godsilove: My dad and grandfather both have Type II diabetes, so I infer that I am at risk of developing it later in my lifetime.
This was a quote from another topic, and rather than change the subject there, I have started a new topic.
The word "have" implies that both your father and grandfather are alive. If so, you have an opportunity to witness an unproven alternative therapy at work in your own family. I learned about Thomas Smith and his theory of Type II diabetes from an article in the Australian magazine Nexus. (That article was an excellent overview, but I am currently unable to find it on the Internet. For the next best thing, you can study Smith's postings at http://healingmatters.com.
In a nutshell, from memory, Smith was diagnosed as a Type II diabetic with blood sugar over 400. His doctors were unable to control his blood sugar, and he began to take matters into his own hands. He did a thorough literature search and discovered that medical science had identified the cause of Type II, but had kept this knowledge away from doctors treating the disease. Basically, Type II can be viewed as a disturbance of cell membranes that inhibits the uptake of glucose into cells, leading to increased glucose in the blood stream. (We became interested because ascorbic acid and glucose share the same insulin-mediated transport mechanism into cells. In theory, a diabetic would also have a hard time with the uptake of ascorbic acid into cells.)
The discovery of the cause has to do with cell membrane maintenance and repair, an ongoing metabolic process. If the quality of fats in the diet is poor, then these poor fats (e.g. trans fats) will be used to maintain the integrity of the membrane, but the repair will be faulty. As the disease progresses, more and more cells have faulty membranes inhibiting glucose uptake.
The fix is to eliminate trans fats and replace with healthier fats. I believe Smith's protocol eliminates ALL fats for a certain period, and then introduces certain Omega 3/6s. In his case, his blood sugar returned to normal after 90 days (again, if memory serves) but others with more advanced disease (more disturbed cells) may require a longer period. The good news is that because the process of maintaining cell membranes is ongoing, the damage caused by trans fats (or some impurity induced during the creation of the fat) can be reversed. (I have many messages from people who learned about this here, visited Smith's site and tried the protocol, and were successful. Maybe people where the protocol failed do not contact me?)
So you have a simple experiment (if you can get your dad and granddad off the junk foods) that you can monitor in your own family. (If you want really spectacular results in measured blood sugar, slowly introduce vitamin C.)