Sweet Poison

“Sugar Nation” exposes the underlying causes of the diabetes epidemic and delivers simple solutions to stop it. Will we listen?  

By Jim Schmaltz

Occasionally a book is published that should be required reading for every man, woman and child in the country. “Sugar Nation” by Jeff O’Connell (Hyperion, 2011)

not only achieves that distinction, but should also be added to medical school curricula around the world.

Like other classic books on urgent societal issues (e.g., “Silent Spring,” “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”) “Sugar Nation” is enhanced by the unique journey of its author.  O’Connell (he is a former colleague and personal friend) is an unlikely Virgil for a descent into insulin-resistant hell. Tall, thin and outwardly healthy, he learned that his estranged father was gravely ill with type-2 diabetes (known as adult-onset diabetes) and that this risk was inherited. After doctors confirmed he was prediabetic, O’Connell went on a quest to discover causes and solutions to the disease.

How prevalent is diabetes? Early in the book O’Connell quotes Paul Zimmet, MD, PhD, director of international research at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Australia, who says, “Diabetes, along with obesity, is looming as the biggest epidemic in human history.” The statistics bear this out. At current rates, one of every three people born in the United States in the year 2000 will become diabetic.

O’Connell interviews dozens of researchers, doctors and diabetes victims; visits multiple clinics, hospitals and health conferences; and reads numerous reports and studies. What he discovers is that people are losing limbs, going blind and dying before their time when making simple lifestyle changes can manage diabetes if not outright cure it.

And he’s living proof.

THE BUSINESS OF DISEASE

A veteran health and fitness journalist, O’Connell stresses that lifestyle intervention should be the preferred initial treatment for diabetes. He writes: “Back in early 2002, the medical world was stunned when a combination of lifestyle changes (dietary adjustments, exercise, and the resulting weight loss) reduced diabetes incidence by 58 percent in the Diabetes Prevention Program, a major multicenter clinical research study. The superstar of type 2 diabetes drugs, metformin, reduced it by only 31 percent. Problem solved, you might think.”

            You’d be wrong. O’Connell’s maddening and enlightening journey into the diabetes industrial complex exposes the powerful corporate interests behind our sugar fix, and the unwittingly enablers to the bad habit in the form of physicians and other health-care professionals misinformed or uninformed about the solutions to diabetes and other sugar-related maladies.

            Instead of changing diets (mostly cutting carbs) and encouraging exercise, physicians reach for the prescription pad as a reflex to a diabetes diagnosis. This is the result of doctors unaware of the power of the exercise/diet fix, along with pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, who benefit more from treating the disease then seeing it cured. According to experts at Stanford University, the U.S. spent $12.5 billion on diabetes prescriptions in 2007, reports O’Connell. That’s a lot of bread invested in not telling us to eat bread.

            It doesn’t help that the American Diabetes Association’s guidelines give short shrift to the lifestyle cure. In an investigation both maddening and enlightening, O’Connell discovers that the ADA is just one of the major medical organizations compromised by financial entanglements with Big Pharma and poorly served by general bureaucratic paralysis. He writes: “If a nondrug alternative works better than the drug therapy, shouldn’t the nondrug alternative be the preferred treatment? At present, no organizing principle for guideline committees says to take the least invasive alternative.”

A HUMAN STORY

O’Connell’s personal investment in these issues makes “Sugar Nation” much more than the story of a disease: It’s a stirring call to action. His frustration at the drug-first approach becomes an appeal to our national character: “We’re indoctrinated to think that it always wins in the end, when it should lose every single time,”  he writes. “Our collective response to this lifestyle disease is to fill drug prescriptions? Shouldn’t the land of the free and the home of the brace set its sights much higher than that? We defeated the Third Reich, but we can ‘t beat this?”

            Fortunately, the journalist encounters researchers and physicians who do advise diabetics and those hoping to prevent the disease to make lifestyle changes. In short, that means cutting carbs from  your diet, particularly refined carbs with high glycemic loads, and exercising regularly, preferably by adopting a routine with high-intensity interval training.

            O’Connell becomes his own best case study and successfully uses the formula to control his own blood sugar and insulin response. His bracingly honest assessment of his encounters with his father lying in a hospital bed ravaged with the disease is unforgettable and heartbreaking. It puts a human face on a health crisis that touches people from all income groups, regions and backgrounds.

We live in an environment that promotes diabetes, and while it seems that sedentary and fast-food habits are permanent fixtures of our 21^st century lifestyles, O’Connell stresses that changing your habits shouldn’t be seen as difficult or painful. He writes: “Once you decide that your heart, kidneys and limbs are worth more than hamburger buns, french fries, and glazed doughnuts, you’ll do more than avoid complications. You may find yourself in the best shape of your life. Don’t think of this as the end of your best days; those are still coming your way.”

            Reading “Sugar Nation” is your first step to this better life.