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Chronicles
Diabeties-A New Cure
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On January 15, 2011, in partnership with Rick
Warren from Saddleback Church in Orange County
and two other doctors, launched The Daniel
Plan – a social experiment to learn if community
support was more effective than medication or
conventional medical care for treating and reversing
disease and creating health.
Our Global Obesity and Diabetes Epidemic
One in two Americans has pre-diabetes or diabetes—that
is every other person in America. Twenty five percent of
diabetics and ninety percent of pre-diabetics are not diagnosed.
Caring for them will cost $3.4 trillion over the next
10 years. One in three Medicare dollars is spent on treating
diabetes.
This is a global problem. From 1983 to 2011 world-wide diabetes
prevalence increased from 35 million to 366 million
and is projected to grow to 552 million in 2030. Ninety five
percent of diabetes is lifestyle induced type 2 diabetes. The
world’s best-selling blockbuster diabetes drug, Avandia, has
killed nearly 200,000 people from heart attacks since it was
introduced in 1999 – the very disease that kills most diabetics.
The solution to our diabetes epidemic will not come
from within the health care system. It will not come at
the end of a pill bottle or the blade of a scalpel. We cannot
bypass the fact that this is a lifestyle disease and cannot be
solved by better or more medication.
Doctors graduate medical school knowing more about
treating malaria than treating obesity — or what I call DI-
ABESITY – that now accounts for most the patients they
see. We need to rethink medicine and rethink health care.
When the collective cost of diabesity related disease – heart
disease, cancer, dementia, strokes, infertility, depression
and more is accounted for, it is the single biggest contributor
to our health care costs and our national debt. Seventy
percent of our federal budget is spent on Medicaid, Medicare
and Social Security. It is unsustainable.
In the face of those seemingly insurmountable statistics,
I had an insight after working with Paul Farmer in Haiti
where he built the model of accompaniment – community
health workers and peer support that created the conditions
that led to health.
The insight was this – that the community could be the
cure.
I realized that getting healthy is a team sport!
The Daniel Plan
The Daniel Plan is a wellness program delivered through
small groups in the church. Rick Warren’s church of 30,000
met every week in 5,000 small groups. That was the secret
sauce. The program is named after biblical story of Daniel
and his small group of men who refused to consume royal
food and wine. By eating vegetables and water, “they looked
healthier and better nourished than any of the young men
who ate the royal food,” according to Daniel 1:15.
In the first month 15,000 people signed up, and over the
last year they have lost an estimated 250,000 pounds – or
the equivalent of 10 tractor-trailer trucks loaded with soda.
Over 6,000 people spontaneously joined from around
the country. There have been over half a million visits to
our Daniel Plan website from 189 countries. Hundreds of
churches from around the country have called to participate
and build programs for their own churches. Rick cast
a vision to scale this through faith based communities to 1
billion people.
The results appear to be more effective than conventional
medical care for chronic disease. The program is based
on functional medicine – a way of treating chronic disease
through lifestyle based systems solutions – not just treating
symptoms. It is the science of creating health, not treating
specific diseases. Disease goes away as a side effect of
creating health. That delivered within small groups via
The Daniel Plan was the lever than moved mountains – of
donuts, ribs, soda and more!
Not only were there estimated weight reductions of 250,000
pounds but also equal reductions in medication use, hospitalizations
and doctors visits. And it was free.
In a survey after 10 months of the program, participants
reported the following:
An average weight loss of 13.5 pounds (and 18
pounds for those who said they followed the
program closely)
72% of those who wanted to lose weight did
53% reported increased energy levels
34% reported better sleep
27% improvement in blood work
20% reported improvement in blood pressure
11% reported reduction in medications
31% reported improvement in mood
Those who did the plan together lost twice as much weight
as those who did it alone.
People like Chiquita Seals lost 125 pounds and Kendall Rock
reversed his diabetes. Others got off their insulin, heart.
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