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The Diabetes Code

About one and a half million Americans will receive a diabetes diagnosis this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 30 million are already diagnosed with it, per the most recently available data, and another 81 million more have prediabetes but just don’t know it yet. The rise in insulin-related conditions such as these, and metabolic syndrome and fatty liver disease, are contributing to a growing health crisis—and the conditions are all related to the way in which the human body processes the glucose from carbohydrates that we eat.

Type 2 diabetes actually happens in two phases, explains Jason Fung, MD, a kidney specialist in Toronto whose book The Diabetes Code has been changing lives. “The first phase, which lasts approximately 10 to 15 years shows a slow increase in insulin resistance. The body compensates by increasing insulin levels,” he says. “After approximately a decade of rising insulin resistance, pancreatic beta cells responsible for insulin production are unable to keep up and blood glucose rises quickly. It takes only two years or so before full-blown type 2 diabetes is diagnosed.”

The clinical consensus has always been that type 2 diabetes is chronic, progressive, and incurable. However, people have been known to reverse an adult-onset condition through lifestyle changes and Dr. Fung is helping countless patients do just that, with what may seem to many to be an unconventional method: fasting. Here are just a few of the amazing diabetes transformations from those using the method: