DIET | DETECTIVE^®

Stuart A. Seale, M.D., board-certified family physician and co-author of The 30-Day Diabetes Miracle, has helped thousands of patients over the past quarter century.

While managing a thriving solo, family practice in Springfield, Missouri for 21 years, he treated an increasing number of patients who suffered from lifestyle-related diseases. This moved him to learn more about treating the cause of these conditions, not just how to control the symptoms, as is the case with standard medical treatments.

He now serves as the medical director for Ardmore Institute of Health, and is the medical director, physician, and educator for Lifestyle Center of America’s Stopping Diabetes ProgramTM in Sedona, Arizona. He conducts an advanced wellness and healthy lifestyle workshop called The Well ExperienceTM. Dr. Seale also maintains a private, mobile medical practice, Room Calls Sedona.

Dr. Seale educates and motivates patients into improved health by treating the underlying cause of their diseases – an unhealthy lifestyle. He has expertise in nutrition, exercise physiology, and chronic disease prevention and reversal via lifestyle modification.

Dr. Seale graduated from Loma Linda University School of Medicine in 1979 and completed a family practice residency at the University of Missouri in 1983. Since that time he has continuously maintained certification by the American Board of Family Practice, most recently re-certifying in 2007. He has also received the 3-year AMA Physician Recognition Award eight times, most recently in 2007.

The Lincoln, Nebraska native, age 53, spent most of his youth in Brainerd, Minnesota. Dr. Seale and his wife now reside in Sedona, Arizona. He has three adult children.

Name: Stuart A. Seale, M.D.

Birthday: June 7, 1954

Location: Lincoln, NE

Website:  www.diabetesmiracle.org

Diet Detective: Hello Dr. Seale, I know you’re a man on a mission, and we share your passion – thanks for the opportunity to hear your thoughts about diabetes. What motivated you to focus your energy towards preventing and “curing” diabetes?

Dr. Seale: My initial foray into the area of lifestyle medicine (the use of changing lifestyle behaviors as a means of treating chronic disease) was much more general in focus, and not so diabetes oriented.  There are many chronic diseases besides diabetes that benefit from the lifestyle recommendations that are made for those with diabetes.  The focus began narrowing down and finally became more diabetes specific as the tidal wave of type 2 diabetes began to sweep the country, and is continuing to grow.  Because of the huge numbers of individuals who are either already diagnosed, or will likely become diabetic (there are nearly 50 million “pre-diabetics” in the United States at this time), it became obvious that I should devote my professional attention to not only preventing diabetes, but also reversing it.

Diet Detective: How big a problem is Diabetes?

Dr. Seale: There are more than 21 million people with diabetes in the United States—7 percent of the population. Nearly 50 million more people have “prediabetes.” In some places, like New York City, more than one in eight people already have diabetes. And soon even those numbers will seem small. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one in three children born in the United States in 2000 are expected to get diabetes in their lifetimes. We’re not talking about a minor inconvenience here, or even just a run-of-the-mill epidemic. Diabetes is a serious, chronic, pervasive disease that has rapidly grown into a crisis and will soon become a bona fide catastrophe.

Diet Detective: Can you explain how diabetes occurs, what it is and what and how it does damage to your body?

Dr. Seale: Diabetes is an abnormality of how the body manages glucose, otherwise known as blood sugar.  In type 1 diabetes, the portion of the pancreas that produces and secretes insulin is damaged (most commonly by antibodies directed against the insulin-producing cells), and eventually stops making insulin completely.  Insulin is the hormone that allows entry of glucose into fat and muscle cells, taking it out of the blood stream.  Therefore, when insulin is insufficiently produced, the blood sugar stays in the blood and blood sugar levels rise abnormally high.  In type 2 diabetes something quite different occurs.  The pancreas actually produces much more insulin than usual.  This is brought about as a result of something called insulin resistance, a disorder resulting in a resistance of the fat and muscle cells to letting insulin help glucose enter the cells.  Insulin resistance is caused by an increase in body fat, especially the fat found in the abdomen.  Eventually the ability of the pancreas to produce more insulin can be overwhelmed by insulin resistance, and blood sugar levels go abnormally high.  High blood sugar levels cause damage to small blood vessels, creating the complications of blindness, nerve damage, kidney failure, poor wound healing, and amputations.  Ironically, high blood sugars also damage the pancreas itself, further accelerating the disease.  High insulin levels cause changes in blood lipids, elevation of blood pressure, and an increased tendency for hardening of the arteries leading to stroke and heart attack.  It also acts like a growth hormone, leading to increased weight gain and the development of even more insulin resistance by the body.

[ Read an excerpt from the book: The 30-Day Diabetes Miracle ]

Diet Detective: You and your co-authors claim to be able to cure diabetes -- What forms the basic core of your “miracle” approach to treating diabetes?

Dr. Seale: The three pillars of this lifestyle approach to the miracle are a plant-based diet, intermittent training, and cognitive behavior therapy. We present a natural, health-promoting diet that is clinically proven to attack the diabetes process at the level of cause, not symptoms. We propose a program of physical activity that’s easier to learn, easier to maintain, and more effective than the standard “no pain, no gain” prescription. Finally, we teach common sense techniques for training your brain to overcome the obstacles to major life change, and to make important changes stick.

Diet Detective:   Why do most other attempts/treatments to control or reverse diabetes fail?

Dr. Seale: Most attempts to control and reverse diabetes fail because most – even those from the venerable diabetes research and advocacy-based institutions like the American Diabetes Association – give only lip service to the critical lifestyle factors that are at the cause of the type-2 diabetes disease process. When they do promote healthful lifestyle choices, they only go partway (for example, recommending eating 4 ounces only of lean meat, rather than eschewing meat altogether). Also, most efforts focus on drug treatments, which treat symptoms rather than causes, and often have unintended consequences that worsen the diabetes process, rather than ameliorate it. In short, the “usual prescription” doesn’t offer the patient the whole truth, that Type-2 diabetes is a disease of culture, a disease of choices. The “lifestyle medicine” approach is intuitively simple: Different choices, different outcomes. Different inputs, different results.

Diet Detective: What about your advice is unique? Doesn’t Dean Ornish, and even Michael Pollen in the book In Defense of Foods recommend a mostly plant based diet (for heart disease, but as a cure all)?  Can you give me some real details?

Dr. Seale: Other individuals may recommend a plant-based diet just as we do, based on solid scientific evidence.  We are not at odds with others, or necessarily claim to be unique or different from them in our nutritional recommendations.  If others are promoting a whole-food (meaning unprocessed), plant-based diet, with high-fiber carbohydrates making up the lion’s share of the calories, then we applaud them!  We are in this battle together as allies, not as opposition.  However, as I have pointed out earlier, there are three pillars to our program – nutrition, exercise, and behavioral change.  They are like the legs on a three legged stool, and if you only have one leg (nutrition in this instance) then the stool will fall over.  We promote all three legs equally, and that is where I feel the real differences are between what others recommend and what we offer.

Diet Detective: Does eating sweets cause diabetes? Why do people believe it does (assuming it doesn’t)?

Dr. Seale: While eating refined carbohydrates and sugars is not part of a healthy nutritional program, it is not the eating of these foods on the occasional basis that causes diabetes.  Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disorder.  Type 2 diabetes is caused by insulin resistance, which is related to weight gain.  Since eating excessive sweets can lead to weight gain, they could be related to causing diabetes on that basis.  Since sweets are made primarily of sugar, and since diabetes is a disease in which the blood “sugar” goes up, it would seem logical that eating too much sugar would lead to a build-up of sugar in the blood.  But it is not quite as simple as that.

Diet Detective: Can you tell us the top ten reasons the average doctor fails diabetes patients?

Dr. Seale: Quite simply, here they are:

1. They assume you won’t understand what you really need to know.
2. They assume you can’t or won’t do what they tell you to do.
3. They assume you want a “magic bullet” solution requiring no effort or change.
4. They’re trained and experienced more in drugs, and much less in nutrition.
5. They’re excited by the promises offered by newfangled technology, to the point of ignoring the wisdom of the ages.
6. They feel victimized and under-compensated by the third-party provider health care system for their efforts in coaching patients to change their lifestyle.
7. They’re trained to focus on treating symptoms, not preventing or attacking the cause of chronic disease.
8. They’re inclined to conform to the “safe,” accepted standards, and do things in the usual and customary way. If they meet this “standard-of-care,” they won’t be at risk for a lawsuit if something goes wrong.
9. They’re too highly specialized, or not specialized enough.
10. They’re not doing much better with their personal lifestyle choices than their patients with diabetes.

Diet Detective: The thought is that Diabetes is not a “curable” disease? Can you cure Diabetes?

Dr. Seale: When patients follow recommendations such as we have given in “The 30-Day Diabetes Miracle”, I frequently will see them have blood sugars that are under control without the need for medication, when previously their blood sugars were not controlled even with medication.  So I have to ask – is this a cure?  It will be as long as healthy lifestyle is adhered to.  If they allow their old habits to come back, so will the diabetes, most assuredly.

Now a few more personal questions so readers can get to know about you.

Diet Detective: If you could eat one unhealthy food (candy, cakes, etc..) whenever you wanted without gaining weight, what would it be?

Dr. Seale: I don’t have difficulty staying away from foods that are truly unhealthy, and I really don’t crave them or want to eat them.  This doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy foods that I know I need to limit – a dish of Soy Dream, for example.  My biggest temptation is in eating too much of foods that are actually beneficial for me when eaten in moderation, but that in excess will create a potential problem such as weight gain.  Munching on nuts, or eating too many avocados are examples. Eating too much of anything at night time is another example.

Diet Detective: What’s your favorite breakfast?

Dr. Seale: A big bowl of stir-fried vegetables (as many varieties as possible) with buckwheat noodles and a spray or two of liquid aminos, with perhaps a side of black beans.  A close runner-up is two slices of whole wheat toast (homemade, from coarse ground flour) covered with a cup of bean chili and steamed Swiss chard.

Diet Detective: What’s your favorite “junk food?”  If you even eat any?

Dr. Seale: It is too easy to snack on tortilla chips if they are accessible – so, it’s best if I don’t keep them in my home environment and limit them to when I go to a Mexican restaurant to eat.

Diet Detective: Do you have time to exercise? What do you do?   Also, how important is exercise in fighting off  diabetes?

Dr. Seale: No one really has time – it is what we make time for.  Just like I make time to bathe, sleep, and eat, I also make time to exercise.  It is not a problem for me to do this, because I enjoy exercise so much I will squeeze out whatever it takes in order to get the time I need.  I absolutely love to run, especially on the trails near my home in Sedona, Arizona.  I also equally love to mountain bike the same trails, or take long hikes in the nearby mountains.  I do something dedicated at least 5 days per week, enough to make me sweat profusely.  If the weather is particularly bad, or if I am travelling, I’ll go to a fitness center and run on a treadmill.  Exercise is one of the legs of the three legged stool (nutrition-exercise-behavior change), and as such it is extremely important in the fight against diabetes.  Without it, any program will fail.

Diet Detective: What do you do to reduce stress/relax/center your mind? Do you participate in an organized relaxation activity such as yoga, meditation or tai chi?

Dr. Seale: Running, mountain biking, and hiking all serve to reduce my stress and get me centered.  I find myself lost in thoughts that are totally different than those of the rest of my day when I am doing these activities.  There can also be euphoria that I experience, possibly because of the endorphins released during intense exercise.  I prefer to do solitary exercise or exercise with my wife, as compared to group exercise.  During our Stopping Diabetes Programs here in Sedona I do morning yoga-stretch with the patients, but that is the extent of group exercise or yoga that I do.

Diet Detective: What’s your favorite healthy ingredient? What’s the one thing you’d suggest people keep in their kitchen if they want to cook healthy meals?

Dr. Seale: Beans – without question.  Any variety is good, but black beans, kidney beans, and small red beans are the best because they are the highest in antioxidants and fiber.

Diet Detective: What do you consider the world’s most perfect food?

Dr. Seale: This isn’t meant as an attempt to duck the question, because if I thought there was a most perfect food, I would give it as my answer.  But there really isn’t a most perfect food.  A variety of whole plant foods make up a perfect diet.  We weren’t designed to subsist on one item – that is why we have the variety of foods that we do.  Having said all of that, if I had one food to choose to live on for an extended period of time, I would choose black beans.

Diet Detective: Which person do you respect most, or who motivates you? And why?

Dr. Seale: This is going to sound really odd, because it is not a person per se, but rather a group of individuals; and also they are totally unknown to me personally.  So who are these people and why do they motivate me?  They are the groups of Hispanic men in Sedona, who stand clustered outside their trailers early every morning, waiting for someone to drive up and offer them work.  They will stand there all day long, hot or cold, rain or shine, and they have no guarantee of any work on any given day.  Yet they are there, and they have hope.  Whenever I think I have it rough, I think of them and what they go through every day, and the odds that are against them ever fulfilling their dreams – and despite this, they don’t give up.  They motivate me to not give up on my dreams either!

Question: If you had to pick one healthy cook book to recommend (or two) which would you choose?   (Other than your own)

Dr. Seale: “Choices – Quick and Healthy Cooking”; “More Choices – for a Healthy and Low-Fat You” – both by Cheryl Thomas Peters.

Diet Detective: What’s your favorite healthy recipes? Will you share a few with our readers?

Dr. Seale: I actually prefer to not use recipes.  This is also the case for my wife, Sandra.  That is one of the beauties of plant-based cooking – there doesn’t need to be recipes to do over 90% of the meals that we eat!  Most of our diet is comprised of easy to put together meals, such as stir-fry and noodles, bean dishes and vegetables, cooked grains, soups, salads, etc. that we never use a recipe for.  What I encourage my patients to do is mix plant foods they think will go together, and give it a try.  If it doesn’t taste good, keep tinkering with it until it does – you can’t do that with a meat loaf or a roast!  You could die of E. Coli poisoning.

[ Read and Download the free Recipe Book Breakfast Like a King..Right Here:

Question: What's the most bodacious chance you've ever taken?

Dr. Seale: Closing my traditional family practice office that had several thousand active patients, and that took me over 21 years to build, in order to become a full-time lifestyle physician at the age of 51.

Diet Detective: What was your worst summer job?

Dr. Seale: I really haven’t had any job I didn’t enjoy most of the time.  Probably the very first summer job I had was the one I tired of the most.  I was an amusement park worker and got paid $1.65 an hour.  I got my fill of screaming kids and frustrated parents the summers I worked there, but I also got to see all of my friends and I made some good memories.  By far the hardest summer job I had was that of a “hod carrier” on a cement block-laying crew.  We worked 12 to 14 hour days, six days per week.  But the pay was great.

Diet Detective:  What did you want to be at the age of 5? (as far as a career)?  Was it always a Doctor?

Dr. Seale: Believe it or not, I wanted to be a garbage man!  In our town, when I was 5, the garbage man drove a big Caddie, and so I thought all of them were rich.  It was when I got to be junior high school age that the desire to be a doctor started burning in me.

Thank you!!!!

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