The reader's edition
The Diabetes Code: Prevent and Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally: the summary
Jason Fung is a Toronto kidney specialist who saw many of his patients arrive with kidney damage from type 2 diabetes. In The Diabetes Code he argues that type 2 diabetes is a disease of too much insulin and of too much sugar stored in the body, not only of high blood sugar. He compares the body to an overfilled suitcase: once the liver and other organs are full, sugar spills back out into the blood. In his view, giving more insulin pushes more sugar into an already full case, which treats the reading but not the disease. His answer is to empty the case with diet: cut sugar and refined carbohydrates, eat real food with healthy fats, and use intermittent fasting under medical supervision. He draws on clinical trials, the history of diabetes treatment, and the patients in his own clinic. Read a chapter at a time, with a printable action book at the end.
- Jason Fung
- 2018
- 4 chapters
- 5 min read
- 9 takeaways
This is HourLife's reading of The Diabetes Code: Prevent and Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally, in our own words. It is not a substitute for the book.
Chapter 01
Before you start
The book in a minute
Tap a paragraph to highlight it. Turn pages with the arrows, the arrow keys, or a swipe.
Jason Fung is a Toronto kidney specialist who saw many of his patients arrive with kidney damage from type 2 diabetes. In The Diabetes Code he argues that type 2 diabetes is a disease of too much insulin and of too much sugar stored in the body, not only of high blood sugar. He compares the body to an overfilled suitcase: once the liver and other organs are full, sugar spills back out into the blood. In his view, giving more insulin pushes more sugar into an already full case, which treats the reading but not the disease. His answer is to empty the case with diet: cut sugar and refined carbohydrates, eat real food with healthy fats, and use intermittent fasting under medical supervision. He draws on clinical trials, the history of diabetes treatment, and the patients in his own clinic.
Below are the 9 ideas HourLife readers vote up most, each in our words with a note on what it asks of you, and then the steps that put them to work.
Chapter 02
What readers keep
The takeaways
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1
HourLife takeaway
Fung treats type 2 diabetes as a problem of too much sugar stored in the body, not just too much in the blood.
The blood reading is what doctors measure, so it is what most treatment aims at. Fung argues the reading is the symptom. The disease is the overload underneath it, in the liver, the muscles and the rest of the body.
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2
HourLife takeaway
In his picture, insulin resistance is an overflow: the stores are full, so new sugar is pushed back out.
He compares it to an overfilled suitcase, or a packed subway car where nobody else can get on. The cells are not broken. They are full. That is why, in his view, the body seems to ignore its own insulin.
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3
HourLife takeaway
Adding insulin moves sugar out of the blood and into the body, which in Fung's view hides the problem rather than fixing it.
The blood reading improves, but the sugar has only been moved somewhere else. Fung points to large trials of tight glucose control, such as ACCORD, that did not deliver the heart benefits people expected. Mainstream guidelines still rely on insulin for many people, so this is his argument, not a reason to stop a medicine.
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4
HourLife takeaway
Too much insulin and insulin resistance feed each other, so the cycle tightens over the years.
High insulin fills the stores. Full stores resist insulin. The body answers with more insulin. Fung reads the slow worsening of type 2 diabetes as this loop running for a decade or more.
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5
HourLife takeaway
If diet filled the case, diet can empty it, which is why Fung calls type 2 diabetes reversible.
He points to bariatric surgery, after which many people's diabetes goes into remission within weeks. Trials such as DiRECT, in the UK, have shown remission through a supervised weight-loss diet too. Remission is real, but it does not happen for everyone.
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6
HourLife takeaway
Sugar and refined carbohydrates are the first thing Fung takes out, with fructose singled out for the liver.
He argues that fructose, from table sugar and sweet drinks, is handled almost entirely by the liver and helps build a fatty liver. He treats sugary drinks as the easiest and most important change.
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7
HourLife takeaway
Fung sees fasting as the simplest way to let insulin fall and let the body draw on what it has stored.
When you are not eating, insulin drops and the body spends its stores. He describes intermittent fasting as an old practice and uses it with patients in his clinic. Fasting as a treatment is still debated, and on some medicines it can be dangerous without a doctor's plan.
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8
HourLife takeaway
Eating all day leaves little time for insulin to fall, however healthy each snack is.
Fung questions the advice to graze through the day. In his model the question is not only what you eat, but how long the body spends with insulin high.
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9
HourLife takeaway
The book is about type 2 diabetes only; type 1 is a different disease with a different cause.
In type 1 the body makes too little insulin, so the overflow picture does not apply and insulin is life-saving. Fung keeps the two apart, and so should any reader thinking about changing what they eat.
Chapter 03
Put it to work
Your action book
Do the setup steps once, then keep the habits going. The setup changes your week; the habits keep it changed after the first good one.
The download puts this whole reading and a printable action book in one PDF: the setup checklist, then a page of real calendar days for each habit, starting on the day you choose.
Set up once
Book a medication review first
Before you cut carbohydrates or skip meals, ask your doctor or diabetes nurse which of your medicines would need changing. Insulin, sulfonylureas and SGLT2 inhibitors can all become risky when you eat much less.
Ask for your baseline numbers
Get your latest HbA1c, weight and blood pressure written down, and ask what your liver tests show. You need a starting point to see whether anything changes.
Clear the sugary drinks out
Go through the fridge and cupboard and remove soda, juice and sweetened coffee drinks. Put water, sparkling water and plain tea where they used to be.
Swap three refined staples
Pick the three refined foods you eat most, such as white bread, breakfast cereal or crackers. Write down a whole-food replacement for each and buy those this week.
Keep a one-week eating log
For seven days, note the time of every meal and snack, and roughly what it was. Take it to your next appointment so your clinician sees how you actually eat.
Keep it up
Read labels for added sugar
Each time you shop, check the added-sugar line on one product you buy often. Swap one item a week for a version without it.
Stop the automatic snack
When you reach for a snack, ask whether you are hungry or just used to eating at that time. If it is habit, have a glass of water and wait until the next meal.
Check your readings as your doctor asks
If you change your diet, test your blood sugar as often as your care team tells you, and call them if readings run low. Lows need treating at once.
Chapter 04
The last word
Before you go
Pick one step from the action book and do it today. An idea from a book starts to count once it changes what one ordinary day looks like.
A full case needs emptying, not a harder push on the lid.
That is the end of our reading. Where to go from here, or go back to the full The Diabetes Code: Prevent and Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally page.
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