Pick up a newspaper or magazine or do a little channel hopping these days and you're sure to find a makeover story, some more extreme than others. Almost everything or everyone needs a makeover, it seems, whether it's your furnishings, your face, or your future.

Your life can't continue as it was. You have to be made over. That is the millenium edict.

Some makeovers are frivolous. Some appear to be downright dangerous. Others, though, have an intrinsic merit. At Book Expo America (BEA) in L.A., (www.bookexpoamerica.com). I encountered a truly rewarding, 275-page makeover guide called Lifestyle Makeover for Diabetics (www.lifestyle-makeover.com). Since uncontrolled diabetes kills over 200,000 people every year, and since I have been diabetic for the last dozen years, I was really intrigued. In fact, I think it's one of the most comprehensive books on diabetes that I have ever read. It is not the best written book because the purposely conversational, anecdotal style is a little forced, the language awkward at times. That being said, the author, George F. Tohme, has written a book that could well become a bible for diabetics. It tells you EVERYTHING you need to know, not only to understand what causes diabetes (if you are a neophyte) and how to control it, but it also goes into detail about the different medications currently available (the book is up-to-date), and how they work.

Tohme's LIfestyle Makeover for Diabetics doesn't pull any punches. Written in a simple question and answer style he claims even a third-grader can understand (and lots of young children have diabetes), he stresses that the antidote to diabetes is not medication, although meds are also necessary. What really is necessary is a commited lifestyle makeover. Unlike the instant makeovers we see on T.V., this makeover is a lifetime commitment.

Why is this book different from other books about diabetes? George Tohme is a pharmacist who filled out countless prescriptions for diabetic patients and, over the years, watched them come back to the counter suffering from complications of diabetes. They relied on the pills but didn't make the necessary lifestyle changes to accompany the meds they took. Statistics for complications of diabetes in the U.S. are grim (over 100,000 leg amputations annually, 44,000 cases of kidney failure, 24,000 cases of blindness).

Tohme knows these statistics. But he could only try to give his customers information about what they could do to prevent complications on a one-to-one basis. With the publication of Lifestyle Makeover for Diabetics, he hopes to reach a wider public. What also makes his book different is the very practical, human approach the author takes to this lifestyle makeover commitment. He knows how hard it is to stick to it because he was once an unhappy, obese little kid. For many years now, he has been personally committed to the makeover he writes about.

The book is selling well, and a new edition (mainly a new cover) will be coming out on October 1, 2008. It's available in both hardcover and as an ebook.