[shabbie]

its been a while since i last posted here, but i had been asked to update on my progress so far.

its been 10 weeks since i made the changes to an alkaline diet. i eat 90% alkaline/alkalizing foods, which are 95% raw veggies, fruits and nuts/seeds. the only animal proteins i eat now are some fish and a couple of eggs each week. apart from that my meals are mostly vegan based.
i do include some grains and carbs still if i fancy them. but i havent challenged my pancreas for a couple of weeks yet. its being allowed to rest.

i've been enjoying the menu, i keep it balanced, varied and like to try new things too.

ive seen a vast improvement in my glucose readings since i started. i was taking around 26 units of novolog in a pump when i started the diet. my last A1c in may was 5.7% which i was really happy about (the results have been the same for about 2 years)

i turned my pump off 6 weeks ago after i had seen amazing drops in insulin requirements over the first 4 weeks. when i turned my pump off i was only taking 2 units per day. ive taken one correction dose for a post meal bg of 8.8 at 3 hours. that was 4 weeks ago. ive not taken any insulin since not even basal.

ive added some pancreatic support during the process too, chromium picolinate, alpha lipoic acid and vitamin d3.

i still test several times per day. my bg's are always in non-diabetic ranges, and the standard deviation is so tiny at average 0.4. my SD was 2.8 when i started out.

my fasting bg's are consistently between 4.5 and 5.4. and my 2 hour readings are just as impressive.

ive found other diabetics who have also achieved the same results after going on a raw food/vegan diet. a young woman made the changes after she took an accidental overdose of rapid insulin and woke up after a 5 day coma. she switched to a raw diet and weened herself off insulin.


i should add a foot note here that medical advice/support should be sought before making any changes to your medication regimen.

[cwathne]

good for you



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[jer.lawrence]

Way to go. That sounds extremely tough, but great job.

[viranth]

I know from experience, that this kind of diet works. But for me, with a family and all that, I can't stay on this kind of diet for too long. It gets too hard when the others have a nice dinner, pancakes or something similar.

It's all about willpower, and I manages it for 4 months and had great results. I'm curious to know how your diet for one day is, and how your activity level is.

[shabbie]

thanks you guys

there was a certain amount of willpower in the beginning because i was still craving the carby foods, bread, chocolate etc.
and i was craving something that didint resemble salad or blended gloop. i got around that by making dehydrated raw veggie snack crackers and munching on them when the urge came over me.
ive replaced chocolate with carob bars instead, although i need to limit those as i find them quite more-ish. i also make puddings from frozen soft fruits and bananas and liquidise them to make my own icecream. its dreamy lol

breakfast is made up of a super green smoothie, which includes spinach, broccoli, cucumber soya milk and avocado each morning. i make enough so that there is also some for lunch as well.
i get hungry mid morning and tend to snack on chopped veggies, apples and soaked almonds (dried ones give me belly ache)
evening meal is a nice green salad with either fish, tofu or chickpeas or beans. if the mood takes me i will have steamed veggies with it too and some brown rice. follow that up with pudding of homemade fruit 'icecream'.

its quite enjoyable, and since ive found what i like i can mix it up a little.

other raw foodies make dishes out of eggplant but i cant find away to enjoy it raw, its too leathery for my taste. i like it grilled or roasted best.

i found ways to make the meals fun too, my next purchase is a spiraliser that will create spirals of zucchini to eat as substitute raw noodles. i like raw zucchini a lot.

we are in general pretty active. hubby and i play golf a couple of times a week, and as he is a builder and i help him our activity levels vary depending on what jobs we are doing. some days its heavy digging other days its hanging around passing the screwdriver lol.

we like to go out walking as often as we can though too. but mostly it involves playing golf as well.

if im more active then i need to step up the carbs from grains like brown rice, quinoa, amaranth or even a few baby new potaoes. as long as i stick to around 30-50 grams i do not worry about my bg's, they always come down again.

i'm not ready to challenge the pancreas yet with bigger meals, i think it better to allow it to rest and get used to its new work load.

re: eating the same meals as the family, i actually dont feel my best when i eat that way, so it suits me to do it this way, each of us is different heh??

[JJM335]

Originally Posted by shabbie

i turned my pump off 6 weeks ago after i had seen amazing drops in insulin requirements over the first 4 weeks. when i turned my pump off i was only taking 2 units per day. ive taken one correction dose for a post meal bg of 8.8 at 3 hours. that was 4 weeks ago. ive not taken any insulin since not even basal.

ive found other diabetics who have also achieved the same results after going on a raw food/vegan diet. a young woman made the changes after she took an accidental overdose of rapid insulin and woke up after a 5 day coma. she switched to a raw diet and weened herself off insulin.

Sharon:

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but you describe yourself as T1.5 and I would guess that you must still have significant beta cell function. Presumably, by reducing demand for insulin through altering your diet, you are allowing your remaining beta cells to produce enough insulin to meet your basal requirements. A "classic" T1 (unless they are still honeymooning), will have essentially zero functioning beta cells. Stopping insulin completely will rapidly lead to DKA.

A quick trawl through the internet will turn up a number of claims for diets or treatments that supposedly allowed Diabetics to wean themselves off insulin. However, these cases always turn out to be insulin dependent T2's. I think you need to be careful when you suggest that ANY diet can abolish insulin-dependence in a T1.

Joel

[sarahspins]

Originally Posted by JJM335

A "classic" T1 (unless they are still honeymooning), will have essentially zero functioning beta cells. Stopping insulin completely will rapidly lead to DKA.

Agreed, and as far as I can tell, Sharon has failed to produce ANY evidence that she really was/is a true T1... and without that information, any claims to a "cure" are totally meaningless IMO. Cured what, exactly? If you can't say FOR SURE that you were a T1, you can't say FOR SURE that you've "cured" yourself with an Alkaline diet. It just doesn't work that way for a TRUE TYPE 1!

[Funnygrl]

Originally Posted by sarahspins

Agreed, and as far as I can tell, Sharon has failed to produce ANY evidence that she really was/is a true T1... and without that information, any claims to a "cure" are totally meaningless IMO. Cured what, exactly? If you can't say FOR SURE that you were a T1, you can't say FOR SURE that you've "cured" yourself with an Alkaline diet. It just doesn't work that way for a TRUE TYPE 1!

Agreed. I really wish these posts would be moved from the type 1 section. It may give new/inexperienced members the wrong impression.

[notme]

Thread was moved from Type 1 forum to Type 1.5 forum to clear up any confusion.

[conguitos]

Hi Sharon, thanks for sharing,

I also began with a raw food diet, but with the difference that I ate loads of meat, fatty meat, every day. My readings went to the point that I had an average of 4.6 on my meter, but the spread was from 2.5 to 6, under 3 it was critical and I had that daily.

My endo was quite astonished, he thought that I was lying when I told him that I didn't exercise to achieve that.

Now I began testing with "normal" food. My "best" reading, 16, until now, that after eating a dürüm kebap. It's like an omelett, with lots of white flour.

All the diabetes symptoms are returning, like itching, cramps, bad sight, belly aches, etc..., grrrr

Chocolate is not as bad, my endo and me agreed to do some testing as we will measure my insuling production after a glucose tolerance test, we will measure the insulin directly not the c-peptides. For that I'll have to stress a little bit the body with those nasty carbs...

Lets see...

[shabbie]

sadly the negativity displayed on these forums (...yet again!) about my genuine posts has made me realise just how much i do not enjoy hanging around here.

i wont bother again. mods please delete my account asap.

[ant hill]

Originally Posted by shabbie

we are in general pretty active. hubby and i play golf a couple of times a week, and as he is a builder and i help him our activity levels vary depending on what jobs we are doing. some days its heavy digging other days its hanging around passing the screwdriver lol.

we like to go out walking as often as we can though too. but mostly it involves playing golf as well.

if im more active then i need to step up the carbs from grains like brown rice, quinoa, amaranth or even a few baby new potaoes. as long as i stick to around 30-50 grams i do not worry about my bg's, they always come down again.

i'm not ready to challenge the pancreas yet with bigger meals, i think it better to allow it to rest and get used to its new work load.

re: eating the same meals as the family, i actually dont feel my best when i eat that way, so it suits me to do it this way, each of us is different heh??

Hello Shabbie , I see that you are very happy with what you are doing and the food is a big step as you are keeping the BG down and the activity that you now employ is the key to weight loss. I would think that you will continue with losing more weight all because of the exercise that you are doing. I would not be too scared of the carbs now as the activity will help you to keep the weight off as carbs are your friend with the exercise & activity. So good on ya Shabbie!!! Lots of love to you and keep up the good work.

[fgummett]

Originally Posted by shabbie

sadly the negativity displayed on these forums (...yet again!) about my genuine posts has made me realise just how much i do not enjoy hanging around here.

It is a shame if you don't return as your diet clearly has something going for it I guess my only question is: why as a Type 1.5 would you post a thread about a Diet in the Type 1 forum? As a thread explaining the virtues of a natural food diet in another forum you're likely to get a different reaction than in a place where -- implicitly or explicitly -- the suggestion is that you have "found a cure" for Type 1 D

[inkvisitor]

Maybe the posting in the type 1 section was a mistake - it has been moved anyhow.

Obviously us type 1s wouldn't last too long without at least basal insulin, even on that diet...

[tealas]

I'm saddened to catch up on this thread and see how this played out on the board, especially given what Sharon was able to accomplish.

I read through the past postings and see that she had previously been communicating under the Type 1 forum for many threads about her dietary experiments, probably because she was a Type 1.5 that had long past her honeymoon phase with almost 2 years of serious pumping before she tried these dietary changes.

Given that I have seen similar changes in my own insulin requirements (albeit I am a MODY3 that was on shots, not a Type 1 or even Type 1.5/LADA on a pump) - I can understand the fervor that Sharon was trying to express.

I can also understand why folks felt it was inappropriate to leave the thread under Type 1, but I don't really see that she was making claims to "cure" anything. She specifically footnoted that no one should make changes to their medication without consulting their doctor etc. Sounded like she was just amazed that shifting to predominantely raw foods could restore that much natural insulin production, given how much insulin she had been taking for a signifcant time. Many Type 1's (much less a Type 1.5/LADA) do have a low level of natural insulin production left - I thought the recent posting about the Joslin's Medalists was very interesting in that regard.

Anyway, even if her account will be closed, I hope her postings will remain? They contain good information for those of us who are interested in these types of dietary approaches.