Oprah has a radical goal- to save million of lives in the next 60 minutes. Diabetes is a ticking time bomb, a silent killer, annihilating 100 African Americans a day. That number may not be alot unless it’s your mother or friend or your family or yourself. It’s time to get out of denial. Dr Oz is here because as a heart surgeon he sees the affects of diabetes daily. Its the fastest growing disease in history 80 million people in America have, or or on the verge of having diabetes. 6 billion are walking around undiagnosed. We spend $174 billion a year on this diease, more than all the  cancers combined or AIDS. The healthcare system will be bankrupt if we don’t do something about diabetes. Believe it or not, the bright side is most diabetes is treatable and preventable and even reversible. Dr Oz is here, his new show is doing great, congratulations. They high five. He says he learned from the best, he was well-taught.

So what is diabetes? Dr Oz wants to be crystal clear that the problem is not just a little bit of sugar. A tortilla in the mouth  goes into the  stomach, the liver takes the nutrients and decides what to do with it, including making sugar. The pancreas is the hero today. The food in the small bowel is washed by the  bile and the yellow stuff from the pancreas. The molecules of sugar get absorbed into the body. In the bloodstream, the sugar is traveling, particles of insulin are being released from the pancreas to attract the sugar. The pancreas is trying to take the sugar and funnel it from the blood into the tissues- to the brain so we can think, to our muscles so we can exercise. Simple carbohydrates are sugars. If you have too much sugar going in, we store it in our belly, just as our ancestors did to survive. Belly fat gets ponderously large and poisins the insulin so sugar can’t get out the bloodstream. This is a problem because in the heart the blood vessels are delicate and the sugar is like glass shards scraping and making holes.As our body scars and attempts to heals, it breaks and ruptures. The open surface forms a scab like anywhere else in your body. The scab in the artery gets larger and larger and kaboom. Right there, you saw the leading cause of death in diabetics. A diabetic will most likely die from a heart attack. 1/4 of the patients he operates on every day has diabetes. Oprah summarises that too much sugar is like shards of glass inside the body. We scar and heal which equals hardening of the arteries. It influences all of our organs: a scarred kidney gives us kidney failure. An image of a healthy kidney is shown next to a diabetic kidney which has shrivelled. The blood vessels in the eye are very fragile. A diabetic eye has cracked blood vessels, which means that you get dark patches in your vision. This is not just a little bit of sugar.

Oprah has family members who takes insulin every day. Dr Oz wants us to feel diabetes, not just think it. He took a film crew to New York Presbyterian Hospital to see Laureen who is on insulin, who has had diabetes for much of her life. Diabetes ravaged Laureen kidneys so much so that by age 34 she needed a transplant. Just 7 years later, diabetes destroyed that kidney too. 3 days a week, she is on dialysis for 3 hours a day to clean her blood. Now at age 44, diabetes has taken a further toll on her body.  She ended up with lesions on her feet; she has lost half one leg and half a foot. What would she say to people who say diabetes is just sugar? Take care of yourself- she thought insulin would compensate for eating soda and cake. She used to be very active and was a nurse. She says people dont take it seriously when they feel ok. The day it hits you, it’s too late. The day she saw the dialysis machines she thought this is not me, it can’t be happening. She cries.  Dr Oz says shes a brave woman. Looking at her body, Laureen says its so shocking to see her foot and leg gone.

86,000 amputations are done every year as a result of diabetes. Imagine that your blood vessels look like a straw. The diabetes causes scars on the inside which twist up the blood vessels, which shuts off both the blood flow and the protective white blood cells so you get infections. Often the first problem is a toe infection- diabetics can’t feel it and they loose their foot. People change their lives based on what they feel, not what they know. So Feel Laureen. She is Type 1, which is genetic, 10% of diabetes is Type 1.  Type 2 is a lifestyle issues- the belly fat has poisoned the insulin. This is a perfect storm. When you go to get food, you get sugar which is like crack cocaine. He says he  is going to blow our mind He shows the 150lbs of sugar that each of us eats a year. Their generation ate 40lb of sugar less. That is shocking, says Oprah.

This show should be a big wake-up call. Everyone in the audience today has diabetes, pre-diabetes, or a family member living with diabetes. Oprah brought Dr Oz out of surgery and off his own show to be here today to give the brutal facts. $175 billion a year in diabetes spending will be doubled in 25 years. We will have to take care of a good portion of the population.

Warning signs:

• Constant thirst
• Frequent urination
• Non-healing infections
• Tingling toes
• Blurred vision

Your whole immune system is depressed. Those symptoms will be there with Type 1 or 2. Type 1 can not be prevented, but it can be treated. Up to 90% of Type 2 can be reversed.

Risk Factors:

• Belly Fat
• Sedentary Lifestyle
• Family History
• Smoking

Dr Oz can walk around and see people with big bellies who have diabetes. It is not surprising. Exercise can help reverse diabetes. A little bit of fat is hard to reverse. Oprah asks if only overweight people are at risk. If the average height woman is 150lbs, has an increased risk of diabetes. If your waist size is more than half your height, you’ll have an increased risk of diabetes. Oprah is 5′ 6 1/2″ so her height is 66 1/2″ so 33 1/4″ is the limit for her waist size. We are not talking about really big people. And please women of America. guys never change their belt size after age 40, they just let it hang over the top, so you have to measure.

Oprah asks why is diabetes running rampant in the African American community? The big reason is because the cheapest calories are those with no nutrients. Every day on his show, Dr OZ gives Doctor’s Orders, and  when the guidelines were to eat 100% wholegrain foods, because that’ll prevent the problem, people wrote in by the thousands saying that they couldn’t find those foods in their neighborhoods. We need to change that. Find it and demand it. Forget the cheap foods, get food without a label. The Hispanic community is also hard hit. We have to eat better. Essentially, we must avoid the white foods, the processed foods. White flour, pasta, rice, bread, sugar… white bread is like a candy bar for your stomach. Oprah reads an email letter from 33 year old Rochelle- she lost her mom due to a massive stroke and renal failure brought on by diabetes and high blood pressure. She was only 53, and spent most of her life as a nurse. Rochelle is concerned for the health of her church, over half of the members have diabetes; they fellowship over food. Breakfast is fried chicken, french fries, pork chops and maybe a hamburger, after evening service they serve sweets. They are slowly killing themselves and they need change.

Oprah thanks Rochelle for the email which prompted the show. Dr Ian Smith is a Harvard Educated  diet and health expert, author of the 50 Million Pound Challenge, where he is mobilising the country to loose weight and get healthy. He went to Rochelle’s church to try and light a fire to mobilise change. African Americans tip the scale in record numbers- they are twice as likely to have  Type 2 diabetes, twice as likely to have kidney disease, twice as likely to have  amputations, and twice as likely to die from diabetes. A familiar scene in churches across the US, the congregation are enjoying their usual meal. Dr Ian asks who in the audience has or knows someone with diabetes- everyone raises their hand.Walgreens is going to test all of their blood sugar levels- it’s a simple test. Dottie is living with diabetes and Dr Ian says she’s a walking ticking time bomb. He is alarmed by the numbers and the denial. The members with diabetes are on a crash course for disaster.

Oprah asks him how it was, he says it was unbelievable. African Americans have obesity in record numbers- its a habitual thing. Habits are tough to break, especially around food. They take a heels in the ground approach that they will not be told what to eat and how to change, This disease comes down to attitude. So 24 church ladies from Dayton Ohio are in the audience in their hats. Dee Dee was told she could end up in a diabetic coma- she thought about what he said and she’ll do better with exercise, diet and medicine. As a diabetic she should test herself daily, Dee Dee hadn’t tested for a month.  Nell who cooks the food has diabetes, as does her husband. Her mother and sister died of diabetes so she has decided to take it seriously after the wake up call. Typically African Americans are diagnosed with the disease at later stages which means that the reversibility is more difficult to happen. You can almost always reverse it, but not the side effects such as heart disease. Outreach is so important, Dr Oz says if we can figure out the people who don’t know they have it yet, we can answer Laureen’s wish. Dr Ian’s goal is for people to do something now. There’s a sense of resignation that the family history is there, and a lack of urgency unlike in say pancreatic or brain cancer. Diabetes can take years to kill you. People believe they can change in the future and be ok. By the time they get diagnosed, it’s too late. Dr Oz says that taking insulin is not the solution. The pills paint over the cracks, but you don’t want the cracks to form. We must address the foods that are stopping us from putting one foot n front of the other, which is something we have always done.

Fitness expert Bob Greene, author of Best Life Diet: Managaing Diabetes and Pre-Diabetes says its up to us to save our own lives. His parents have it so he is a candidate, but by changing factors of lifestyle, you can change your risk. Exercise is huge, it’s hard to tell people to eat right and it’s harder to get people to exercise. We dont move in our culture as we used to. Bob was charged with getting the church ladies to move. They do not wear pants, ever, so they wear skirts on the treadmill. In footage, only a few say that they exercise regularly. 30 minutes a day of exercise, lowers your risk of diabetes by 60%. Exercise is not negociable. If they do it consistently they’ll drop weight which will lower their risk. He shows them strength training. They have to do cardio every day. They are lowering their blood sugar by exercising. After exercising, one of the congregation walked back rather than take a wheelchair as previously. The group craved the information. Bob says some are really ready to make the commitment, some will need more emotional homework to make the commitment.

Bob gave them a sermon on sugar after the exercise- hidden sugar is the big problem, well find it in ranch dressing, and each plate had about 4 servings of dressing. Take soda off the table, there is 10 tsp of sugar in each can. Women who drink one can of soda a day, increase their risk of type 2 diabetes by 83%. 2 tablespoons of ketchup has 2 teaspoons sugar in it. The doughnuts can each have 13 teaspoons of sugar in each.

Dr Oz says cut out the white foods. Dr Ian says cut out fried foods- bake, grill, steam. Bob’s book is all about food choices and exercise and changing behaviour, unwiring ourselves from how we grew up. He has a specially designed website that Oprah actually went  to with all the information, everyone can get a free 30 day trial at thebestlife.com.

After Oprah’s former chef, Art Smith, was diagnosed with diabetes, ten months ago, he’s lost 85lbs and now no longer needs to take his diabetes medication. His diagnosis horrified him- his parents have diabetes. His first goal was to loose 50 lbs, he thought at first he was getting older and couldn’t see as well, he thought he was having a heart attack and he other ailments. Dr Oz measures his waist -it’s 40 inches- which has reversed his diabetes. Without the belly fat, it no longer sends out chemicals to the body saying ignore the insulin.

Bob Greene has great recipes in his book, including fried chicken without frying it. Art says once a week he makes skinless chicken in a multi-grain cereal coating. Greek yogurt is zero fat and has protein, to coat the chicken. Bob’s cheesy cornbread has less calories and sugar than regular, and there is a black-eyed pea salad. We should have legumes, the super-food, 3-4 times a week. Apple cider vinegar drops the glycemic index of any food. The recipes can be found on Oprah.com.

Extra belly fat, thirst, urination means you should get tested. Walgreens is stepping up in a big way- tomorrow from 11-11pm, you can go to any 24 hour clinic and get a free blood screening, or you can call 1-800-Walgreens to set up an appointment. It’s free and easy and you can get tested and help reverse this silent killer. Thank you.

WHAT WE LEARNED TODAY:

People change their lives based on what they feel, not what they know.

If your waist size is more than half your height, you’ll have an increased risk of diabetes.

The cheapest calories are those with no nutrients- white bread is like a candy bar for your stomach.

It’s hard to tell people to eat right and it’s harder to get people to exercise. Exercise is not negociable.

Stop eating white foods, stop frying foods, do 30 minutes of exercise daily.

VERY QUICK SUMMARY:

Women who drink one can of soda a day, increase their risk of type 2 diabetes by 83%.