Healing Diabetes

by

Mitch Hall

Diabetes is a chronic, degenerative, metabolic disease in which glucose, the sugar carried in our blood stream for our cells to utilize for energy, is abnormally high. Diabetics excrete sugar in the urine, making it sweet, too. That fact led the ancient Greeks, who first identified the disease, to call it diabetes mellitus, which means “honey passing through.”1Diabetes is so common that most people know, at a minimum, that it means blood sugar is excessively high. In this country, 20 million people are diabetic, and six million of them must inject themselves daily with synthesized version of the pancreatic hormone insulin.2 Insulin is the hormone the pancreas produces to provide negative feedback to keep blood sugar levels within a normal range and to transfer glucose from the blood into cells for use as a fuel. Diabetes is the disease most highly associated with common dietary practices of western culture, 3 and it remains, along with its complications, one of the leading causes of death in the west.4 Dietary factors leading to the most prevalent form of diabetes will be discussed below in connection with the causes of diabetes and with measures to control or cure it.

Diabetes always involves a failure of the body’s homeostatic mechanisms for keeping blood sugar within a normal range. The breakdown can be either because the pancreas does not produce and secrete enough insulin or because the available insulin cannot transfer glucose out of the blood and into the cells.5

The National Diabetes Data Group of the National Institutes of Health categorized diabetes into five subgroup,6 among which there are two primary types. Type I diabetes  is known as insulin-dependent diabetes and childhood diabetes, and its onset may occur from childhood up to about the age of 30.7 This is considered to be an autoimmune disease because the body’s immune system, provoked by a trigger about which there is no medical consensus, attacks the pancreatic cells that produce and secrete insulin. These cells are called beta cells or the islets of Langerhans. Various agents have been cited as triggering the destructive autoimmune reaction in Type I diabetes. Some evidence implicates “early feeding of pasteurized milk, soy products and grains, or the use of vaccines, as likely triggers.”8 Other researchers have argued the condition may be due to a hereditary predisposition, chemical toxins, prenatal exposure to too much sugar in the mother’s diet, or viral infections.9 Type I diabetes accounts for about ten percent of the incidence of the disease.10

Type II diabetes accounts for 90 percent of the occurrence of the disease. It is also known as adult-onset diabetes or non-insulin-dependent diabetes. It “occurs when for many years the consumption of foods that raise the blood sugar chronically exceeds the amount of sugar needed by the muscles for exercise.”11 Two metabolic consequences occur from such excessive eating of carbohydrates. First, the pancreas, which has been producing more and more insulin to cope with the high level of ingested sugar circulating in the blood, cannot produce enough insulin to bring the level back down to normal in relation to the amount of carbohydrates consumed. As a result, the blood is chronically overloaded with sugar. Secondly, in order to protect themselves from too much sugar, the cells become insulin resistant. This means that they put a protective coat around themselves that prevents the insulin from transporting sugar into the cells. While the blood has excessive sugar, the insulin-resistant cells have too little sugar for normal functioning, leading to feelings of exhaustion, hunger, and subsequent overeating, only making matters worse in a vicious cycle.12

Type II diabetics are at risk for obesity, cardiovascular diseases, kidney disease, retinal degeneration that can result in blindness, neuropathy involving numbness, tingling, burning sensations, and pain in the limbs, foot ulcers that can become fatally gangrenous, higher rates of infections, insatiable hunger and thirst, leg cramps, listlessness, impotence, slow healing of cuts and bruises, and accelerated aging.13 Despite such extreme symptoms that develop in later stages of Type II diabetes, many patients with alarmingly high blood glucose levels, even four times above normal, are not aware of how out of balance they are at the beginning of diabetes.14

In the course of human evolution over many millennia, the human body developed adaptations to commonly occurring food shortages so that dozens of hormones come into play to restore balance if blood sugar levels fall too low.15 However, it is only recently that humans have had a surfeit of refined carbohydrates available in all sorts of highly marketed fast foods that give sweet, momentary pleasure to the taste buds and a brief, sugar-charged boost to energy, followed by fatigue. Such impoverished foods provide a paucity of nutrients while overloading the blood stream with more sugar than the body can utilize. The evolutionary perspective helps us understand why “the body has only two mechanisms to deal with blood sugar that goes too high. One is exercise—any muscular activity drives the sugar from the blood into the muscle cells where it is used a fuel. The second is the production of insulin.”16 

What then helps a diabetic? For Type I diabetes, since the pancreas cannot produce insulin, daily injections of synthesized insulin are the standard medical treatment. In addition, a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet also helps, provided the fats are healthy ones and do not contain any harmful trans-fatty acids, such as found in cookies, crackers, donuts, margarine, and French fries.17

For Type II diabetes, it is important to eat nutrient-dense foods, preferably organic, grown in mineral-rich soil. This is because scientific research has demonstrated that deficiencies in the trace minerals zinc, vanadium and chromium inhibit insulin production and absorption.”18  Zinc is abundant in red meats, shellfish, oysters, and brewer’s yeast. Vanadium is found in extra-virgin, unfiltered olive oil. Chromium-rich foods include whole grains, brewer’s yeast, string beans. Eggs, cucumbers, liver, onions, garlic, and shiitake mushrooms.19Bone broths and celtic sea salt are also rich in trace minerals.Foods rich in vitamin B6, necessary for carbohydrate metabolism, are also needed. Such foods are raw

dairy, meat, and fish.20 Because vitamin D is critical for insulin production, exposure to sunlight and consumption of foods rich in this vitamin are also indicated, as is eating foods rich in vitamin A, such as cod liver oil, healthy fats and organ meats, to protect the body from kidney and retina problems.21 Because the diabetic cannot make adequate amounts of the fatty acid GLA, it is important to obtain this nutrient by eating evening primrose, borage, or black currant oil.22

All authorities agree that the diabetic needs to restrict daily carbohydrate ingestion to about 60 grams per day. It is essential to exclude processed carbohydrates in the form of sugar and refined, white flour. Also to be excluded are foods with hydrogenated fats because of the trans-fatty acids in them. It is particularly relevant for diabetics not to smoke because nicotine “increases the desire for sugar and sugary foods.”23

The herb gymnema sylvestre has a long history of use in Ayurvedic medicine for treating diabetes. It has been found, through modern research, to lower insulin resistance, to increase pancreatic secretion of insulin, and to be the only currently known medicine “that actually helps regenerate destroyed pancreatic islet cells in Type I diabetes.”24

Having highlighted the importance of diet and the herb gymnema sylvestre in the treatment of diabetes, it is now appropriate to emphasize the indispensable role of exercise. As noted above, exercise is one of only two mechanisms by which the body can normalize blood sugar that has risen too high. By increasing the muscles’ demand for the fuel of sugar, exercise helps move sugar from the blood into cells where it is consumed. It is evident from this fact, that proper exercise enhances metabolism. Because diabetics, especially those with Type II diabetes tend to feel weighted down with their condition, it is helpful for them to find uplifting exercises that they enjoy, whatever form this may take individually. Enjoyment will increase the likelihood of exercising regularly. Reaching outward and upward expansively with the limbs is recommended as symbolic of joy.25 Furthermore, “it is helpful to create the space around the organs so that the natural rhythms of the organs can take their proper role again. With the diabetic especially, the space of the organs, particularly the pancreas, has become congested; the organs have taken on frightened, cramped, constricted gestures.”26

In this connection, we see how raja yoga can be enormously beneficial for opening the space around the organs and liberating the energy. There are many poses in yoga, such as the arm movements of thoracic breathing and the gestures of surya namaskar, that involve raising and extending the arms. The forward, backward, and twisting movements of many yoga asanas release tension in the muscles and connective tissues and free up movement and space throughout the organism. The deep breathing of yoga, including rhythmic abdominal breathing, massages the internal organs, including the pancreas, in a nurturing way. After 25 years of teaching yoga and experiencing its therapeutic benefits for a wide range of diseases, including diabetes, the renowned yogi B.K.S. Iyengar presented his recommendations for the practices proven to be most beneficial. With respect to diabetes, his recommendations are comprehensive.27 It is also to be noted that since food has many emotional associations, meditative practice, as promoted in raja yoga, can help a diabetic to discover mindfully any emotional components to unhealthy cravings and eating habits. To the extent that raja yoga enhances relaxation, peace of mind, and being in touch with one’s true nature, the recovering diabetic can discover more wholesome ways to find satisfaction than through high-carbohydrate intake.

 



References



1.Thomas S. Cowan, M.D., The Fourfold Path to Healing: Working with the Laws of Nutrition, Therapeutics, Movement and Meditation in the Art of Medicine. (Washington, DC: New Trends Publishing, Inc., 2007).

2. Cowan.

3. Michael Murray, N.D. and Joseph Pizzorno, N.D., The Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine. (Rocklin, CA: Prima Publishing, 1991).

4. Cowan.

5. Cowan.

6. Murray and Pizzorno.

7. Cowan.

8. Cowan, p. 168.

9. Murray and Pizzorno.

10. Murray and Pizzorno.

11. Cowan, pp. 169-170.

12. Cowan.

13. Cowan; Linda Page, N.D., Ph.D., Healthy Healing: A Guide to Self-Healing for Everyone, 11th edition. (Traditional Healing, Inc. 2000).

14. Cowan.

15. Cowan.

16. Cowan, p. 169.

17. Cowan.

18. Cowan, p. 173.

19. Page.

20. Cowan.

21. Cowan.

22. Cowan; Page.

23. Page, p. D367.

24. Cowan, p. 175.

25. Cowan

26. Cowan, pp. 175-176.

27. B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Yoga, Revised Edition. (New York: Schocken Books, 1966, 1977, 1979), p. 494.