Diabetes and Pre-Diabetes
Is it just about sugar?
What I will be discussing today is Adult Onset or Type 2 Diabetes. This post is NOT about Type 1 Diabetes which is actually caused by a totally different mechanism.
People do not just wake up one day and become Diabetic. It is actually a slow progression over time, usually taking years to decades.
Q: What is the number one cause I see for Type 2 -Adult Onset Diabetes?
A: Becoming overweight-obese
Percent of adults aged 20 and over with obesity: 42.5% (2017-2018)
Percent of adults aged 20 and over with overweight, including obesity: 73.6% (2017-2018)
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm
I think the above statistics may be around 80% by 2021.
So what you say….
The cost is financial as well as quality of life.
We need to fix this and we can. But first we must understand the true causes of Type 2 Diabetes which I will now just refer to as Diabetes.
When you think of Diabetes what is the first word that comes to mind?
My bet it is sugar.
If I was correct, you owe me….. to continue reading. If I was incorrect, well, keep reading anyway. You might learn something new.
In doctors vocabulary we call blood sugar blood glucose.
Almost all docs are trained that Diabetes is a disease of too much blood glucose. This singularly centric narrow focus on blood glucose has unfortunately shaped the care Diabetics and Pre-Diabetics receive. Instead of treating the root cause of Diabetes and preventing it from occurring everyone JUST focuses on lowering blood glucose by almost any means possible, which usually means a monthly trip to your local Big Chain pharmacy for a few prescriptions and while you are there why not get the latest vaccine and some doughnuts for the trip home.
Sounds like my idea of healthy living, NOT!
What if I told you blood glucose was JUST one marker of Diabetes/Pre-Diabetes?
What if I told you the best way to prevent Diabetes/Pre-Diabetes is to understand what happens to blood glucose in your body?
What if I told you most adults already have a Diabetic/Pre-Diabetic physiology even if they don’t meet the standard criteria for Diabetes?
Are you still with me?
What if I told you that a Diabetic/Pre-Diabetic physiology prematurely ages you and increases your risk for Obesity, High Blood Pressure, Heart Disease, Strokes, Dementia, Kidney Disease, Cancers, and a shorter life expectancy?
What if I told you that Diabetic/Pre-Diabetic physiology greatly increases your risks of complications from COVID?
Now do I have your attention?
I hope so.
Almost all docs are trained that Type 2 /Adult Onset Diabetes is a chronic progressive disease that gets worse with time and that requires pills and then eventually insulin as treatment. This glucose-centric training has unfortunately shaped the care Diabetics receive. It also greatly delays early diet and lifestyle changes that can prevent Diabetes from occurring and thus slow your aging process.
There goes that common sense word “prevent” again. You don’t hear that much in the traditional healthcare system.
Funny thing though, almost as funny as the next run on sentence about to come, so you are warned. Well not funny if you dig down deep as most docs who treat Diabetics are so worried about heart disease in Diabetics, as well as their misguided fear of dietary fats that they advise their Diabetic patients to eat low fat meals with the result being their meals are now very high in carbohydrates.
Here is the problem with that illogic.
Diabetes by definition is a carbohydrate intolerant disease.
Carbohydrates are in essence sugar (glucose). So traditional dietary recommendations that incorrectly fear dietary fat and then advise a high carbohydrate diet for Diabetics does not make much sense.
Aren’t traditional dietary recommendations just so well thought out?
I wonder how much advertising and research revenue the American Diabetes Association and the American Heart Association receives to advocate for a low fat high carb diet for Diabetics?
High glucose/sugar levels are toxic to Diabetics yet the traditional healthcare system instructs Diabetics to eat a diet high in carbohydrates that turns into glucose. Too high a level of glucose in the blood acts like a toxin that creates inflammation throughout your body. Think about it a second. Inflammation is like swelling. When your body gains extra fat weight, your body is swelling. Swell too much and things don’t work as well.
Let’s look at how your body handles carbohydrates via a mechanistic approach.
Step 1- Eat carbohydrates
Step 2- Turn carbohydrates into Glucose which causes a rise in Blood Glucose
Step 3- Your body responds by trying to burn the glucose for fuel as it doesn’t like a whole lot of glucose hanging around in the blood. Think of glucose as syrup. Do you want a lot of sticky syrup mucking up your bloodstream? I know I don’t.
Q: Do you know how much glucose is in your blood?
A: About 1 teaspoon
How many teaspoons of glucose are in your Starbucks latte?
The answer is much more in one latte than you have floating around in your blood.
So what happens to all this sugar?
Let’s get back to the mechanism of how your body handles dietary carbohydrates.
Step 4- You have a thyroid hormone, specifically Free T3 (FT3) that helps to burn your Glucose for energy. This in essence eliminates the glucose from your body.
Step 5- If there is Excess Glucose left after FT3 did it’s part, Insulin hormone will rise and help store the excess blood glucose by moving it into your fat cells as Triglycerides.
Yep, insulin does not remove the sugar from your body.
It just moves it from your blood into your fat cells for storage as fat.
Yes, high insulin makes you gain extra fat weight.
So Triglycerides while being a fat we measure in your blood is actually a marker of EXCESS DIETARY CARBOHYDRATES.
Step 6- Leptin is a hormone from fat cells that can be measured in a blood test. It indicates the amount of fat stored in your cells. High levels are a marker of excessive fat cell inflammation. In fact high Leptin is very inflammatory and is thought to play a role in other inflammatory conditions as well as COVID complications.
Follow this pathway closely.
Think of a sink (fat cells) whose pipes gets clogged (with too much fat storage) and starts backing up (with excess dietary carbs measured as increasing blood glucose) that get measured on a blood test as elevated glucose (carbs-sugar). If the sink backs up too far, your floor (other parts of your body) get damaged.
Step 7- If you have been overeating carbohydrates for a long time, your fat cells are overloaded, inflamed and can’t continue to store more triglycerides and other fats. But you are still eating excess carbohydrates and your sink is backing up (blood sugar rising). Your insulin level then rises more to try and store more but your fat cells are resisting.
This is called Insulin Resistance.
The following occurs with insulin resistance.
As your fat cells are resisting more storage you begin to gain weight in your organs especially in your trunk/midsection including your artery walls. This is part of arterial blockages. Your liver and other organs start storing fat as well which can mess up how they function. None of these are what we want for optimal health. The beauty though is that it is all reversible.
Let’s look at the lab values associated with Insulin resistance.
Your Leptin is too high. - optimal levels <20
Your Triglycerides are too high. - optimal levels < HDL cholesterol
Your Fasting Insulin is too high. - optimal levels 3-7
Your FT3 is too high. - optimal levels < 3.0
If you have had an IMW Advanced Wellness Testing (IMW-AWT), look at your numbers and see if your levels are optimal or need some work to improve.
All of these markers are high with Insulin Resistance meaning your body is having a hard time safely processing the dietary carbohydrates. This then causes the carbohydrates/glucose blood levels to rise as they have nowhere to go. There is no more room in the fat cells and the organs are playing backup storage which is not healthy. In other words, there is no more room at the Inn for more glucose/triglyceride storage.
It is at this end point that traditional docs diagnose you with Diabetes. They wait until your blood glucose levels are high as well as another longer term marker of diabetes, the Hemoglobin A1C is elevated.
By this time though damage has already been done.
Your fat cells are inflamed and causing body wide inflammation.
Your liver, pancreas, kidneys, arteries, nerves and other organs are storing fat which they should not be asked to do.
Your brain is getting bombarded with glucose which increases inflammation and can lead to Type 3 Diabetes, aka Dementia.
So I ask:
Why not look for earlier markers of Diabetic physiology and if they are present, start working to reduce them naturally? Look for these earlier markers BEFORE organ damage and inflammation has occurred.
It’s not that difficult, if you know what to look for.
Here are some early lab markers to look for that indicate Insulin Resistance.
Triglyceride/ HDL ratio > 1.5
Free T3 levels > 3.0
Fasting Insulin levels > 10
Leptin > 20
Adiponectin > 10
Leptin /Adiponectin ratio > 2
Elevated Liver function tests such as:
AST and ALT > 30
GGT > 30
Ferritin > 150
Uric acid > 6.0
All of the above are markers of how well your metabolism is working to handle your diet and lifestyle. The goal is to optimize your diet and lifestyle to optimize these markers to prevent becoming Diabetic. All of these markers are part of the Institute for Medical Wellness Annual Wellness Testing (IMW-AWT)
I say all the time:
“If you want to get old fast, then become a Diabetic.”
“ If you want to slow down aging, get control of your metabolism. The markers mentioned above are just a few ways to guide your progress. “
Diabetes is NOT inevitable.
Diabetes is avoidable.
Diabetes is reversible.
At the IMW we have helped many people reverse their Diabetic/Pre-Diabetic physiology and regain their health.
It takes a better understanding of Diabetes than we get from the traditional establishment.
You now have the basics.
You now probably have more understanding than many healthcare professionals.
So what are you going to do now?
If you are on Instagram and want to see some healthy yummy meals that should help you prevent and reverse Diabetic/Pre-Diabetic physiology, follow IMWHorvitz.
Here are a few sample meals.
Yum Yum Yum !!!
Not to mention the tears I shed when it was brought to my attention that my life long preference to vegetarian-ism was not in my own personal best interest for my health and well being🤷♀️ Keto-carnivore👍
I feel so fortunate to receive your posts👍❤️ Thanks for helping to fix the pre diabetic in my family. He curses you ever time he realizes he doesn’t care for/can’t tolerate all those sugars/carbs he use to LOVE!!! You da bomb!!!