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

Maybe you could talk your 12 year old son into reading this thread. The info he needs to stand up for himself if necessary is right here.

Liz, I found the same page, remembering this woo from a couple of years back. My emphasis was (1) it claims to only reduce the amount of insulin taken by type 1s, not get them off, as the mother and son seem to think it will; and (2) on the fact that the program is NOT a guaranteed cure.

Total and complete nonsensical woo.

BSC, there are huge differences between the diets Joslin et al prescribed in the era before insulin and this diet. First and foremost is that this diet quite literally means RAW. You eat all your food raw and uncooked – so it’s definitely 100% vegetarian. NO meat whatsoever (can’t imagine anyone recommending modern humans eat raw cow, chicken or seafood…yuck). Joslin et al had their patients boiling their vegetables three times, throwing out the water each time in order to remove as many carbohydrates from the vegetables as possible. Further, most of the calories (when the patient wasn’t literally being starved with little more than coffee spiked with whiskey) came from fat – cream, butter, and other sources of fat were allowed, with modest amounts of protein (a friend of mine had a grandmother with type 1 who survived for about a decade on 900 calories/day of red meat and all the red wine she could drink). The majority of the calories in this program come from non-fatty plant sources, such as celery, lettuce, spinich, kale, carrots, and other foods that are eaten raw. Very little fat is used. It is more akin to the Pritikin diet than Joslin’s diet, though without the lean animal based protein. And, for the record, many with type 2 do quite well on a vegetarian meal plan when coupled with sufficient levels of aerobic and anerobic exercise. But that’s an argument for another thread :wink:

Angela, raw meat isn’t all that bad (depending on many factors of course). Raw fish is fairly common in some diets, as well as thinly sliced pickled meats. Neither are terrible for you as long as the animals were taken care of (i.e. not factory farmed) and the meat is handled properly.



Raw meat the way Americans view meat would be a huge concern though.

Angela, I don’t disagree with any you have said. But they are both primarily starvation diets. The book “Catching Fire” talks about eating raw foods and how humans evolved to eat cooked foods. They make a strong argument that you have to eat for hours to get enough nutrients and that raw meat is actually very hard to chew into small pieces and digest.



In either case, going for two weeks on a “whole food vegan” diet is unlikely to be fatal.

I dabbled in raw a couple of years ago, and found lots of misleading info when it comes to diabetes. While the Cousens info is misleading at best, he never really specifically says that Type 1 can be cured by the raw diet. However, the Boutenko family are another group of raw food activists and they claim that the son, Sergei, was cured of his “juvenile diabetes” by eating a raw foods diet - don’t let your step-son’s mother use this as proof. There are actually children/teenagers who are diagnosed with Type 1 only to have it “disappear”, and the reason is that is was never Type 1 in the first place. It is a different form of diabetes called diabetes insipidus. The Boutenkos have never responded to the possibility of this being Sergei’s actual type in public, that I know of.



Basically, sure - a raw diet could help. But it could also be disastrous - if I ate scores of raw bananas and pineapples for lunch, my blood sugar levels would put me into DKA immediately. Seems that the raw-food gurus don’t quite understand the beast that is Type 1.

Well, I am greatly relieved that she’s not withholding insulin from him – that’s what scared me so much!

If he’s getting his insulin, and being monitored by his endo, I don’t think raw food is going to hurt him, as long as it’s healthy food. Some foods cannot be eaten raw, and raw meat and fish might have a yuck factor (I’m a long-time sushi eater, and steak tartare – they don’t bother me). But as long as he’s getting fruits and vegetables and protein, and enough fat to supply adequate calories and nutrition for his growth and wellbeing, and as long as his insulin needs are being met, and he understands why he needs insulin and will need it until there’s a cure (maybe in HIS lifetime, not in mine!), then it’s not such a catastrophe. Before the discovery of fire, our ancient ancestors ate only raw food, and it didn’t stop them from producing us!

It’s a big fat dangerous lie. NOTHING will cure T1 diabetes and nothing will “cure” T2 diabetes either. There is NO CURE, much to our chagrin.

I love “nonsensical woo.”

All of this seems to me to be stemming from an “insulin is a failure on your part, it’s the medication of last resort, insulin is bad.” A number of people grew up thinking that if you had to go on insulin, you were doing poorly or weren’t well-controlled. We’ve evolved to eat cooked food. Particularly the proteins. Why do people put themselves through hell over insulin? It’s a biological need, not a failure of character.

That’s why I mentioned the yuck factor in my post. But many Americans eat rare beef, which is raw in the center – what’s the difference between having brown outsides and red outsides, LOL.



In Japan, they eat raw seafood whenever they have enough money to go to the sushi restaurant (and if you don’t want the rice, you can eat sashimi!). And sukiyaki is dipped in raw egg. Steak tartare is a delicacy in Europe. There are even raw eggs in ice cream!



I’m not up on the Cousens diet – if it’s vegan, then there is a problem. Vegans must take supplements because we were not evolved to eat a vegan diet. So I would worry about malnutrition if the mother were putting a 12-year-old child on a vegan diet. He still has a major growth period ahead of him. If he were even allowed to drink milk, it would help.



At least the father can feed him up when he has him, as long as the child were willing to eat cooked foods – at issue is how much the boy buys into what the mother is telling him.



Hoping for the best.

You’re right – there is a lot of fear of insulin among Type 2’s, because society and doctors promote the myth that going on insulin is a failure.

I was lucky – Glucotrol (a sulfonylurea) wasn’t making an ounce of difference in my BGs (and I tested that several times by going off it), and I asked the doc for insulin. No other oral meds were available at the time, anyway, and when Metformin came out, I was already getting good control on a reasonable dose of insulin (20’s of units TDD) and saw no reason to endure the side effects of Metformin.

For a person who is highly insulin-resistant, and making a lot of their own insulin, maybe more orals are really a better answer, but insulin is NOT a failure – it can be a life-saver!

Andy, you can find it here: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/simply-raw-reversing-diabetes-in-30-days/.

I did not watch the entire movie only about 1 hour of it. My take? Most of the people in the video were unaware of what they were eating, were physically inactive and were so busy being angry at their diabetes they were sabotaging themselves. The long-term type 1 they featured (“Austin”, a 25 year old), appeared to be a heavy drinker from the description they gave. He stuck with the program, though he described the food as “disgusting”. He lost weight, improved his blood pressure and dropped his insulin requirements from 70 units/day to 5 units/day (gee, and I thought I took very little insulin). He did have a low of 37 mg/dl at one point during his stay, but I did not catch his highest bg. They also did not state whether or not he experienced DKA, which, given the high carb diet he was on at this ranch, is a distinct possibility.

Why did his bgs go down, though he dropped his insulin substantially over the course of 30 days? I do not think it was because he was “healed” of his type 1. I believe the answer is simpler. First is the lack of alcohol. For those thirty days, he didn’t add the empty calories of alcohol. Even if he still consumed the same number of food calories for his meals, without the alcohol, his caloric intake was substantially reduced. He also did not have to eat additional food to ensure he did not go low thanks to his alcohol intake, so those calories were gone. That could help reduce his weight quickly by cutting out several hundred (or thousand) calories per day. Weight goes down, bp goes down, cholesterol goes down. Less weight = less insulin (in general). Even if he had not been there, simply giving up the alcohol probably made a huge difference.

Next, throughout the film, you see the participants engaging in exercise, walking around the ranch, climbing through the Arizona desert. Exercise improves insulin sensitivity, thereby reducing the need for insulin. Again, he could have gotten the same benefit without going on a “raw” diet, and cheaper, too.

Finally, let’s get down to the diet, the heart of the film. While they do not give specifics, the diet is vegetarian/vegan, focusing on nuts, vegetables, and “natural” sources of sweets. NO meat or seafood. The diet is described as high carb, high fiber, low fat. Yet, one of the featured meals is a nut burger, made from walnuts and tomatoes (among other things). As everyone knows, walnuts are high in fats, particularly polyunsaturated fats. So, if that’s the typical main course, then is the diet truly “low fat”? Regardless, a diet that is very high in fiber (>25g fiber/day, which is more than the current recommendation) is going to be a diet that is, by definition, high in carbohydrate. However, that high fiber has one big benefit: Slower diegestion. Instead of the carbs hitting your system all at once, the carbs are slowly digested and released. Now, should that make a hill of beans difference to a fully-consolidated type 1 diabetic? Maybe, maybe not. If you’re eating the same number of total carbs, but you’re eating fewer “net” carbs – the ones that will actually hit your blood, raising your bgs – then sure, that could result in needing less insulin. Couple that with increased vigorous activity, and that could explain the decrease in bgs and reduction in insulin. Again, do you need to eat vegan-raw, as these people did? Not necessarily. Did it cure the long-term diabetic? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Did it help him manage his diabetes more effectively (really effectively)? I think the answer to that is yes. Do I think everyone ought to eat like this? Not necessarily, though I do believe that eating additional fiber from natural sources is good for people, regardless of whether or not the individuals have diabetes.

What do you mean by a “starvation diet”?

Going for two weeks on a whole food vegan diet will not be fatal – in as much as the child continues to take his insulin and does not stop. When I was in college, I typically went vegetarian/vegan for Lent every year, especially when I was in grad school. It was cheaper and I do believe it was healthy to eat sauted green beans, salads, and (before I was dx’ed) baked potatoes and popcorn. It certainly is more environmentally sound than the standard American diet, especially if you grow your own vegetables. Since my dx, though, the closest I’ve come to eating vegetarian/vegan was to skip the meats and eat cheese instead.

My apologies to the sushi lovers out there, as I forgot about that. As for pickling meats, I would argue that putting any food product into pickling materials (generally vinegar and salt) changes the food from raw to processed. It may not be “cooked”, like heated over a fire, but the protein structure has been changed from its natural state by exposing the food to an acidic and/or salty compound – i.e. the vinegar and salt. As the wikipedia article on denaturation states:

Denaturation is a process in which proteins or nucleic acids lose their tertiary structure and secondary structure by application of some external stress or compound, such as a strong acid or base, a concentrated inorganic salt, an organic solvent (e.g., alcohol or chloroform), or heat. If proteins in a living cell are denatured, this results in disruption of cell activity and possibly cell death. Denatured proteins can exhibit a wide range of characteristics, from loss of solubility to communal aggregation.

Since the protein structure of the meat has been changed when you put it in the vinegar and salt, the same as happens when placed over heat, it’s not the same as raw. Further, when you pickle, placing the food in the acidic vinegar salt bath kills off most forms of bacteria, which makes pickled food far safer to eat than a hunk of raw, bloody beef. So, pickled foods aren’t the same as truly raw.

When I wrote my comment, I was thinking about the fish in the Gulf of Mexico and not wanting to eat them, thanks to the Gulf oil spill. When I think about the environmental degradation of the planet and its impact on the food supply, it makes me wary of eating any food, meat or plant based, in a raw form.

I have been down this road before, (no not personally) and i can tell you it is dangerous. It stems in part from the Allan diet, and notions that somehow a person can reduce crabs to the point that they can live without supplemental insulin. True the Allan diet was not vegan and more extreme than the vegan diet being discussed. Still, these notions are not new, and time and time again they have proven to be dangerous.

When I was in first grade, My poor mom recently diagnosed went to a doctor in town who wanted her to forgo insulin and instead eat a diet of raw vegetables and fruit juices. My dad saw it as the cure for this new disease, which he had just been told would claim his young wife’s life. One cannot blame him for grasping at this straw, and frankly my mom thought it over. Well, this discussion wen tone for several days, what to do. Certain death (this was 1962, or a miracle cure.

Thankfully mom chose insulin and she did pass way to soon but she lived until she was 48. This is the same thing and I will tell you how mom reasoned it out. First she asked both doctors, what their patients had died from in the last 10 years. The doctor of internal medicine told mom most of his patients died from diabetic complications. The nutritionist said that his patents routinely died of non diabetic ailments. Things like heart attacks, auto accidents, stomach malfunction, blood issues, and stroke.

Here is the thing, many of these are diabetic complications especially in the early 60’s. The deciding factor was the average length of treatment following diagnosis. The doctor, 15 years, the nutritionist 2 years. Mom choose insulin, and never looked back. Yeah her disease was terrible. She suffered for years, with complications. But as she often said, had she gone with the other guy she would have avoided those complications. Not because she would have been better off, rather because she would have been dead.

This is not even a close decision. Take the insulin. The short cut is not worth the price.

rick phillips

Rick, you’re making the same assumption that BSC has made: That this is a calorie-restricted diet. From what I could see, it is not. It is a fat-restricted diet, making it far different from the Allen and Joslin diets of the past. It insists on NO meat. It is a high fiber diet, thereby making it high in carbohydrates. Protein and fat are primarily nut and I will bet (though they do not say this) legume source, making them also a source of carbohydrates.



THIS IS NOT A STARVATION DIET. IT IS MORE LIKE PRITIKIN’S DIET. JUST BECAUSE A DIET DOES NOT INCLUDE MEAT DOES NOT MEAN IT WILL CAUSE STARVATION.



(sorry for the yelling, but I want to get my point across in no uncertain terms)

Call CPS!!Two days without insulin (I’ve heard) can kill you. This is dangerous!

P.S. Yeah, if you’re not eating junk you might be able to “reduce” insulin…but going off insulin is crazy!

I understand that both Type 1 and Type 2 (occasionally) can have a depressing tough time with diabetes. But I feel its time for a name change like type 1 “Advanced Chronic Diabetes” or type 2 “Disfunctional Pancreas” LOL, it sucks but I dont think a cure for type 1 is even close to near. Type 2s stay strong excercise and eat right and you will have rid the insulin and or metformin (if u take it) and control it with only diet and excercise.

Hey Rcggw and everyone else,

I think you guys need to read what LizBa said on teh first page of comments. The guys websitestates the following:



"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."



In this statement it claims to reduce insulin levels for Type 1’s, not eliminate them. Other places on the same page, it states they can cure Type 1’s. I think that means this vegan (Dr Knowitall) is trying to make a buck off curing diabetes and doesn’t care enough about us to learn the difference between a Type 1 and a Type 2 on insulin. I find this to be gross negligence stemming from the desire to make a buck. Rcggw, perhaps you could use that arguement with your ex.



The truth is, the less processed the foods, and the fewer the carbohydrates, the less insulin your son will need. That is regardless if he is vegan or not, though. The thing that takes extra work is getting a teenage boy proper nutrition on a vegan diet, but it is doable. Complete proteins are one thing that needs attention, and if your ex-wife is willing to do the work to verify that complete proteins are part of his diet, it won’t hurt him. It just seems that all of the complete proteins contain a lot of carbs, relative to a low carb diet, though.

Good luck, my friend. Thanks for working to be a really good dad.