Book Review: 'Your Simple Guide to Reversing Type 2 Diabetes' and 'Life Without Diabetes'
The books
This page reviews two books:
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Your Simple Guide to Reversing Type 2 Diabetes: The 3-step plan to transform your health, by Professor Roy Taylor, is a short, simply-written book. It's split into three parts:
- What is type 2 diabetes? A clear explanation of the condition. This section would make for a great introduction for the newly-diagnosed, or anyone with little or no previous knowledge.
- Why we get it: this section sets out Professor Taylor's theory of how diabetes develops.
- How to escape it: describes the (fairly straightforward) diet plan.
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Life Without Diabetes: The definitive guide to understanding and reversing your Type 2 diabetes. This is a much longer read (though still clearly written and easy to get through). It goes into much greater depth on the research and science behind the diet. However it follows broadly the same structure: an introduction to type 2, why we get it, and the diet.
The theory: personal fat threshold
Professor Taylor's theory (backed up by pancreas scans and testing out the diet approach), is that it's not simply being overweight that causes type 2, but rather, exceeding your personal fat threshold. This is the amount of fat you can gain before it starts to be stored in your liver and pancreas, thus causing type 2 diabetes.
This explains how you get type 2 diabetics who are a healthy BMI (body mass index). They may be slim, but if they've crossed their PFT, they're still putting strain on their pancreas.
It seems to be that if you gain much weight after age 20-25, you're likely to cross this threshold.
The diet
Professor Taylor recommends a three-stage diet:
- Eight weeks of extremely low calorie eating, using meal replacement shakes.
- A phased reintroduction of normal, but carefully portioned, meals.
- Normal eating, but at a lower calorie amount than before.
The hope is that the swift weight loss quickly improves life for your pancreas, and thus makes managing your blood glucose easier.
Criticisms of the diet
Diets are always controversial. The diet industry is a huge money-making machine, aimed primarily at monetising people's body-consciousness.
This one comes with better credentials than many:
- Professor Taylor is donating all proceeds from his books to Diabetes UK, and isn't selling his own meal replacement shakes.
- The diet was trialled by the University of Newcastle, and produced good results.
- A version of the diet is available on prescription on the NHS.
However, anyone talking about "reversing" type 2 diabetes should be treated with some skepticism. It may be possible for some type 2s to undo some of the damage, but even then, you'll have to watch weight (calories and possibly carbs) for the rest of your life. And as Professor Taylor himself acknowledges, the diet won't work for everyone. Some diabetic communities won't allow members to talk about "reversing" the condition, probably wisely: think in terms of remission, rather than a true cure.
Conclusion
Although diets that promise cures should always be approached with caution, the Newcastle diet has decent science behind it, and at least Professor Taylor isn't making himself rich off of it. Moreover, the books also serve as a good introduction to type 2 diabetes.
I read the simple guide first, and that was enough to get me started on the diet. However, I still had questions (and some misunderstandings) about the background, and how exactly the liver and pancreas are behaving. Therefor, if you're only buying one, I'd recommend getting Life Without Diabetes: The definitive guide to understanding and reversing your Type 2 diabetes.
I am going to try the diet, and will be reporting on it over in the Newcastle diet.