Despite the common observation that obesity runs in families, genetic research shows that the habits you inherit from your family are more important than the genes you inherit. Obesity genes account for only five percent of all weight problems. Then, we have to wonder, what causes the other 95 percent of weight problems?

We are seeing an epidemic of obesity in America today. It is the single most important public health issue facing us. If genes do not account for obesity, perhaps it is our high-fat diet that is to blame. That has been the common belief in our society since nutritional low fat guidelines were pushed upon us in the 1970's. It seems logical that eating fat makes you fat. Fat contains nine calories per gram, so it would seem that eating more fat (and more calories) would make you gain weight. But that's not what the science reveals.

Pioneering research by Harvard Medical School's David Ludwig reveals the reason that low-fat diets do not work -- and identifies the true cause of obesity for most Americans. Dr. Ludwig's research explains the real reasons 70 percent of Americans are overweight. In the 1980's not one state had an obesity rate over 20 percent. In 2010, ONLY one state has an obesity rate UNDER 20 percent. This is not a genetic problem.

Diabetes is not reversible and controlling your blood sugar with drugs or insulin will protect you from organ damage and death.

That is what the medical profession would have you believe, but medication and insulin can actually increase your risk getting a heart attack or dying.

The diabetes epidemic is accelerating along with the obesity epidemic, and what you are not hearing about is another way to treat it.

Type 2 diabetes, or what was once called adult onset diabetes, is increasing worldwide and now affects nearly 100 million people -- and over 20 million Americans.

We are seeing increasing rates of Type 2 diabetes, especially in children, which has increased over 1,000 percent in the last decade and was unknown before this generation. One in three children born today will have diabetes in their lifetime.

Yet this is an entirely preventable lifestyle disease.

In a report in The New England Journal of Medicine, Walter Willett, MD, PhD, and his colleagues from the Harvard School of Public Health demonstrated that 91 percent of all Type 2 diabetes cases could be prevented through improvements lifestyle and diet.

Today, I want to review in detail this new way of thinking about diabetes and outline the tests I recommend to identify problems with blood sugar. Then next week I want to tell you exactly how to prevent, treat, and reverse Type 2 diabetes.