Western Food is Making the World Diabetic

Listen to this interesting 13 minute NPR audio on Diet and Diabetes, where one doctor discusses the differences he noticed between Afghan patients and the bodies of North American patients. He says;

"Typical Afghan civilians and soldiers would have been 140 pounds or so as adults. And when we operated on them, what we were aware of was the absence of any fat or any adipose tissue underneath the skin," Patterson says. "Of course, when we operated on Canadians or Americans or Europeans, what was normal was to have most of the organs encased in fat. It had a visceral potency to it when you could see it directly there."

Diabetes without Insulin

The Los Angeles Times has five stories of people who were diagnosed with diabetes but who later kicked the insulin habit with diet and exercise. See their inspiring stories here.

Huckabee Loses 110 Pounds and Runs for President

Mike Huckabee lost 110 pounds in one year. He is now 51 years old and decided to change his lifestyle a couple of years ago when his doctor told him that his Type II diabetes would cause his entire body to deteriorate.

He turned around a lifetime of eating fried and sugary foods and began abstaining from these. He started an exercise routine by getting on a stationary bike each morning. He had been reading his newspaper each morning anyway, now he read it while riding his bicycle. He then started jogging short distances and has since completed four marathons. (His wife walked the complete marathon route of 26 miles on two of these). He was able to reverse his Type II diabetes diagnosis without the use of any drugs even though his parents and grandparents had also suffered from it.

He has become an advocate of the "culture of health" and is heavily involved with the Healthy America initiative.

We'll be hearing a lot more about Huckabee soon. He just announced he is running for President of the United States. He has been the Governor of Arkansas since 1996 and happened to grow up in the same tiny town as Bill Clinton.