Wellness Radio Recap: November 14, 2020

Do you know the markers to look for on your annual checkup? Having normal blood sugar isn’t good enough if your insulin levels are high, as revealed in this episode of Wellness Radio. We discuss metabolic health and all the repercussions of trying to manage symptoms of high blood sugar or high insulin levels instead of getting down to the root cause and lowering these markers. 

These notes summarize the discussion. Here are the time stamps for each topic discussed so you can get more details and recommendations: 

10:55 Facebook question: Can pathogens and mold be part of the cause of metabolic issues like diabetes or pre-diabetes?

21:44 Discussing heart disease and whether it is caused by sugar or fat

29:11 Are carbs essential to your health?

35:56 How to Start Fixing Your Metabolic Health

44:44 Reversing High Blood Sugar

Your blood sugar can look normal while you’re still experiencing signs of a metabolic issue happening beneath the surface. If your blood sugar is 80, which is where you want it to be, but your insulin levels report at 30, this is a sign that there’s something wrong. Your insulin levels should always be as low as possible, single digits are great. When your insulin levels are high, it means your body is constantly releasing insulin to try to maintain your glucose. If your body keeps releasing insulin, there will come a point where it just can’t anymore and this leads to your insulin crashing, your blood sugar going crazy, your cell receptors no longer receiving glucose so you end up with diabetes, PCOS, gestational diabetes or even Alzheimer’s. 

Dr. Rebecca spoke of a health coaching client that felt fine, she had some inflammation but she reported feeling ok, just some slight symptoms. They ran bloodwork and found her glucose levels over 200. This number should be in the 80s. She went day-to-day feeling fine, managing symptoms like so many people walking around, not realizing that this will lead to a crash and burn when the body is no longer able to handle the stressors you put on it each day. 

If you neglect to maintain your car, it’s going to break down one day. The same is true with your body. It has to be maintained with proper nourishment to function at its optimal level. 

Illnesses are developed through the stressors we put on our bodies. If our actions lead to us developing illnesses, we can also take action to heal. We see this with diabetic patients often, believing they woke up with this illness out of nowhere instead of looking at the cookies, cakes, and constant fried food infiltrating their daily diet. 

Can Diabetes Be Reversed?

Once you take responsibility and see the actions that brought diabetes to your doorstep, you can reverse those steps and in time, reverse diabetes. Yes, type 2 diabetes is reversible. Dr. Nathan believes that type 1 diabetes can also be reversed as he has seen massive improvements with these patients in his office. “Medicine and science would like us to believe this can’t happen, T1D is something you’re born with, but we see it every day, patients living without insulin with this diagnosis” he stated.

Your metabolic health determines your overall health. When you’re faced with a metabolic issue like high blood sugar, this is your body telling you that it needs something from you. Provide those needs and you will see a change. It won’t be overnight, you will have to work at it, but it is possible. 

Our kids saw Dr. Rebecca testing her ketones once and got interested in the test. They were adamant they wanted to have it done so we did and found that they were in ketosis. We were surprised since they had eaten fruits and cereal that day and the night before that were not low in carbs. It goes to show that once you are metabolically healthy, the carbs that you eat will go to directly support your muscles and your brain. 

This is proof that you won’t have to live your life completely avoiding carbs forever. Work to get to a place where when you do consume some sugar or carbs on a one-off basis, your body burns it up immediately and goes back to burning fat for fuel. Your body won’t store carbs and sugar as fat if you’re metabolically healthy. 

Can pathogens and mold be part of the cause of metabolic issues like diabetes or pre-diabetes?

Absolutely. There are lots of issues that lead to metabolic issues and mold and pathogens can definitely be one of them. Lots of my patients with an overgrowth of bacteria or who have been exposed to mold all crave carbohydrates and sugar. This causes them to be weight-loss resistant because the mold damages your metabolic system so much that it’s developing disease in the body. 

Another angle I find interesting is that some of my patients with parasitic infections suffer from low blood sugar. This is caused by the parasites in their body consuming the nutrients they eat. 

High blood sugar has become an epidemic because for most people food will be the root cause of this issue, but it can really be caused by so many other environmental factors as well. 

Cortisol is one of those things that has a bad reputation but we need it to help us wake up in the morning and get those gains in the gym. But, if you’ve been exposed to mold or have cavitations such as infections in cavities or complications from root canals; if you have any work stress or were in a car accident and never corrected your spine, all these things contribute to stress and your cortisol response. 

Stress can be real or perceived. If your stress is from a broken relationship, you will have a physical reaction which is an increase in cortisol which then increases your glucose. Why does cortisol increase glucose? Well, your body is thinking you’re in survival mode when you’re stressed, so it produces quick energy since it is expecting a fight or flight situation. When your body produces that extra glucose and you don’t burn that glucose off, your metabolic health is negatively affected. 

This can present in a number of ways. Cancer cells, for instance, loves glucose and will thrive in a high blood sugar or high glucose environment. 

Heart Disease and Women’s Issues

Heart disease isn’t caused by fat, contrary to popular opinion. It’s always been a sugar issue. 

A lot of women’s health issues like PCOS, low testosterone, even autoimmune diseases are also caused by high blood sugar. 

Gestational diabetes highlights the fact that one’s blood sugar was an underlying issue all along. So many illnesses are caused by high blood sugar and glucose that it is very important to eliminate excess from our diet. 

Are carbs essential?

No one needs to consume more than 200g of carbohydrates per day. Carbs are not essential, even though you may have learned that before. If you don’t have enough fatty acids and essential amino acids in your daily diet, you will die, but you’re not dying from not eating carbs. 

It’s a misconception that eating a ketogenic diet will cause you to lose muscle. Your liver has enough fat stores to burn through before that would ever happen plus your diet should be filled with lots of nutrient-dense fats to use as fuel.  

Many people think they may be doing well with their carb count and staying well under 200g not realizing that carbs and sugars are hidden in everything. If you were to start tracking how much carbs and added sugars you were consuming on a daily basis, you may be surprised to learn that your breakfast is already close to 200g of carbs. 

It’s not that sugar is bad. We don’t tell our kids that sugar is bad. It’s that too much of it is harmful and it’s already present in so many foods naturally that it is easy to overdo it when you add carbohydrates and added sugars to your diet. 

Grapes are a great example of healthy food that we eat all the time, especially in the summer but with all their great benefits, it still contains a lot of sugar so you don’t want to consume too much in one sitting. You also want to avoid having grapes in conjunction with other carbs such as in oatmeal or with breakfast bagels.

When you lessen your carb intake, you will not feel hungry. The goal is not starvation. The goal is to replace carbohydrates with good, healthy, dietary fat. Healing the cell membrane is a big part of fixing metabolic health issues as the cell membrane houses the receptors that bind to insulin. 

Healthy sources of dietary fat like avocados, raw seeds and nuts, grass-fed butter, and cold-pressed oils are higher in calories than carbohydrates and will actually help you to feel fuller for longer. 

How to Start Fixing Your Metabolic Health

For the vast majority of us, changing your diet and lifestyle will be a major improvement. But for the rest of us, you’ll have to start by detoxing your body from heavy metals, mold, parasites. 

Step one is to start intermittent fasting. That can be as little as 12 hours of fasting but if you can get that up to 18 hours of fasting, you’ll really start to see the benefits. Your body will start to heal itself in that time that it has to concentrate on doing just that and not metabolizing food. 

Secondly, you’ll want to eliminate processed sugar from your diet completely and keep your carbs to about 50g or under. Some people may benefit from eating even fewer carbs, depending on how long you’ve been diabetic, in order to see real benefits. Save those carbs for later in the day to help you with your melatonin release for better sleep. 

While you’re eliminating sugar and carbs, increase your intake of nutrient-dense dietary fats, as well as your green leafy veggies and cruciferous vegetables. So lots of broccoli, cauliflower, kale, spinach steamed in grass-fed butter or avocado oil, and huge salads topped with pasture-raised eggs, wild salmon or organic chicken, raw nuts, and cold-pressed oils as your dressing. 

Supplement with healthy fats like Pure Form Omega and things that will lower glucose like alpha-lipoic acid. Bitter melon extract and berberine help to lower glucose as well. Find these in herbal supplements with other beneficial ingredients that support metabolic health. 

This episode wrapped with a caller who shared his journey on the ketogenic diet. He was diagnosed with diabetes and his doctor recommended he “just stop eating sugar.” He did a little research into exactly what that meant and discovered that carbs are converted and stored as fat. He went on a ketogenic diet to lose 75lbs and come off insulin medication which was a great personal testament to the benefit of the ketogenic diet.