Eat, Chew, Live: 4 Revolutionary Ideas to Prevent Diabetes, Lose Weight and Enjoy Food

by John M. Poothullil MD

Diabetes is among the fastest growing diseases in the world. In the U.S. 1 in 3 adults over age 20 has high blood sugar and 1 in 4 adults over age 65 is fully diabetic. Yet, nearly every single person could avoid high blood and diabetes if they understood its real cause—and Eat, Chew, Live provides exactly the new science & powerful inspiration to help people prevent this serious disease from altering their lives—without drugs. Eat, Chew, Live offers a revolutionary new science-based explanation of what really happens in the body to cause high blood sugar. While traditional medicine blames the condition on “insulin resistance,” Dr. Poothullil disagrees, offering systematic proof of a far better biological explanation for it. According to him, diabetes is not a hormonal disease; in fact, he demonstrates that insulin resistance is not even logical. Instead, high blood sugar and diabetes are the result of overconsumption, especially of grain-based carbohydrates that cause a normal bodily metabolism--cells burning fatty acids rather than glucose--to go haywire. When people understand this insight, everything about preventing high blood sugar and diabetes becomes clear. Eat, Chew, Live goes on to present three other revolutionary ideas to help people get in tune with their body’s need for nutrition, their hunger and satisfaction signals, and the causes of their overeating. Dr. Poothullil’s offers insightful and persuasive advice about why avoiding complex carbohydrates—even “whole grain” and “gluten free” -- is the key to losing weight and preventing high blood sugar. He goes on to teach readers how to eat mindfully, chewing fully to enjoy and savor food. Many readers report that the book helped them lose weight, get in touch with their body, and reduce their diabetes medications significantly. Eat, Chew, Live is unlike other books on diabetes, as nearly every one accepts insulin resistance as the cause. Dr. Poothullil theory is a medically sound new approach to explaining high blood sugar—and the implications are enormous for the entire medical approach to treating high blood sugar with medications rather than teaching people “how to eat what they enjoy to lower blood sugar.” Eat, Chew, Live may be one of the most important health books of the decade, as its 4 revolutionary ideas will save many lives. Eat, Chew, Live has over 30 illustrations and 2 storyboards to explain the science visually. The entire book is in color.

Genres: Health, Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published June 17, 2015

About the author

Dr. John Poothullill practiced medicine as a pediatrician and allergist for more than 30 years, with 27 of those years in the state of Texas. He received his medical degree from the University of Kerala, India in 1968, after which he did two years of medical residency in Washington, DC and Phoenix, AZ and two years of fellowship, one in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and the other in Ontario, Canada. He began his practice in 1974 and retired in 2008. He holds certifications from the American Board of Pediatrics, The American Board of Allergy & Immunology, and the Canadian Board of Pediatrics.

During his medical practice, John became interested in understanding the causes of and interconnections between hunger, satiation, and weight gain. His interest turned into a passion and a multi-decade personal study and research project that led him to read many medical journal articles, medical textbooks, and other scholarly works in biology, biochemistry, physiology, endocrinology, and cellular metabolic functions. This eventually guided Dr. Poothullil to investigate the theory of insulin resistance as it relates to diabetes. Recognizing that this theory was illogical, he spent a few years rethinking the biology behind high blood sugar and finally developed the fatty acid burn switch as the real cause of diabetes.

Dr. Poothullil has written articles on hunger and satiation, weight loss, diabetes, and the senses of taste and smell. His articles have been published in medical journals such as Physiology and Behavior, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, Journal of Women’s Health, Journal of Applied Research, Nutrition, and Nutritional Neuroscience. His work has been quoted in Woman’s Day, Fitness, Red Book and Woman’s World.

Reviews

[John (JP) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eat Chew Live, how you eat matters more than what you eat by John M Poohillil, MD. The central premise of this book is that conventional wisdom on diabetes, weight loss, and nutrition is wrong. In order to lose weight and control your diabetes or pre-diabetes you must return to the way you ate when you were a toddler, or pre teen, before you were trained to crave high carb grain based fast food, and when knew enough to eat only enough to supply your body with the nutrients it needed. You return to this ideal state by training your brain to listen to your taste buds, by eating slowly enough to taste your food. When the food loses it flavor that is the body signaling you have had enough eat . Your ability to assess the nutrients in your food is directly proportional to the amount of time nutrients remain in contact with your taste and smell receptors. You should as an adult eat the widest possible variety of foods to get the nutrients body needs and your is driving you to eat Poothullil contends that there are 3 reasons why people overeat. People eat for pure enjoyment even when they are not hungry, when they are hungry they ignore the body’s signals to stop, and finally they eat to reduce stress, when they should reduce stress by other means. While Poothullil is pro a wide variety of foods he very anti-grain based foods pastas, breads, anything that contains carbs. He feels that overeating carbs is the major cause of weight gain and diabetes. Much of what Poothullil says seems like things your doctors have told you, chew your food, eat less bread, and eat only when you hungry. The material on returning to eating like a toddler seems strange. His argument seems reasonable but the book has few footnotes and no supporting bibliography. Reader has no means of verifying his claims independently. The end of each chapter is summarized and the book has a good index.

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

[Liaken · Rating 2 out of 5]

Astonishingly unusable. The author is sure he's got something super valid to share that will change everything, but he's so caught up in leading into his ideas that the ideas themselves get swamped and lost. There also seems to be a fair amount of contradiction, which may have more to do with the presentation than the author's actual ideas. This book could have used an editor.