Hello...my first post. Couldn't keep quiet although is past midnight.
I have to admit that Dr. Cousens looks weird with his hat and don't swallow many of his theories...but....there are good elements of what he says that are working in our case. My son (5 yo) was diagnosed with T1 5 months ago, was found to be over the scale in the glucose meter at the hospital (34+) and his HbA1c were higher than 9%.
Ok, diabetes cannot be cured but can be managed much better than feeding rice krispies and cereal bars to our little loved ones.
Now, after changing our whole family's diet to something closer to a vegetarian diet we managed to get a 5.5% HbA1c (same as a non-diabetic person) in his last appointment, and he is more energetic than ever (who knows for how long my little boy was fading with this disease), practising judo and competing with his older brother. His normal insulin intake now is of 2 units of lantus per day and during the summer holidays, with a very close monitoring from us, he didn't use any insulin for 10 days in a row. (I am not recommending anybody to try this...first talk to your doctor...just explaining our case, please don't burn me).
What are we doing? First of all, bye bye to all refined and processed food. We don't need them at all. Human beings went through thousands of years without refined cane sugar, McDonalds and all that rubbish. Where possible, we have reeducated our children to eat raw vegetables...a good and varied salad. Not everything is raw, but not made of "empty" carbohydrates, having cooked pulses of many kinds as a staple in our diet. No red meat or chicken, but we have eggs and blue fish. We have plenty of raw nuts and seeds of many kinds, and my wife prepares delicious cakes replacing wheat flour with almond flour and we use Xylitol and (Banned UK product reference removed) as sweeteners. We also prepare "green smoothies" to our kids, mixing greens with fruit. We tend to use fruits with low GI, like berries, etc.
We are not alone in our approach...We took some inspiration from the Boutenko family (Blog link removed) and many othe parents that do not want to leave medicine all the load of keeping diabetes controlled (Blog link removed) (Blog link removed).
The most fantastic thing is that we have no hypos and no highs, we go out with some healthy snacks and that's it...don't live in fear. It is hard work, all the cooking and the researching, but it is worth it. And not only has benefited him but the whole family (we have lost weight!).
I wish you the best and I hope that sharing my experience can give you a different perspective.