You must have a stable foundation for everything, especially for your health. Diabetes is typically treated with medications and doctors don’t typically focus on prevention. The reality is that most doctors get very little education in nutritional health and diabetes often leads to blindness, peripheral vascular disease, and amputations. It often involves eating disorders, fatigue, mood disorders, sleep disorders, and erectile dysfunction.
The recommended diets for diabetics are very confusing. There isn’t enough clarity about what a “low-carb diet” is and there isn’t enough emphasis on how a diet rich in complex carbohydrates is beneficial. A plant-based diet provides an easy way to replace simple carbohydrates with complex ones by consuming whole foods.
Many Benefits of a WFPBD for this Population
Doctors don’t know all the things that cause type 1 diabetes, but they do know that genetics play a role. The most common cause of type 1 diabetes is the destruction of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. To treat this condition, patients usually receive lifelong insulin injections or use an insulin pump.
As you age, high glucose levels and cholesterol in the blood can harm your eyes, kidneys, and heart. These abnormal blood levels in diabetic patients can cause arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and atherosclerosis leading to heart attacks and strokes. Other complications include loss of blood flow, infections, and loss of limbs.
Though it is often very hard to find dietary support for people with Type 1 diabetes, a whole food, plant-based diet is extremely beneficial and an attainable goal for this population. A healthy diet can mean less insulin, more stable blood sugar levels, and preservation of eyesight, organs, and limbs.
A fiber-rich, plant-based diet includes replacing simple sugar sources with complex sources, which will significantly lower glycemic indices.
Diabetes Type 1 – Whole Food Plant-Based Diet for Diabetes Benefits
- Insulin medication reduction. Studies show that insulin requirements decrease by about 35 percent in only four days, and over a six-month period, they can reduce by 45 percent.
- More predictable and easier to manage. When people with insulin-dependent diabetes follow a low-fat, low-sugar, plant-based diet for diabetes, their blood glucose levels decrease and stabilize without the need to “limit carbs”. This way of eating also eliminates the feeling of starvation commonly experienced.
- Decreasing kidney disease risk. Even though you believe you can manage your blood glucose levels while consuming an animal-based diet, the increased protein of animal-based food and glucose level changes often lead to kidney disease. Blood vessels in the kidneys are damaged over time, and the kidneys have to work very hard to process the high levels of protein. Diabetes is the leading cause of chronic kidney disease, which can lead to dialysis and kidney failure.
- Eat as much as you want and still lose weight. If you replace all fat, which is 9 calories per gram, with complex plant food, which is 4 calories per gram, you can eat more than double what you usually eat, no longer starve yourself, and still lose weight.
- Reduced risk of diabetic neuropathies . Blood flow increases throughout the body on a WFPBD by lowering the blood’s viscosity or thickness and increasing cell function by eliminating fat and cholesterol blockages. This helps prevent diabetic neuropathic pain, numbness, and amputations.
- Increase in energy and happiness. Some of the most commonly reported experiences of diabetic patients on a WFPBD are increases in energy, happiness, improved digestion, and increased quality of sleep
Diabetes Type 2 – Extra Caution with WFPB Dietary Changes
Diabetes type 2 is caused by insulin resistance, and metformin is the drug most commonly used to treat it. Decades of studies show that in groups of healthy subjects placed on high-fat diets versus high-carbohydrate diets, the high-fat diet group would develop double the blood sugar levels.
Despite this fact, there was a widespread belief for a long time that increased consumption of sugar and carbs was causing diabetes due to the elevation of sugar in the blood. A 2006 study conducted by Japanese scientists’ proved that diabetes is linked to intracellular lipids that block insulin.
Insulin normally acts as a key to open a cell for allowing sugar to enter and be used to produce energy, but this fat layer blocks that process, and sugar levels elevate in the blood instead.
The type of fat that causes this is found mostly in saturated fat from meat, dairy, and eggs. Almonds, nuts, and avocados contain unsaturated fat that helps reverse this problem. Type 2 diabetes can actually be reversed in a matter of days to a couple of weeks. Patients typically are unwilling or think they cannot change their diet and lifestyle to reach this goal.
If someone overcomes these hurdles and wishes to pursue a plant-based diet, their blood sugar levels should be closely monitored.
Committing to a Plant-Based Diet
Patients who succeed at improving their blood sugars versus those who don’t often differ in their willingness to make changes, according to Schwartz.
“There’s always an excuse if you let yourself to be one for choosing junky processed food over real food. It’s been a stressful day for me. The cafeteria was closed and I was hungry. I was at a party. I didn’t say no to the cake because I might offend someone. It’s too expensive to eat healthy.”
If you can afford cigarettes, Netflix, or fast food, you can afford healthier food.
“You learn how to eat from how you were raised, but you can change those habits, too. Take more ownership over the fact that you do have control over what you put in your mouth,” says Schwartz.