The Diabesity Epidemic Part I: How Diabetes And Obesity Are Ravaging America

One evening, after a lec­ture in New York, a man approached me about becom­ing my patient. He was rotund, with a round, ruddy face, a boom­ing voice, and a gen­tle man­ner. Everything about him was large—his appetite, his belly, and his heart.

Sam was nearly 60 years old, and his love of every­thing big was wan­ing as he felt the encroach­ment of death. As we talked, he described years of feed­ing his fat, drink­ing a pint of heavy whip­ping cream every night before bed to keep his weight up.

In the end, the big pres­ence that Sam’s 300-plus pound cor­pus gave him was not worth the infir­mi­ties he suf­fered. He was dia­betic. His insulin was over 200, nor­mal is less than 20. He also had dan­ger­ous cho­les­terol lev­els, angina, sleep apnea, a slug­gish thy­roid, and was doggedly fatigued, short of breath at nearly every step, had nasal con­ges­tion, swollen legs, dry skin, and yeast grew all over his body.

Sam may sound like a hope­less case, but the truth is that every­thing Sam had done to his body he did him­self and could undo. I told him that if he did every­thing I sug­gested he would lose weight, feel bet­ter, and all his symp­toms would go away.

Enthusiastic, though some­what skep­ti­cal, he left my office deter­mined. Three months later when I spoke to him again, he lost 30 pounds, had more energy, his nasal con­ges­tion was gone, his fluid-filled, swollen legs were bet­ter, and all of his crav­ings were gone–he never felt hun­gry, and he found the pro­gram I pre­scribed to him easy to follow.

Fourteen months later I saw him again and repeated his blood tests. I was shocked when he weighed in. He had lost 110 pounds with­out being on a strict depri­va­tion diet. He sim­ply changed his eat­ing and his lifestyle. His dia­betes was CURED. His blood sugar dropped from 130 to 74 (greater than 126 fast­ing denotes dia­betes). His HDL and LDL cho­les­terol and triglyc­erides were nor­mal with­out any med­ica­tion. And he was exer­cis­ing vig­or­ously three to four times a week.

After a life­time of uncon­trol­lable appetites, Sam finally found bal­ance and health with­out suf­fer­ing. Yes, he changed his diet and lifestyle, but he was able to con­tinue tak­ing plea­sure in food. Most impor­tantly, he looked and felt twenty years younger.

Now, I know Sam’s story is an extreme one. You may or may not be suf­fer­ing from prob­lems as severe as those he faced. Even so, I’m sure you can relate to some of what Sam expe­ri­enced if you are over­weight, have high blood pres­sure, ele­vated cho­les­terol, have prob­lems with your blood sugar, or have been diag­nosed with type 2 diabetes …

You may feel twenty years older than you are, and, deep down, you may even be ter­ri­fied by the pos­si­bil­ity of addi­tional health com­pli­ca­tions like heart dis­ease, stroke, demen­tia, nerve dam­age, blind­ness, and ampu­ta­tion or even can­cer. Like so many oth­ers that suf­fer with this con­di­tion, you just want to live a nor­mal life and get back some of your energy and vital­ity; you want to turn back the clock and reverse your diabetes …

You can do that. I know most peo­ple are skep­ti­cal when a doc­tor tells them they can reverse dia­betes, but over the course of this three-part series of blogs I’m going to show you how. You can have the same expe­ri­ence Sam did, and you don’t have to suf­fer or starve to make that happen.

Later in this blog series, I will tell you how you can do that. Today, I want to explain what I mean by the term “dia­besity“. If you have dia­betes you have it. But you don’t have to have dia­betes or even have symp­toms to be suf­fer­ing from dia­besity. In fact most peo­ple who have it don’t know they are suf­fer­ing from a deadly con­di­tion that is 100% reversible.

Many Names, One Disease–Defining Diabesity

You may be one among mil­lions of peo­ple who are suf­fer­ing from a health prob­lem that is now epi­demic in our coun­try. Your doc­tor might have diag­nosed you with one of many seem­ingly dif­fer­ent dis­eases. He may have said you have:

• Insulin resistance

• Pre-diabetes

• Metabolic syndrome

• Obesity

• Syndrome X

• Adult onset diabetes

• Type 2 diabetes

What he likely didn’t tell you is that ALL of these con­di­tions are basi­cally the same thing–just with vary­ing degrees of sever­ity. The under­ly­ing causes of ALL of these con­di­tions are the same. And because they are all the same con­di­tion, the treat­ment for all of them is also the same.

That is why I have set aside these con­ven­tional diag­noses in place of a new name that more accu­rately defines the health prob­lems you may suf­fer from. That term is dia­besity. Diabesity is the con­di­tion of meta­bolic imbal­ance and dis­ease that ranges all the way from mild blood sugar imbal­ance to full blown diabetes.

Whether you are suf­fer­ing from a lit­tle extra weight around the mid­dle or you have been diag­nosed with insulin resis­tance or even type 2 dia­betes, the fun­da­men­tal under­ly­ing bio­log­i­cal causes of ALL of these con­di­tions are the same. This is what I’ve dis­cov­ered in over 20 years see­ing thou­sands of patients.

Diabesity, in its var­i­ous forms, affects over 1 bil­lion peo­ple world­wide. It is a mas­sive global prob­lem, and our cur­rent approach to pre­ven­tion and treat­ment is obvi­ously not work­ing because mil­lions more are affected every year in a dra­matic increase of a con­di­tion that was once very rare.

Click here to read the rest of this arti­cle at HuffingtonPost.com.