Warm greetings to all reading my personal testimony. I am Sr Nency Katsande and it is a privilege for me to share with you the wonderful miracle the Lord has performed in my life!
“You are diabetic. Here is the medication you must take for the rest of your life until you die.” This is what the doctor said to me when I was diagnosed with diabetes in 2014. She gave me the Metforman tablets and a list of food showing what I could and could not eat. I soon realized three things: Firstly, the tablets they had given me were not helping to stabilize my sugar levels at all. When I was diagnosed with diabetes, my sugar level at that time would spike to about 20 and then come down to about 13 or so. With the medication it would still stabilize around 13-15 and sometimes drop as low as 2! Secondly, many items on the list of food they said I could eat was still pushing up my sugar levels really high! And thirdly, I was still experiencing the terrible symptoms caused by the diabetes. These included shakiness, hot shivers, terribly itchy skin, I was thirsty all the time, my energy levels were low and I was tired most of the time.
Because of the thirst I would sometimes drink 1-2 litres of water – and 2 hours after this my sugar levels would drop really low and I would feel extremely hungry again. Then I would eat something, my sugar levels would spike really high – I would take the medication – and as I would become terribly thirsty, drink more water – and 2 hours later start feeling extremely hungry again. And so this cycle would continue daily. My energy levels were really low so most of the time I felt really tired. My sugar levels were very erratic and would be very high and would randomly drop to very low.
As I realized the medication was not really working, I thought I could just go off the medication because, either way, it wasn't helping to stabilize my sugar levels as it was still mostly high. When I fell pregnant with my son, Shaun, who is now seven (7) years old, I also had pregnancy diabetes and was put on insulin that I needed to inject. During this time was possibly the worst of the diabetes symptoms I had experienced as with the medication my sugar levels would randomly drop to as low as even 2! I really didn’t think that there was any hope for my condition and, as the doctor said, would continue like this until I died.
When Pastor Poswa preached at our church in July this year on the Health Message and the wonderful results people were experiencing by following the 21-day plant-based whole food diet he had put them on, I was really encouraged and enthused that maybe there would be hope for my health condition. When the Health Department at our church started this program as a 21-day challenge on 1 September this year, I was definitely on board. I prayed to the Lord and pleaded that He must please be with me as I really wanted to improve my diabetes and go off the tablets which have their own side effects and, in any case, were not working.
During the first week of the challenge, I was very surprised! Without having taken the tablets, my sugar levels were stabilizing between 7 and 9, and even as low as 6. My sugar levels had not been like this in years! And I realised the terrible itchiness had stopped! So did the intense thirst. I could not believe that just eating a plant-based diet was improving my diabetes. To date, it has been 50 days since following a plant based diet. Now I can have a green smoothie for breakfast and then a raw green salad with an avocado, for example, for lunch and this will keep me satiated for the whole day. And when I come home from work, I am no longer terribly hungry and tired – now my energy levels are up, I feel healthier physically and mentally. I have lost about 5kg and feel like I have a new lease on life! But best of all, I no longer need to take that horrible medication as my diet is now helping to stabilize my sugar levels.
So to answer the question: Can a plant-based diet reverse diabetes? From my experience, I can answer with an emphatic, ABSOLUTELY, YES! I can only praise God for the wonderful health message that we as Seventh-day Adventists have been blessed with. And I want to encourage everyone reading this that following a plant-based diet can reverse not only type 2 diabetes but help reverse other lifestyle diseases and help us live a healthier quality of life. By obeying the laws of nature (encapsulated in the NEWSTART principles), we truly can live the abundant life that we are promised through Christ in John 10:10. Today I can truly say with the psalmist: "O LORD my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me." (Psalms 30:2 ESV)
The Riverside Seventh-day Adventist Church Health Ministries Department, led by Sr Denise Du Plessis, has a group of 39 members participating in the 21-Day Plant-based Kickstart Diet introduced by Pr Poswa. If you’re serious about your health, contact us for more information. Join the group for the support of like-minded individuals.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.
