Medical Doctor Reversed His Own Type 2 Pre-Diabetes & Helps His Patients Reverse Their Type 2 Diabetes Naturally

Doctor Steven Lawenda (M.D.), a board-certified Family Medicine physician at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California, learned first-hand the power of whole food plant-based nutrition to reverse diabetes naturally and transform your health destiny for life — because he himself reversed his own pre-diabetes and improved his health exponentially.

After he discovered how nutrition can prevent and reverse type 2 diabetes, he began to teach his own patients to do exactly what he himself had done: he reversed his own type 2 pre-diabetes, lost a lot of weight, and improved his health dramatically.

Dr. Lawenda’s testimonial is all the more poignant and powerful because his own father suffered needlessly from type 2 diabetes. Dr. Lawenda’s father suffered amputations due to type 2 diabetes, before Dr. Lawenda had learned about the power of whole food plant-based nutrition to reverse type 2 diabetes.

In medical school, med school students typically learn to treat chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes with a lifetime of drugs, (rather than prevention and disease reversal).

Dr. Lawenda only learned about the power of whole food plant-based foods to prevent and even reverse and cure disease, including type 2 diabetes, almost by accident, inadvertently, after he already had become a medical doctor and had already become a practicing Family Medicine physician.

In an interview series about reversing type 2 diabetes naturally, Dr. Lawenda describes how his wife had received as a gift from someone an audio book called Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman (a board-certified medical doctor). They were driving back home from a family vacation, and he was tired from the long trip. He didn’t really feel like listening to any audio book necessarily, but his wife had popped it in and hit play … so, he ended up listening to the audio book Eat to Live.

And that was it: the revelations in the Eat to Live audio book (from which he learned about years of medical studies about which he had not learned previously) were so compelling for Dr. Lawenda that he made the decision that he would do this! He would apply the principles in Eat to Live to his own life, and switch to eating whole food plant-based nutrition.

Note: In Eat to Live, Dr. Fuhrman refers to this way of eating as “nutritarian”: choose foods that have the most nutrients per calorie (including vitamins, micronutrients, phytonutrients). Many of the foods that most people eat & drink constantly have practically zero — or very few — nutrients per calorie.

Dr. Fuhrman further describes this as a kind of mathematical formula: Health = Nutrients / Calories. In other words, the H=N/C formula means that the foods you choose — either nutrient-dense, or nutrient-poor — determine your health. Which means that your overall health destiny also is a choice: your own choice. Choose wisely (i.e., whole food plant-based or “nutritarian”) and you can prevent and even reverse so many of the diseases — including type 2 diabetes and heart disease, auto-immune diseases and cancer, among MANY others — that have become rampant where people eat the typical Western diet.

Dr. Lawenda describes how, upon hearing the audio Eat to Live, he felt shocked that he had never learned any of this previously. He had never previously learned about these major studies or about the power of whole food plant-based nutrition (WFPB) to prevent and reverse so many of the diseases from which millions are suffering.

Despite having attended a prestigious medical school, despite becoming a medical doctor, he never before had even heard of what he learned in Eat to Live about the power of WFPB nutrition to prevent, cure and reverse disease and illnesses.

So Dr. Lawenda decided he had nothing to lose by giving it a try himself, to see if it would work to help him lose weight as well as reverse his type 2 pre-diabetes and other health conditions.

He gained so much more than he had ever expected when he started out, all based on the spark of information he learned by listening to the Eat to Live audio book.

He lost the excess weight (75 pounds in the first eight months).

He reversed his type 2 pre-diabetes.

His own description is compelling. At the time he (inadvertently) discovered Eat to Live, he had just turned 38, the same age his paternal grandfather was when he had his first heart attack. His father had suffered his first heart attack when he was only seven years older than Dr. Lawenda was at the time. He has described how worried he was that he might also suffer the same fate as his father and grandfather, who both had their first heart attacks at such young ages.

Also, as a medical doctor himself, he knew that a third of heart attack victims don’t survive. All of this caused Dr. Lawenda a great deal of stress and fear.

Describing his own health conditions at the time he first learned the information in Eat to Live, he says:
“I was obese with a BMI of 33 and already had pre-diabetes, fatty liver, acid reflux, and symptoms of sleep apnea.”

His first child was only three years old at that time, and he “could not imagine leaving her without her daddy.”

But his worries about the possibility of a heart attack at a young age, given his medical condition and his father’s and grandfather’s heart attacks at young ages, were not the only things causing Dr. Lawenda’s worry for his own health and for his own family’s well-being.

As Dr. Lawenda has described it in his own testimonial,

[T]wo years prior . . . I had witnessed one of the most tragic and horrible events that have ever happened to my family. My father, fortunate to have survived his first heart attack and coronary artery bypass surgery a few years later, underwent bilateral leg amputations (below the knee) as a result of his type II diabetes. He went from being a fully functional, working, and joyful new grandpa enjoying his first infant grandchild (our daughter), to being a disabled, unemployed, and depressed man confined to a wheelchair.” (emphasis added)

So imagine how Dr. Lawenda felt upon learning that both his father’s heart disease (and bypass surgery) and his father’s type 2 diabetes (and then the amputations) all could have been preventable and reversible simply through switching to delicious whole food plant-based foods.

If Dr. Lawenda had only known, a few years prior, what he learned by listening to the Eat to Live audio book at age 38, he could have helped his father avoid such suffering.

He was also at a point in his medical practice where he was frustrated and disappointed to see that his patients were just gaining more and more weight, getting sicker and sicker, taking more and more medications. “They would ask me for help, and I felt I had nothing to offer them other than more pills.” – Dr. Steve Lawenda’s own personal testimonial.

But now he could use this information in Eat to Live, try it out on himself, and see what his results would be. What did he have to lose? He had so much to gain by trying.

Fortunately . . . at the age of 38, worried deeply about my personal and professional future, I discovered the incredible power of food as medicine. I was blown away by what I was learning. I was amazed to learn that there existed a way of eating, namely a whole food, plant-based diet, in which a person could eat until full, without counting calories or measuring / restricting portion size (no portion control!), yet lose significant amounts of weight, regardless of the amount of exercise as well.

This same way of eating, I learned, also REVERSES our most common chronic diseases, including our number one killer, heart disease, and our most costly and complicated disease, diabetes.

I was very skeptical learning all of this, especially as it was not part of my years of training.

Yet, soon I began to realize how much solid scientific evidence existed that more than substantiated these incredible benefits.”

– Excerpt from Dr. Steve Lawenda’s testimonial about the power of whole food plant-based nutrition..

Dr. Lawenda describes how he challenged himself to eat and live this way, and how, within eight months, he had already lost 75 pounds.

His BMI went from a BMI of 33 (obese) down to a normal BMI (23).

His pre-diabetes, fatty liver, acid reflux, and symptoms of sleep apnea all went away.

His blood pressure dropped twenty points.

These weren’t the only benefits, though. As Dr. Lawenda describes his health transformation:

I felt amazing. Most importantly, I felt as if the huge monkey on my back was gone. I was no longer depressed or worried about my health and my future.”

– Dr. Steven Lawenda

One of the patients Dr. Lawenda has spoken about (in an interview series about reversing type 2 diabetes) was a patient with TYPE 1 diabetes, who came to Dr. Lawenda because he was facing (imminent) amputation of his foot.

The patient wanted to avoid that fate, and hoped that Dr. Lawenda could help him. The patient’s podiatrist (foot doctor) was open to the patient giving nutrition a try with Dr. Lawenda, because he had nothing to lose by trying. The current reality was that this type 1 diabetic patient was going to lose his foot imminently.

In the interview, Dr. Lawenda described how the patient’s foot quickly healed simply through switching to whole foods plant-based nutrition, and the patient didn’t have to have his foot amputated.

The patient’s podiatrist was stunned by the fast turn-around (seemingly miraculous!) for the patient. Dr. Lawenda talked about how that podiatrist and others now refer patients to him regularly; and he is able to help patients heal themselves through whole food plant-based nutrition.

Especially in light of the suffering that Dr. Lawenda’s own father experienced only a few years prior, having had both of his legs amputated below the knees due to type 2 diabetes, one can only imagine the emotion that Dr. Lawenda must have felt when this type 1 diabetic patient’s foot healed, quickly, and his patient did not have to have the amputation.

Read Dr. Lawenda’s own testimonial here, to learn more about the excellent results he has experienced for his own health, as well as the great satisfaction he now gets from actually being able to help his patients reverse, cure and prevent diseases including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune diseases and many more.

Before, I felt as if I wasn’t really helping people. I rarely if ever saw a patient’s health turn around completely from a prescription I wrote. Yet now I was seeing patients have such dramatic and meaningful improvements in their lives and health.

I have become so passionate about plant-based nutrition that I discuss it with nearly every patient at almost every visit. I realize not all patients are ready for change, but some change is better than none, and some patients may not be ready for change now but will be someday in the future.”

Because short office visits do not allow enough time to fully educate patients about the WFPB lifestyle change, in addition to his medical practice Dr. Lawenda also created and teaches a two-hour plant-based diet introduction class called “Plants for Life.” In addition, for people looking for additional support, he also runs (with a colleague) a 14-week group-based plant-based diet/lifestyle medicine program (in California) called “Life 180” that combines education with a support group.

Dr. Lawenda’s patients have had excellent results from these programs, for example:

With this new class and group program, I have been so fortunate to see many patients lose dramatic amounts of weight, in some cases as much weight as what we see with bariatric surgery (e.g. gastric bypass).

So many patients have reversed their chronic diseases such as diabetes; including diabetic neuropathy and erectile dysfunction, which we are taught are non-reversible!

One patient in particular was able to discontinue a total of 160 units of daily insulin in just two weeks after starting a whole-foods, plant-based diet!

Another patient was facing a below the knee amputation like my father and was able to heal his diabetic foot ulcer and avoid amputation by changing to a plant-based diet! This patient also had painful neuropathy and erectile dysfunction and these too were reversed!

I have seen numerous patients discontinue the majority and in some cases all of their medications within a matter of just days to weeks.”

Watch this short (7 minute video) in which Dr. Steve Lawenda describes his personal transformation and health journey that has led him to help his patients transform their lives too:

Testimonials from people who have reversed their type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes, and changed their health destiny, by switching to whole food plant-based foods, are a great source of inspiration to help anyone who desires an outcome similar to Dr. Lawenda’s own health transformation and that of his patients.

As a medical doctor himself, Dr. Steve Lawenda’s testimonial about the life-saving changes that he himself experienced by making these changes in his own life, as well as the excellent results of his patients, is inspirational and compelling. His testimonial helps others suffering from type 2 diabetes believe and understand that they too can make the kinds of changes that Dr. Lawenda — and his patients — have made to dramatically improve their health destiny for life.

You have the choice to change your health destiny, too, not only to reverse type 2 diabetes naturally, but also to prevent cancer and prevent or reverse heart disease and so many illnesses and diseases including auto-immune diseases and many others.