100 books like Mastering Diabetes

Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., is a soft-spoken giant of modern medicine who has revolutionized the treatment of heart disease. The studies he has conducted on the role of diet in reversing heart disease, reported on within the book, are the most significant heart studies of our time. Esselstyn writes simply and clearly; when you finish reading his book, you understand everything you need to know in order to nurture and protect, through diet, a healthy heart. 

While friendship, ikigai and optimism are important for our health and longevity, diet and exercise still matter—a lot. For me, How Not to Die is a go-to book when I want to check the science on what works—and what doesn’t—in terms of nutrition, physical activity, supplements, etc.

This is a truly spiritual look at health. It is bolstered by a ton of science, but what stays with you is the instinctive decency of the author, appealing to the instinctive decency of the reader to embrace what it means to be human, and apply that lesson to diet. It’s hard to imagine that anyone could read this book and not be moved and changed by it. This book has undoubtedly improved the lives and health of millions.

Let Dr. John McDougall open your eyes about how badly most of us have been misled on the subject of nutrition, and how simple, powerful, and effective the truth can be. You have to love how the book provides plenty of stories of individuals transformed and restored to health on the starch-based diet, and how it provides recipes (by Mary McDougall) and eating plans to get the reader started on a path to optimal health.

‘Counting’ calories at every meal is not a recipe for a sane or happy life. But knowing the approximate calorie content of what you regularly eat is certainly wise. This is a look-up book, not a reading book. So—how about the blueberry muffin you have been led to believe is the healthy option? What! 393 calories? But that is about a quarter of the daily calorie requirement for a smaller person. Orange juice? Ah yes, one of my five-a-day—so healthy. But at 90 calories per 250 ml glass it is easy to cut without bothering appetite. Taken in addition to a weight neutral diet, it would cause around six pounds of weight gain in a year. This is a book of information. Information useful for life. 

Dr. Hayes is the originator of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, an innovative approach to addressing human suffering based on examining and changing our relationship to our thoughts. 

This book looks at the many ways that our capacity for evaluative and judgmental thought leads to suffering. Then, it offers a map for changing how we relate to and respond to those thoughts. 

It offers tools for shifting away from struggling with our internal narratives toward taking action based on our values. 

This book by an award-winning Canadian novelist mixes memoir and essay. The memoir is set in New Brunswick’s Miramichi region in 1961. Richards has no use of his left arm; his best friend is going blind due to diabetes. They are in their last year of playing hockey. Woven into that story are other memories—including of distasteful meetings with people who don’t like the sport—as well as his thoughts on the game and its place in the Canadian psyche. Hockey Dreams is highly personal, so it may not be for readers, but I loved it. 

Bliss’s classic book is the definitive account of the discovery of insulin by Canadians Frederick Banting, Charles Best, J.R.R. Macleod, and James Collip. I share this story in my book but Bliss delves far deeper into this incredible tale full of drama and human failings.

Bliss describes Banting as a failed surgeon who had a middle-of-the-night epiphany about how to isolate the unknown product of the pancreas’s mysterious islets of Langerhans cells. Eminent scientist Macleod gives Banting a chance and some lab space, but in the end, Banting accuses Macleod of stealing credit for this discovery that turns diabetes from a death sentence into a chronic, manageable illness.

Banting loathes Macleod so much that he almost refuses his Nobel Prize because he is so angry that Macleod will also get one!

Michael Mosley was the one of the first best-selling authors to disseminate the new knowledge about how type 2 diabetes could be put into remission. It is all the more authentic in that he describes his personal battle with rising blood sugar levels. "Once you tip from prediabetes into diabetes you will be slapped on medication faster than you can say 'Coca-Cola'."  And it worth avoiding that fate. This is an eminently readable book which brings you onside with the author—a confident not a teacher. Just look at the section "Sort out your head". It’s the mind and body thing, often overlooked by well-meaning advisers. Just glance down the three sections of the book—The Science, The Diet, The Menus. Where will you start? This book bubbles with well-informed enthusiasm.

The discovery of insulin in early 1922 was a medical milestone that has since saved countless lives–my own included. Until this moment, a diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes was a certain death sentence. But as diabetes clinician and historian of medicine, Chris Feudtner points out, the success of insulin has distorted historical accounts of diabetes by marginalising the experience of the patient in favour of narratives that focus on the development of medical technology to treat them. And Feudtner’s diagnosis is confined not just to diabetes but to the history of medicine in general. Following a personal epiphany that patients have an existence beyond X-rays and blood tests, Feudtner set out to address this problem by writing a history of diabetes as told from the perspective of patients. He does so magnificently and offers important insights about our relationship with technology that extend well beyond the treatment of diabetes.