I used to have diabetes, hypertension, and was obese. Like many of you, I attacked the problem with dramatic lifestyle changes while supervised by a medical doctor. What I ate — my diet — was key to my recovery. Today, at sixty years of age, I am normal weight, routinely have blood pressure readings below 120/80, and never even bother to check my blood sugar. It is just fine. I take no medication regularly at all.
But, I cannot give myself a clean bill of health. I still periodically suffer from dramatically swollen eyes full of tears with a gritty substance. I also periodically pass a stone in my urine causing excruciating pain. In the past few years, I have also had three urinary tract infections that made me so sick that I wanted to die.
Let’s cover the good news first. How did I eliminate diabetes, obesity, and hypertension symptoms? I’m not going to give you a miracle diet to follow. There are hundreds already out there. Everyone’s situation is different, and it is illegal to practice medicine without a license. I won’t even tell you specifically what foods I eat on a regular basis. But, I will share my philosophy on how to use science to figure that out for yourself.
When I started my research, I kept running into diets that might be proven to help with diabetes, but maybe increased hypertension or were in conflict with a proven weight loss diet. How do I choose which goal is more important?
Can we agree that our number one health goal is to not die for as long as possible? In fact, most responsible publications and medical professionals don’t even talk about “cures” to any of these three chronic diseases. We talk about “management” and living as long and productive life as possible with the chronic disease being managed. The goal is a long life, not the eradication of chronic disease. In my case, I was able to manage my chronic illnesses so well that they are no longer detectable. What diet did I use?
I call it the science diet. I followed no fad diet. I never cared a bit about calories, fat, protein, carbohydrates, how paleolithic man ate, how Italians eat, the ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 fats, or anything like that. I recognize that every single one of those diet theories uncovers something beneficial and I celebrate all of you who are currently living healthy due to one of those diets. I sneak a peek at all of them from time to time to see if I can find ideas… especially from those (like Dr. Ornish) who also try to follow science.
Following the science is difficult. Until very recently, no science existed. There is no money in studying whether oatmeal (for example) leads to a longer life (spoiler alert: It does). You can’t patent oatmeal and charge predatory prices so pharmaceutical companies simply haven’t studied it. In the last couple decades, universities and even trade groups have begun to study the actual health effect of various foods. The information age has made the results of those studies available.
The next barrier to using science was learning how to read the lingo. I encourage everyone to learn it, but… the reality is that we now live in a world where AI is plentiful and even the dumbest AI does know how to understand academic reports of clinical studies. All you have to know is how to tell the AI that science is your interest. You want an answer that uses only academic journals as sources and only uses randomized, placebo-controlled, experimental trials on human subjects. Finally, the words “all cause mortality” are magical. That is how scientists say “not dying” and that is our goal.
Two other magical phrases are “cardiovascular disease” and “cancer.” These are magical phrases because the leading causes of death are heart attack, stroke, and cancer. Scientists use the term “cardiovascular disease (CVD)” to cover heart attack and stroke. They politely call cancer by the hyper-technical name of “cancer.” We need to know those terms because the number of studies that have been done on individual foods and their effect on “all cause mortality” is still limited. We can find more by including studies that measure cardiovascular disease and cancer.
What does that have to do with diabetes? People don’t generally die of diabetes. It is a chronic disease that leads to other chronic diseases which lead to death. Our goal is not dying. If we do the things that keep us from dying, we magically also treat our diabetes (and, in my case, my hypertension and obesity). The reason that works is that diabetes is a predictor that you will die early due to complications of managing diabetes. Maybe your death certificate will actually say “myocardial infarction” (the fancy way of saying “heart attack”), but the reality is that the heart attack was the result of a long chain of dominoes falling that began with poor management of diabetes.
My “science diet” is simply eating foods that has been shown to reduce “all cause mortality”, “cardiovascular disease”, and/or “cancer.” I avoid other foods. Pretty simple. For me, the result has been a complete lack of diabetes, hypertension, or obesity symptoms. That’s pretty good news.
However, I do still have miserable, horrible, occasional eye swelling, kidney pain, passing stones, and urinary tract infections that make me want to die. I’m following a diet that is science-based and likely ensures that these problems will not lead to death, but I just don’t want them. What can I do?
I think the problem turned out to be oxalates. Kidney stones are usually calcium oxalate. I considered reducing the calcium in my diet, but the science showed an inverse ratio of calcium consumption and kidney stone formation and release. That left the oxalate to consider. What the heck is oxalate anyways?
Many plants produce oxalates in their leaves, roots, or around their seeds in order to function as a pesticide. The plants make this poison to make life miserable for pests who try to eat them.
Perhaps you have owned a Dieffenbachia house plant — or seen one in a doctor’s waiting room. They are beautiful house plants, but, on occasion, a child or pet tries to eat a leaf. They are quite poisonous. Not many deaths are reported, but the life of that pet or child becomes quite miserable for some time. There is a burning sensation in the mouth and throat. Massive swelling and voice loss (temporary) are just the start of the misery. The plant has evolved a pretty decent way of protecting itself.
Many edible (or generally thought to be edible) plants also make oxalates, but at a lower level. The oxalate level in some can still cause problems for those who are aging or otherwise just don’t have the kidney function to filter out these oxalates before they become kidney stones or otherwise deposit themselves throughout the body.
There are even a few foods that are considered healthy, but have high enough oxalates that they can cause kidney failure if that food is consumed in high quantities.
I happened to have discovered a few foods that helped me control my diabetes, hypertension, and obesity, but, in high quantities, caused all of the other miserable symptoms I experienced. Here are the offending foods for me:
Beets. This was a miracle food for my hypertension. It is relatively high in oxalate content though. Once my blood pressure was under control, I avoided beets to avoid the oxalate load.
Dark chocolate. This helped with blood sugar control, obesity, and hypertension. It is an oxalate offender though and had to go.
Star fruit. Once again, I ate a lot of star fruit at my leanest with normal blood sugar and blood pressure. It has dangerous levels of oxalate though and does actually record many deaths from kidney failure every year.
Buck wheat. This pseudo-grain is a very popular “healthy” alternative to wheat flour. It is high in oxalates. I focus on oatmeal for my grain intake. Oatmeal was once used to treat diabetes before insulin became readily available.
Spinach. I used to love spinach in green smoothies. This is another “health” food that is so high in oxalate that kidney failures are sometimes recorded. I use kale now which is low in oxalate.
Nuts and peanuts. Most aren’t super-high in oxalate and are associated with longevity. This was a hard one except when we consider that walnuts are way ahead for their health benefit as compared to any other tree nut and they happen to be low in oxalate. I use walnuts and only walnuts now.
Chia seeds. This was also hard to give up, but they are very high in oxalate and flax seeds are not. It is a simple substitution.
All of these healthy foods were important to me and helped me manage my diabetes. Fortunately, the most important had simple substitutions. With the substitutions, I get to enjoy completely normal blood sugars while also avoiding the horrible symptoms of oxalate poisoning. That’s how you science the heck out of health — or at least how I do it.
James D. Brausch is on the board of directors of iFramo, a non-profit dedicated to health and wellness for all.
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