Here is the full text of the conversation titled ”How to REVERSE Diabetes & Hypertension with 100 Year Old Dr. John Scharffenberg & Doug Batchelor.”
In this conversation, Pastor Doug Batchelor and Dr. John Scharfenberg discuss the keys to reversing diabetes and hypertension. They emphasize the importance of lifestyle changes, such as avoiding alcohol, tobacco, inactivity, excessive weight, meat, sugar, high blood cholesterol, and high blood pressure.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Doug Batchelor: Hi friends, Pastor Doug Batchelor. We want to welcome you to this special Amazing Facts Spotlight program, and this is going to be part two in a series where we’ve been interviewing Dr. John Scharffenberg.
Now last time we talked about some of the seven keys to lengthening your life and today we’re going to talk about how to reverse hypertension and diabetes.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Right.
Doug Batchelor: Is that right? So over 70 years now and you’re a full MD. So if I understand correctly, you’re also on a department connected with the National Defense. What was that?
Dr. John Scharffenberg: That was the Interdepartmental Nutrition Committee.
Doug Batchelor: So you’ve had a long experience in understanding some of the components of having good health. You’re practicing what you preach. Now you’ve been a vegetarian all of your life and you don’t smoke and you don’t drink. You still drive yourself even at night. You don’t have dentures and you see almost 20/20.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: I do see 20/20.
Doug Batchelor: And you’ve got more hair than me and you’ve got a very positive outlook on life. So whatever you’re doing works. That’s why it’s very interesting to people to know what are these secrets to not only longer, stronger, abundant life. But today we’re going to talk about cardiovascular disease is the number one killer.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Yes, it’s killing more than the next five leading causes of death combined.
Doug Batchelor: If I understand correctly, it’s cardiovascular disease and then it goes to cancer and then down the line from obesity and diabetes and some of the other leading causes of death. I think the real thrust of what we want to talk about today is it is possible to reverse many types of diabetes and even hypertension or cardiovascular problems. Is that correct?
Dr. John Scharffenberg: That’s correct. We can reverse atherosclerosis like Dean Ornish did.
KEYS TO REVERSE DIABETES AND HYPERTENSION
Doug Batchelor: Now what are some of the keys to do that?
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Well, there’s these seven risk factors you have to avoid. Alcohol, tobacco, inactivity, overweight, too much meat and sugar and then they added two others, high blood cholesterol and high blood pressure.
Doug Batchelor: I just saw something on my phone just before we went on the air. I want to share with people. Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness worldwide. It says adults with diabetes are twice as likely to die from heart disease and stroke and that’s what you’re saying. Millions of America have type 1 diabetes. Early symptoms are too mild to notice. A lot of people have it and they don’t even know it and half of those with diabetes are undiagnosed.
Now we were talking also before the broadcast that there’s an epidemic of diabetes that is growing right now in North America and globally. It’s just skyrocketing.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Yes. Now with these seven risk factors, decreases cardiovascular disease 80%, it decreases diabetes 88%.
Doug Batchelor: That’s incredible.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Which is remarkable. Without any medicine, this is just lifestyle.
Doug Batchelor: And so I think I read somewhere in your documents that if a person is overweight, I’m not even talking about obesity yet, but if a person’s overweight that increases the likelihood of their getting diabetes. Is that right?
Dr. John Scharffenberg: That’s true.
Doug Batchelor: And that is increased 20-fold if they drift over into the obesity category.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: That’s correct. That’s correct.
Doug Batchelor: So one of the most important things a person can do to help avoid that is to manage their weight.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Now we should mention that it’s the diabetes, hypertension, and overweight are the three things that are still keeping our cardiovascular disease rate high. Because we aren’t lowering those well enough. We’ve lowered smoking. You have only 11% of adults are smoking in this country, and in California only 9%. But that’s done fine.
But because of the diabetes increase, hypertension increase, and overweight, particularly in children, increase, that’s keeping the cardiovascular disease risk high.
BIGGEST CAUSE OF DIABETES AND HYPERTENSION
Doug Batchelor: So it’s evident from what you’re sharing that obesity is a tremendous contributor to hypertension and diabetes. What do you think the biggest cause is? What is it in the American diet? Is it a combination of not enough exercise? Is it too much sugar?
Dr. John Scharffenberg: I think eating between meals is number one. A lot of people would get down to normal weight if they just stopped eating between meals. They figured maybe two-thirds of them would get back to normal weight if they didn’t eat any time except at mealtime. So that’s number one.
Number two is exercise. Number three is the vegetarian diet. Vegetarian diet helps to prevent diabetes, helps to prevent hypertension, helps to prevent the weight. We make about 400 decisions every day on eating without even thinking. And so behavioral change techniques are important to tell people how to avoid getting overweight.
Doug Batchelor: And so that’s one of the big struggles that people have in North America. I forget what the percentage is, but I understand that childhood obesity is also an epidemic.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: It is. It is.
Doug Batchelor: Soda pop is like liquid candy. You know, kids are always nursing a soda, it seems.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: And that increases the risk of diabetes. And usually, diabetics have hypertension about seven years before the diabetes is diagnosed.
Doug Batchelor: Now, we were talking and not only are these health issues causing a lot of premature death, the heart disease, the cancer, the diabetes, the obesity, but it’s actually bankrupting the country because there are so many sick people.
In the old days, a person near the last few years of their life, they’d get sick, they’d get old, they’d get their final illness, they’d die. Now people are being sick the last 30 years of their life, struggling with medicines.
And I understand that the average American right now, or as of 2021, pays over $12,000 a year in health costs. That 18% of the national budget is health care. Think about how much money everybody in the country would have for other things. If we would take care of our health, there would not be this health care crisis. You are saying that a lot of people are taking medicine that don’t really need it.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Yes, for example, the statins are used to lower blood cholesterol. We thought if we lowered everybody’s blood cholesterol, we would no longer have any heart disease. That was an error. The World Cardiology Journal in 2015 said that’s an error. We should tell our patients that’s an error. We should tell them the lifestyle is what we really need to do to lower our risk of heart disease. We can lower 80% better than any statin drug can do.
Doug Batchelor: How long is the average medical office visit when someone meets with their doctor?
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Well, you know, we have so many people in group practices now. And the leader of the group says you’ve got to see a patient every 10 minutes for us to make any money on this. And that’s not enough to do any education.
Doug Batchelor: So they — basically they write prescriptions to give them a quick fix, and they don’t educate them so they could get off those prescriptions.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Well, now with the statin medicines, for example, they’re supposed to try lifestyle before they give them any statins. But here’s the problem. They’ve done studies on longevity with those who are on the pills and those who aren’t. Those who are on the pills aren’t any better, don’t live any longer for 93% of them because they don’t have heart disease.
Now it’s insane to give a person a pill and say you’ve got to take this the rest of your life for a disease you don’t have.
Doug Batchelor: And usually all medicines have some side effects too.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: They do.
SIDE EFFECTS FROM STATINS
Doug Batchelor: And so what are some of the side effects from statins?
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Well, they have this muscle cramps is one of the big ones. That’s why they got the CQ10 business to try to help that.
Doug Batchelor: Yeah. Then you get the muscle cramps, and then you take another medicine for the muscle cramps, and it causes a chain reaction or domino effect. And they could get rid of all of it if they threw lifestyle. Most people.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Now, look at the women taking the statins. They have 71% higher risk of getting diabetes. Three and a half times more than men. Much higher risk getting diabetes if you’re on those statin pills. Now, fortunately, one year after the statins have been prescribed, only 55% of the people are still taking them.
Doug Batchelor: So that’s actually a good thing.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: That’s a good thing. But with 7% of the people who actually have heart disease, then the statins do help. They live seven, eight years longer. If they take the pill. But we don’t know who that is. We’re going by cholesterol level, and cholesterol level is not a good way to tell who has atherosclerosis.
Doug Batchelor: So there’s a relationship, then, between high blood pressure and atherosclerosis and diabetes.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Yes.
Doug Batchelor: If I understand, you’re also saying that diabetes is actually a bigger risk for women than breast cancer.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: It is. They’ll die sooner with that than they would with breast cancer. Ten and a half percent of the American population has diabetes. That’s very high. And it suddenly just jumped. And what made it jump? Well, the COVID came in. And we didn’t monitor the other diseases. And the people sitting still in the house. You know, they aren’t exercising. So more have to get overweight, and more have to get diabetes.
Doug Batchelor: And then sitting in the house, they eat more, too.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Yes.
Doug Batchelor: That’s incredible when you think that 10% of a population is struggling from a disease that most of them don’t need to have. Now, there are some, like, certain types of childhood diabetes that may not be affected.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Type 1.
Doug Batchelor: Type 1. Yeah. But most people have Type 2.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Yes. But Type 1 has increased, too. We don’t know exactly why.
JUNK FOOD DIET MAKES YOU CRAVE FOR ALCOHOL
Doug Batchelor: When we were speaking earlier, you said you actually had a few slides that would illustrate some studies that talk not only about vegetarianism and being tobacco-free, but some of the other lifestyle issues.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Yes. I call a diet alcohol and hard-line drugs. In other words, we read a statement in the book Ministry of Healing by E.G. White, page 334. It said, “Many who would not be guilty of placing on their table wine or liquor of any kind will load their table with food, which creates such a thirst for strong drink that to resist the temptation is almost impossible. Wrong habits of eating and drinking destroy the health and prepare the way for drunkenness.”
So Dr. Register was head of our nutrition department at Loma Linda. And he wanted to know if there’s any scientific evidence for this. So he thought he would do a rat study and see. And he designed a diet, which he called the poor teenage diet. It’s junk food. When the rats drink liquid, it’s water. Every rat knows not to drink alcohol. Humans haven’t learned that yet, but all rats know this.
Okay. So they don’t drink alcohol. But if you put them on this junk food diet, they do.
Doug Batchelor: So they have a craving for alcohol if they’re eating the junk food diet.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Yes. Here is donuts and coffee, hot dogs and mustard and piccolos, soft drink, apple pie and coffee, sweet rolls, spaghetti and meatballs, French bread, green beans, tossed salad, chocolate cake and coffee, three filled cookies for evening snack, candy bar, junk food. He blended this up in a blender with water and then dried it out. And you feed that to the rats compared to a good diet, and they ate it. And they start drinking alcohol.
And I have a slide here which shows them when they’re on the good diet, the height of the line represents how much alcohol they’re drinking. They don’t drink any. They drink water. But if you give them this junk food diet, they start off drinking a little alcohol. It was a 12-week study. And by the seventh week, they take off and become real alcoholic rats.
Doug Batchelor: So they have to have the alcohol all the time no matter what you do with their diet.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: That’s right. And then we put them back on a good diet again, and they stop drinking alcohol. They drink water.
Doug Batchelor: Interesting. That is fascinating.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: It is fascinating. And so then they took the formerly alcoholic rats, paired them off and mated them. And the progeny of these alcoholic rats tend to like alcohol, even though their parents are no longer alcoholics.
Doug Batchelor: So it affects actually the DNA. They pass that on to their offspring.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Yes.
Doug Batchelor: So the baby rats are more inclined to drink alcohol because the parents did.
DOPAMINE TO OPIUM
Dr. John Scharffenberg: That’s right. Now, we found out biochemically exactly how that works. We have eight or nine essential amino acids in a protein we eat. About 6% of it is phenylalanine. Phenylalanine goes to make tyrosine. That goes to make dopamine. Dopamine, it goes to make tetrahydropapaveroline, which is in the poppy plant.
Doug Batchelor: It’s like an opium.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Yes. And so they radioactive tag that with carbon 14. And 50% of the carbon 14 came out in the urine as morphine, codeine, normorphine, or norcodeine the precursors.
So why does that happen? Well, when it gets to the dopamine, which is the center in the brain, which is the exciting center that likes food and stuff, that center of the brain, that dopamine goes to make something else, which is a aldehyde. 3, 4-dihydroxyphenylaldehyde. That’s toxic. So your body quickly converts it to the acid form. But if you get a little alcohol, that blocks it. So it makes it go down to make more opium.
Now, it doesn’t have to do it that way. It can go another direction and make the basic building block of the body biochemically, the coenzyme A**, acetyl coenzyme A**. But it takes lots of good nutrients to do it. On a junk food diet, you don’t get all those good nutrients. So you tend to make more opium.
So they drink more alcohol because they’re getting the opium, which demands the alcohol.
Doug Batchelor: It becomes an endless cycle.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Yes. Now we know something else about this thing. We know this is true because we injected those rats that were alcoholic with morphine and they drank water. They were already getting what the body craved.
Doug Batchelor: I guess the bottom line is we’re saying that the diet — and this junk food diet ended up making addicts out of rats.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Now, something else that’s new you should know about, obesity. If you give those people an opiate blocker so they can’t make opium, they lose their taste for the things that they used to crave. In other words, when they were getting too much of the wrong foods, too much sugars and too much fat, they began to make opium in their bodies. So if you block that, then you won’t crave those foods.
Doug Batchelor: It’s amazing that there’s actually an integral internal mechanism that’s driving them in these things. We’re talking about reversing diabetes and hypertension, which is connected, I guess, with high blood pressure and obesity. Have you observed people, do you know cases where people have been diabetics and they’re taking insulin, they’ve made a change in their diet, they lose the weight and they get where they don’t need the medicine anymore?
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Yes, right here at Weimar, in this little institution, they have done these New Start programs, changed their diet, put them on an exercise program, and they can get off the insulin.
Doug Batchelor: So there are a lot of case studies then of people who actually are able to reverse their diabetes. We’re not saying in every case, but in most cases, a lifestyle change would do this, and that’ll also help them, of course, with the obesity and the high blood pressure. Any studies on how that will lengthen their lives?
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Yes, Dr. Ornish, in 1990, in San Francisco, took a group of patients who had clogged up coronary arteries. He put food on their ports every day for a year, and then checked a year later, 82% of those had a reversal of their atherosclerosis. They had only 12 milligrams of cholesterol a day, and 5% of the calories saturated fat. So that’s what did it.
So if we eat right, that means the vegetarian diet. If you eat like this, you don’t get all of those fat, and you can reverse what you already have.
Doug Batchelor: So what would you say to a person out there, they’re wanting to get on a vegetarian diet, but they’ve grown up with the typical American diet. What’s a good first step?
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Well, you’ve got to change, number one, cutting down on the meat. You don’t do it cold turkey, but a little at a time. Just eat meat maybe five days a week instead of every day. Then three days, and gradually change it over till you’re without any meat at all. That’s number one.
You eat only sitting down at the table, only at meal time, not between meals. Now you should know that diabetes is on the death certificate 3.6 times if you’re non-vegetarian compared to being a vegetarian. So a vegetarian plays a part in cutting down on diabetes risk, plays a part in hypertension. The plant proteins don’t tend to raise your blood pressure like animal proteins do.
Doug Batchelor: And it probably plays a part then also in obesity.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: That’s right.
KEYS TO REVERSE HYPERTENSION AND DIABETES
Doug Batchelor: So if you were to summarize for our friends that are listening, what would be the keys in reversing the hypertension and the diabetes?
Dr. John Scharffenberg: I think the key thing is be a vegetarian. That’s the key. That includes all of this stuff, and then get more exercise. You need more exercise.
Doug Batchelor: Now if I’m not mistaken, there’s been some studies that show that the teeth and the digestive system of humans is really designed more like that of a gorilla where it’s a vegetarian diet. Some animals have digestive systems that are not as complex as the human digestive system, and that our bodies are really designed for a vegetarian diet.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Yeah, I think that’s true. We don’t have as good evidence for that, but I think it’s true that we were designed to be vegetarian.
Doug Batchelor: And I think the jury’s in that those that practice vegetarianism have less of not only hypertension, obesity, diabetes, but is it true to say they also have less certain types of cancer?
Dr. John Scharffenberg: That’s right. Now people who exercise have 13 less cancers. They exercise this out, lowers it.
Doug Batchelor: So since cancer is the number two top killer, by exercising you’re going to help with the number one and the number two top killers.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Yeah, that’s right.
Doug Batchelor: And you said even just walking, you don’t necessarily need to go out there and play tackle football.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: No.
Doug Batchelor: Just get out and move. People sit so much these days because of their digital lifestyles.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Now you should know that hypertension is less apt to happen if you do three things. If you get enough linoleic acid in your diet, polyunsaturated essential amino acids, plant fatty acids — If you get enough of this — with animal studies, it shows, it lowers the risk of hypertension.
You can give animals also a lot of potassium, which is fruits and vegetables, and the sodium doesn’t cause the problem. The salt doesn’t cause the problem. We should have a ratio of potassium to sodium of two to one. We have it just turned around. We have twice as much sodium as we do potassium in the American diet.
Doug Batchelor: And you’re saying that the sodium or the salt is not as big a risk factor if we’re getting more of the plant fruits.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: That’s right. You’re getting more potassium from the fruits and vegetables. You’re getting more linoleic acid, the right kind of fat instead of saturated fat. Fiber in the diet helps. If you have 12 grams of fiber a day and you change it to 24 grams, you lower your risk of hypertension. For example, at 12 grams compared to 24 grams of fiber a day, there’s 50% more hypertension.
Doug Batchelor: Now, if a person’s eating the vegetarian diet, they’re a lot more prone to get more fiber.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: You see, the vegetarians in Europe in the EPIC-Oxford study compared the Adventist health study to vegetarians. The Adventists were doing it for health reasons. In Europe, they’re doing it because they just don’t want to kill animals.
So if you’re doing it for health reasons, you get more fiber, you get more vitamin C. You see, they just want to get rid of the meat, but you’re not getting more C or more fiber. But if you’re doing it for health reasons, you get a not white bread for toast, you get whole wheat bread for toast.
Doug Batchelor: Which has got got more fiber. It’s got the bran still in it.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: So there was quite a difference between vegetarians. For health reasons, they’re getting more C, they’re getting more fiber.
Doug Batchelor: Now, in addition to being a doctor, you’re a man of faith. And, you know, you’re very careful to bifurcate the medicine from your faith, because you know that faith and personal testimonies doesn’t really stand up in a lab or a scientific study. But as a man, your faith is integrated with your scientific knowledge.
You have a very positive attitude. You’re always smiling. I’ve known you for a while. And you always laugh, you get a good sense of humor. There’s medical benefit for that as well.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Yes, there is. I have a good friend. And his grandson I met the other day, he was despondent all the time. He’d gotten alcoholic, and he was despondent. And I tried to help him. And I tell him that when I wake up in the morning, I’m so excited, because I just want to know how God is going to bring somebody to me that I can help that day.
I want him to get the idea, if he gets his mind off himself, but on helping other people, it’ll do him a lot of good on his despondent problem.
Doug Batchelor: Most people struggle with depression because they’re focused within. But you wake up every day and you say, Lord, there’s someone out there that you want me to help and encourage. And you always meet somebody, it seems.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Yes, it does.
Doug Batchelor: And that brings you joy and satisfaction.
Dr. John Scharffenberg: Right.
Doug Batchelor: Well, they say that if you make yourself useful, God is more inclined to keep you around. And so you’ve made yourself useful. And I think the Lord has blessed you with long life. That’s one of the promises in the Bible, by the way.
Well, thank you so much, Dr. Scharffenberg, for being with us again. And thank you, friends, for joining us for our Amazing Facts Spotlight program. And share this with your friends.
