Veganist_ Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World - Kathy Freston [32]
Vance also encouraged me to mention that it is not only blood sugar that gets better; his erectile dysfunction also improved dramatically, too—in case anyone needs an extra motivator.
Ha! I love that last comment! And that was a result, by the way, of Vance’s circulation being improved (more on that in the next chapter). My takeaway here is that diabetes is deeply connected to having too much fat in the body, and that fat is largely a result of eating meat and dairy. What is so exciting is that you can really reverse this disease, and you can do it in a fairly short amount of time.
As informative as this talk with the doctor has been, there is nothing so compelling as a personal story, so here is Natala Constantine’s.
Natala Constantine’s Story: Her Diabetes Cure
I was diagnosed with diabetes two weeks after my husband and I got married. I was twenty-five years old. I sat in a doctor’s office, trying to remain calm as the doctors and nurses spoke to me, telling me that my blood sugar was dangerously high. My husband and I sat in an emergency room listening to a doctor explain how my blood had turned acidic, how I was fortunate to be alive, how they were not sure if I would make it. I survived that night, only to spend many nights wishing that I hadn’t.
I spent five years of my life trying everything to control my diabetes. I went to doctor after doctor, all of whom put me on different cocktails of drugs. Some would work for a time, but in the end, I was constantly adjusting the medications, constantly battling high blood sugar, and still battling high cholesterol, being morbidly obese, hormonal problems, blood pressure issues, nerve damage, early arthritis, and other physical problems, mostly caused from diabetes.
My story is like millions of others. I tried everything—every diet, every workout regimen, and every drug. I was on what doctors would prescribe as a “healthy diet,” which always meant lots of animal protein and almost no carbohydrates, including vegetables. I was told that a high–animal protein diet was the only way to control my diabetes. My blood sugar would improve at times, but I could never decrease my medicines, and my health overall was deteriorating.
When I turned thirty, my diabetes remained out of control. I was still on the doctor-prescribed diet, high in animal proteins. My weight tipped the scale at the time at over 360 pounds. I was in the gym two to three hours a day and I was losing only a couple of pounds a month. Then I developed an infection in my lower right calf.
For a diabetic, an infection anywhere in the foot area or lower leg is dangerous. I already had significant nerve damage to my lower legs due to poor circulation. I already had severe pain in my feet, caused by early arthritis in the bones in the tops of my feet. And now I was facing an infection in my leg.
The doctor looked at my leg and expressed grave concern that the infection wasn’t healing. She told me that if things didn’t improve, I might be facing partial amputation.
I was devastated. I was only thirty. I didn’t think things like this happened until later in life. I thought about my husband and how this seemed so unfair to him. Our life together was completely focused on my illness. I sat in the doctor’s office and sobbed. I was on nine different medications, I had no energy to work, I was trying everything that I was told to do, and nothing helped.
I got to the point where I questioned if I had the strength to go on. I would cry myself to sleep at night. I didn’t want to continue living life as a morbidly obese, out-of-control diabetic. But I realized that I did want to live.
On one of the darkest days, a good friend suggested that I look at a natural approach to my diabetes. She told me that I needed to