Dr. Cousens Cure for Diabetes....Raw foods

Has anyone, with TYPE ! diabetes every followed this man’s raw food diet and cured their diabetes? My son’s biological mom is a firm believer in this and has convinced my 12 year old son, that this diet will cure his insulin dependent, type 1 diabetes???

Dr. Nonsense should burn in hell and this lady should realize that she is creating false hope in her child. This is a serious case of quakery. There is NO cure for type 1 diabetes at the moment. The best possible knowledge is important to achieve good glucose control. This control with insulin is very challenging. It does not help at all to make this child question his insulin treatment.

Do you know if eating RAW foods helps to balance blood glucose? I am just grasping at straws, trying to find some way to support this crazy notion and not have to tell my son that his mom is creating false hopes…thank you for your comment.

It could help balancing blood glucose if the raw food is also low carb. If he has just been diagnosed and is still in his honeymoon phase he even might (although it’s very unlikely) be able to get by without insulin for a while using a low carb diet. But this requires careful monitoring of his blood glucose levels and the start of insulin the moment his sugars get too high and diet alone is no longer working.



Frankly, the whole situation sounds very dangerous. And I wouldn’t recommend this kind of experimentation, especially for a child.

There is no cure for Type 1 diabetes. I hope that your son will not try to get off insulin, as this is extremely dangerous and can easily lead to a life-threatening situation. As far as I know there is absolutely no evidence that eating raw foods has any effect on Type 1 diabetes.

Your ex-wife could KILL your son! Denying him his insulin is child abuse. Sorry to be so dramatic, but this scares the living daylights out of me! If she’s not giving him his insulin, you might have to call child protective services – it would be a mess, but you have to do what is necessary as far as your son’s life is concerned.

If he’s taking his insulin by himself, and she’s not in control of that, then you might take him to a CDE or someone who could explain to him why there is no treatment other than insulin for a Type 1. He has to have the knowledge and strength of character NOT to let her feed him nonsense, and he must clearly understand that it’s nonsense. Life-threatening nonsense.

A full-blown Type 1 can go into DKA in hours without insulin. And DKA is an emergency, needing hospitalization. Would she recognize it when he is in DKA, and would she take appropriate steps to treat it, i.e. call 911?

This whole thing blows me out of the water!

I think the whole rumor of this “cure” came from a few type 2 diabetics that were using insulin, switched to a raw food (and therefor also easier to be low carb) diet, and no longer needed the extra boost of insulin once they lost some weight and were eating better. They then claimed that an insulin-dependent diabetic is “cured” by eating raw food, and kept rolling with that eventually calling it type 1. Type 1 = insulin dependent but that doesn’t work the other way around.

So sure, a diet that includes lots of fresh fruits and veggies can be low carb and very beneficial as a healthy diet which could help reduce a lot of sugar spikes, but it is nothing like a cure. A cure would mean that you could then make insulin on your own and drink can of soda without going high.

I do try to incorporate a lot of fresh food in my diet and find that very beneficial. Getting away from dense carbs in snack foods helps a lot. I would never consider eating only raw food though, since that would be very tough to still get a reasonable amount of calories and nutrients.

OMG, I almost missed this. This is like my favorite topic. Gabriel Cousens is what I consider a dangerous man. He produced a “documentary” backed by Joel Fuhrman (of PCRM and PETA fame) suggesting that raw vegan diets can “cure” diabetes and in particular T1 diabetes. Total hogwash. Yes, Elliot Joslin was able to have T1s live for perhaps 4 years or more before insulin, and his method is similar to Cousens, it is called “starvation.” But I am not clear at all that this is healthy. If you look closely at Cousens, he makes alarm bells go off in my head. He has been denied a license to practice medicine in AZ, was investigated in the death of one of his patients, he had his license taken away in CA, and he remains censured in NY.



That being said, your posting implies that you don’t have primary guardianship of your son and you may have trouble influencing what is happening. Screaming to your son’s mom that she is a wacko may not be the best way to deal with it. It may be best to let her follow the guidance, but make it a condition that she get a concurring opinion from a credible medical source (of your choosing). You pick the doctor, one that you can trust. In the US, withholding insulin from a T1 child is a crime and it will be prosecuted. But you need to try to work through this without an escalating conflict, let alone involving the police.

Wow…thanks to everyone’s comments but she is not taking him off of his insulin pump…she is continuing to work with his endo and using insulin therapy to keep him alive…however she very much believes that the above mentioned diet has the potential to cure him. My husband and I have over 50% custody of him (the school year) she has him and his brother on vacations. I just want to make sure that he understands the Myth behind the video she watched with him and in return made him believe that eating a certain way could cure his diabetes…

Is the movie out and available yet? I would be interesting to have some type 1’s review it, especially if an endo could write a response to it to clarify the obvious mistakes.

It is called Simply Raw…reversing diabetes in 30 days

I did a quick internet search and found the website. Raw for 30 days

Interesting disclaimer at the bottom of the page (bold is my emphasis):

*Medical Disclaimer: If you are on diabetes medication, insulin, or oral hypoglycemics, please do not attempt to come off medication without medical supervision, for the approach in this film or any other approach. If you are not on any diabetic medication, oral hypoglycemics, or insulin, then we invite you to safely explore this option on your own. The program featured in the film at the Tree of Life Rejuvination Center is most effective with diabetes type 2 but is also very effective at increasing quality of life and reducing insulin levels for diabetes type 1. The 21 day cycle at the core of this program is also a powerful modality for hyperglycemia and pre-diabetes as well as improving quality of life for those in need of rejuvenation and healing.

I think that says it all…

I agree reducing insulin levels can be a good thing but you need some. If the mom has misinterpreted the remarks to mean junior doesn’t need insulin, she needs a taser ASAP.

yes…I have read this…I am not the one who believes that this is a cure for Type 1 diabetes…my step-son’s mother does. The video itself is very emotional and if you are a 12 year old who was diagnosed at age 9 you will believe what it shows, especially if you mother is backing it up. I just wanted to see if there was any one out there that had tried this and seen drastic changes in their insulin needs, BG etc. I needed to put it out there and make sure I wasn’t missing something. Diabetes is no joke, although my husband and I are what we like to call Type 3s, diabetes has changed our lives forever…we have seen our son seize, we have seen him lie about eating, we have seen him pretend he does not have diabetes infront of his peers, we wake up every 2 hours to check his BG at night…I could go on and on…thanks for letting me vent

This is a much better situation than we all feared. If you can feed your son when he is with you, then it is unlikely to be an issue. I suspect your son may well rebel against the diet. What you might want to do is request that you son be given vitamins and supplements sufficient to keep him from any malnutrition problems and then just feed him when you have him. Following a raw vegan diet for a couple weeks won’t hurt him.

I have spoken with these folks many times. I have emphasized to them how deceiving the language about “cure” in connection with either type of diabetes is when you talk about a change of lifestyle as is the case of eating raw foods.

I have seen parts of their movie (Raw for 30 days) and this LIFESTYLE will clearly help anyone with diabetes. But if you were to stop it, you’d soon go back to your previous insulin needs.

It looks like this is a trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSuqCMld00w

I can see how it’s deceiving, especially when the trailer says “by the fourth day they were off their insulin” implying that they were ALL off their insulin, even though the website shows that two of them had Type 1 diabetes. It doesn’t cure anything, it just helps control diabetes, and in the case of Type 2 this means people may be able to stop taking their medication or insulin.

If a cure for Type 1 could be found by simply following a raw food diet, there would be a lot of folks on Tu and otherwise who would have gone on a raw food diet. I’m sick of these wackos advertising nutritional and vitamin supplement cures. If this worked, I, for one, would have been all over it five years ago. I saw a recent show on Veria about a raw foodie who had great recipes.

In the absence of ANY food, or any carbohydrate, I should say, DN would still need her basal insulin in order to survive. Recently she went to HI in three and a half hours overnght due to a pump malfunction. No food in her system; only the absence of basal. She is on Apidra so she was in trouble sooner than if she was on Novolog.

It is sad to hear this foolishness being pushed on children as young as your son. It is one thing for an adult who has years of experience and education behind him/her to fall for this; it is another thing for an adult to convince a child of this.

The “raw food” movement is a strict vegetarian movement based on Hindu/yoga practices. If you read yoga books, many will tell you that eating uncooked vegetables and fruits is the most healthful way to eat. It is believed that eating this way helps bring in more of the food’s “life force” into you, which is supposed to aid in your healing and vitality. Frankly, it’s a bunch of medical woo, full of words that have no meaning whatsoever. For instance, what is meant by “life force”? How does it aid in healing? Everything I have read over the years (and I used to practice yoga regularly, so I am quite familar with this way of thinking) offers little in terms of concrete definition and comparative studies and much that allows the reader to fill in the blanks with his/her own interpretation. It’s a recipe for disaster.

If you read the program’s page on diabetes, you will read the following disclaimer toward the end:

*Medical Disclaimer: If you are on diabetes medication, insulin, or oral hypoglycemics, please do not attempt to come off medication without medical supervision, for the approach in this film or any other approach. If you are not on any diabetic medication, oral hypoglycemics, or insulin, then we invite you to safely explore this option on your own. The program featured in the film at the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center is most effective with diabetes type 2 but is also very effective at reducing insulin levels for diabetes type 1. The 21-day cycle at the core of this program is also a powerful modality for hyperglycemia and pre-diabetes as well as improving quality of life for those in need of rejuvenation and healing. Even though we are having regular successes, this program is not a guaranteed cure.

The program itself does not guarantee a cure, it does not claim that it can get all type 1s off of insulin, though it does show a pretty chart whereby someone’s bgs were brought closer to normal through their diet. Note on their page, too, that there are NO references to articles published in peer-reviewed journals. The only evidence they offer is a chart of an unknown person’s bgs before and after their program and a bunch of testimonials. That is another clue that what is being said is a bunch of WOO and should be avoided as if it had the Black Plauge.

One problem no one in vegetarian/organic/raw/“natural” food movements likes to talk about is the rise of a new eating disorder, named orthorexia nervosa, or an obsession with “healthy” or “righteous” eating. As the Wikipedia entry for orthorexia nervosa states:

Bratman describes orthorexia as an unhealthy fixation with what the individual considers to be healthy eating. The subject may avoid certain unhealthy foods, such as those containing fats, preservatives, man-made food-additives, animal products, or other ingredients considered by the subject to be unhealthy; if the sufferer does not eat appropriately, malnutrition can ensue. Bratman claims Orthorexic sufferers have specific preferences about the foods they are eating and avoiding. Products that are preserved with additives can be considered dangerous. Industrial products can be seen as artificial, whereas biological fruits and vegetables can be seen as healthy.[6] Bratman asserts that "emaciation is common among followers of certain health food diets, such as rawfoodism, and this can at times reach the extremes seen in anorexia nervosa."

That’s another reason why I’d be concerned about your son going on a diet such as this at such a young age. Diabetes is difficult enough to live with, nevermind having an eating disorder compounding it.

Angela