There Is a Cure for Diabetes: The Tree of Life 21-Day+ Program Paperback - 2008 - 1st Edition

Excerpt

From the Introduction: Healing Diabetes Is a Shift in Consciousness
 
Yes . . . Type-2 diabetes is a curable disease. From my thirty-five years of clinical experience as a wholistic medical doctor, and that of livefood therapeutic centers since the 1920s when Max Gerson, MD, healed Albert Schweitzer of diabetes with live foods, the fact that diabetes is a curable disease is common knowledge in the live-food community. Diabetes is not a fixed sentence; it is not our natural condition, and has only become a problem of pandemic proportions since the 1940s. The word pandemic comes from the Greek pan-, meaning “all,” plus demos, meaning “people or population.” Thus, “pandemos” or “all the people.” A pandemic is an epidemic that becomes very widespread and affects a whole region, a continent, or the world. This book is about looking deeply at the underlying causes of diabetes on both the pandemic-global and the personal level, and supplying readers with a way to achieve rapid reversal from the misery of a diabetic physiology to a joyous and healthy physiology.
 
Although many people have a genetic susceptibility to Type-2 diabetes, the true causes (which activate the genetic potential physiology of diabetes) lie in a personal and world lifestyle and diet that pulls the trigger on the diabetes gun. This diabetogenic personal and world lifestyle and diet includes on the level of individual responsibility: a diet high in refined carbohydrates such as white sugar and white flour; high amounts of cooked animal saturated fats; trans-fatty acids produced from cooking (and especially frying oils at high temperatures); low fiber food; coffee and caffeinated beverages; smoking; a lifestyle devoid of love and exercise; high stress; watching TV programming. Diabetogenic contributing factors on a planetary level include living in a degraded environment in which the air, earth, and water are, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, filled with 70,000 different toxic chemicals, heavy metals, agrochemicals, and other toxic substances—65,000 of which are potentially hazardous to our health. The Environmental Defense Council reports that more than four billion pounds of toxic chemicals are released into the environment each year, including seventy-two million pounds of known carcinogens. In addition, we live in a mental and emotional environment filled with messages of stress and death from the media, including news of constant wars and terrorism infecting the planet. The degenerate conditions, lifestyle, and diet that create diabetes emanate from these modern human-created realities, which, taken together, we are calling the Culture of Death.
 
The cure, on the most profound level, is to move away from a global and personal Culture of Death, to embrace the Culture of Life. On a personal level this means choosing to live in a way that promotes life and well-being for oneself as well as the planet. It means creating a diet and lifestyle in which there is minimal or no incidence of diabetes. Individually, this means a diet that is organic, vegan, at least 80 percent live-food, high in mineral content, 15—20 percent plant-only fat (no animal fat), high-fiber, low-glycemic, low-insulin index, well hydrated, individualized, and prudent food intake—a cuisine that is sustainable for the duration of one’s life, and prepared and eaten with love. Collectively, it means creating a world culture where all people have access to healthy, organic food and water, decent shelter, and a living environment free of chemicals and pollutants. Healing diabetes in this personal and global context is an act of love for oneself and the living planet. This love is an expression of the Culture of Life.
 
The teaching of this book is that humanity is created to be vibrant, alive, and healthy. As it says in Deuteronomy 30:19 from 3,400 years ago: “Today, I have set before you life and death and a blessing and a curse. You must choose life in order that you and your children shall live.” Things have not changed. We still have that choice. This book is about empowering you, health professionals, and national and global policymakers to have that choice. Even in the most adverse circumstances, it still is possible for motivated individuals and nations to heal on the Tree of Life 21-Day+ Program as an act of love and consciousness.
 
The inspiration for this book began with a movie on diabetes and live foods that was made at the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Patagonia, Arizona. The original idea was to do a film on the effect of being raw for thirty days. I strongly suggested that it would be more interesting to the general public to witness on film the effect of live foods on diabetic, McDonald’s-Culture-of-Death individuals. Based on my clinical experience in healing diabetes naturally with motivated people, I was confident that these principles and approach would work with this new group of diabetic people. It seemed like an interesting exploration of how it would work for a group of people totally unfamiliar with live-food cuisine and way of life. The results were amazing. Of the six who started the program, only one dropped out. By the fourth day, four were off their insulin or oral hypoglycemic medications, and one Type-1 diabetic was down from 70 units of insulin per day to moving toward the 5 units he reached by the end of the month. One of the two Type-1 diabetics, whose fasting blood sugar (FBS) chart appears later in the book, and who was diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes by doctors in a hospital setting, dropped to a normal blood sugar after two weeks, and has remained there ever since. As of this writing, two years later, he remains cured of Type-1 diabetes. Another participant, who had severe neuropathy in his lower limbs, numbness in his scrotum and feet, was suffering from mental deterioration and confusion, and was preparing to have a foot amputated, recovered completely from the neuropathy and became mentally clearer. The tissue of his foot also healed and his blood sugar dropped to normal range in the first two weeks. Two of the women who had been living with a blood sugar of 300-plus while on medications dropped to blood sugars of 111 and 130 by the end of the month without medications. Most of the other blood chemistries of all of them became normal after one month. Mental state became clear and joyous in all participants.
 
On realizing the powerful effect of thirty days of live food with specific diabetic supplements and herbs on participants’ physical and mental states, and on their diabetes in particular, it became clear that we had a program that could be applicable and successful for everyone, as this group was representative of the Western populace. The Tree of Life 21-Day+ Program is more powerful than the thirty-day raw approach seen in the film. It includes a minimum seven-day green juice fast in the first week, which greatly accelerates the reversing of the diabetic degenerative physiological process. Based on research by Dr. Stephen Spindler, it is our theory that calorie restriction turns on the anti-aging and theoretically the anti-diabetic genes. In our dietary approach, there is actually no restriction, but the participant is invited to enjoy a delicious, healthy cuisine. This is the powerful secret of the success of this program. In the second week, a four-day course shows people how to let go of their belief that diabetes is incurable. It also shows people how to let go of all the psychological programming and habits that create the diabetes lifestyle. In the third week, people learn how to prepare low-glycemic foods and a healthy healing cuisine. We then have a one year follow-up that supports people in staying on the program, which includes, if needed, supervised Juice Feasting, a powerful at-home practice for those who need to continue to lose weight and heal the complications associated with a diabetic physiology that develops over many years and takes some time to reverse...

Media reviews

“With this book, Gabriel Cousens, MD, takes his place among the world's leading physician-healers. A synthesis of his thirty-five years of clinical experience, There Is a Cure for Diabetes presents a practical, comprehensive, and highly effective holistic approach for treating and curing one of our most common diseases.  It is the greatest contribution to the treatment of diabetes I've encountered in the forty years since I began my medical training.”
—Dr. Rob Ivker, DO, ABHM, co-founder and past president of the American Board of Holistic Medicine and author of Sinus Survival
 
“Gabriel Cousens, MD, has clearly established himself as the world's leading medical authority on diabetes. His Tree of Life program is proven to completely reverse Type-2 diabetes and markedly improve the condition of those suffering from Type-1 diabetes.”
—David Wolfe, author of Eating for Beauty and The Sunfood Diet Success System and founder of Sunfood Nutrition and The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation
 
“There is abundant evidence that people with even long-standing diabetes can improve their health dramatically—and practically reverse their condition. Gabriel Cousens, MD, shows you how to tackle this disease through lifestyle intervention, explaining how a low-fat, vegan diet could save your life. There Is a Cure for Diabetes is an extraordinary tool that will guide you in your journey to fight diabetes and regain your health.”
—Neal Barnard, MD, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
 
“As a doctor who has treated diabetes for nearly thirty years, I can tell you with certainty that the standard medical protocols and management of this illness are not only inappropriate, they’re absurd. In sharp contrast, Gabriel Cousens, MD, has developed a protocol for successfully restoring the health and well-being of diabetics, sparing them the pain and agony of unnecessary and inevitable amputations, obesity, blindness, and premature death. If followed, his advice in There Is a Cure for Diabetes provides diabetics freedom from their illness and enriches the quality of their lives.”
—Daniel Nuchovich, MD, director of Jupiter Gardens Medical Center and Jupiter Institute of the Healing Arts
 
"The beauty of Gabriel's work is that he's not just putting forward an interesting theory—the people he's cured of diabetes are living proof that it works. The truths in [There is a Cure for Diabetes] go behind diabetes—they're a sensible lifestyle choice for all human beings."
—The Mother magazine
 
"There is a Cure for Diabetes: The Tree of Life 21-Day+ Program by Gabriel Cousens, M.D., prescribes fasting and a low glycemic, low insulin scoring diet."
—Publishers Weekly
 
"Massively packed with information and references to studies and other scientific papers that can make your head spin. [Cousens'] years of tireless scientific research for the living foods community is a precious gift for those of us seeking a much healthier lifestyle. All in all, There Is A Cure For Diabetes is an excellent book for a raw foodist library."
—Raw Food Right Now!
 
"Gabriel Cousens’ book, There is a Cure for Diabetes: The Tree of Life 21-Day+ Program, is a comprehensive guide—not to living with diabetes but for learning how to live without it. It is, as the author explains, about embracing a culture of life rather than a culture of death. In reading this book, do not expect an approach of moderate changes to your lifestyle—adding this, or subtracting that—this is about total physical and spiritual transformation."
—Spiritualitea.com