Diabetes And You: A Comprehensive, Holistic Approach, by Naheed Ali, MD

It is something worth remembering that simply because a book lives up to its aims does not mean that it is a great book. And it must be remembered as well that simply because a book is not particularly useful to me does not mean that it is useless to everyone else. In many ways, this book suffers from a common problem, in that its desire to speak about the wide breadth of issues related to the complex suite of diseases known as diabetes can sometimes hinder its ability to speak in depth about the disease and how one is to deal with it, and the book’s attempts to focus on certain elements–particularly with regards to mental health–come off as rather heavy-handed and unhelpful. It is easy to see that the writer wishes to give help, but the qualifications and caveats that the author provides are about precisely those areas that many readers would be most interested in. This book suggests that there are fundamental issues in the way that diabetes is framed and understood and dealt with that encourages a great deal of hostility between people with different approaches to the disease, as this author has a clear support of the medical establishment with all that means.

One of the aspects of this book that bothered me the most was the way that the author seemed to assume that the reader of the book who has received a diagnosis of diabetes (or perhaps even pre-diabetes) was going to be overwhelmed by depression, and so a great deal of effort is spent by the author in seeking to counter this assumed depression. Indeed, the author spends a whole chapter on the relationship between diabetes and mental health where depression is a huge part of the connection that the author is trying to draw in these areas, providing a sense of encouragement (and perhaps a bit of nagging) about the sorts of things that can be done. Another one of the issues with this book–and with many books about diabetes–is that it attempts to do too much to do any of it well. Diabetes, after all, is made up of at least two very different sorts of diseases with very different origins, and there are even people who are getting both types of diabetes simultaneously, which sounds particularly disastrous. It seems obvious, in light of the way that diabetes works, that the pancreas has a key role in weight regulation, and it is clear that our way of living in contemporary decades–which is perhaps not the fault of ordinary people but is something that all too many of us have to deal with–causes a great deal of suffering and complications and that the bodies of all too many people are having a hard time coping with these conditions, influenced as they are by what seem to be chance infections of the presence of particular genetic patterns in the midst of widespread caloric plenty but nutritional poverty.

If you include the resources at the end of the book, this book goes from a bit less than 200 to a bit less than 250 pages. The main contents of the book are divided into four parts that take up 11 chapters. The author begins with a disclaimer (always a bad idea), as well as introductory comments0 from the author. This leads into an introduction section that looks at diabetes at a glance (I), starting with an explanation of diabetes (1) as well as its two types (2). This is followed by the author wishing to encourage the writer to get to know diabetes (II), with chapters on causes and symptoms (3), the ways that diabetes tends to be diagnosed (4), treatment options (5), as well as a specific discussion on juvenile diabetes (6). This section of the book is properly speaking the core of the book, yet the book is a bit out of date when it comes to treatment options, suggesting that some updating would be worthwhile to give readers what they are looking for. After this the author discusses other manifestations of diabetes (III) with regards to mental health (7) and heart health (8) in particular. This is then followed by three chapters that show how the reader should deal with diabetes (IV), namely through diet (9), pain management (10), and staying motivated (11) in one’s efforts, which seems strangely incomplete as well. After this comes a glossary, resources, references, an index, and information about the author.