7/10/2009:
Over 32,000 North Dakotans have some type of diabetes - that's an estimate from the North Dakota Diabetes Prevention and Control Program. Type 2 Diabetes is preventable, or controllable, by a healthy diet and exercise program. North Dakota born Dr. Neal Barnard is doing just that.
Neal Barnard was born in Fargo on this day in 1953. Although he began his working life at McDonald's as a teenager, he's now president and founder of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and has been on the forefront in health, nutrition and Type 2 diabetes prevention for 23 years. Dr. Barnard is one busy man. He is also president of The Cancer Project - a non-profit organization advancing cancer prevention and survival through nutrition and education; and he has authored 12 books on healthy living and disease prevention, with sales of over 2 million copies. The doctor is a life member of the American Medical Association and a member of the American Diabetes Association, as well. And in his free time, Dr. Barnard is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Georgetown University.
However, it is his outlook on nutrition and vegetarian living that drives his research and clinical trials. Barnard's studies show that what you put into your body has a direct link to how your body performs. While in his 20s, Barnard assisted with autopsies at a morgue in Minneapolis, witnessing first hand the damage an unhealthy diet can do to blood vessels, the heart and the body.
Dr. Barnard suggests that one in three children born today will end up as diabetic adults. So to combat those odds, and lower your chances of this life threatening disease, Barnard suggests simple foods such as beans, vegetables, fruits and legumes, and healthful meals low in fats and sugars. Dr. Barnard says, "My parents are now vegetarian. That was a job and a half. My mother had high cholesterol. I kept telling my parents: ‘You need to change this. You need to do something.' Her doctor handed her a bunch of pills and told her to take them for the rest of her life. Instead, she changed her diet. Eight weeks later she went back for tests, and the doctor was convinced he had a lab error. No disease! Mom demanded, of me, ‘Why didn't you tell me?'"
Dr. Barnard feels the common practice of taking a pills when diagnosed with diabetes or high blood pressure isn't preventing the disease, and risks more problems and side effects. You can find Dr. Barnard's books on healthy dietary changes and disease prevention in most North Dakota libraries and bookshops.
Dakota Datebook written by Jill Whitcomb
Sources
North Dakota Diabetes Prevention and Control Program- www.diabetesnd.org
Tavis Smiley archives, January 2007-http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200701/20070129_barnard.html
SATYA-April 2005, "The Doctor is In- the Satya Interview with Neal Barnard"-http://www.satyamag.com/april05/barnard.html
Shine-"Sugar is the Heroin of the Masses: Advice on how to Kick It"-April 17, 2008-
washingtonpost.com-Sunday,December5, 2004-http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28550-2004Dec2.html
personal emails from Ms. Simon Chaitowitz (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine)