A case where food can actually ‘be thy medicine’

You would think that after forking over $53 billion, we would have gotten more bang for our buck!

That’s what was spent last year in the U.S. for meds to treat diabetes. And yet, people aren’t being cured or even spared from the cruel side effects of this disease.

Actually, those with type 2 are being asked to take on even bigger risks from the very real potential of adverse reactions to those diabetes meds – ones such as upping the odds of suffering amputation, kidney disease, or frightening episodes of hypoglycemia.

But if you’re struggling with blood sugar control and perhaps even taking one of these extremely risky drugs, maybe it’s time to get your “meds” from another pharmacy – the farmacy!

Sure, we all know that filling our plates with healthy, real foods instead of processed junk is good for us — that’s no shocker. But it turns out that eating this way is a more powerful method of blood-sugar control than taking two – even three – diabetes drugs!

In fact, one health care system in Pennsylvania is having such remarkable success with this method of treating diabetes that I’d be surprised if Big Pharma wasn’t starting to worry.

But as good as this appears to be in helping to erase diabetes, it’s not the only way certain foods can take you from being a patient to becoming a healthy person again. Because there’s one specific type of diet that not just helps to control your blood sugar, but it can even reverse diabetes!

‘Food as a Specialty Drug’

It sounds like the impossible dream.

What if… instead of being good for pharma’s bottom line… the “treatments” you got were good for you?

Well, it’s not just a fantasy – because that’s exactly what the Pennsylvania-based Geisinger Health System is offering. And as a result, the tide is turning for many of the diabetics it works with.

Almost two years ago, doctors there started actually writing prescriptions for those with diabetes to participate in its Fresh Food Farmacy, a plan that includes classroom-type education about diabetes and 10 free meals a week — serving up plenty of fresh fruits, veggies, and fish for the patients and their families.

Dr. Andrea Feinberg, Geisinger’s director of health and wellness, and her colleagues call it “prescribing food as a specialty drug.”

If providing all of that highly nutritious food sounds expensive, it costs merely a fraction of what Geisinger was paying before. When drug use dropped, so did its expenses — from an average annual cost of $240,000 per person down to $48,000.

But something else plummeted for the 260 patients who got that special food Rx. It was their A1C numbers (an average of your blood sugar over two or three months), which plunged more than double what’s expected from multiple diabetes drugs. They also lost weight and had an average 50 percent reduction in the use of prescription meds to treat their diabetes.

But the “medicinal” power of the right kinds of foods to bring diabetes under control can go even further than that!

The ketogenic diet would be lauded as a miracle drug if it had been invented in one of Big Pharma’s labs! It’s not a med, of course. Instead, it’s a way of eating that’s very low in carbs, high in good fats, and includes a moderate amount of protein.

HSI panel member Dr. Mark Stengler is a big fan of the ketogenic diet, having seen firsthand how it can effectively manage and even reverse diabetes.

But he also knows that it can be difficult to exclusively follow (in fact, before you even consider doing so, you need to be working with a doctor or nutritionist who can guide you along the way). And when things get too hard, the knee-jerk approach is usually to give up!

That’s why he tells his patients that by alternating a ketogenic diet with the Mediterranean style of eating – less red meat, more fish, and plenty of olive oil, veggies, fruits, and nuts – you’ll stand a better chance of being successful.

So, with all we now know about how diet can help regulate your blood sugar, why not start making some improvements right away? For dinner tonight, for example, how about ditching some carbs and adding some fish, fresh veggies, and olive oil?

With a little extra effort, you can turn mealtime into a potent treatment for diabetes… no prescription required!

“Diabetes defeated by diet: How new fresh-food prescriptions are beating pricey drugs” Meg Tirrell, Jodi Gralnick, June 21, 2018, CNBC, cnbc.com