ecently,
I received another e-mail touting what is being called a "cure for diabetes":
What really struck me about this e-mail was the claim of cure of type 1 diabetes, an
autoimmune
disorder where antibodies are assumed to destroy the
beta cells
of the pancreas.
Most pitches to gullible consumers concerns cures for type 2 diabetes
based on the reasonable premise of weight reduction and subsequent improvement of glucose control, but this doctor claims to cure an autoimmune disorder by changing to "civilized origin nutrition"
(whatever that is -- it's certainly new to me!):
Because already in 1977 - when asked for advice in a dramatic case - he found a way to save the leg of a diabetic patient that urgently should have been amputated because of diabetic gangrene. After that, surprisingly, the diabetes itself healed up. Dr. Schnitzer discovered the main cause of incurability of diabetes: It's the common diabetic diet itself! Its high content of protein makes the disease incurable, and the protein oversupply causes the so called "later consequences" or "later sequelae" of both types of diabetes (type I and II): Gangrene, hypertension, nerve degeneration, loss of sensation, impotency, loss of eyesight, liver degeneration, inner bleed to death because of varicosis of the esophagus,and renal atrophy. Therefore, this whole complex of nightmares becomes prevented, and in most cases also cured, by the "civilized origin nutrition" described in this book.
The webpage shows that 7 type 1 patients were "cured", 25 were "improved", and
none
were
unchanged and
none
worsened, of 32 treated.
The book, which can be ordered on the Internet at
http://www.dr-schnitzer.de/besteug1.htm
is
Diabetes Causes & Cure - including cure of later diabetes consequences (only $59.00 for a cure of diabetes!)
Interestly, not mentioned in the e-mail but on the webpage, there are also cures for
hypertension and obesity, as well as diabetes.
Could this be true?
Well, there are clear examples of new concepts of nutrition curing (and preventing) nutritional deficiency disorders: Scurvy was cured/prevented by adding vitamin C (the British navy insisted on sailors eating limes, hence the nickname "limeys"). Rickets is largely gone due to vitamin D supplementation. And
pellagra is prevented by niacin, beri-beri by thiamine.
But diabetes?
In a single word, no.
If there were such an easy cure, the
US Government wouldn't have spent millions of dollars on the
DPT-1, which sought (unsuccessfully) to delay or prevent type 1 diabetes.
And if a single person had found a cure for diabetes over 25 years ago, then he would be listed in the Nobel prize-winners by now (and he isn't — see http://www.nobel.se/medicine/). Interestingly, in this case, it would also have been the first time a dentist received a Nobel prize for medicine (his career is profiled briefly in
PubMed as follows: "From dentist to nutrition researcher and entrepreneur. An… interview with Dr. Johann Georg Schnitzer".)
And surely, the American Diabetes Association, and myriad other patient-advocacy groups world-wide, would have heard of this, and you wouldn't be reading this webpage!
Caveat emptor [From the Latin, "let the buyer beware".]
It's too good to be true.
