Tom Jelinek PhD

Tom Jelinek earned his PhD in 1993 (McMaster University), studying cellular regulatory processes. He then joined the Cancer Center at the University of Virginia Medical School, where he furthered his studies on the mechanisms of cell signaling. Growth factors or other hormones hit their receptors on cells, which initiate biochemical signals inside those cells, and control physiological processes. One growth factor receptor of interest was the insulin-like growth factor receptor. It is peripherally involved in many cancers, is highly similar to the insulin receptor, and a high dose of insulin will activate both receptors. After leaving the University of Virginia, Tom spent 15 years in a strategic role in biotechnology, where it was essential to keep abreast of all significant developments.

At age 51, Tom was diagnosed with type II diabetes, with a blood glucose reading of 325 mg/dl (18 mM). But instead of turning to medication, he returned to his roots, and began to ask what went wrong, and whether it could be cured by reversing what went wrong. The result was a halving of blood glucose in under a month, and full reversal of diabetes in under three months. He spent the next three years questioning, dissecting, and re-thinking every aspect of diabetes. Along the way, it became clear that diabetes treatment orthodoxy is a derivative of the same orthodoxy that gave us the food pyramid, replacing fat with carbohydrates, ostensibly to prevent heart disease. The advice has produced the exact opposite of what was promised, and yet the guidelines remain in place. Seeing the public health disaster unfolding in front of him, Tom decided it was time for the world to hear why those guidelines caused the diabetes epidemic, and how it can easily be fixed.