The Natural Food Interaction Diet for Type II Diabetes
In 2015, I wrote “The Battle of the Diabetic Diets”. In it I attempt to make the case that whole food plant based (WFPB) diets outperform low carb high fat (LCHF) diets when it comes to long term treatment of type II diabetes. However, not every WFPB-compliant type II diabetic experiences a full reversal of his/her diabetes. Reasons for this can include, but may not be limited to, individual variability, missing gut microbes, and irreversible damage to beta cells of pancreas.
Can The Natural Food Interaction Diet help those with intractable type II diabetes?
The founders of The Natural Food Interaction (NFI) Diet believe it can reverse type II diabetes in more than 95% of all cases. The 5% that cannot be reversed is mainly due to pancreatic burnout (irreversible damage to beta cells). However the founders state that even folks with pancreatic burnout can make significant improvements to their health by following an NFI diet.
Dr. Janka Lejavova
Dr. Janka Lejavova is a Slovakian physician who recently had this article posted on the nutritionstudies.org web site. In her article, Dr. Lejavova describes the NFI diet as a whole food plant-based approach to nutrition that goes one step further, by mixing and matching different plant foods in combinations that are tailored to the individual.
The NFI was developed by chemical engineers and biomedical scientists. Dr. Lejavova states that it works by using molecular interactions between a number of unrefined plant foods, which when combined in a specific order, create chemical compounds within the body, that optimize the removal of lipid from insulin receptors in cells around the body. This, in turn, brings down blood sugar to normal levels and starts to improve symptoms.
Beginning in 2019, Professor Emil Martinka, PhD, head of the National Institute of Diabetes and Endocrinology in Slovakia began a clinical trial testing the effects of the NFI diet. He observed a number of type 2 diabetic patients achieve full clinical remission. This resulted in Dr. Lejavova prescribing the NFI diet to her diabetic patients with greater frequency.
The Slovakian National Congress for Diabetes
Dr. Lejavova was invited to the National Congress for Diabetes to be part of an expert panel to share information about the NFI diet. She states that it is rare that the conference addresses anything about diet, but because of the unprecedented results of professor Martinka’s research study, a special block of time was allotted to the NFI diet experts. The results of the study, which are yet to be published, showed a 97.2% type II diabetes remission rate within 20 weeks of following an NFI diet. Dr. Lejavova states that the audience was so engaged and interested, that following the panel’s presentation, the panel members were flooded with questions for hours.
More About The NFI Diet
“The simplicity of the NFI diet is that it targets lipids in the muscle tissues, “removing” the fat from the cells using targeted chemistry which breaks down the lipid parts and then using the body’s own natural processes removes them from the organism.
The specifically tailored diet works with your body using natural foods and no other medication which results in a dramatic improvement in both health and wellbeing.
The other benefits of the diet are significantly improved blood pressure and lower cholesterol levels, these in turn reduce the long term risk of other chronic illnesses.”
For further details, check out the NFI Diet web site’s “How it Works” page.
My Thoughts
The NFI diet consists predominately of beans, legumes, nuts, seeds, fruits and vegetables. So far, so good.
I am not a biochemist so I cannot assess the rationale behind how foods are combined or how diets are specifically designed for each individual. My bullshit meter goes bonkers whenever a diet is specifically tailored for someone’s individual biochemistry or DNA. However, I will give the founders of this diet some leeway as I learned about this diet on T. Colin Campbell’s nutritionstudies.org web site.
Dr. Campbell is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University, project director of the acclaimed China-Oxford-Cornell Diet and Health Project, coauthor of The China Study, and author of Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition. Dr. Campbell has conducted original research in both laboratory experiments and large-scale human studies and authored more than 300 peer-reviewed research papers.
The fact that Dr. Lejavova’s article appears on Dr. Campbell’s web site leads me to think that Dr. Campbell believes that the science behind the NRI Diet has merit – or at least deserves further investigation.
The NFI Diet is a clinical diet. It is very strict when it comes to the types of food that are consumed, the combinations of food that must be consumed, and the timing of when the foods are consumed. As long as these parameters are followed, patients can eat as much of each food as they want. There is no restriction on portion size.
During the set up phase, patients must input accurate data measurements that include height and weight. Due to changes in weight and potentially other data points, diet plans are recalculated every two weeks to ensure maximum improvement during the next two weeks.
This diet is clearly for people who are hypermotivated to reverse their type II diabetes. The length of the program depends on when full blood glucose control is achieved. This is usually between 12 to 20 weeks.
Upon completion, it is expected that patients will have the necessary knowledge to make the right food choices in the future in order to maintain blood glucose control.
It will be interesting to see if the NFI diet will gain traction in the US. My guess is that it won’t.
E Excerpt from Laurie Endicott Thomas’s amazing book Thin Diabetes – Fat Diabetes by clicking here!
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