An Open Letter on Curing Type 2 Diabetes: What I Wish Every Last Person Knew

The info that I would paste on the door of every doctor's office: that T2 diabetes is dangerous when only treated with meds yet easily cured with diet.

Summary of today’s article:

• See the bottom for an open letter that I wish the whole world could read

• Type 2 diabetes continues to destroy the body WHILE on meds to treat it

• This is because you can’t cure a dietary disease with meds

• Type 2 diabetes is one of the easiest diseases to cure without meds

• Intermittent fasting and carb reduction are proven cures that anyone can easily implement

• Click here to read T2 diabetes non drug, remission success stories. Even a patient on her deathbed from T2 diabetes found remission through fasting

Dear Reader,

Here’s one of the oddest quandaries that I’ve come across in a long time:

How is it possible that there is a disease that affects one in two adults yet medical schools all over the country accidentally forgot to teach doctors the 15-minute lesson about how to cure this disease?

I’m talking, of course, about T2 diabetes (which I’ll just refer to as diabetes from now on.) Since one in two adults is either prediabetic or diabetic, diabetes is now the most prevalent disease in the developed world.¹ Everyone either has it or knows someone who does. (However, 8 out of 10 prediabetics are undiagnosed²).

And yet, the vast majority of doctors believe that it is a permanent and progressive disease and that the most someone with this diagnosis can hope for is to slow the progression of this disease. Many believe drugs are the best treatment.³

But the evidence for a non-drug cure is unavoidable if one is willing to look. For example, Dr. David Unwin, practicing in the UK, recently posted on Twitter that he just put his 129th patient into non-drug diabetes remission—129 people cured at just one doctor’s small clinic.

Dr. Unwin himself had not the slightest idea that diabetes could be cured until a patient marched into his office and scolded him after finding the cure herself (full story here). After that exchange, Dr. Unwin changed the entire way he practiced medicine.

This is very personal to me. My dad suffered from diabetes for 30 years and was under the care of doctors during that entire time. Never once did a doctor mention to him that he could completely reverse his disease if he made radical lifestyle changes. They encouraged him to lay off sugary drinks and desserts, which he did, but this wasn’t enough to effect the change he needed.

Then in 2018, my sister gave my dad a copy of Dr. Jason Fung’s The Diabetes Code, the same year the book was published. He read the book and followed its recommendations to fast for part of each day and greatly reduce carbs. Within a few months, his diabetes was gone and his doctors took him off all the medications he had been on for 30 years. But why did he have to find the info himself? He trusted his medical professionals to give him the best info on how to treat his disease.

Since doctors aren’t spreading the word, I will.

The sad part of my dad’s story is that the damage done to his heart over those 30 years was permanent—he passed away from diabetes-induced heart failure in 2022. However, he was under the care of doctors the entire time, following their advice and taking their pills. Yet the diabetes continued to damage his body despite the meds.

If someone had told him the cure when he was first diagnosed, or perhaps even 10 years before he died, he would have changed back then, before the damage was permanent.

But for many people, it’s not yet too late. Now is the time to spread the word.

The Many Ways Diabetes Damages the Body

Fung carefully documents all the ways diabetes damages the body in spite of meds in The Diabetes Code. He explains that diabetes drugs are only able to “manage” the disease by keeping the blood sugars from skyrocketing too high. But the disease is still damaging the body while you take medications.

This is important information. Neither myself, nor Dr. Fung, nor anyone else is against the use of drugs simply on principle. This isn’t a case of, “My great grandfather had to walk to school barefoot so everyone should walk to school barefoot just because.” We aren’t opposing the drugs because people should do things the hard way just to be old-fashioned.

We are warning about reliance on medication because it doesn’t work. But it can give the false illusion that it does.

I’m opposed to using drugs because nearly every way that Dr. Fung outlines that diabetes damages the body happened to my dad while he was on medication. Meds are not capable of curing the disease.

In Chapter 3, “The Whole Body Effect,” Fung details the exact damage that happens in the body while taking medications for diabetes to so-called “manage it.”

1. Microvascular Complications:

   1. Retinopathy: (eye damage)

      Diabetes weakens the small, retinal blood vessels, which causes blood and other fluids to leak out…Retinopathy may actually develop up to seven years before the diabetes itself is diagnosed. (p. 23, emphasis author’s)

   2. Nephropathy: diabetic kidney disease.

      Ten years after diagnosis, 25 percent of patients will have evidence of kidney disease. Once established, diabetic nephropathy tends to progress, leading to more and more kidney impairment until eventually the patient requires dialysis or transplantation. (p. 25)

   3. Neuropathy: diabetic nerve damage

      Diabetic nerve damage affects approximately 60-70 percent of patients with diabetes…Damage to different nerves will result in different symptoms, including tingling, numbness, burning, and pain…The incessant pain of severe diabetic neuropathy is debilitating, and the symptoms are commonly worse at night. Even powerful painkillers such as narcotic medications are often ineffective. Instead of pain, patients may sometimes experience complete numbness. (p. 25)

2. Macrovascular complications

   1. Atherosclerosis: hardening of the arteries

      Diabetes greatly increases the risk of developing atherosclerosis. (p. 26)

   2. Heart Disease

      Diabetes increases the risk of cardiovascular disease two- to fourfold, and these complications develop at a younger age compared to nondiabetics. Sixty-eight percent of diabetics aged sixty-five or older will die of heart disease, and a further sixteen percent will die of stroke. (p. 27)

   3. Stroke

      Diabetes is a strong independent risk factor in stroke, meaning that, on its own, diabetes increases a person’s risk of having a stroke by as much as 150-400 percent. (p. 28)

   4. Peripheral Vascular Disease

      PVD is caused by atherosclerosis of the large blood vessels supplying the legs. The disruption of normal blood flow starves the legs of oxygen-carrying hemoglobin. (p. 28)

      PVD is what causes many diabetics to get foot and leg ulcers that will not heal. This happened to my dad. His toe got gangrene. His entire leg from the knee down needed to be amputated but his heart was not strong enough to survive the surgery.

3. Other Complications

   1. Alzheimer’s Disease

      The links between Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes have grown so strong that many researchers have suggested Alzheimer’s disease can be called type 3 diabetes. (p. 29)

   2. Cancer

      Type 2 diabetes increases the risk of most common cancers, including breast, stomach, colorectal, kidney, and endometrial cancers. This may be related to some of the medications used to treat diabetes. (p. 29)

   3. Fatty Liver Disease

      Current estimates suggest that NAFLD [non-alcoholic fatty liver disease] affects 30 percent and NASH [non-alcoholic steatohapatis] 5 percent of the U. S. population; both are important causes of liver cirrhosis (irreversible scarring of the liver). (p. 30)

   4. Infections

      Diabetics are more prone to all types of infections…Not only are they more susceptible to many types of bacterial and fungal infections than nondiabetics, the effects also tend to be more serious. (p. 30)

   5. Skin and Nail Conditions

      Numerous skin and nail conditions are linked to diabetes. (p. 30)

   6. Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome PCOS

      PCOS is caused by elevated insulin resistance and increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes three- to fivefold in young women. (p. 31)

A Frightening Diagnosis

It sounds like quite a scary diagnosis. And diabetics should be scared—they should be properly warned of the dangers! All the scariest diseases come along as bonuses with diabetes: cancer, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s. And yet, docs often fail to first, point out the severity of diabetes and second, point out the possibility of dodging all those scary complications.

Below is the letter that I wish my dad had received when he was first diagnosed more than 30 years ago. If I could have my way, this is the letter that every person would receive when they were diagnosed with diabetes. I wish I could print it out and tape it on the inside of the door of every doctor’s office in the world for every patient to read while they wait.

So You’ve Been Diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes

Dear Patient,

You’ve just received a scary diagnosis. You have type 2 diabetes or prediabetes, a disease which, if treated only with meds instead of a lifestyle change, will inevitably lead to physical suffering as you age. It will greatly increase your risk of heart disease, stroke, neuropathy (painful nerve damage), kidney disease, Alzheimer’s, cancer, blindness, and limb amputation. If allowed to continue, this disease will likely decrease your lifespan by 15-20 years, and your healthspan, the amount of time you remain healthy and active with a sane mind, by even more than that. This bodily damage occurs WHILE on medication to treat the disease.

But the good news is that T2 diabetes is one of the easiest diseases to cure.

You now have before you two options: the medication route and the lifestyle route.

If you choose the medication route, diabetes will continue to damage your body in spite of the best medications science can offer. The medications can slightly slow the progression of the disease but they cannot cure you. Plus, you will be financially dependent on expensive medications for the rest of your life.

Thankfully, you have a second option, the lifestyle option. This option requires no medication if you are diligent. It’s possible that you can not only cure the disease, but get your blood sugar numbers so low that you are at an even lower risk of the above complications than the average person. In that way, the disease can become a blessing in disguise by forcing you to make lifestyle changes.

What changes do you have to make? It’s not enough for you to simply reduce sugary drinks and have fewer desserts, as important as those two changes are. You need to do more. The most important thing you can start doing tonight is to practice intermittent fasting. This means you quit eating at 7 pm tonight and do not eat again until 11 am tomorrow morning. This will give your body 16 hours to process all the fuel you consumed the day before. If this seems too hard, you can work on a 14 hour fast each night. Quit eating by 8 and don’t eat until 10 am. Slowly work towards longer and longer fasts.

Begin prioritizing protein and healthy animal fats (such as butter) at every meal. Take a short walk every day. Greatly reduce the amount of processed foods and carbs you eat. Each small change you make will encourage you to make another small change.

Intermittent fasting can be the beginning of many other lifestyle changes. Slowly shorten your eating window until your blood sugar numbers come down. Many diabetics need to work toward eating only one meal a day while they are reversing their diabetes.

Measure your waist: is it shrinking even if the scale isn’t? Then good things are happening.

Pay attention to your appetite. Are you feeling more full after eating less food? IF often causes this. Are you losing your cravings for sweets and carbs? Keep reducing them until your blood sugar numbers lower.

Make sure you track your A1c (the average sugariness in your blood) with your provider. It is rewarding to see your lab numbers improve. Most importantly, have your fasting insulin test taken. When you get your fasting insulin down near 3.0, you’ll know that your disease is reversed and all the former risk factors are now near non-existent.

The most rewarding thing will be to know that you’re in control of your health. When you delay eating and allow yourself to feel hungry but don’t give in, you are giving yourself a gift and showing how strong you are. You will not need to spend your hard-earned money on expensive medications that you can’t live without. You won’t need to be a slave to expensive insurance plans to help you pay for meds. You may be able to opt for a cheaper, high-deductible plan.

Fasting and reducing the carbs you consume puts you back in control of your health. If you’re already on meds for diabetes, make sure you work with your doctor to reduce those meds. Some people can come off them within a week or two of fasting. Continuing them (especially insulin) while fasting can lead to dangerously low blood sugar.

But without meds interfering, your body knows exactly what to do without food. Your body has stored away weeks or months worth of extra fuel and finally reducing those stores is life-changing.

So what are you waiting for? Take control of your health in a way that is free, empowering, simple, and life-changing.

Please pass this on to anyone else you know who has just faced a type 2 diabetes diagnosis. Anyone can do this. Anyone can be healed.

Sincerely,

Someone who has done this very thing and wants others to benefit too.

Please feel free to copy this letter, reproduce it, forward it, or share it in any way you see fit. Yes, you may feel a little silly telling someone something different than what their doctor is telling them. But I’ve found that the more that you share such info, the easier it gets. You get kind of used to sticking your neck out. You’ll see.

1. https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/data/statistics-report/index.html

2. https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/prevention/about-prediabetes.html#:~:text=There%20are%2096%20million%20American,2%20diabetes%20within%205%20years.

3. Nina Teicholz says in the Forward to The Diabetes Code: “Tragically, diabetes authorities worldwide have come to the consensus that the best hope for sufferers is merely to control or delay the disease through a lifelong dependence on medications combined with medical devices and surgery. There is no emphasis on better nutrition. Instead, some forty-five international medical and scientific societies and associations around the world declared in 2016 that bariatric surgery, which is both expensive and risky, should be the first option for diabetes treatment. Another recently approved idea is a new weight-loss procedure in which a thin tube, implanted in the stomach, ejects food from the body before all the calories can be absorbed, which some have termed “medically sanctioned bulimia.” And all this is in addition to the basic regimen for diabetes sufferers: multiple medications, which cost hundreds of dollars a month, and which include insulin, a drug that paradoxically often causes weight gain. These techniques for managing diabetes are expensive, invasive, and do nothing to reverse diabetes—because, as Dr. Jason Fung explains in The Diabetes Code, “you can’t use drugs [or devices] to cure a dietary disease.”

Fung, Dr. Jason. The Diabetes Code: 2 (The Code Series) (pp. 7-8). Greystone Books. Kindle Edition.