Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Can't I Do This Naturally?

"Is there a natural way to get my cholesterol down?"

"Is there a way to get my diabetes under control without all these pills?"

"Can I control my blood pressure naturally?"

Usually, the answer is, "Yes, you can." I recommend eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly and avoiding the extremes of psychological stressors. Yet most of my patients have trouble making the adjustments to diet and lifestyle that are necessary to control their metabolism without medications.

So it is gratifying when occasionally I have patients who do exactly what I recommend and harvest the results. Over the last month, I've seen three patients, all of whom were diagnosed with diabetes. Each one had changed their diet to a primarily whole foods, plant-based diet and all of them had been able, in consultation with me to drop all diabetes medications. All but one had been (again, on my advice) able to discontinue their cholesterol pills, and we stopped the one who was still on them. One patient was only on a single blood pressure pill with a goal of stopping that as well, down from seven different medications previously.

The lesson is that the people who can and do make modifications to their eating and lifestyle do get great results.

No comments:

Post a Comment