Vegetarian Era
Vegan Diet Effective in Treating Type 2 Diabetes
By brother Richard Demetrious, Tasmania,
Australia (Originally in English)
Scientists and researchers have discovered, through a rigorous study, that Type 2 diabetes can be treated more effectively with a low-fat vegan diet than with the standard diabetes diet. Astonishingly, the low-fat vegan diet may even be more effective at treating the disease than single-agent therapy with oral diabetes drugs. The study was conducted by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), the George Washington University, and the University of Toronto, with funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Diabetes Action Research and Education Foundation. It involved 99 people with Type 2 diabetes. Half of the participants followed the standard diabetes diet based on the American Diabetes Association’s guidelines, and the other half followed a low-fat vegan diet for 22 weeks. Both groups measured improvements in all the standard diabetes symptoms, but the vegan participants showed a much greater improvement. Referring to the vegan diet, Dr. Barnard, PCRM president, said, “And all the ‘side effects’ were good ones—weight loss, lower cholesterol, and overall better health.” Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of the disease, affecting 85-90% of all people with diabetes. It used to be generally associated with old age, but with today’s unhealthy, high-fat, low-exercise lifestyle, more and more of the younger generation are affected, including children. It is a lifestyle disease and strongly associated with high blood pressure, high cholesterol and excess body fat around the lower torso. Unlike people with Type 1 diabetes, the pancreas of Type 2 people is still creating insulin, but the insulin is not working as it should and hence the pancreas needs to make even more, and eventually cannot make enough to keep the glucose balance in the blood correct. At this point doctors usually prescribe tablets and/or insulin. Vance Warren, a 36-year-old participant and former Washington, D.C., police officer had some life changing results from the diet: He lost 74 pounds, his cholesterol went from 221 to 148 points and his A1c (a measure of blood sugar levels) dropped from over 9 percent to 5.3 percent (normal values are below 6.0 percent). Other participants experienced similar groundbreaking results. Considering the drastic improvements in health gained by the participants in this program, it makes one think that if these people had been on the vegan diet prior to having diabetes, that they wouldn’t have developed it to begin with. The results suggest through common logic that the typical western diet, consisting of meat, fats and processed grains, could in fact be responsible for Type 2 diabetes. Maybe it’s time for governments to start educating the people before their citizens get diseases such as this, to attempt to prevent the disease before it begins. It is common for doctors to recommend that people change their diet and eat much less meat and saturated fat after they have a heart attack. Instead of making this recommendation after the sickness happens, why not make it before the sickness comes and save people from needless suffering and billions of dollars in health expenses. Supreme Master Ching Hai recommends
a vegetarian diet for all, saying that it is the most suitable for
the human body and saves us from many sicknesses.
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