You can reverse diabetes. Recent gene research has revealed that diabetes is not an irreversible genetic disease. Diet, physical activity, and environment can change the way that your genes act. In this letter, I'll show you that it's possible to reverse diabetes through diet.

Everyone is born with a distinct set of genes. But, how you use your genes is much more important than which genes you have. You can turn your genes on and off, amplify them, or never use them at all.

Your current health is the result of how your choices have activated genes from your genetic library. Make the best possible choices from here on out, and you can “program” your genes to build a better you.

* One Patient's Success *

A couple of years ago I started to see a middle-aged patient named Will. He had a few health problems, but his nastiest problem was diabetes. Will had been injecting himself with insulin for years. And his previous doctor told him that he would have to take insulin shots for the rest of his life.

When I asked Will about his history, everything seemed to be in order. He was a letter carrier, so he got plenty of exercise. When I asked him to tell me about his eating habits, I found what I had been looking for. Will loved to eat carbohydrates. With every meal, he would have a potatoes or mounds of bread. He had been eating loads starches his entire life.

His doctors and the literature from The American Diabetic Association had told him to avoid sugar but not starches. But all those starches ended up turning into sugar in Will's body. Throughout the years, he had forced his body to adapt to handle an overload of sugar.

He consumed high starches, which stimulated more insulin than his body was genetically able to tolerate. This insulin overload switched on genes that eventually produced diabetes.

I started Will on a specialized very low-glycemic index, high-protein diet plan. I changed his exercise plan to focus on the big muscle groups of the legs and back. They burn off much more blood sugar.

When Will took my advice and severely restricted carbohydrates for a time, insulin went way down and his insulin receptor switches were thrown in the other direction. Eventually he reset his diabetes genes to their “prediabetes” settings. Will is now “expressing” a different set of his inherited genes.

In a matter of months, he no longer needed insulin shots. His blood sugar, insulin and other labs returned to normal. He no longer had (and still doesn't have) any signs of diabetes.

* My Plan for Improving Diabetes *

Here are some diet tips that will train your genes to bring to an end to diabetes.

1. Stay away from starches. Starches are of little nutritional value. They convert to sugar. Your body stimulates too much insulin when you eat starches.

Manufacturers are producing highly processed starches. If it is processed, don't eat it. Processed foods often have harmful additives like sugar, preservatives, and other chemicals.

2. Eat foods with low glycemic index. Health Alert 21 contains a great chart of foods on the glycemic index. Eat foods with the lowest glycemic indexes. Foods with high glycemic indexes cause blood sugar levels to spike.

3. Eat plenty of protein. Your genes need the nutrients in protein. Lean protein like fish are chock full of nutrients. Protein will counteract the damage done by starches. The more protein you eat, the better.

4. Exercise large muscle groups. Concentrate on exercising the biggest muscles. Leg muscles are the largest. These hefty muscles burn excess sugar in the blood faster than any others.

Al Sears MD