead to a cure

and there are treatments that do not lead to a cure.

So those that lead to a cure -

bariatric surgery, fasting and very low-carb diets

And these treatments do not lead to a cure -

insulin, other drugs, a low-fat diet.

You'll never guess of course which direction

all our current treatment protocols and research are heading to.

They're all heading towards the path of no cure.

And that's why, they tell you - it's a chronic and progressive disease.

But it's not.

This is amazing news.

This is amazing

because type 2 diabetes is in fact a curable and reversible disease.

The fact that treatments exist, means that there is hope for all of us.

Drugs however cannot cure a dietary disease.

The cure must be a diet.

The right diet.