Michael Abdalla of Atlanta, GA Reversing Type 2 Diabetes and Heart Disease – What the Health Documentary

The documentary What the Health, produced by Joaquin Phoenix, and featuring some of the leading medical doctors who are experts in nutrition for healing, preventing, and reversing diseases and illness, also features powerful testimonials from people who have reversed type 2 diabetes as well as heart disease, asthma osteoarthritis and more.

When viewers are first introduced to Michael Abdalla, 69, of Atlanta, Georgia in What the Health, Michael was suffering from type 2 diabetes and a list of health issues.

He had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes ten years prior, and he had previously had heart surgery (two stents) eight years prior to What the Health.

As Michael described his situation at the beginning of the documentary,

I don’t know where to go, I don’t know what to do, you are just like out of options, and you don’t know what to do.
You’re taking medicines.
You listen to this doctor.
And the cardiologist says take this.
And the endocrinologist says take that.
And your general practitioner doctor says…
You don’t know what’s going on here.
It’s a real challenging thing and it is something that you don’t want to get. You just don’t want to get it [type 2 diabetes and heart disease.]” – Michael Abdalla, What the Health documentary

Later in the What the Health documentary, Michael Abdalla goes into more details about his health situation at the time, before he began to reverse his type 2 diabetes and his high blood pressure:

I’m taking about 16 drugs.
Not counting the insulin in the morning.
I take insulin in the morning, insulin at night, 32-34 units, of insulin. …
Some of these meds are for diabetes.
This is for peeing.
I have to use this for my prostrate.
And then I have to use this for the heart.
And I have to use this for blood pressure.
And it’s just on and on and on and on.
The doctors are telling me this is what I gotta do for my whole life.
And it’s frustrating and it’s very stressful.
And I don’t know how long my liver is gonna last taking all this stuff. – Michael Abdalla, What the Health, at 59:43.

In the documentary, Dr. Alan Goldhamer explains powerfully the results of standard medical treatment of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic illnesses, (as many can relate to, based on their own experience under similar circumstances as Michael Abdalla’s),

Under conventional medical treatment, whether it be for autoimmune disease or even conditions like high blood pressure, or diabetes, you’re told that you have to take drugs.

And not just for a week or a month or, a year, you’re told you have to take drugs forever.

You are guaranteed that if you follow your doctor’s advice you’ll be sick forever, you will NEVER get well. That’s the guarantee.

Because the strategies are all about manipulating the symptoms, not dealing with the underlying cause.” – Dr. Alan Goldhamer, What the Health at 1:00:20.

The standard medical treatment of chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes and heart disease is “disease management,” and has nothing to do with causation; nothing to do with addressing and solving the source of the problem. So with a palliative of never-ending drugs, the only solution offered is to medicate and treat the symptoms, not to eliminate the disease itself.

In contrast, as described throughout the What the Health documentary, whole food plant-based nutrition is a simple but powerful way to eliminate the source of the problem, preventing and reversing type 2 diabetes, preventing and reversing heart disease and many other common illnesses and diseases.

Michael Abdalla’s Results in What the Health

After Michael switched to whole food plant-based nutrition (aka vegan), he quickly reduced all of his medications in half, reduced his insulin by half, and resolved to continue eating this way to get off all of the drugs. He had heard about other people going vegan / whole food plant-based, and reversing their type 2 diabetes and reversing their heart disease, so he decided to change his eating to get the same results.

On Valentine’s Day, I decided to go vegan, which was never in my thoughts before, never in a million years, but I’ve heard so much success from people that are vegan.

And so I gave up all animal product whatsoever.

I’ve lost 29 pounds.

I’ve been able to cut my meds in half,
I’ve been able to cut my insulin in half,
and now I’m going for the moon,
I’m going to [get off all the medications].

In the last six weeks, we’ve just had three grandchildren.
And [I’m] going to be around to see them graduate from high school and college. I’m going to be here.” – Michael Abdalla, What the Health, at 1:22:00.

You can watch the What the Health documentary film here (on Amazon):

(Click to watch the movie online or to purchase the DVD. You can also watch What the Health on Netflix).

Kip Andersen, the documentary’s narrator and host, describes how “government and media almost exclusively blame lack of exercise and sugary foods as a cause of diabetes,” but he spoke with a preeminent expert on the role of diet and diabetes, world-renowned board-certified physician and researcher, Dr. Neal Barnard.

Kip asked Dr. Barnard about whether sugar causes diabetes, and Dr. Barnard explained that this is a misconception and misunderstanding of the cause of diabetes:

Diabetes is not and never was caused be eating a high carbohydrate diet, and it’s not caused by eating sugar. The cause of diabetes is a diet that builds up the amount of fat into the blood.

I’m talking about a typical meat-based, animal-based diet.
You can look into the muscle cells of the human body, and you find that they’re building up tiny particles of fat that’s causing insulin resistance.

What that means is, the sugar that is naturally from the foods that you’re eating can’t get into the cells where it belongs. It builds up in the blood, and that’s diabetes.” – Dr. Neal Barnard, What the Health

Later in the documentary, Dr. Barnard made this memorable sugar-as-Trojan Horse analogy:

Here’s the thing. If I eat a sugary cookie, the sugar lures you in like the Trojan horse, but waiting inside that cookie is a huge load of butter or, shortening.
And that’s what fattens you up.
And that’s the part that leads to the diabetes, it’s the fatty foods, not really so much the sugar. – Dr. Neal Barnard, What the Health documentary

Kip had never heard that meat was associated with causing diabetes; the general idea people have is that sugar or obesity causes it.

So Kip next spoke with renowned weight loss bariatric surgeon, Dr. Garth Davis, who reiterated Dr. Barnard’s points and added:

Everyone thinks that you get diabetic because of carbs. They did a huge study in that EPIC study 500,000 people, [and] carbs consumption was inversely related with diabetes. In other words, the more carbs someone ate, the less diabetes they had. But, meat was strongly correlated.

Get that aha moment. The starch, the carbs are good for you. They’re not bad for you. This idea that carbs make you fat is utterly ridiculous. Carbs cannot make you fat in and of themselves. We have storage in our muscles and in our liver for carbs called glycogen. So, when we eat carbs, we either store it or we burn it.

Now eat fat, that goes straight to your fat. Your body can’t turn those carbs into fat unless you’re really overdoing the calories. And obesity is a death sentence. You’re at much higher risk of getting cancer, you’re almost certainly going to get diabetes.” – Dr. Garth Davis, What the Health documentary

Dr. Davis added this critical point:

No one wants the fat shame, and we all want everybody to be comfortable with our bodies, but, this movement to be comfortable with our bodies has made us comfortable with being sick.
And that’s a huge problem.
I go into the hospital and I look around me, people on dialysis, all these sick people. And just about every disease in there is because of what people are eating.” – Dr. Garth Davis, What the Health documentary

Of course, table sugar on its own or as an ingredient in processed foods or in baked goods or recipes isn’t good for you either. In contrast, the sweetness in delicious whole food plant-based foods comes from healthy, naturally sweet, fiber-filled and nutrient-rich whole foods such as whole fruits (with the fiber, not juiced) and medjool dates, for example.

As Dr. Davis emphasized,

It’s not that sugar’s good for you. There are no nutrients in it. It’s excess calories. But, when you eat sugar, you don’t get inflammation right away. When you eat sugar, you’re not getting plaques forming in your vessels. When you’re eating sugar, your body’s going to store most of it as glycogen or burn it as calories.

And so this focus on sugar has taken all the focus off meat, dairy, eggs, pork, turkey, chicken.

People need to understand.

If their child gets diabetes, you’ve just taken 19 years off their lifespan.

We’re talking life and death.”

The documentary then discussed the findings of a Harvard research group, in which Harvard researchers looked at nine prospective studies and found that just one serving of processed meat per day increased risk of developing diabetes by 51 percent.

The link between eating meat and developing diabetes is something Kip had never heard about previously.

(Anecdotally, read the description of Jim Balla, who reversed his type 2 diabetes in days, and lost 162 pounds in 22 months, about how he never ate sugary or processed foods, no chips, no ice cream. Read here Jim Balla’s description about how he weighed up to 324 pounds at his heaviest, and was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at age 34, from a lifetime of eating lots and lots of meat and dairy every day, but not sugar, not ice cream, not chips or fried foods, not packaged or processed foods.)

In the documentary, Kip then went to the leading diabetes organization’s website, and found that, not only did they not have this information front and center, they were featuring recipes for red [meat] and processed meat, including bacon.

Later in What the Health, Kip had an extraordinary, eye-opening interview with a medical doctor (“Chief Scientific & Medical Officer”) of that same leading diabetes organization (it is named in the movie), in which the interviewee became [seemingly infuriated] by Kip’s questions about the connection between food choices and diabetes, and abruptly ended the interview.

Anyone who has type 2 diabetes (or any kind of diabetes), should watch What the Health from beginning to end, and especially pay close attention to witness this interview for themselves. The visual of this person (interviewee’s) agitated body language, and [seemingly barely contained anger] in refusing to discuss studies or the connection between food and diabetes, is practically shocking. One might ask themselves if they can trust an organization that refuses to discuss or acknowledge (or even to debate) the studies and science regarding the connection between the kinds of foods that cause diabetes.

The film follows Kip as he went on to discover that this leading diabetes organization receives its funding from some of the largest and most influential processed food companies and meat and dairy companies / conglomerates. That organization is funded by powerful food companies that are purveyors of, and big-money advocates of, and lobbyists for, the standard American diet (S.A.D.) that makes people who eat the S.A.D. sicker and sicker.

What the Health also goes into detail about the many other health problems, diseases, illnesses and maladies that are directly caused by eating the standard American diet, and how eating a whole food plant-based diet prevents and reverses, and at a minimum, dramatically ameliorates most disease and illness.

Watch What the Health for inspiration from (1) Michael Abdalla who reversed his type 2 diabetes and reversed his heart disease, and (2) a 61-year-old woman who reversed her debilitating osteoarthritis within two weeks after she switched to whole food plant-based nutrition, as well as (3) the testimonial from a woman who was at critical risk of heart attack, and who reversed her heart disease and cured her debilitating asthma (in under 30 days).

Watch What the Health to learn the science behind the way whole food plant-based nutrition brings about these dramatic health transformations.

Then get started on your own health transformation for life, beginning with the resources offered in What the Health.

Read Dr. Neal Barnard’s book (Dr. Neal Barnard’s Program for Reversing Diabetes: The Scientifically Proven System for Reversing Diabetes Without Drugs).

Watch the Youtube videos about how to reverse type 2 diabetes from world-renowned board-certified medical doctors, Dr. Neal Barnard, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, and Dr. John McDougall. Read Dr. Fuhrman’s book, The End of Diabetes.

Read some of the 1,500+ type 2 diabetes reversal success stories in the reviews for Dr. Fuhrman’s book, The End of Diabetes, to give yourself more certainty and belief that, since all of these people reversed their type 2 diabetes after reading this book, you can do what they are doing and achieve your own health transformation. Step one: READ THE BOOKS, The End of Diabetes and ! Watch What the Health. Get started now; this is your LIFE we are talking about. This is your QUALITY OF LIFE we are talking about.

Arm yourself with all of the information you need to make this change: it’s all within your reach right now, in this very moment.

Here’s to your health for life!

What do you have to lose? What do you have to gain, once you free yourself from chronic disease and reclaim your health for life?

More Type 2 Diabetes Reversal Success Stories

Read about how Jason Mraz Helped His Bandmate Reverse Type 2 Diabetes in Under 30 Days

Read about how a Joey Aucoin, a Florida Dad and Business Owner, Reversed Diabetes Naturally in Weeks in the Forks Over Knives documentary

Read about how a board-certified Medical Doctor, Dr. Steve Lawenda, (Kaiser Permanente, Southern California) reversed his pre-diabetes and now helps his patients reverse their type 2 diabetes

Read about how Jim Balla of Detroit, Michigan reversed his type 2 diabetes in days, and went on to lose 162+ pounds in 22 months.

Learn More: What is the Cure for Type 2 Diabetes?

Read about how a Mebane, North Carolina Woman Reversed Type 2 Diabetes as part of PlantPure Nation

Read about how an Ohio Mother of Five Reversed her Type 2 Diabetes and Reversed Hypertension in Weeks

Read about the powerful testimonials and type 2 diabetes reversal success stories in the Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days documentary.

Read about Kirt Tysons’s health journey, reversing his diabetes as part of the Simply Raw documentary challenge, becoming a naturopathic doctor, and founding/running a naturopathic health center in Washington, DC.

Read about Amy Johnson’s type 2 diabetes reversal and 50-pound weight loss from switching to whole food plant-based nutrition six years ago.