Author: Diane Kress, RD, CDE

Publisher: Da Capo-Lifelong Books – 352 pages

Book Review by:  Paiso Jamakar

The author Diane Kress cites data from the American Diabetes Association that an alarming number of Americans – some 105 million or about one-third of the current United States population of 313 million – have got either pre-diabetes (79 percent) or type 2 diabetes (26 percent).

Of all diabetics in America, 95 percent have type 2 diabetes using oral medication for control. The other 5 percent have type 1 diabetes, requiring regular injections of insulin.

Diabetes, excess weight, obesity and heart disease are related. Diane Kress reveals data from the American Heart Association which shows that between 1963 and 1970, some 4.5 percent of U.S. children (about one in twenty) were overweight. By 1980 that increased to 5.6 percent. Today in 2012, it has tripled to 17 percent: one in six children and adolescents aged 2 to 19 is not just overweight buy obese. A person is considered obese if one third of his or her body weight consists of fat.

The author points out six factors that have increased the size of the obesity-diabetes epidemic in the U.S. The most alarming one of them is that Americans are consuming ever larger quantities of carbohydrate-dense foods, including portions served in fast-food restaurants and diners, of: bagels served with butter; large, dense buns; double cheeseburgers and “quarter pounder” burgers; jumbo fries; sugar-topped large muffins; pastas like lasagna layered with full-fat mozzarella cheese; large, six-topping cheese-filled pizzas; pretzels dipped in chocolate; and super-sized sugar-laden soft drinks and triple-scoop, fat-rich ice creams.

The other major factor is that increasingly, people’s lives have turned sedentary, devoid of physical activity or movement. Much of the work most adult Americans do today involves sitting behind a desk, while children spend most of their waking time sitting in classrooms, and sitting at home eating junk food while watching television or playing video games, or on desks in front of computers, or talking on their phones or constantly texting. All this, while they often consume fat-laden and sugary snacks.

Part One of the book helps you understand what diabetes is, how to find with a visit to your doctor if you have it, or if you are at the pre-diabetes stage. Here you learn about metabolism and the relationship between Metabolism B, diabetes, and being overweight. This part of the book shows you how to reverse pre-diabetes, and how to take control of type 2 diabetes.

For those who want to prevent the onset of diabetes, or get control of it before complications associated with it – such as amputation, blindness, heart disease, kidney failure, neuropathy (nerve disease) and stroke – occur, Diane Kress introduces, in this book her proprietary Diabetes Miracle Plan that that consists of three simple steps that will “rest, reset and retrain your pancreas.”

This program is laid out in three chapters of Part Two of her book. In chapters 9, 10 and 11, you learn respectively, how to take “Step 1: Stopping the Diabetes Train,” then “Step 2: Reprogramming Your Metabolism to Handle Carbohydrates Normally,” and finally, “Step 3: Maintaining Great Health for a Lifetime.”

Arriving at and controlling your glucose level is a beginning. In Part 3, the author discusses exercise and how to incorporate it in your daily living; keep track of and control your glucose to keep it at the optimum level; what to do if that level goes too low; and explanations of the effects of some drugs related to diabetes.

Diane Kress has performed an invaluable service with this book The Diabetes Miracle along with her previous one The Metabolism Miracle. With her training as a Registered Dietitian (RD) and Certified Diabetic Educator (CDE) she shows readers that it is not difficult to reverse pre-diabetes, get control of diabetes, and to start an energetic, activity-filled, healthful lifestyle. This is very valuable to benefit hundreds of millions of people worldwide.