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Highway to Health     

June, 2000

                                                                                                                           

Treating diabetes without drugs.  Adult Onset Type II Diabetes.

I want to tell you why you should treat your diabetes without drugs and how you can treat your diabetes without drugs.  If you treat your diabetes without drugs it will lead to a healthier life.  It is less expensive, the complication rate will be less and you will have less likely a chance of heart attack, stroke, neuropathy, bladder dysfunction, gastroparesis or stomach dysfunction and a less likely chance of impotence.  You will feel better and you will look better than you do by treating your diabetes with drugs.  I tell people with type II diabetes that they can be completely off of their diabetes medications, both their tablets and their insulin, within in a week.  Most people do not believe me.

Just 3 weeks ago there was a lady who came to my office in tears.  She cried because in spite of taking 3 different medications; Actos, Amaryl, Glucophage and insulin, her blood sugars still went too high.  Even with her best efforts, she was having difficulty controlling her blood sugar.  In spite of her best efforts, her weight continued to go up almost weekly.  She sat in my office and cried and I told her that we could have her off of her medication.  She looked at me with skepticism.  

It angers me that so few diabetics realize there is another option.  One reason diabetics are not told this is that most physicians don’t realize there is another option or have trouble finding a patient who’s motivated enough to do it.  I can’t wave a magic wand and cause a diabetic not to need their medication anymore.  I can’t give a diabetic a shot to cause them not to need any more shots.  I can’t give a diabetic person a tablet and have that person not need any more diabetic medication.  But I can tell a diabetic person what to do and if they do it they will not need their medication anymore.  Now this does not apply to a Type I diabetic, which is someone who developed his or her diabetes as a child.  A few Type I’s develop their diabetes as adults but the majority of people who develop diabetes as an adult are Type II-adult-onset diabetics.  These people don't need to take medicine.

If think I'm crazy, please suspend your doubt for just 10 minutes for the benefit of yourself and for your family.  If you read the rest of this article and still don't believe me, then you're just not ready and I apologize for taking your time... but please invest just another 10 minutes and it could change your life if you or someone in your family takes diabetes medication.  Forget whatever you’ve heard in the past and just stay with me until the end of this article.  Within 3 days of having seen me, the lady who cried in my office was completely off of her medication and her blood sugars never went above 128mg per deciliter.  She continues to lose weight and she does not take her medication at all.  She cannot claim to be the first patient to come to me with those complaints nor can she claim to be the first patient to completely come off of their medication under my instruction and God's healing.  She's just the latest one to benefit.

I want to give you a step-by-step plan for coming off of your diabetes medication but before I do I want you to understand something about the disease process.  If you are diabetic, you probably had yourr diabetes explained to you by a hospital dietician. You had an RN who specializes in diabetes instruct you on how to use a glucometer and how to check your sugars and what foods to avoid.  You had a doctor talk to you about the importance of keeping your blood sugars under control.  You had blood tests and have been stuck and prodded, tested beyond belief if you are like the average diabetic.  So if you are reading this article you’re probably thinking you already know all you want to know about diabetes.  There is nothing new to learn.  The fact that you’re reading this book tells me that you want to be educated about your disease; but you probably feel like you know your disease well and maybe like you have no need for someone to teach you more about it.  But stay with me because I want to tell you about your disease in a way that you probably haven’t heard the story told before.  I want to point out some facts that you know.  But point them out in a way that you may not have thought about them before.  In a way that could lead to you not needing your medication.  In a way that would cause you to be healthier than you could ever be taking your medication as strictly as you could ever take it.  That is, I want to tell you how to live a life without your diabetes. 

Only three weapons against diabetes actually work.  There are really only 3 ways to defeat diabetes and they all do the same thing.  Diabetes has been studied extensively and there are many nuances that we could discuss but a real artist picks.  The best artist doesn’t paint every detail.  The best artist paints the details that bring out the message and the feeling that they want to convey.  So the artwork is the truth.  But it is the truth that moves in the right direction.  I am going to paint you diabetes with every detail being the truth, with the resulting picture being a picture that moves you to be done with your diabetes.  When I paint this picture you’ll say ‘well what about this? Or what about this detail or that detail?’  Purposefully we will leave out some finer points about diabetes because they don’t matter.  When I paint the painting of a flower if I leave out a certain part of the flower or certain shade of red that doesn’t convey the picture I want to convey, it doesn’t make my picture any less the truth.  But the bottom line is that many of the details of the research of diabetes do not help the patient or the doctor manage the disease.  These details accomplish nothing in the way of healing.  They accomplish nothing in the way of being done with your disease.  I am going to tell you the things you need to know to be well.  Though I make no apologies for the simplifications of this disease in my explanation, I would simplify it in a way that accomplishes the purpose that we are after.

Now, what about this monster called diabetes?  How does it do what it does?  And how do we defeat it?  If you’re a Type II diabetic you make insulin.  Your pancreas function responds well to sugar and makes insulin to draw the sugar back into the cells of your body.  The sugars are within the cell and then it is utilized.  You move a muscle to think a thought. Without sugar in your cells you couldn’t read this book, you couldn’t turn the page, you couldn’t form a memory of what you’re reading.  Without the insulin you couldn’t take the sugar out of your blood stream and move it into the cell.  Now, the way the insulin allows the sugar to come into the cell is that it attaches to a receptor.  A good analogy is the insulin is trying to come into the cell and must pass through a door.  It can’t go through the wall; it has to go through a door.  And the door is the receptor and the thing that opens the door is insulin.  Sugar cannot come through the door until it opens the door.  So glucose is a very prim and proper lady who has never learned of women’s rights but insists of having the door opened for her and the only thing that can open the door is the very gentlemanly insulin.  And the door is the insulin receptor. 

Now all of the cells in your body have doors and they all must use glucose to live.  If you’re a Type II diabetic you have plenty of insulin gentlemen to open doors.  And you may actually have more insulin in the beginning of your disease than a normal person so you have a lot of gentleman floating around in your blood stream looking for doors to open so that the lady glucoses can come into the cells.  You have no more glucose than a normal person.  If you’re a Type II diabetic you do not have more glucose if you’re eating the same calories as your neighbor.  But the glucose cannot go into the cell, the rooms, or the cells of your body for this reason.  Well, before we get to the reason- the reason your blood sugar goes high- is that the lady glucose is stuck outside.  Stuck out in the cold in your bloodstream and cannot enter the cells of your body and so you have a high concentration.  If you measure your blood you find that you have a high level of lady glucoses because they cannot get into the cells.  So now what keeps them out of the cells?  There are not enough doors.  You’re making insulin.  In the beginning you’re making too much insulin.  You have plenty of gentlemen to open the doors and you have no more lady glucoses than somewhat without diabetes but they are all stuck outside because there are not enough doors to go into. 

So how do you get the ladies inside the cells?  You increase the number of doors.  And the doors are the insulin receptors.  Insulin receptors is the scientific name for the molecule that the insulin binds to, to let the glucose go into the cell. 

That’s it!  You can bear other nuances that we can discuss but the main way to treat a Type II diabetic is to increase the number of insulin receptors.  So how do you do that?  There’s only 2 ways.  There are drugs, which lead to weight gain and increased disease and there are the non-drug ways which lead to weight loss and the defeat of disease.  Now the standard way of treating diabetes in this country is to recommend activity, as to recommend the non-drug ways first.  But most people are either too far along in their disease process to be treated with non-drug ways or they are given an inadequate chance to treat their disease without drugs and an inadequate explanation of how to do it.  And eventually they are put onto drugs many times in the beginning without even having trying a trial of no drugs and the drugs lead to more weight gain and further dependence on the drugs and further depression about the disease and complications of the ravages of this horrible disease. 

Don’t do it.  Let me tell you how to take care of your disease without the drugs.  Now you’re thinking ‘well can I just stop the medicine as soon as you start this program?’  Many people can.  But if you are already on medication you really should do this under the direction of a physician who understands this method of treatment enough for you to have a successful result.  If the physician doesn’t understand the physiology or isn’t motivated enough, doesn’t have the time enough to work with you in this modality, you will not be successful.  Very few people will be successful.  You need a coach and the coach must be a physician who understands this process.  If you have those things and if you are willing to follow the instructions of your physician coach you can lose your medication and be done with it-usually within a week.  So before I get further into how to increase the number of doors or increase the number of insulin receptors, let me tell you more about the medication and why you should not use it. 

Glucotrol-look it up in the PDR (the Physician’s Desk Reference).  It will tell you it’s associated with an increase.  That’s more heart attacks with the drug than without it.  Read about the ravages of diabetes and you’ll see even with good blood glucose control. Control your blood glucose perfectly, as perfectly as you can, and you’ll still have an increased risk of blindness, impotence, painful neuropathy, amputations, peripheral vascular disease, heart attack, stroke, infection, nausea, constipation and just generally feeling lousy.  So the way I’m going to teach you to handle your diabetes you can avoid all of those complications.  If you have them it won’t be from the diabetes.  You may have a heart attack but you got it from another risk factor.  If you treat your diabetes this way essentially you will become prone to developing diabetes again.  But if you treat your diabetes this way and maintain yourself in a way I’m going to tell you how to do it- you are essentially disease free as far as your diabetes is concerned. 

So what are the ways to treat it without medication?  There are only 3 other ways you can increase the insulin receptors.  One is exercise; the other is the way you eat.  All right I hear what you’re saying.  You’re already saying ‘well; I’m already eating a diabetic diet, an ADA diet. The doctor put me on a 1200 calorie ADA diet and I still gain weight.’  That’s right you did.  That’s not what I’m talking about.  You say, ‘ I’ve already tried to lose weight, I did this diet plan or that diet plan and I’m still having to go up on my sugar pill and had to take insulin and I still gain weight.’ Or maybe you lost 5 pounds and you regained it.  I know all of that.  I know what you’re thinking.  Will you shut the book and put it down?  Let me tell you- the diet I’m talking about is not a diet that you’ve probably experienced before but thousands have, and thousands have been cured from their diabetes in this way.  For you to cure your diabetes, for you to be completely drug free of your diabetes you have to do this.  You have to communicate to the cells of your body that food is in short supply.  You see what’s happened to your body is that it’s decided that food is more abundant than what you really need. 

Let me explain it a different way.  In other words, let me start over.  If you had a room full of people-full of ladies-lady glucoses and the room had intelligence and said we’re full, we can’t have any more ladies in here, this room is full.  So in order to avoid over crowding the room we would seal off some of the doors.  That’s essentially what the body does.  It says I am a little bit over nourished here, let’s seal some doors off so that no more lady glucoses can come inside and then we can monitor and cut back on the number of lady glucoses that come in here and we won’t be over crowded.  And so then you have to continue to eat.  You take some so the sugar builds up in your bloodstream and you get a high blood sugar and you have a high insulin level because now your pancreas says well the sugar is too high in the blood, we need to make more insulin because that’s what it does.  The pancreatic cells are sort of like hall monitors and when it sees too many lady glucoses standing in the hall it sends out more gentleman insulin to go open some doors.  And so when the ladies get piled up on the outside you get a high insulin level.  But that’s got nothing to do with what’s going on inside the cell.  So as a separate intelligence which sees the inside is being nourished it seals the doors off. 

So how do you stop this viscous cycle because when you take medication, what happens?  Well you fool the cell.  You trick the cell into making more insulin receptors but remember the cell is already full.  You have already started to store fat but now the insulin receptors increase and you make more doors to a room that’s already full and the lady glucoses come inside.  So now you have an over crowded room and guess what happens?  You gain weight.  You build up plaque.  You have a heart attack.  You have a stroke.  Because each individual cell has an intelligence that knows when the cell is full.  So how do you trick the system?  The only way to trick the system is to tell the cell food is in short supply.  And how do you teach the cell the food is in short supply?  You don’t do it with an ADA diet, because guess what an ADA diet is?  An ADA diet is designed to be right about your caloric needs or maybe a little less if the dietician thinks you need to lose some weight.  ADA diets will not trick anybody’s cell to be able to open more cells to let glucose in.  The way you trick the cell is you have to truly make your body, truly make the cells because they can be tricked- you have to truly make the cells hungry for more nourishment.  That is you have to live on a consistent basis day after day on a diet that supplies you with less nourishment than what your body needs.  Now this isn’t to be done to a degree that you’re in actual starvation.  But it must be done in a very well planned way that allows you to communicate to the cell, that no, you’re not going to have an abundance supply of sugar from here on out and you need to open the doors, build some new doors- that is make new receptors.  Because when you get some sugar you are going to need it and you need to be able to absorb it quickly. 

Now how can you do that in a permanent way? Can you be cured forever from your diabetes?  This is the way you do it.  You have to do it through a diet that is extreme.  And you have to do it through exercise.  This must be consistent, almost daily, and more than what you’re used to doing.  You know one of the big fallacies is to think that you can do the same thing and get a different result.  Because now I hear you saying, ‘well I’m already walking,’ or I’m already doing whatever it is you do, water aerobics or you’re biking.  I’m telling you that if you are a Type II diabetic you are not doing enough and if you’re not ready to do more than you are doing, you might as well throw the book away now because you are wasting your time.  But if you’re willing to be open to the idea that more might be better- than hang with me and I’ll tell you exactly how much more-how much more exercise and how much less food you need.  A lot of it depends on your own body’s intelligence and how long your disease has been ongoing.  But you can reach the end so that you don’t need your medication anymore.  I never diagnose anybody as having the beginning of diabetes at a certain date because you never really know when the disease started.  You only know when you diagnosed it and that’s usually quite some time after it began.  But usually where your weight must go or where you are before you are cured of your diabetes is back to whatever you weighed when the diabetes began.  Where your activity must go is back to the level you had before your diabetes began.  

If I had a diabetic patient Type II, there are 2 routes of treatment to teach the cell to be hungry for sugar.  The first is to go on a complete water fast for 7 days. That’s 7 days.  7 times 24 hours with nothing but water.  And you’re saying, ‘well, can this be healthy?  This sounds like it would be dangerous.’  Let me tell you what dangerous is.  Dangerous is having diabetes for 20 years and dying of a heart attack. Going 7 days without food when you’re 40 pounds over weight is not dangerous.  It’s done; it has been done for centuries. The wisest men in the world throughout the history of the world have promoted fasting.  Jesus Christ fasted.  Johnny Weinsmiller (Tarzan) fasted.  Jack LaLanne fasted.  Thereau fasted.  Only in our leaning-tower-of-Pisa medical establishment has it suddenly become unhealthy to do without food in a country where 55% of the adults are overweight.  Get over it if you think fasting is not healthy.  Fasting is one of the healthiest things you could ever do unless you take it to extremes.  Now, you’re saying, ‘well 7 days is an extreme.’  No, an extreme is carrying 40 pounds of extra weight around for 10 years until you have a heart attack.

So how do you do a 7 day fast?  It is best to do it under the direction of a physician who understands this physiology and understands fasting.  But I can tell you if you come to my clinic and you stay with me and we put you on a fast, you will come off of your medication the first day, completely off of your medication.  And you won’t go back on it ever again if you do what I ask you to do.  You will be healthy.  You will be medication free and you will feel the best you’ve felt in years.  The problem with doing a fast at home is you’re not supported.  You’re not sure what’s happening.  You’re not sure what to do with your medicine.  You’re afraid if you stop it too soon your sugars are going to go too high or if you try to go without eating while you’re still taking your medication, it’s going to go too low.  But when you stop your medication and you stop eating, this is what happens with your cells. They say, wait a minute, because remember inside the cell the lady glucoses are being consumed.  They don’t just hang out in the cell.  The cell uses them.  And they are consumed.  That is they are turned into energy.  So, when you quit eating you’ve got this cell that’s going along nice and happy full of glucose and it starts to use it up and there is one door coming into the cell.  It gets a little low of glucose and then it gets a little more low until finally it says wait a minute, we are starting to get very low on glucose here and there’s none out there.  There’s nothing happening here, there are no lady glucoses knocking on our one door.  Let’s build another door so if one comes by here we will have a better chance of it coming through the door.  And then it builds another, and another and another until that cell becomes so sensitive to glucose that even the tiniest bit of insulin flies open all the doors and the glucose goes sailing in and more glucose can come in more quickly just like more people can walk more quickly through several doors than they can through one door.  By the end of the 7th day most people can go back to a reasonable healthy diet and never need their medication again.  Now if you fasted for 24 hours and you go back to eating a normal diet, the chances are you will not have built enough doors or not enough insulin receptors to be able to keep a normal blood sugar without your medication.  By the 7th day you will have not only lost some weight and probably be feeling more energetic than you did on the 1st day, not only will you look better and feel better, but when you start to eat again your blood sugar is going to be very well maintained unless you start eating more and more and more in high glycemic index- high caloric foods that are more than what your cells need and they begin to get packed again and they start to seal off doors again and you’ll develop diabetes again.  So, what to do is when you go back to eating is that you go back to eating in a reasonable way that supplies the caloric need that’s equal to what your ideal body weight is. 

Now, what’s an ideal body weight?  If you’re a diabetic, with most people, your ideal body weight is whatever you weighed when you were about 17 years old.  And you’re going to say, ‘man, I haven’t weighed that since I was 17 years old.’  You can weigh than again.  But another rule of thumb is what I call the elite runner ideal weight.  That is, elite runners weigh twice their height in inches.  So if you’re a 6-foot person, 6 x 12 is 72 so your ideal weight would be 72 x 2 which is 144 pounds.  A 6-foot man who weighs 144 pounds would be considered very thin in the United States of America, but he would be considered about the normal weight in many other countries.  In a country where over the half of the population is obese, someone who’s on the thin side appears very thin.  You could probably maintain a diabetes free life at a weight over twice your height in inches but you must maintain a reasonable caloric intake if you hope to maintain a drug free diabetes free life.  One of the best ways to do this is with a weekly 24-hour water fast.  This rebuilds doors or rebuilds insulin receptors.  Rebuilds insulin sensitivity.  It helps bring blood glucose under control.  It helps re-teach you what hunger is.  It controls your weight and it’s a good physical and spiritual discipline in many other ways.  If you are new to fasting, contact me for more information about how to fast.  I am sure that you may feel like most Americans or even most physicians and fasting is a new idea for you, something you read about Holy men doing or you never thought it would apply to common people.  But I’m telling you nobody is going to study fasting and prove its efficacy enough to compete with the big drug companies because what do you sell?  There’s nothing to sell to fund the research.  But if you’re studying Amaryl or glucose, you have a product to sell.  If you’re studying feeding somebody water as a way to treat disease, where’s the profit in that? 

Now if a complete 7 day water fast seems too radical for you and if its something you can’t work in your schedule because it really is too dangerous for most people to do at home and a lot of people have trouble working themselves up into the excitement about taking a week off from work to sit around and drink water then believe me that’s about the best way to start.  But if that doesn’t seem practical to you, there is another option with you diet.  And that is to go on a very low calorie diet without ever doing the fast.  Here’s a fun fact for you.  Of all the diets studied, all the fad diets, all the scientific diets, all the Mayo Clinic diets, you name anybody’s diet- the only one that’s been proven to extend the life years, not help disease processes but actually cause you to live a longer life-in everything ever studied including spiders, including monkeys, people, dogs, you name it (there was a review article about this in the New England Journal about it a year ago that reviewed all the hundred’s of studies that have been done on this particular diet), the only one proven to cause you to live a longer life, and you know  what the diet is?  It’s the very low calorie diet.  It doesn’t matter if your percent body fat is low.  I don’t care if you’re a 4% body fat gymnast, it’s been proven the lighter you are within reason, I am not talking about anorexia nervosa or malnutrition in a third world country.  I am talking about a very low calorie diet that borders on malnutrition but doesn’t quite make it.  It still supplies adequate protein, adequate nutrients, vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates and fats but a low calorie diet has been proven to extend life. 

What I recommend for my diabetic patients that are not willing to go on a fast is that they go on a very low calorie diet as a ways to coming immediately off their medication and they stay on a very low calorie diet until they reach the weight at which they can go back to a reasonable healthy diet and not need their medication.  In other words, there is a set point for you somewhere.  There is a weight combined with a certain activity level at which you will not need medication.  If you are a 180-pound man it could be that if you weighed 152 and were walking a mile a day, you may no longer need medication for your diabetes.  If you weighed 154, you may still need it.  It’s hard to know exactly where your set point is but it’s probably right about whatever you weighed when you were 18 years old.  Give or take about 10 pounds. So add about 10 pounds to your 18-year-old weight and that’s about what you need to weigh. 

So you go on a very low calorie diet until you reach that particular weight and then you go back to a more reasonable diet that gives a caloric intake equal to whatever it takes to support your weight at your ideal weight.  Your ideal weight then is your disease free weight or your diabetes free weight.  Again, for a very low calorie diet, unfortunately you need some help.  It’s hard to do this on your own and do it safely.  I am sorry; most people cannot tune up their car anymore without the help of a mechanic yet somehow they think they can tune up their bodies by buying a $2.00 book.  It just doesn’t work that way.  Your body is much more complicated than a Volvo and if you think you can go buy a $5.00 book at Barnes and Noble and go tune up your Volvo, go give it a try.  But somehow people think they can do that with a body that’s broken down by disease.  Get some help and get it from somebody who understands what I am talking about and doesn’t look at it with a jaundiced uneducated eye and I don’t mean a medical school educated eye either.  When I went to medical school and finished in 1988, not that long ago, I attended 1 of only 2 schools in the country that had a course in nutrition and our course was only 3 months long--only a few hours of the day for 3 months.  We spent more time learning infectious diseases that I will never see than I did studying food, which every one of my patients eat.  So unfortunately physicians in this country are still very under educated about the medicinal properties of food.  We learned from the guru’s and the athletes instead of from our research because our research if fueled by pharmaceutical dollars not by grocery stores or athletes.  There is nothing wrong with pharmaceutical companies in particular and they’ve allowed us to treat many diseases and to save lives but they just aren’t motivated to teach you how to save your life with a glass of water.  Why should they?  It’s not that they are bad organizations or run by bad people, it’s not that the medical profession is run by evil doctors or out to stick you with a bunch of wicked medications.  It’s just the nature of the research process.  The research type physicians apply for money to buy groceries for their children from people who have money and people who have money are the ones who have something to sell and nobody makes money selling water for a 7 day fast.  So the doctors who want to buy groceries for their kids, tuition for their kids, fancy cars for their spouse-doctors who want to live in this world-they apply for grant money from people who have money and people who have money are those that have something to sell for the most part.  So find a physician who understands a very low calorie diet and how to take you off of your diabetes medication. 

Now to exercise.  Another way to teach your cell that it needs sugar is to put the cells of the body that use much sugar make them hungry for sugar, that is muscles.  Make your muscles hungry for sugar.  They don’t get hungry for sugar by being inactive.  They must be made hungry on a near daily basis.  I am not talking about a 30-minute walk 3 x a week.  I am talking about a 60-minute walk, a full hour walk 6 days a week minimum.  You may not be able to do this in the beginning.  Now after you reach a disease free state, a diabetes free state you can back off but until you reach that state, you are going to need to work up to an hour a day, 6 days a week if you hope to be diabetes free.   So, when you do that your cells are going to learn that they need to be ready for glucose and they’ll increase in the insulin receptors dramatically.  Your blood sugar will be controlled because now the insulin has a door to open.  Before you had all these gentleman running around looking for doors to open up so that the glucoses could go inside the cell and now you have plenty of doors so that when the insulin is released it has no trouble finding all the doors it needs in order to let the glucoses go inside. 

So in summary, there are only 2 things you can do to treat your diabetes.  You can take medicine or you cannot take medicine.  If you are going to treat your diabetes without medication you must do 2 things.  You must change your diet in a way that teaches the cell that food is not an abundant supply and you must exercise the muscle of your body in a way that teaches them that they need sugar.

The summary of a basic plan to accomplish these things are: diet- start a 7 day water fast followed by a diet that supplies the caloric needs needed to maintain your weight at your ideal body weight.  Your ideal body weight is either what you weighed when you were 18 assuming you were healthy or its 2 x your height in inches plus about 10 pounds.  For caloric intake to support this body weight once you have calculated is if you are a man, 12 x your ideal body weight in pounds.  So if your ideal body weight were 150, your caloric intake to support that body weight would be 150 x 12.  Now if you are doing exercise, you can add in the number of calories of exercise you are doing per day as an ideal number of calories to take in per day.  The good part about this is that if you do a 7 day fast and follow that with a 1 day water fast once a week your caloric intake will be pretty close to on track automatically if you add to that an hour long walk 6 days a week.  The other option with your diet is to have a very low calorie diet without the fast, but a very low calorie diet until you reach ideal body weight.  Now with exercise you must have an hour a day of walking 6 days a week.  Another way to do this is to cover 3 miles a day 6 days a week.  This could be done walking at which point for many people it will equal out to be about an hour’s walking.  Or it can be by jogging, which for most people would turn out to be somewhere around 30 minutes.  But if you’ll cover 3 miles a day 6 days a week after a period of some time, you will reach your ideal body weight almost automatically without any conscious change in your diet.  That is your diet will start to change on its own because your body will say this is too much weight to carry and your appetite will go down. Your body will try to control its weight by changing some hormone levels that cause you to eat less.  Now as an addendum to the book, I’d like for you to know that there are many nuances to this plan and to try to do this on your own could be suicide. 

If you try to do this without the help of a physician who knows what they are doing, you could die.  But if you find a physician who is sympathetic to your wish and if you are motivated you can come off of your medication.  Once again let me warn you if you do this on your own you could risk electrolyte abnormalities that cause heart attack, you could risk blood pressure changes that cause syncope, passing out and heart attack.  You could risk a hypoglycemic reaction that puts you in a coma.  You could risk hyperglycemia that puts you in a coma.  You could risk your life. 

Do not try this on your own.  Now, is it dangerous under the direction of a physician but it sounds pretty bad if you do it on your own, well I compare it with walking down the street. If you had no understanding of traffic and cars, and you walk down the street and you are walking in the center of the stripes that divide the lanes, you are taking your life--essentially you are committing suicide.  But if you have someone who understands traffic flow, who leads you to the side and you walk along the shoulder on the grass surface next to the road, sure you may get plowed over by a drunk driver but the chances are you’ll do pretty well and not have any injury at all. We all walk along sidewalks everyday without any worry that we are going to be smeared.  The same applies to this form of therapy.  Unfortunately most physicians don’t even understand the process I‘ve described to you but for sure very few laymen do.  If you attempt this on your own it is as if you are a child from a third world country trying to walk down a busy street in the city without any understanding of the rules of the road where if you attempt this process under the direction of a physician you are a savvy pedestrian walking along a quiet country lane with very little risk at all to your health.  If you have an interest in this form of therapy and you can find no physician near you who understands or is willing to help you in this way, please contact me at www.runels.com or call me office at 1-800-615-1270.