Amma is a warhorse!
The first memory her three children have of her is how she would shift furniture around with her hips! She is never satisfied with having a single furniture arrangement and loves shifting things about giving an extra artistic touch to everything that she does.
Her fervour in wanting to keep busy with something or the other sometimes makes me wonder if she wishes to forget the trauma of being diabetic!
She discovered that she had Type 2 in her early 40s. Her parents were diabetic and died very young. She assumed that she simply had to follow in their footsteps! No one told her that she had a lifestyle disease and not merely a hereditary disease!
No one told her that she could reverse it. All the doctors that she met informed her that fruits and sweets were off her radar and she spent many a days eating sparsely, staying hungry, longing for food she could not have, afraid of shifting to insulin, hating to prick herself ever so often to test her sugars. It made her scared and frustrated!
She would need to walk hard if she indulged a bit to bring down the sugars and doctors became her school principals whom she had to please with a good report, or else!
This must have gone on for 22 hard years. She was put on maximum dosage. She was obese in spite of eating less. She had to get injected very soon with insulin. Her stomach lining would permanently become sick and her gall bladder would need to be removed.
Traumatised and forced to lead a half-life she would constantly worry about gangrene and heart attacks. Even an acid reflux could send her mind spiralling into thinking she was meeting her end.
Until she got to understand that food and lifestyle habits were the culprits for her problem. Dr. Nagarathnamma, Dr. Subramanium, and her grandson Dr. Achyuthan Eswar showed her a new path to deal with her illness. She brought down her 24 units of insulin to just 8 to 10 units. Her meds from a maximum level are now down to a minimum level!
And what's more, from touching 80 plus kg, she is down to 54 kgs. Plus, she can eat sweets and fruits and rice as well! Most importantly her mind stopped feeling as deprived as it used to before, when she would cook delicious sweets for all but would not be able to taste even a morsel of it!
So how did this magic happen?
She simply shifted to 2 meal a day plan of whole food plant-based diet using Dr. Michael Greger's Daily Dozen chart. She feasts on most all things. Everyday she is able to eat the following at each meal:
- A bowl of seasonal fruits. Mangoes, sapotas...no bar on the kind of fruits. She prefers a mixed kind though as her mind still feels scarred by years of shunning fruits!
- Two bowls of vegetables with a few root vegetables and a lot of other kinds, with special focus on cruciferous ones
- Some kind of spinach preparation, alone or with lentils ranging from soaked and boiled to soaked, steamed and mashed to baked
- 1 small katori of whole grain or 2 rotis or dosas or idlis.
- Some soya and flaxseed preparation.
From being hungry all the time, we now have to chase her to finish her meals which she finds a little more than what she can consume!
From feeling her skin might get attacked she feels it has gotten better.
From getting 4th stage lymphoma due to her lifestyle dependency on all kinds of medicines, she is now healthy and has shut the door on cancer and chemo impacts as well.
From taking in maximum doses and thinking that her days were numbered, she now has extended her life considerably.
She happily creates whole food plant-based recipes for Sampoorna Ahara. If you ever eat Puliyogare from Sampoorna Ahara, it is thanks to her. :)
She can make any dish in such a manner that it is healthy without compromising on taste! Villu Hajji as the team fondly calls her in Sampoorna Ahara is no more a diabetic who is on the threshold of point of no return.
She reversed it by her intelligent choice of taking up to eat Whole food plant-based diet.
What are you waiting for?
Go ahead and make the change happen today and stay healthy all your life! If my mom could, you can!
Be blessed!
Radha Eswar.