During my recovery, I was confused and frustrated by all the conflicting information in various  diabetes books and health books. None of the books, not a single book laid out a structured step-by-step plan to help me better manage my diabetes! None of the books clearly explained what foods to eat and not eat. None of the books explained how to use the blood glucose testing data to do more than figure out how much insulin to take! And, none of the books explained how to get your doctor to work with you instead of against you.

In addition, none of the books provided any real emotional support, where you could call a toll-free number, and ask questions; or, visit the book's website and find someone to respond to your emails.

In addition, my mother and my daughter kept bugging me to write the book -- they wouldn't let up. In addition, during my talks to various churches and community groups, they kept asking if I was going to write a book. Even my primary care physician felt that I should write a book!

I hope that the following information will give you some additional insight into why I wrote the book Death to Diabetes and why I designed the book's content, layout and cover to be totally different from any other health book on the market. 

After reading quite a few diabetes books and after listening to hundreds of diabetics complain about the diabetes books that they had purchased, I realized that there were several things wrong with most diabetes books and other health/nutrition books Consequently, I decided to focus on writing a "how to" book that accomplished the following objectives:

• Explain diabetes is simple layman terms that made it easier for diabetics to truly understand the disease.
• Simplify a complex diabetes management process to make it easier and less intimidating for diabetics to implement.
• Design a simple meal model that would not require any calorie counting
• Clearly identify the foods that were unhealthy for diabetics even if it meant taking a risk for being laughed at by the experts.
• Define the optimum foods and the best type of meals for diabetics, based on the biochemistry of the human body -- instead, of based on what the experts were saying in the hundreds of other diabetes books that didn't work.
• Define a structured model that would make it easy for diabetics to track their progress from day to day, week to week, and month to month.
• Define a set of procedures that would explain step-by-step what a diabetic should be doing each day during their recovery.
• Define a set of procedures that could be customized by every diabetic to fit their specific needs and lifestyle.
• Assume that diabetics are going to make mistakes, and develop a proactive strategy that would address the typical problems and failures that all diabetics face very day.
• Clearly explain why diabetics remain diabetic and how to overcome these barriers.
• Define a clear set of metrics that all diabetics could use to measure their progress instead of guessing.
• Define a process for diabetics to overcome their fear and anxiety dealing with their doctors, and show them how to get their doctors to work for them.
• Provide multiple ways for diabetics to improve their diabetes.
• Provide clinical references to justify any specific recommendations in the book, especially for nutrition and supplements.

The Book's Cover

Despite what the experts kept telling me, I decided to design a controversial book cover with a serious title that would convey a serious message. The experts felt that the book's title should be something like "Living with Diabetes" or "Living as a Diabetic". They also felt that the book's cover should be a picture of people with happy faces, and the colors of the cover should be happy, bright colors.

I asked one of the publishing experts at the time: "Do you think diabetes is a happy disease? Do you think people really like living with diabetes?"

I wanted a title that would grab people's attention. I also wanted a title that conveyed a desired state of achieving better health. With my daughter's help, we came up with the title "Death to Diabetes". The experts felt that most people won't "get it" and will assume that the title is referring to them being dead from the diabetes. As a result, they felt the title was too negative and dark for the public to accept. They also felt that having a health book where the very first word was "death" would kill my book sales. My daughter and I felt that it conveyed my message of hope and a better state of health, that is to kill the disease and put the disease in the grave instead of the person!

When it came to the colors for the book cover, I wanted a combination of colors that would stand out from all the other health books. Subconsciously, I always liked the colors black and gold because those are the colors of my favorite football team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. But, the primary reason why I picked those colors is based on my understanding that black and gold created the biggest color differential, and would allow the gold title to stand out against the black background.

Sidebar: Before I published the book, the publishing experts tried to convince me to change the color of the book cover from black to red, blue, green, yellow (happy colors). They said there were no health books with a black cover. My mother pointed out that the Number 1 selling health book in the world has a black cover ... Do you know what book she was referring to?  (The Bible)

The final touch was the photograph of a cemetery, with the 3 headstones titled "High Blood Pressure", "Diabetes", and "Obesity" -- to indicate that the diseases would be in the graveyard instead of the people who were dying from these diseases. The experts just shook their heads, and felt that I had killed any chances of anyone buying my book with such a dark and negative cover.

It's not that I had this fascination for Death. But, when I was in the hospital, I kept having a nightmare about being in a cemetery, walking  slowly towards a headstone with a word starting with the letter "D", the first letter of my name. But I would wake up in a cold sweat before I could see the entire word on the headstone. I told my mother that it was a sign that I was going to die in the hospital. But, my mother said that God was speaking to me through the dream, and that I should stop waking up before I reached the headstone. So, finally I stuck with the dream, and when I reached the headstone, I saw that the letter "D" was for "Diabetes" and not for "DeWayne". I was so happy! 

But, at that time, I didn't understand the purpose of the dream. My mother said it would be more clear later on. And, she was right! She reminded me of the dream, when I was designing the book cover and it all made sense! The title of the book, the headstone, the colors for the cover -- it all made sense! Hopefully, it would make sense to diabetics and readers of the book ...

The Book's Design and Layout

I laid out the book logically, the way an engineer would present the case for solving a complex problem. After the Introduction (Chapter 1), and after discussing my personal experience with diabetes (Chapter 2), I present the book to the reader the way only an engineer would.

I start with "the problem" (diabetes), explaining the problem in detail (Chapter 3). Then, I provide "the solution" to the problem (Chapter 4). And, then, I explain the solution in more detail by describing each component of the solution (Chapters 4 to Chapter 13): nutrition, supplements, detox, exercise, testing, emotional support, and spirituality.

Then, I pull all the components together, to discuss an integrated solution in Chapter 14; and, also in Chapter 15 where I provide more detailed, specific solutions for the specific complications of the problem diabetes.

Now that the problem and the solution had been presented,  I  then provided a series of next steps in Chapter 16 -- so that the reader can decide how to proceed with this new and powerful knowledge base of information about science, nutrition, lifestyle, and spirituality.

As more of an afterthought, I added the the last chapter because my mother and daughter felt that I needed some recipes based on my Super Meal Model of healthy eating. So, Chapter 17 is a summary of some recipes that my mother, daughter, and some church ladies gave me that I modified to ensure they were healthy and met my guidelines of a healthy, balanced meal.

I purposely used specific words throughout the book to convey my message and solution. I used the words "dead" and "live" to more dramatically describe which foods are healthy vs. not healthy. I used the word "Super" to better describe how powerful the solution would be, as in the Super Meal Model.

Note: When I was growing up, "Superman" was one of my favorite TV shows, so I felt the word "super" belonged somewhere in my book.

I added the Appendix to provide proof to substantiate my solution, Including more than 200 clinical studies and references.

Finally, I added an Index, so that the reader would be able to use the book as a reference manual when looking up specific information. I also added a detailed Table of Contents, again to make it easier for the reader to find specific information.

Use Google Book Search to look inside the book

Book Reviews & Quotes

Bowker Book Rating & Book Review 

“Death to Diabetes!” is slowly becoming a rallying cry of many diabetics and family members who are suffering unnecessarily with this disease and its horrific complications of blindness, amputations, kidney dialysis, heart attack, and stroke.
 
Many diabetics who were struggling with their diabetes for years were getting their blood glucose under control within weeks following Mr. McCulley’s program! Some of the doctors were so surprised that they invited the author to their diabetic support group meetings to answer questions. Clinics and other medical groups invited the author to give them presentations on his findings.

Some doctors are slowly beginning to consider the power of God's food because the author has been able to show them the nutritional science behind these foods. When the diabetic's body is fed these missing nutrients from whole foods, the body is able to defend itself against the disease! This is due to the human body being designed by God with an intelligent code that programs the body’s cells to repair and heal -- when they are fed the necessary nutrients from God's foods (not man's processed foods).