The Dangerous Diet Eaten By People On The Marshall Islands

and we do we have actually the the Physicians Committee for Responsible medicine did a few reasonably small studies but following people for a good period of time showing that that what they actually did was used a low-fat vegan diet and that their their control was people doing an American Diabetes Association diet and actually both diets showed benefits in terms of you know insulin resistance and lowering blood glucose levels and a1cs and body weight and cholesterol and all of those things but the vegan diet consistently did better than the American Diabetes Association diet so we have those studies we have some studies out of the Czech Republic a study from 2014 I think it was showing again comparing a vegetarian diet and the only animal product they used was one serving of yogurt low-fat yogurt per day otherwise there were no animal products in the diet and in that study again they found that they and they compared it to the conventional diabetic diet that the the vegetarian diet did better on every single count and then the the work that I’ve actually been doing some work in the Marshall Islands where and we’re working where we’re just writing it up now but we actually found very significant advantages to doing plant-based as well by the Marshall Islands for those people that that aren’t familiar with Marshall Islands they’re a small group of many islands in the South Pacific and the Pacific about 2,300 miles southwest of Hawaii so they were it’s sort of a strategic location some people may remember bikini island being atomic bomb testing groans after the Second World War but anyway the marshalese people went from having absolutely no diabetes a hundred years ago to having among the highest rates in the world and they literally went from living off the land where they were eating coconut and green leaves and whatever taro root and bananas and and fish whatever fish they could catch with their little Spears to living off of having more people on the islands than what the islands could sustain so the the main island Majuro has 30,000 people it might sustain a thousand if we were lucky so so the they they have to import food and so what the import is because people are very poor and there’s not a great economy is the cheapest food you can think of so they import things like turkey tails and and spam and you know the parts of the animals we don’t want so because they’re cheap white rice sticky rice luau which is high fructose corn syrup drink lots of ramen so they eat dry ramen noodles and they sprinkle kool-aid powder on top to make it taste good the kids do it’s it’s really I couldn’t design a diet to induce diabetes that would be more efficient than the diet they’ve adopted and it’s just so sad because they are I just I love I it’s like a second home to me I’ve been there maybe ten times now and I stayed the first time I was there eight months and and I worked on a diabetes research research project and I continue to go go back on a regular basis but they are just absolutely the most beautiful people in I the way they laugh the way they enjoy every moment together and they tease one another and they sing and you you never you never feel judged you can down the street and sing to the top of your lungs and people just start singing with you it’s it’s a really a beautiful place and and so it really saddens me to see people suffering the way they’re suffering so needlessly and so we went in and we did this control group usual care and very fairly aggressive whole food plant-based diet and we saw average blood sugar drops of 70 points within two weeks we saw average a1c drops of two points within twelve weeks we you know we saw a one seized or surrey HS CRP is down by about one point two points so we saw some really big changes and even going back like last year when I went back or 2016 when I went back we actually had blood glucose drops of over a hundred points on average so we’re seeing we’re getting better and better at what we’re doing there and seeing better and better results and we saw several people who were able to completely reverse their diabetes and it’s it’s very very encouraging to see and what’s happening now is that the government is so interested in helping the people that that I just went to a couple of months ago two months ago in in November of 2017 we along with a colleague to create a program that if that it would would a new curriculum for schools from kindergarten to grade six so that the teachers and we trained all the teachers in the public schools while we were there so that the kids could start to learn they’ve got new rules new laws where people are not allowed to sell unhealthy foods near the schools in the schools anymore so we’re you know where we’re working on things and we’re seeing changes I you know when I first arrived nobody walked anywhere because walking showed you were too poor to afford a 25 cent taxi and and so people just didn’t walk and now people walking in the mornings there’s walkathons all the time and you know the restaurants have diabetes wellness approve menu no menu options and the stores are having way more produce than they used to and they’re carrying little some of them have little health sections now where they sell flax seeds and steel cut oats and things like that so we’re really seeing some very encouraging changes it’s quite wonderful