Michael's Story

On June 25, 2013 I was told I had diabetes. My blood glucose was 252 fasting. My blood pressure, even though I was on medicine, was still out of control.  I was seriously obese, but at the time, I was proud I was down from 270 pounds to about 245 pounds.  I told the doctor, okay fine I am diabetic, now tell me what I need to do to beat this and I will make it happen in the next six months. He said sorry you will not beat this, this is your life now and I am putting you on 750mg of Metformin. Then, in a few years, I will have to put you on insulin, but first you have to see a nutritionist to help you learn to live with this disease.   I was shocked and in disbelief.

I started the Metformin, made an appointment with a nutritionist, and then went on vacation.   While on vacation, every break I had from the beach and hanging out with my boys and wife, I researched diabetes.  I found that there is a lot of good information, but it was so fragmented, and I couldn’t tell the quackery from reality.  I also found a lot of conflict in the information and realized very quickly something I didn’t understand until now.  All the magazines, the ADA websites seemed to be nothing but advertisements for living with diabetes, not beating it.  They all had tons of information and advertisements for glucose monitors, insulin pumps, and different types of insulins, how you can eat badly even though you have diabetes.   I was really very confused.  

I started the ADA diet. But even on the ADA diet and working out every day, I wasn’t losing weight and my blood sugar wasn’t going below 140/170.  I was happy that I was no longer in the 200’s, but I know that the mid hundreds is still bad. So around July 8th I started to panic. I wanted to know why, with the change to the ADA diet, working out and taking Metformin, I couldn’t get below 100 on my blood glucose.  So I called my doctor. I explained everything I was doing, he said what I was doing was great, but  like he had told me before, this is my life, we will monitor it for a little longer, and if it doesn’t fall farther he may up my dose of metformin to twice a day and consider insulin. 

At that point I had absolutely had it with him. I was 100 percent determined to beat this thing; it had become an obsession for me. I actually started taking days off from work to research more, started working out twice a day and started to experiment with herbs. Still nothing was a sure fire fix and I started to panic more.  On July 13, 2013 we went to the book store to get some books for my sons. I went to the medical section and found The End of Diabetes. That night and the next day I read through the entire book. I started to apply what I had learned that afternoon on July 14th. Remember, my blood glucose was still around 140/170. The next morning my resting blood glucose was now 100 for the first time. I was jazzed, so excited I was going nuts. The next morning I was in the low 90’s, and then the next morning I was in the 80’s.  I was sold and really started focusing on turning this into my life style.

Here is the kicker. I kept my resting glucose in the 80’s and 90’s for about eight days when I went to see the nutritionist.  She discounted everything. She told me that my diet was not sustainable, and I needed to get serious, that I would not be able to get off the metformin. She told me that the Nutritarian diet was stupid (her words, not mine) and that it will fail me eventually, and that I have to do the ADA. She told me that I am not getting enough meat, protein, healthy oils and grains.  I just smiled, walked out and ignored her and continued on my path of following the Nutritarian program.

It is now November 19, 2013 and I have continued to be successful on the diet. I weigh 180 pounds and still losing and work out roughly twice a day. More importantly, my HA1C is now 5.2 and my resting blood sugar is 84 (last official test with doctor).  He removed diabetes and high blood pressure from my list of diagnoses, and I am officially been off all medicines now since July 18th.  God Bless you Dr. Fuhrman, you saved my life. Thank you for giving my future back!

Results may vary.