John Young, MD

Dr. John Young

     For those afflicted with Type 2 diabetes, a Largo doctor says he has a solution to the disease that resets the pancreas and permanently returns patients to normal.
Dr. John Young of Seminole, who operates the Foundational Health Center at 7241 Bryan Dairy Road, has been experimenting with a new process for reversing the disease over the past seven years and claims to have a success rate of 80 percent with over 100 diabetes patients. Young, who studied past diabetes research and more recent breakthroughs by Nobel Prize winners, uses a combination of alkaline protein and minerals with a form of iodine that he says reverses the process in diabetes patients in eight to 12 weeks. The key is to stay on a low-carbohydrate diet and blood sugar levels will remain normal. He said his success has been with pre-diabetes patients, who have blood sugar levels from 100 to 125, and Type 2 patients, who have blood sugar levels much higher. “It’s basic physiology and bio-chemistry,” said Young who has been practicing medicine for 22 years. “It’s first-year medical school lectures.” He calls it classical medicine – the way medicine was first practiced.

     The Tampa office of the American Diabetes Association calls it a mystery and a spokeswoman there said the ADA has no knowledge of Young’s work. However, it’s another story with insurance companies that are struggling to find ways to save money on skyrocketing costs associated with diabetes care. Lisa Goodwin, a Tampa Bay area sales rep with Humana Care Plus, said she became familiar with Young’s work about six months ago and it’s legitimate. “Our upper management had a couple of meetings with Dr. Young and came back astonished with what he has accomplished,” Goodwin said. “It’s a classic example of thinking outside the box. In my 15 years (as a medical insurance sales rep) I’ve never seen anything like this.” Goodwin said the proof is in the testimony of his patients.

     One of those is 74-year-old Bob Stevens, who works as an independent medical insurance contractor and has been a patient of Young’s for seven months. “You have to remember insurance companies are slow to move,” Stevens said. “But the impact of diabetes on healthcare is gigantic.” Stevens said his clients speak highly of Young’s procedures and the results have been good. “You have to listen to what he says,” said Stevens. “He turns them around if they’re compliant. “It’s all proven medical interventions that the medical profession doesn’t use any more,” he added. Young said that’s because modern medicine doesn’t go to the root of the problem. “Doctors prescribe oral hypoglycemics to drop blood sugar and after a while the body becomes resistant to it,” Young said. “After that, you increase dosage or put them on insulin shots.” He said insulin-like growth factor receptors in arteries grow, which makes the diameter of the blood vessel smaller, eventually constricting the amount of blood flow. He said that’s why advanced diabetes patients have five times the normal chance of strokes and heart attacks.

     According to the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse, among adults with Type 1 or 2 diabetes, 14 percent take insulin only, 13 percent take insulin and oral medication and 57 percent take oral medication only. He pointed to former NBC television correspondent Tim Russert as an example. Young said Russert had elevated blood pressure and was on medication, had elevated cholesterol and a blood sugar level of 150. “He did everything they (doctors) said and he dropped dead,” Young said. “The key is getting to the root of the problem rather than treating symptoms. “When I was doing emergency medicine work, I noticed every year I was seeing the same patients and every year we were prescribing more and more drugs,” he added. “All I was doing was slowing their progress to death.” Young began asking around and reading as much as possible about diabetes research. “I read what the old guys used to do (in the 1930s and 1940s),” Young said, “and realized more could be done.”

Young studied the work of John Myer at Johns Hopkins University; Dr. Frederick Klenner, a former assistant professor of medicine at Duke University; Dr. Robert Cathcart of Los Altos, Calif.; and Wilhelm Kauffman, a former researcher at Yale University. He took their research and combined it with the cell membrane research of 1931 Nobel Prize winner Otto Warburg; along with the work of 1998 Nobel Prize winners Robert Furchgott, Louis Ignarro and Ferid Murad on nitric oxide in relation to basic medical proteins; and the work of 1999 Nobel Prize winner Gunter Blobel who conducted research on cell receptors in relation to proteins within membranes. “This is nothing new,” Young said. “I just went back to what the old boys were doing at the big institutions and I looked at the Nobel Prizes.”

The concept revolves around producing less insulin. “Once you reset the pancreas (which produces insulin), you’re fine,” Young said. “But if you go back to eating the way you did before with a high-carb diet, you’ll get in trouble again.” Because his research numbers are relatively small, Young hasn’t written any articles for any of the major medical journals but does have plans to write a book on the topic within the next year. I went into this (medical profession) because I wanted to get people better,” Young said. “I didn’t get into medicine to pass out drugs and slow the process to die. I hated medicine before but I enjoy it now.”

Young earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of South Florida, a master’s degree in hospital administration from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a medical degree from the Grace University School of Medicine in St. Klus/Nevis, British West Indies. He completed a residency in internal medicine at the Marshall University School of Medicine and a second residency in family practice at Marshall.

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John Young, MD