Preventing Diabetes Mellitus Type 2

By E Douglas Kihn, OMD, LAc, CPT

What is diabetes?

The term “diabetes” means “sugar in the blood.”

There are several diseases that go by the name of “diabetes.” Diabetes mellitus type 1 is an inherited disorder in which the islet cells of the pancreas fail to manufacture enough insulin, a hormone that conducts nutrients in the blood through the cell membranes and into the cells. Diabetes mellitus type 2 is by far the most common. Of the nearly 21 million people in the United States with diabetes, 90 to 95 percent have type 2 diabetes.

In people with diabetes type 2, the cells of their bodies develop a resistance to insulin and the calories that come along with it. This resistance is the result of the following. After years of suffering from the suffocating effects of excessive nutrition, the diabetes genes in the cells eventually come alive and begin to reject the overfeeding. If the cells continue to reject insulin, they will slowly starve.

Researchers attribute most cases of type 2 diabetes to obesity because there is a strong statistical relationship between obesity and type 2 diabetes. About 80 percent of diabetics with this form of the disease are significantly overweight. Studies show that the risk for developing type 2 diabetes increases by 4 percent for every pound of excess weight a person carries. That is because excess body fat – stored calories – is converted into blood sugar by the liver, creating a constant 24-hour-a-day surplus of calories bombarding the cells. The cells follow their genetic instructions and start resisting the insulin and its calories.

The other 20 percent of type 2 sufferers are the “grazers.” These are the people who, also having the “diabetes genes,” and for one reason or the other, eat small amounts of food throughout their waking hours. They might not be eating past their physical comfort levels and so may appear lean on the outside. But on the inside and at the cellular level, they are constantly engorged with food. Slowly over the course of years, their cells give up from exhaustion, and start rejecting insulin.

Chinese medicine would explain it this way. A dry warm spleen (digestive system) is a happy spleen. A happy spleen uses food and drink to produce sufficient amounts of high quality qi (energy) and xue (blood). Excessive eating will overload the machinery, causing a damp spleen. This weak spleen will fail in its job of qi and xue production, which in turn damages the jing (genetic potential), and in some, will cause symptoms of diabetes (xiao ke). In addition, the excess damp can pile up in the tissues, causing stagnation that further hinders the body’s own processes.

Indications of diabetes

The following signals are indicative of diabetes type 2:

No hunger: In the case of diabetes type 2, the whole digestion/metabolism process is in crisis. The most consistent indicator I know of for a weak digestion and metabolism is the strength and frequency of the hunger feeling, which is an empty “pang” in the stomach region that is wonderfully satisfied by a meal-sized portion of food. For people who have diabetes type 2 or who are approaching diabetes type 2, true hunger is non-existent. Their bodies are rejecting food. Why would these same bodies “request” food at the same time?

Fatigue: The body’s cells are not getting enough fuel and their engines are sputtering. The damp spleen is producing an inferior quantity and quality of qi, and all movement becomes sluggish.

Frequent urination: The excess sugar in the blood draws water from the body into the blood. The kidneys remove the water and excrete it as urine.

Tingling and numbness in the hands and feet, blurred vision and blindness: Lack of nourishment and poor circulation begin to starve cells that need a lot of blood, like the eyes, or that require a lot of qi to reach, like the extremities. Lack of nourishment in the legs and arms can progress to tissue death, gangrene, and amputation.

Repeated infections or skin sores that heal slowly or not at all: When the skin does not receive proper nourishment, it turns funky and attracts unwelcome visitors. The immune system being weakened at the same time will fail to reach the skin in sufficient force to neutralize the invaders. In addition, the skin will often exude excess damp and toxic heat in specific areas, causing severe itching and pain.

Metabolic syndrome: A syndrome is a collection of indicators that point to a pattern, but not necessarily a particular disease. Over the last decade, the term "metabolic syndrome" has come into popular medical usage. Metabolic syndrome is seen as a precursor to diabetes 2 and heart disease. Anyone with metabolic syndrome should be taking preventative steps right away. According to the American Heart Association and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, metabolic syndrome is present if you have three or more of the following signs:
• Blood pressure equal to or higher than 130/85 mmHg
• Fasting blood sugar (glucose) equal to or higher than 100 mg/dL
• Large waist circumference (length around the waist):
   o Men - 40 inches or more
   o Women - 35 inches or more
• Low HDL cholesterol:
   o Men - under 40 mg/dL
   o Women - under 50 mg/dL
• Triglycerides equal to or higher than 150 mg/dL

The conventional approach

Western medicine considers diabetes type 2 to be incurable and barely preventable. When someone is diagnosed with insulin intolerance (metabolic syndrome), the usual course of action is to prescribe drugs that interfere with the digestion of carbohydrates, control liver production of sugar, or make the cells more sensitive to insulin. These drugs come with potentially serious side effects. Patients also receive routine advice on “diet and exercise,” but without much conviction, since compliance is so poor.

Natural prevention

The first task in prevention is to stop adding to the problem. This means, above all, body fat reduction and calorie restriction. The overfed, pre-diabetic body does not want food – it wants nutrition but it doesn’t want food - and is in fact developing an “allergy” to insulin. Excuses for eating should be gradually eliminated, food portions limited, and new habits – like tea or coffee drinking for example – developed to replace the habit of mechanical eating. For ideas on eliminating mechanical eating, go to http://drkihn.com/Weight-Management.html and click on Hunger Awareness Training.

Now the job remains – how to introduce nutrients into the cells without the aid of insulin. And the answer is simple and widely known – exercise. Strenuous physical movement is the only known agency that will feed blood sugar to the cells without the aid of the pancreas and insulin. Pre-diabetics usually do not follow a regular exercise routine, and most likely avoid moving whenever possible. These people would do well to hire a professional fitness trainer to plan a balanced, daily workout schedule. Even 15 minutes of walking will reduce the amount of sugar in the blood. For people with disabilities, performing water exercises and swimming are excellent ways of bypassing insulin. Pre-diabetics who exercise regularly will notice immediately how much better they feel after a workout.

Pre-diabetics must learn to wait for hunger, and stop trying to prevent it. Without hunger, there is no “correct” food, only less harmful food.

A weak digestion that does not want more food (no hunger) will encounter the least problems on food that is the easiest to digest. This means reverting to a paleo diet, the range of foods that our Stone Age ancestors consumed for 100,000 years. It is this food, more than agricultural food or modern processed food, that our genes have designed us to digest and process. Plant-based foods are the staple of a paleo diet. When you lightly cook vegetables – stir fry, bake, steam, make into a soup - the fiber gets broken down enough to make them easily digestible, with a minimum of calories and insulin to bombard the body’s cells. Add a small amount of fish, meat, egg, nuts, berries, or fruit for variety and taste. A person who is pre-diabetic should stay away from processed food as much as possible. If an approximate equivalent for a food cannot be found in a wilderness situation, it will likely cause problems. For more information on the paleo diet, go to http://paleodietlifestyle.com/.

And lastly, there seems to be credible evidence that coffee drinking confers some degree of protection against the development of diabetes type 2. In the latest study, researchers from UCLA compared the medical histories and coffee-drinking habits of 359 women who had diabetes type 2 with those of 359 healthy women over 10 years. They used information from the Women’s Health Study, run by the National Institutes of Health. Women who drank four cups of caffeinated coffee a day were 56% less likely to develop type 2 diabetes than women who don’t drink coffee. And the more coffee consumed, the lower the risk of developing diabetes.

A 2006 study of 28,812 women in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine found that those who drank six cups of decaffeinated coffee a day had a 22% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes than those who didn’t drink any coffee. Caffeinated coffee also had a protective effect in this study, but it wasn’t as strong. Another study in 2009 from the same journal showed that each daily cup of coffee or tea cut the risk of developing diabetes by 7%.

Scientists aren’t clear about how coffee and tea increase insulin sensitivity. From a Chinese medical point of view, the only explanation I can think of is that both coffee and tea, caffeinated and decaf, are bitter-tasting. Bitter substances dry and drain dampness, and a damp spleen is at the core of the problem of diabetes 2. Reducing the dampness clogging the body’s cells means they will want to begin receiving nutrients and insulin again.