hi i'm lisa fletcher, and you are in the stream. diabetes is growing twice as fast in the u.s. as western europe with some 80 million at risk, we discuss the sharp rise in one of the leading causes of death, and the solution many simple. ♪ my co-host and digital producer, wajahat ali is here bringing in all of your live feedback throughout the show. today is world health day, so we're dedicating this show to

one of the fastest growing diseases in america. >> yes, every single person my paternal family has diabetes. my doctor said your family has an awesome history of diabetes, so take care of yours. chris says . . . that. >> yeah, we have the experts on the show to talk about that. annest mated 26 million americans have diabetes and another 79 million are at risk with prediabetes.

in some states diabetes grew by more than 130% in just the last 15 years. and in a state like oklahoma it escalated a staggering 226%. one in three adults will have diabetes by 2050, additionally there is a sharp rise in type one diabetes. it is also called juvenile diabetes. the remaining 95% are type ii cases which tend to be associated with obesity and unhealthy diets. so is it possible to reverse the trend? we're joined by the associate director of ed medicine, a food consumer activist and the

founder of foodbabe.com. she exposes what is really in our food supply and is responsible for getting major food companies to stop using questionable ingredients. and eric who reversed his type ii diabetes by changing his diet and lifestyle losing more than 100 pounds in the process. thanks to everyone for being here. dr. melton mills we toss around these numbers and toss around this idea of type ii diabetes. what it is and why it is escalating so quickly? >> your, type ii diabetes is charactered by insulin resistance. what it means is that people have -- their body is making insulin but it doesn't work properly. and the only way to get their

blood sugar under control is for their pain koreas a, which is the organ that see cretes insulin to see crete more and more. but the pancreas can't keep up. >> americans think there is a magic pill for everything, right? >> actually that's not the case, because yes, there are pills that can try and, again, force the pancreas to secrete more, and so at that point people have to start injecting insulin or injecting drugs to try to make the insulin work better. but what we know is that having

high insulin levels in the body creates a number of problems. it tends to cause weight gain, increase disease risk. it promotes something that we call metabolic syndrome, which increases your risk for heart problems. >> bad deal across the board? >> absolutely. >> how is it related to or is it related to bad food consumption? >> it is absolutely related to fast-food consumption, as well as the majority of processed foods you see at the grocery store. and unfortunately many of the foodsn't have been tested long term in a cumulative fashion. we have over thousands of ingredients allowed in our food supply that the fda has approved or some that the fda hasn't really looked at, that haven't been studied in over three decades and we really don't know what all of these different

chemicals are doing in our body. are they affecting our insulin? there is an indication that there is a question to that and almost a certainty, because we know that diabetes can be reversed via diet. >> speaking of that . . . and check this out, lisa, this is believe it or not, the same individual. this is a before picture and after picture. this is eric, at 300 pounds to my left, and this is eric at 175 pounds. eric you are joining us today. talk about this transformation. this is amazing. >> thank you very much. i was overweight most of my

adult life beginning at about 25. the weight started to creep up between 3 and 5 pounds a year, until it got to the point where i had elevated glucose levels and my doctor decided to put me on type ii medications. i was taking insulin, supplemented by high blood pressure medication and high cholesterol medication. it was over about a thousand dollars a month. i went to a business trip out of town, and on my return home -- this was in 19 -- pardon me, 2010, on my return home, the airline wasn't able to take off, because they had run out of seat belt extensions because of too many obese people on the flight. i took that as a wake-up call.

and after having tried virtually diet fad and popular diet on the market in the last 20 years, and i could name them all, i saw president clinton come on tv in august 2010, talking about a plant-based diet, and he looked great. he said he had wanted to lose weight for his daughter's wedding, and he looked better than i had ever seen him before, so i listened up and it hit home with me. and i got on google looking up what is a plant-based diet, and there really wasn't anything. i mean, i didn't know what the term vegan meant or what a whole-food plant based diet was. so i began calling around and ended up at a place in sunnydale, california, and they knew what i was talking about. so at age 50 at the time i was about 300 pounds.

i had never eaten a meal in my entire life that did not include meat, and never even knew how to cook. they talked me through everything and just by completely eliminating animal proteins and preparing tasty food made by plants, i started losing five pounds a week, and in less than three months i was off all of the medications. my glucose levels normalized, and i went from being 300 pounds with a 50-inch waist, cholesterol over 300, and very high diabetic level glucose down to where i am now, which is 175 with a 33-inch waist, blood 60. >> eric it is amazing.

congratulations on a hard-fought win on this. eric brought up this idea of eating whole foods versus processed foods. what are processed foods and how do you explain to people why they are not necessarily the best thing for your body. isn't food food? >> actually he makes an excellent point. plant foods are plant foods that have their fiber component in them. so for instance, whole wheat as opposed to white flour, brown rice which is whole grain rice as opposed to white rice which has had its fiber removed. these are whole foods that have not been processed that have the fiber taken out. the fiber is important because it modulated the breakdown and absorption of starch in the food

so you don't get the high sugar -- blood sugar spikes that you can get when you don't have the fiber present. but it actually does something much more important. it turns out when that fiber gets into their colon, it is acted upon by the bacteria in your colon to create short-chain fatty acids that go to your liver and decrease the production of glucose by the liver just the way a medication does, and it also decreases the production of cholesterol, just the way staten drugs do, so the finer will -- fiber will do for you what medications can do for you without the side effects >> while type ii diabetes makes up 95% of diabetes in the u.s., there has always been a sharp

increase in diabetes i. we'll talk to her next.

♪ welcome back, we're talking about the growth of diabetes in america. type i diabetes accounts for only 5% of people with diabetes,

but also has no cure despite active research. kim was diagnosed with type i diabetes at age 6. you have a blog called texting my pancreas. how did you come up with that? >> sure. i decided to look online to find other people who had type i diabetes. i found people to connect to and the title of the blog references the technology that i use, so i have an insulin pump and it had a glucose meter that would wirelessly talk to the insulin pump, so i guess if you would using a really old cell phone it would kind of look like you were texting. >> well us about your experience with type i diabetes. >> sure. the thing about type i diabetes, is it's so constant and intensive.

you are making literally hundreds of decisions every day in terms of insulin dosing, what you are eating, and factor in things that you really can't control like your stress level or hormones. so there's always kind of this other layer of thicks going on in your mind that you need to take in to account. >> doctor mills, why are we seeing an increase diabetes? >> we shouldn't say it's completely unrelated to diet, because what studies have shown is in children are exposed, very young kids, are exposed to cow's milk, there is an increased risk of developing type i diabetes. and worldwide the higher the consumption of cows milk, the greater the risk

and incidence of type idiabetes. studies have shown you not expose children to cow's -- milk under the age of one. so we know that -- that that is one possible connection with diet, but we don't know -- but there are other factors at play that we can't fully explain. there's some viral illnesses that possibly could raise the risk of developing type i diabetes. we don't know all of the factors. but certainly having a plant-based diet can help you have better insulin sensitivity and can also help better control your diabetes even with type i diabetes. >> this is kim's texting my

pancreas blog . . . and hul low has a greet comment. >> hey i'm digital producer for "the stream," but also a dad of a diabetic teenager. this is our life. needles, proper equipment. blood checks, finger pricks, highs and lows. what are you eating? just so many things to do every day. i -- it's a family affair. it's a tough disease, and we need a cure. we totally need a cure. >> not as easy as the type ii. reversing that? >> no not at all, because it's an autoimmune phenomenon. where all of the cells that make insulin have been destroyed. so unlike type i -- excuse me, type ii, where the body the pancreas is still making

insulin, the body is just not responding as well, in type i the body is not making insulin at all. >> so why don't americans just eat healthier? this seems to be the biggest point of contention? it is bad habits or access to healthy food? tweet us your thoughts. we'll get to them in a moment. here are a couple of the stories we're following. only on al jazea

♪ welcome back. we're talking about the diabetes epidemic in america, and why americans just don't eat healthier. we asked your community why there is such a disconnect? >> yeah. jess on twitter says . . .

>> i would argue that a lot of it has to do with misinformation, and that stems from the fact that the u.s. dietary guidelines are put out by the usda, which has as its primary goal to promulgate the interests of industrial agro business, and not necessarily what is in the best interest of american's health. and americans think that they are eating legalthy, when in fact they are really eating a lot of unhealthy foods. the things that i legal my patients and people that i talk to is that none of us came to the delivery room asking for fried chicken, ice cream, or pork chops. we were all born without preferences. the unhealthy things that we learned to eat, we can unlearn those bad habits and learn to instead.

habits. >> i agree with the doctor, it's really about education. you know, i spent some time in mississippi, and one of the most obese counties in the nation -- actually in the world, and the majority of them had type ii diabetes, and they were reaching for the diet coke with the artificial sweetener, and other low-fat foods that they thought were healthy because of the market messages from the food industry and even our government, and right down the road they had gorgeous beautiful organic farms having plant-based foods growing everywhere, and these farmers were shipping it 40 miles south to the major cities. so one of the main key things i tell people is change where they shop. instead of going to the

conventional grocery store find out where their food is being grown and get it from the farmer, because nine times out of ten it will be healthier for them. we has americans -- >> go ahead. >> go ahead. sorry. >> we as americans can really take control of our. the most important thing we do mouth. >> she is talking about farm to table and buying from your farmers, and a lot of people don't live in a situation where that's practical. and people think it's really too expensive to be healthy. is that true? healthy? >> not at all. it's really a myth that eating healthy, plant-based whole food, really, organic, even, is just as accessible and affordable as what most people are eating now. there are over 2,000 vegan cook

books on the market to choose from. you can find anything you want any night by looking up a food and seeing how to prepare it in a vegan way. i show people all the time by taking them to more expensive places like whole foods how you can use the bulk bins, and shop and buy organic produce and fresh food from the bulk bins for less than you can spending at a traditional grocery store. anybody in this country can eat vegan for under $5 a day. it. >> our community is really talking about if we can afford this, and paula says . . .

dr. mills how do we better educate these communities especially the communities of color, who seem to be dispropersian nately affected. >> it is absolutely a misconception that it is more expensive to eat healthy. nothing is cheaper than beans and rice, but nothing is also healthier than beans and rice. it is much healthier than chicken, or a slab of pork. how do we get that information out? there are a number of online resources. there are a number of links to various groups and educational resources that are available. there are a number of books that are available and information that's available online. there is a wide range of information resources that are

out there for people if they will look for them that's readily available, and one, i would encourage healthcare providers to spending more time educating their patients about the importance of eating healthy, and to provide that information in their offices, so that when people come to their office they have that information available, and also to direct them to the online resources so that they can, again, find the information they need to -- to eat healthier. >> yeah, unfortunately -- >> go ahead. >> unfortunately, some of the online resources can be very biased towards the big industry and the government and what they are preaching, so it's really important for people to realize there are third-party sources out there that are safeguarding american health. the cornucopia institute looks over organic farmers and promotes organic living.

my site, i have over 75 organic budget tips on there. if you google organic budget tips you'll find 75 tips that will help you out there if you are watching this. but also it's really important that he start to tell the truth of what is happening in the food supply, how our entire food supply has been indun nated with foods to work against us and buy more of that industry food instead of looking at real whole plant-based foods that you get from the ground, the kind that give you the type of nutrition so you don't go and crave these other foods. >> eric, you have got 20 seconds left in this show. what are your final thoughts for folks who are living what you used to live? >> to support what dr. mills was saying when anybody tells me eating healthy is expensive, i

ask them what does open heart surgery cost, what are the consequences of a ruined life and lack of fulfilling what you are capable of in life. >> all right. ♪ ♪ welcome to al jazerra america, i am del walters, these reports stories that wore we are following for you. >> it's not right. ain't right. it's not right and it ain't right. >> president obama putting income inequality on certainty stage, calling for equal pay for women. unrest. the west ordering russia not to interfere again. never again, looking back at rwanda's painful past, one