Natural Support for Type 2 Diabetes

Can Type 2 Diabetes be Reversed? Is There a Natural Support for Type 2 Diabetes?

Natural Support for Type 2 Diabetes is a reality in 2015. The idea the Type 2 Diabetes can be reversed is absolutely valid, and true. The current US healthcare model is focused on “managing” blood sugar rather than looking for the factors that are causing Diabetes. Our doctors mean well, but their approach is one that is focused on controlling symptoms, not addressing the cause. Addressing the cause of diabetes requires time and specialized training that utilizes the latest literature and research. Addressing the cause of diabetes also requires taking time with patients, and in the insurance mandated world your doctors have 5 to 10 minutes. Obviously this model of healthcare is not equipped to handle solving and addressing why people have chronic conditions like diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune conditions, digestive disorders, neurodegenerative conditions and cancer. What our current model excels at, is “acute” care, or emergency care. If you need to be put back together, the modern healthcare in the United States is the place to be. Due to the inadequacies that our healthcare system has with helping people with chronic diseases like diabetes, a new specialty in medicine has emerged called “Functional Medicine.” Functional Medicine seeks to identify the drivers of disease process so that the doctor and patient can work to reverse, or unwind the causes of the person’s poor health naturally. These conditions are conditions that can be medicated. There is no magic bullet, or pill for these problems. Dr. Shook explains his approach to helping Type 2 Diabetes in the presentation below.

Can Type 2 Diabetes Be Reversed? – Natural Support for Type 2 Diabetes

[Start [0:00:00] – Natural Support for Type 2 Diabetes

Hi, I’m Dr. Shook, and I’d like to welcome you to this presentation on the Fundamentals of Blood Sugar Balance.

What we’re going to talk about are the new science and approach to the management of blood sugar. It is going to take a lot of the conventional wisdom and literally just turn it on its head because there are several things that you may not know. You may not be aware that a lot of the foods that you’ve been told are good for you with diabetes and blood sugar problems could actually be contributing to and making your problem worse. Some of the medications that you’re taking can actually be making your diabetes worse and causing it to become more progressive, making it more difficult for you to actually reverse the process and live without diabetes.

Then we’re going to talk about two very commonly missed things that are not considered at all in the conventional management of diabetes that if you don’t consider, you will never gain control of your health and beat diabetes.

Let’s go ahead and get started so that we can look and get into some of this information.

Functional Medicine Perspective on Diabetes

What we’re going to talk about is the functional medicine perspective to diabetes. Now functional medicine is a relatively new branch of medicine that is evidence-based, that seeks to identify the drivers or the causes of diabetes or any disease process for that matter that we work with, and works to reverse that process through removing the factors that are actually causing it. Then what we do is we formulate a plan to nurture the body back to health naturally, so that we can get you off medications. We want a strategy so that you can live a healthy life.

When you’re put on medications, there’s never a strategy. When does your doctor say, “Hey, yeah let’s you on this medication and do these things and get you off this stuff as soon as we can.”

Listen, the body is intelligent. The body is always working to self-heal, so why don’t they have a strategy to help you become healthy? Why is it that just you’re put on a medication and nothing else is said? There’s no strategy or anything to get you off or then maybe a vague recommendation for diet and exercise. That’s because their science is outdated. They’re model is based on symptom management, and it’s based on matching a symptom with a drug.

The Fundamentals

These are the fundamentals of blood sugar management. These are the things that we’re going to talk about, and we’re going to go through these in detail, so go ahead and get out a piece of paper and pen. You’re going to want to write some of this information down.

(1) Diet nutrition. The first thing that we’re going to talk about is diet nutrition. I’m actually going to dispel some of the myths and the things that you believe to be true that I can promise you are very likely contributing to your diabetes being worse.

(2) Gut health. Then we’re going to talk about digestive health and gut health and the importance of diabetes in gut health and how they are so intimately related, and I’m sure that your doctors never mentioned this to you.

(3) Adrenal glands (cortisol). Then we’re going to talk about the adrenal glands, we’re going to talk about a hormone that they produce called cortisol. When we’re going to talk about adrenaline, we’re going to talk about their very powerful influence on blood sugar regulation.

(4) State of your liver. We’re going to talk about the state of your liver and how important it is in normal blood sugar management and how it too is being neglected.

(5) Brain health. Then finally, we’re going to talk about your nerves and your brain health because they are intimately and very directly, their health is directly tied to your blood sugar control.

Why I Work with Diabetic Patients

I work with diabetic patients because I have lot of health problems myself. When I was about 13 years old, I developed digestive problems that would have been considered today and labeled as irritable bowel, so from age 13 until I was 27, these problems fluctuated on and off. At age 27, I developed psoriasis. I went to a dermatologist. The dermatologist told me that I had psoriasis. I need to use cortisone cream, steroids, and if it progressed to a certain point, if it started attacking my joints, I would need to take immune-suppressing drugs.

I questioned it. I said, “I understand that I have this inflammatory issue, but what is causing it?”

She told me, “You’re autoimmune.”

I said, “Why am I autoimmune?”

She said, “Well, we don’t know why you’re autoimmune. It could be genetic. There’s a lot of factors that play into it. We’re not sure.” From that point forward, I knew that I wanted to get to the root cause of my problem, and it was autoimmune. That was 11 years ago.

What I did was I started researching autoimmunity, causes of autoimmunity, and that’s where I found functional medicine. I began studying functional medicine to help myself and help my family, and I was able to put this psoriasis completely into remission.

Now 1 year ago, I started feeling fatigued. I was pushing myself very hard. I demanded a lot of myself. I had some labs tested and I was tested positive for Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. My autoimmunity, even though I knew how to do a lot of the right things and I feel much, much better. At this point in time, I was really pushing myself and stressing myself, not sleeping adequately, but I had done a lot of things to improve my health and I felt much better.

[0:05:25] Natural Support for Type 2 Diabetes

I developed Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, so the autoimmunity expanded and so here’s the story. These chronic health problems drove me to seek out functional medicine and to learn about what the causes of chronic disease processes are, especially inflammatory diseases. Then I started seeing my patient population. All these people come in with all these problems, and I kept seeing diabetes so frequently and I knew that if diabetes wasn’t addressed, there is no way we’re going to fix their other health problems.

I decided to take it upon myself to start helping diabetics because diabetes is projected to bankrupt the United States. Since 1980, our rate of diabetes has tripled, and this is completely unacceptable. Diabetes in our children is exponentially growing, and now for the first time, our children are expected to have a shorter lifespan than we are, completely unacceptable.

My own personal problems taught me how to help other people and to study functional medicine and become board certified in integrative medicine. It’s helped me to go and arrive at this place where we are now where we work directly with diabetics to help them to work to reverse type 2 diabetes naturally.

My Professional Background

I am a board-certified chiropractic physician, and I love to talk about this because a lot of people don’t realize the education that the modern-day chiropractic physician has. Then also in addition to that education, I’m board-certified in integrative medicine, so I’ve done extensive training, postgraduate, post-doctoral training. I have over 200 hours of training through a doctoral-level nutrition program. I studied functional blood chemistry, functional endocrinology and neurotransmitters through Datis Kharrazian, one of the leading instructors of functional medicine teachers around the country, teaches for the Institute for Functional Medicine, and several other educational groups, very well-respected, has written the number 1 selling thyroid book on Amazon today.

I have also studied genetic single nucleotide polymorphisms, basically genetic SNPs, genetic problems that influence your chemistry. I’ve studied functional neurology. I’ve studied functional medicine university, done extensive training and I continue to do extensive training every single month, and I aggressively train because I am passionate about this stuff, I want to help people to get better.

What I want you to understand is that when you look at the chiropractic – I love to talk about this people because people don’t realize that the chiropractic, the modern-day chiropractic physician just to be a chiropractor and to be considered into a chiropractic program, you have to have prerequisites. I have a pre-medicine 4-year degree that was pre-medicine.

Prerequisites and Requirements for Chiropractic Schools

Let’s look at this. If you look here, college courses on the left in green, Parker College of Chiropractic – this is one of the chiropractic colleges ‑ Harvard Medical School and Stanford University. Let’s look at biological sciences with lab.

Prerequisite – this is what you have to have. To get into Harvard, to get into Stanford, to get into Parker, these are the prerequisites. Let’s take a look at biological sciences, you have to have 1 year with lab, so basically you’re going to have two semesters with lab and biological sciences. It’s the same in Parker, Harvard, and Stanford. You have to have general and/or inorganic chemistry. You have to have 1 year at Parker, 1 year at Harvard, 1 year at Stanford. Organic chemistry with lab, you have to have 1 year at Parker, 1 year at Harvard, 1 year at Stanford. Physics ‑ 1 year at Parker, 1 year at Harvard, 1 year at Stanford. These are very rigorous classes. English or communicative skills ‑ 1 year. Psychology ‑ 1 year. Humanities and social – you have to have a number of prerequisites just to be considered for entry into a doctoral-level, modern-day chiropractic physician program.

You can see that these are the same kind of prerequisites. Now we’ve talked about the actual degree requirements, let’s look at the bottom columns down here.

Comparison of Chiropractic and Medical School Degree Requirements

On the left, what you have are chiropractic college requirements; on the right, you have medical school requirements and these are in hours.

Now minimum required hours and these are what you’re looking at in the center are the area of study. If we look at chiropractic college on the left ‑ 456 hours of anatomy and embryology; in medical school 215 hours. In physiology ‑ 243 hours in chiropractic; 174 in medical school. Pathology – 296 hours in chiropractic, 507 in medical school. Chemistry and biochemistry – 161 (chiropractic college), 100 (medical school). Microbiology – 145 (chiropractic college) and 145 (medical school). Diagnosis – 408 (chiropractic college), 113 (medical school). Neurology – 149 (chiropractic college), 171 (medical school). Psychology and psychiatry – 56 (chiropractic college) and 323 (medical school). Obstetrics and gynecology ‑ 66 (chiropractic college) and 284 (medical school). X-ray 271 (chiropractic college) and 13 (medical school). Orthopedics – 168 (chiropractic college) and 2 (medical school). Total hours – 2, 419 (chiropractic college) and then 2,047 for medical schools.

[0:10:28] Natural Support for Type 2 Diabetes

You can see that the modern-day doctor of chiropractic is very comparable. We actually have more hours in a lot of areas, and this is something that a lot of people don’t realize. This gives you the foundation to have a very expanded practice.

In our office, we do very little to none of the orthopedic care. We do that sometimes in some of our functional medicine patients that we work with diabetes or with some of our other problems that we work with. We would do those things in conjunction with functional medicine because it’s the only way to get the best results with someone’s health. This explains a lot about why I’m qualified to work with patients that had internal inflammatory conditions.

Lessons and Goals from this Presentation

What you’re going to learn from this presentation is you’re going to learn the latest science on blood sugar regulation. We’re going to go into functional medicine perspective and how it’s much different than the current medical model of just managing a disease process and blood sugar levels. We’re actually going to look at the cause of the problem. We’re going to talk about how this is done correctly, that there are natural ways that you can actually reverse type 2 diabetes. You can reverse it. It is reversible.

Three goals that I have for you.

Goal #1: I want to give you new perspective on blood sugar control and diabetes.

Goal #2: I want to help make a positive impact. I want to make a positive impact on your life so that you can take this information. You can research. You can do things for yourself. If you choose to seek care in our office, we are here for you, but this will give you and empower you. Knowledge is power. That’s what we want to do. We want to bring the power to the people. You’ve got to take this information and you’ve got to do something with it.

Goal #3: I want to give you information to improve your health.

Questions for You

Here’s a good question for you. Why are you here? Why are you watching this presentation? I can tell you that what we commonly find is that people either have diabetes and want to know your options, you have a family member or friend with diabetes or pre-diabetes and you’re trying to learn more to help them, or you have diabetes and you’re not getting better. It’s getting progressively worse.

The question that you really have to ask yourself is “why.” Why do I have diabetes? Why do I have these problems? Don’t just look for a way to manage this issue. Look for the reason. If there’s nothing else that you can take away from this, ask the question why. Why do I have the problem to begin with? What is causing me to be here? Because I can assure you it’s not just because you don’t eat a good diet and you’re lazy, which is what everyone else tells you and that is not the fact. Those are not the facts.

What is Diabetes?

What is diabetes? Let’s talk about what do you think diabetes is. If I ask you this question, what is diabetes, what would you tell me? Do you know? Is it insulin resistance? Is that what you’re going to tell me? That’s a good start, but what is it? What is diabetes? What is prediabetes? What does that mean? What is that? What is metabolic syndrome? Now these are all terms you’ve heard thrown around. What is your fasting blood glucose? What do all these things mean?

What is diabetes? It’s a very good question.

Let’s talk about the bear because we’ll get to what it is. This will help you understand what diabetes is. Why are we looking at a bear? Because consider this: bears have been studied. They have been studied because they’re animals. They hibernate. Consider what happens to a bear. When a bear wakes up from hibernation, it’s lean. When they’ve done blood chemistry and studied bears, when they wake up from hibernation, they’re lean. They have good blood chemistry – very low blood sugar, very low insulin levels, very lean animal.

The bear as soon as it wakes up, it goes out. What does it do? It starts gorging on food. It starts eating because it needs to replenish its stores. It needs to get fat. It needs to become obese. It needs to have energy stores for the next time that it hibernates. What it does it do? It goes out in nature, and it starts gorging on food. As it gorges on food, what happens? Well, they’ve studied the body chemistry of the bears, and what they found was that the bear starts gorging and guess what happens. They shift from being lean healthy animals to something that will be diagnosable with metabolic syndrome or prediabetes. They start having triglycerides go up; blood sugar goes up.

Then as the bear continues to eat and continues to gorge, it becomes very obese and what happens to the bear? It would be labeled as being diabetic. Its blood sugar is through the roof. It has all those characteristics of diabetes. It is severely obese, and then what happens? What happens to the bear then? The bear goes and it hibernates. As the bear hibernates, what happens? Well, it’s going into a fasted state. Its blood sugar starts to come down. As the blood sugar starts to come down, it falls into the prediabetic state again. As it continues to come down and stabilize, it comes into nondiabetic state. Now the bear no longer has diabetes.

[0:15:33] Natural Support for Type 2 Diabetes

Then what you’ll see happens the bear’s metabolism shifts from burning sugar for energy to burning fat for energy. As it burns fat for energy, it starts burning its visceral fat and all this fat that’s developed. Then it goes through hibernation, it wakes up again, and guess what? We’ve got a lean bear that’s not diabetic, that has healthy markers.

My whole point here is that diabetes is not a disease. Diabetes is actually a physiological response by your body to its environment to what it’s being exposed to. Just like the bear, diabetes can be reversed. Now I’m not insinuating that you need to fast and starve because we don’t hibernate, but the point is that type 2 diabetes is something that can be reversed. You just have to know what’s driving the process, and it’s not just diet, lack of diet, lack of exercise, and a very poor diet. It comes down to other factors. You need to understand the bear because you need to understand that diabetes is not a disease that once you got it, you got it forever.

Types of Diabetes

How many types of diabetes are there? Do you know? There are five types of diabetes.

1. Type 1 – Autoimmune. We’re primarily talking about type 2 diabetes, but type 1 is autoimmune. It’s where your immune system attacks the cells, the pancreas. You can’t make insulin, so you have to be on insulin. That’s not what we’re talking about. Even though type 1 diabetics usually have a lot of other problems, and we work with people that have type 1 diabetes because we can help their systemic health and function so their autoimmune condition doesn’t progress.
2. Type 1.5 – Autoimmune and Type 2 mix. What we’re primarily talking about right here in this presentation adult-onset nonautoimmune diabetes. These are the things that we know we can reverse, but there’s type 1.5. Did you know that? It’s a combination of autoimmune and it’s a type 2 mix.
3. Type 2 – Adult onset (nonautoimmune). You tend to see this later in life. This is something that you can determine through testing. But if the person is of a normal body weight, or they have fluctuations in blood sugar and you can’t get it stabilized and you’re doing everything you do with type 1 diabetes from the functional medicine perspective, then you can look at if they do have antibodies to their pancreas because they could. If that’s the case, you have to address the autoimmunity at the same time. Regulate immune function, remove immune triggers. That’s functional medicine. That’s looking at what’s causing the problem.
4. Type 3 – Brain. What other types? Diabetes of the brain, that’s a big, big problem because we know that diabetes of the brain, that degenerative neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s are now being called diabetes of the brain. This is something that we have to address because as diabetics, you are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s. This is something that in our clinic we work with. We want people that have Alzheimer’s and these degenerative neurological conditions, and you have to address the foundation of chemistry from a functional medicine perspective, you have to get control of your health because none of the medications are addressing why.
5. Gestational – Pregnancy. Then of course there’s gestational diabetes that occurs during pregnancy.

These are the five types. Primarily we’re talking about the type 2 in this presentation.

Diabetes as a Diagnosis

To answer the question of what diabetes is, it’s a diagnosis. It is a diagnosis. It is nothing more than a diagnosis. It’s defined as a fasting blood sugar that is 127 mg/dl or above measured at two separate occasions.

When we look at blood sugar levels, as they go up, what you’re going to see with own lab range what we call normal lab range, which is too much broad of a lab value; 105 mg/dl to 70 mg/dl is going to be the lab range. If you are 106 mg/dl to 126 mg/dl, you’re considered prediabetic. If you are 127 mg/dl or above, you’re considered to have diabetes.

Now when we look at functional medicine, we want a more narrow range because we know that when we get below 85 mg/dl, your blood sugar gets below 85 mg/dl that you start to have signs and symptoms of hypoglycemia. When you get above 99 mg/dl, that’s getting too high. You’re starting to fluctuate, so we want it to be even more narrow range so that you can have optimal healthy, optimal nerve function. You don’t start damaging your vessels, your nerves, and have some of these other problems that come along with it.

HMO/PPO Standard of Care

Let’s look at what the current insurance HMO/PPO standard of care. What does your insurance consider? What do they do? How do they help you with diabetes? Well, here’s what they do.

1. Results of FBG > 127 mg/dl. If you have a result of your fasting blood sugars over 127 mg/dl, what they’re going to do is they’re going to give you it’s medically necessary that you have a prescription of insulin or metformin, one of these medications. Then they’re going to monitor your glucose levels, and that’s what you’re going to get. Good luck.

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If you’re lucky, you’re going to get a vague recommendation on diet and exercise. If you’re lucky, you’re going to get a consult with a dietician or a nutritionist. What they’re going to do is they’re going to tell you to eat these whole grains, avoid sugars, move more, walk more. I’m going to tell you this: some of those recommendations can make your diabetes worse. I’m going to explain why. That’s what you’re going to get. That’s the standard of care.

You tell me the level of testing that you’ve received in up to his number 4 here, the level of testing. We’re going to check your blood sugar. That’s what you get. No one is addressing the cause why do you have diabetes. Why do you have diabetes? There’s no addressing the cause. This is substandard care. This is substandard care. This is completely unacceptable, and I’m going to explain why and you’re going to understand better why this you cannot, you cannot function. You cannot live. You cannot regain optimal health. You will not be able to reverse type 2 diabetes under this model.

Understanding How Diabetes Works to Understand How to Fix It

Before we talk about what causes these problems, you got to know, think about this, if you’re a mechanic, if you’re a mechanic, you say, “Mechanic, hey what’s going on with my car? I’ve got these problems.”

The mechanic has to know how it works before he can know how to fix it. That’s why you take it to a mechanic. You take it to someone that understands how it works, so that when it’s broken, they can fix it. Let’s do the obvious. Let’s look at how your body works and your blood sugar works so that we can understand how to fix the problem. Let’s look at how it works. I’m going to teach you here more than a lot of your doctors unfortunately remember and understand, and that’s not an exaggeration.

Normal Blood Sugar Regulation (Daytime with Meals)

Normal blood sugar regulation, this is during the daytime with meals. What you’re looking at the chart here, over here on this side, what you’re looking at is 99 mg/dl and 85 mg/dl, those are blood sugar levels that we want to see your blood sugar stay within. What happens is throughout the day, your blood sugar will fluctuate slightly. Sometimes it will go slightly above, slightly below, but it stays very close to those controlled ranges and this happens with meals.

What you’ll see happens is at breakfast, your blood sugar is lower. You eat breakfast and your blood sugar gradually comes up. As the blood sugar comes up and time passes, it gradually comes back down because your body is using that blood sugar for energy. At lunchtime, your blood sugar is typically lower. You eat again. You get a surge in blood sugar, but it’s still maintained in a pretty narrow range, and it drops down lower at dinner. You eat dinner and it gradually comes up. That’s the normal regulation of blood sugar. It doesn’t never get too high, it doesn’t ever go too low. It stays very close to this 99 mg/dl ‑ 85 mg/dl interval.

Normal Blood Sugar Regulation (Sleep without Meals)

When we sleep at night, this is also another important time to understand blood sugar regulation because it’s different than during the day. The brain is signaling other glands and hormones to be created so that you have blood sugar regulation. What happens here is that your blood sugar is even maintained more tightly. What will occur is you go to bed – over here on this side – you go to bed, your blood sugar is somewhere in that normal range. It starts to dip low.

As it starts to drop lower, the brain demands blood sugar. The brain has to have blood sugar to run your systemic bodily functions. What does your brain do? The brain says adrenal glands, which sit on top of your kidneys, produce cortisol. The brain senses this low glucose, when it gets low, and it tells your adrenal glands to produce cortisol. What cortisol does is cortisol actually stimulates the liver to release stored blood sugar.

What does your liver do? Your liver releases blood sugar into the bloodstream so that your blood sugar rises. As your blood sugar comes up, your brain has more sugar for energy and says that’s great. As time passes through the night as you’re fasting, your brain will then tell those glands again, “Hey, I need more blood sugar.” This process will repeat itself, but you’ll notice that your blood sugar stays within this tight range, 99 mg/dl to 85 mg/dl. It’s not going too high, not too low.

The brain is a voracious consumer of blood sugar and it has to have adequate blood sugar to function and run your organs. It uses the adrenal glands, the liver, and the skeletal muscle, where you also have stored blood sugar, to help you maintain blood sugar while you’re in a fasted state, sleeping.

Some Things to be Aware Of

Now let’s look at some things that we need to be aware of.

Food. We’re going to look at some foods, and we’re going to talk about these foods because these foods, what do they do to your body. How do they affect your blood sugar? These doughnuts, cookies, these fast food with all of these omega-6 fats, all of these grains, these simple sugars and the soft drinks, these artificial sweeteners. What does all of this stuff do to your body and how does it regulate your blood sugar?

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I’m sure you’re going to say, “Well, it spikes my blood sugar, right?” Okay, let’s look at actually how it affects the blood sugar in the same kind of graphical format, so you can understand how this affects your body.

Here’s what we’re looking at. We’re looking at the same graph, and what we’re going to look at is our blood sugar, and I’m going to explain these surges and dips to you. Let’s say your blood sugar is it’s right here between 85 mg/dl and 99 mg/dl, and then what happens is it starts to get low and you get hungry. What you do is you drive through McDonald’s and you load up on fries. You get a Big Mac. You get a big Coke, and you drink and you eat all that food and what happens? Your body gets this very strong surge of blood sugar because you’re eating all these simple sugars, so it spikes your blood sugar.

When your blood sugar goes way up like it goes way over 99 mg/dl, it comes up here to the top, what happens is your pancreas, which makes insulin and insulin’s job is to lower your blood sugar, it pumps out all these insulin, more insulin than it normally would because wow there is way too much blood sugar. We can’t have it this high. It’s going to destroy nerves. It’s going to destroy blood vessels. It’s going to cause problems. We’ve got to get it lower, so it pumps out an abnormally high surge of insulin, and what does it do? What that insulin does is it causes your blood sugar to rapidly drop, and it drops below your normal range.

When it gets down here ‑ remember what we talked about when you sleep? What happens when your blood sugar gets low? When your blood sugar gets low, your brain tells the adrenal glands, “Make cortisol. I need blood sugar.” You just created reactive hypoglycemia. Now you’re dropping your blood sugar low. Your blood sugar is down here, and your brain is telling those glands make cortisol, make cortisol. I need blood sugar.

And at the same time, you’re getting shaky. You’re so hypoglycemic, you run and you grab a Coke from the vending machine, and you chug that Coke, so you’re getting a huge surge in blood sugar. At the same time, your brain has already told those adrenal glands to make cortisol, so you’re getting cortisol released from the liver, released from the skeletal muscle. You’ve just pounded down a simple sugar.

Now you get this huge spike again, a huge spike in blood sugar. It goes too high. When it goes high, what does your body do? What does your body do? Well, it reacts the same way every time it has high blood sugar. It pumps out. Your brain says, “Well, you can’t have this much blood sugar. Pancreas, make insulin. Get this blood sugar under control.” Your pancreas makes insulin. Your blood sugar it’s an abnormally high surge in insulin, so what happens is your blood sugar plummets again. It plummets low. What happens? The cycle repeats.

Your brain tells your adrenals to make cortisol. Cortisol gets freed from the liver and muscles. You run and grab some sugary food again. You eat this junk food. It spikes your blood sugar even higher. You have a larger surge of insulin. You have a more pronounced reactive hypoglycemia crash. You get a higher surge of cortisol. You eat this food again. The cycle repeats itself.

This cannot happen. You have to control the cycle, and you are doomed if you are focused on diet alone and try to manage your blood sugar. I’m going to tell you why because look obviously cortisol is really important. Insulin is really important so let’s look at this.

Why do These Foods Cause These Blood Sugar Changes?

Let’s look at this. Why do these foods cause these blood sugar changes? Is it just a sugar content? It is not just a sugar content, but that’s what you’re thinking. Let me show you why these foods cause these surges. Guess what, you’re going to understand something here that 99 percent of people with diabetes and 99 percent of doctors do not understand because they have not studied the current literature.

Let’s look at this stuff: brown rice, oatmeal, whole wheat, corn, potatoes, quinoa – quinoa, you’ve heard of that? It’s an ancient grain. Rye, milk, soy, eggs, coffee, chocolate, amaranth, spelt, teff, barley – all these things, all these things. A lot of this, people have been told to eat that have diabetes. They have. They have been told to eat oatmeal and these things that slow digestion, whole wheat, to consume a lot of this stuff. But guess what, some of these foods, potato, if it’s a white potato, yeah it has a really high glycemic index. It will spike your blood sugar quick. Some of these things you’ve been told not to eat, but guess what a lot of these things you have been told.

1. Antigenic load ‑ inflammation. Guess what problems that a lot of these foods present. They present something called an antigenic load, an antigenic load. An antigen is something that will cause an immune system response, and it will create inflammation. These foods you can have sensitivities to. It doesn’t mean you have a stomachache, it means you have inflammation.

[0:30:11] Natural Support for Type 2 Diabetes

What does inflammation do? Inflammation makes every single hormone in your body less sensitive. That is absolutely critical. You cannot afford to have less sensitivity to your insulin. You need to respond to the insulin appropriately so that you don’t develop insulin resistance. You need to have normal response to your thyroid hormones, so that your cells can have optimum metabolism and burn sugar. You need to have optimal sensitivity to glucagon, to leptin so that you can feel full, so that you can have a feeling of satiety, so that you’re not constantly hungry.

Inflammation, my friends, is one of the things that’s commonly missed in the current medical model of trying to help people with diabetes. If you want to reverse diabetes, type 2 diabetes, you have to address this, you have to look for it, you have to determine the source of it. It’s not just foods.

2. Effects of insulin surges. What are the effects of insulin surges? We talked about these insulin surges, right? What happens? You develop insulin resistance. You develop abdominal obesity, elevated blood pressure. It raises cholesterol. It increases inflammation. Do you know that insulin is inflammatory? It increases your risk of heart disease, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and you can lose the function of your pancreas to make insulin. It’s called exocrine pancreatic insufficiency. It means that your pancreas doesn’t have the capacity. It burns out basically. You cannot have these insulin surges.
3. Effects of cortisol surges. What about cortisol surges? What does cortisol do because it has a different effect? It’s a different hormone. It inhibits serotonin. Do you have a problem sleeping? Do you wake up at night? Are you moody? Are you depressed? Serotonin is a neurotransmitter. It’s a brain chemical. It is critical to normal function. Guess what where most of it is made? In your digestive tract. That’s right. Cortisol inhibits serotonin production. Insomnia, it contributes to insomnia because you cannot produce melatonin appropriately. You have a decrease in melatonin production.

Chronic fatigue, chronic fatigue is something that’s often brought on by adrenal gland fatigue or adrenal gland burnout. Those are those glands on top of your kidneys that produce cortisol. They produce adrenaline. They produce noradrenalin, this whole family called catecholamines. It’s incredibly important for blood sugar regulation and for your normal alertness and awake and sleep cycles.

Waking from sleep. If you have cortisol surges, you’re going to wake up because guess what? That adrenaline is made at the same time cortisol does, so at 2 o’clock in the morning, you’re going to wake up, and you’re going to be awake and why am I awake? It’s because you had reactive hypoglycemia. It spiked your cortisol and it spiked your adrenaline at the same time because your blood sugar was low, your cortisol got pumped out, so did the adrenaline.

Muscle loss. How many people with diabetes that you see that have their abdomen is getting larger, the belly is larger, but they’re losing muscle. Their arms get skinny and their legs get skinny. That’s what you’ll see. Increased belly fat, lower T-cell production, and immune weakness. It appears with thyroid hormone conversion, and it causes osteoporosis. These are important things. How many times have you had your cortisol checked through diabetes? Never! If you do, they want to order a blood test. You can’t do that. You’re going to look at the cortisol production throughout the day. You got to look at your total quantity produced in one day because that’s the daily circadian rhythm. You got to know these things because you cannot maintain blood sugar without maintaining and understanding what’s happening with your cortisol and your adrenal gland function.

You have to know if you have inflammation in your body, and if you have inflammation, you have to figure out why you have it because you cannot have the inflammation because you won’t have hormones instituted. Inflammation and cortisol are completely neglected in the current medical approach to treating and supporting type 2 diabetes.

Most Common Cause of Type II Diabetes

What’s the most common cause of type 2 diabetes? What causes you to develop type 2 diabetes? We’re going to talk about a mechanism biochemically. There are some things that actually cause this: insulin resistance. You want to know what insulin resistance is, you need to know because if you understand what insulin resistance is just like the mechanic, you can understand what’s happening to the body. If you understand what’s happening to the body, then you can understand these factors that influence it, and you can help to fix it.

Here’s our diagram. What we got in the center of the page here, this yellow circle with the white center is a cell in your body. These two red lines that come down and overlap it is your bloodstream, that’s an artery. Within the bloodstream, part of the cell is in the bloodstream. You got these small, these octagons here that have a G in the center, that’s glucose, your blood sugar, your circulating blood sugar. On the outside here, we have an insulin receptor. Those are on the outside of cells. When insulin touches it, it triggers these gray things here, which are gates to open and allow blood sugar in.

[0:35:10] Natural Support for Type 2 Diabetes

To lower blood sugar in your body, you have to have a system where the insulin triggers the cell to open the gates, pulls blood sugar in, so the blood sugar lowers in your bloodstream. This is how it has to happen.

Here’s what happens in a normally functioning cell. Glucose starts to accumulate in the bloodstream, so you see there’s more glucose in the bloodstream. When this happens, the brain tells the pancreas, “Pancreas, pump out insulin.” So the pancreas makes insulin. As you see, insulin now these are the blue circles with the I. That’s insulin and it’s increasing in the bloodstream. As it increases in the bloodstream, what happens is the insulin docks up and touches the receptor of the cell. It activates the receptor. The receptor triggers intracellular function that opens the gates and glucose comes in. this, my friends is how it works. This is how a normally functioning cell in your body brings glucose out of the bloodstream. This is normal function.

What we’re going to look at in this model is insulin resistance. This is actually what insulin resistance looks like and how it happens in your body. We’re going to talk about the receptor. We’re going to talk about the gates that let blood sugar in. What happens is you start to again your blood sugar rises. You’re accumulating blood sugar in the bloodstream through we think about through food and diet. It happens normally. It’s a normal thing that happens, but your cortisol can trigger it as well. Inflammation can cause this to rise as well, so the glucose increases.

Your brain says, “Pancreas, make insulin because we need to lower the blood sugar. What does the pancreas do? The pancreas produces insulin. You’ll see insulin increases in the bloodstream just as in our normal model. The insulin docks up to the cell, but guess what happens? In this case, the cell is not responsive and the gates don’t open because the insulin can’t stimulate the receptor, that’s because you have insulin resistance.

What happens is the glucose cannot get into the cell now, so what you see is glucose starts to build up in the bloodstream even higher and this is when it goes much higher and you check your fasting blood sugar and it’s 150 mg/dl, 200 mg/dl, 300 mg/dl, 400 mg/dl. I’ve heard of much, much higher. It’s accumulating and building up. The brain says, “Wait a minute! You’ve got to lower this blood sugar. Pancreas, make more insulin.” So the pancreas makes even more insulin. It pumps out more and works the pancreas to death. The pancreas pumps, and pumps, and pumps insulin into the bloodstream, so what you see is this greater rise and stimulation, this greater increase in insulin. The insulin now, what it does is it docks up the receptor and there’s so much insulin that finally it gets this weak response of the cell.

The cell finally opens, but this time, the receptor only is activated mildly. What it does is it opens one of the gates, and what happens with the gate is it only lets a little bit of the glucose in, so we only have two of the sugar of the glucose molecules that got into the cell because only one gate opened and it only opened weakly.

What happens is you have a buildup of insulin, a buildup of glucose, and this is [unintelligible [0:38:23] insulin doesn’t affect the cell the way that it should because of this buildup. So what do you have to do? You’ve got to address why this has happened. You’ve got to address why those causation, the causing factors, which is not just sugar, and the answer is not taking metformin to make the receptor more sensitive because guess what you’re still not addressing the underlying cause. It’s not pumping in more insulin because then you’ll produce more insulin resistance.

The insulin resistance will cause you to store more of this blood sugar. You’re going to store blood sugar, the insulin when it’s high, guess what insulin is? It’s a growth hormone, so it will make you fat. The day that you start taking insulin ‑ write it on your calendar – because that’s the day when your health will start to manage your diabetes, and it will go down, down, down. You are managing the disease process. There’s no strategy to get you off insulin, and all you do is continue to pack on abdominal obesity, which you know you’re told, lose weight, right? But now you can’t because you’re taking insulin, so now you’re gaining abdominal obesity. Your insulin resistance is getting worse. It’s just prolonging death, my friends, and that’s the absolute truth. You need a strategy to get your health back.

What Does This Do to Your Liver?

Think about this. The liver is important. This is one of the things we’re going to talk about. Well, this is a picture of a normal liver here in the bottom right-hand corner. This, in F, is a fatty liver. What happens with the fatty liver is that you get an accumulation from the cortisol spikes and the blood sugar release, and the liver gets overworked and you start to accumulate and you accumulate fat in the liver. What does that mean?

[0:39:58] Natural Support for Type 2 Diabetes

The consequences of a fatty liver are that you’ll feel tired. You can have loss of weight or appetite, develop weakness, nausea, confusion, poor judgment, trouble with concentration. You have elevated liver enzymes. You don’t convert thyroid hormone into its appropriate T3. You don’t detoxify and clear things out well. It is a big, big problem, and it can progress into cirrhosis where the liver becomes hardened and you can’t filter blood through it and then you have all kinds of portal hypertension and a lot of other issues. It’s a big deal.

What about gut health? Another one of our priorities. Why in the world would my GI tract have anything to do with my blood sugar? It’s vitally important, vitally important and in particular we’re going to stalk about something called intestinal permeability where the small intestine becomes permeable and leaky and leaks things into the bloodstream. They call it leaky gut syndrome as a lay term.

The strongest contributing factor of type 2 diabetes is intestinal hyperpermeability or leaky gut and here’s why. This is an animation, illustration of a normal gut wall. What you see here these are cells with these fingerlike projections, which are called microvilli. These are the brush border of the inside of the intestinal tract. If you look at the intestinal tract, this is part of the wall. It will be a circular tube and you’re looking at part of the wall. The inside of the tube is here. Right outside this one-layer thick wall ‑ that’s what it is one-cell layer thick between the inside of your GI tract and the bloodstream, which is on the other side here, which is seated two lines with the red blood cells, you have this one layer protecting it.

Now what’s holding these cells together are these binding proteins. Okay, you see what’s forming here, the binding proteins? They’re called tight junctions. In addition to that, you have binding proteins below. These are called adherence junctions. There’s two different things that are holding the cells together so they don’t break apart.

Now in a normally functioning gut, you have proteins, fats, and carbohydrates in your diet. What happens is proteins come into the GI tract. When they come into the GI tract and they’re passing through it, in the normally functioning gut those proteins, they just pass on through the digestive tract and they don’t pass through the wall. The protein, which is made up of all those little colors made up of amino acids that stays together and it can pass through because it’s too big. What actually happens though is your enzymes will break those things down and they will break into amino acids, which are small enough to pass though those junctions. Your body is designed to let those through.

Now when fats come into your diet, what happens there? Well they can’t pass through either because they’re too large. Now in a normally functioning body, they’ll break down into small parts and they will pass through the wall into the bloodstream so that your body can use them for energy.

Carbohydrates – same thing. It’s a long chain. It comes in. Carbohydrates can’t get through the GI wall. What they will do though is they will break down through enzymatic reactions and they will pass through these tight junctions between the cell walls and again into your bloodstream so that your body can use them for energy. This is a normal barrier function of the GI tract.

Now we’re going to talk about fast food, coffee, GMO foods, medications, NSAIDs, which are nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs, Tylenol, Advil, wheat, all these things, lectins, corticosteroids, stress, alcohol, commercial oils, sodas, food additives and preservatives, all these garbage that gets in your GI tract. What they do is when they crawl through and they’re exposed to your barrier system, they start breaking the junctions down, the proteins that hold the barrier together. They come through. They tear the adherence junctions apart. Then what you have is you have these large gaps that occur intracellular, between the cells.

Now what happens when you have a compromised barrier system is you see you have the cells. Now you have paracellular and transcellular destruction, which means the cell can actually be ripped apart. You can have transcellular, as the cell gets ripped apart, and intracellular opening at these big junctions. What happens here is when you get these proteins into your diet, these proteins, these big molecules that shouldn’t pass through, what happens is guess what?

Now that these junctions are torn open and you have permeability or leaky gut, they pass through that wall. Now that they’re in the bloodstream, they cause a cortisol surge and inflammation. Your immune system has no idea what these large proteins are in your bloodstream. It reacts with an immune response and sends out cellular messengers to attack and kill and destroy those proteins because they shouldn’t be there. They’re foreign to your immune system.

[0:45:04] Natural Support for Type 2 Diabetes

Your immune system launches an immune response to look for the molecule, the shape of that protein. They circulate through your bloodstream and they’re searching for this protein shape. Proteins are made up like a chain of amino acids. They look for the amino acids that are in there, the sequences, and your own tissues can sometimes be attacked because they are similar in amino acid sequence. It’s called molecular mimicry and cross-reactivity. It will cause autoimmunity. My friends, this is what we know is the genesis and has to be present at some point for you to develop autoimmunity – hyperpermeability or leaky gut.

It is what the scientific literature is telling us now. If your doctor does not know this, they’re outdated. They’re not bad people. They are not just keeping up with the contemporary literature. This is why I study functional medicine because this is how you truly understand why people are getting sick and how to help them regain the best health that they can possibly have.

This happens and it creates this cortisol surge and inflammation. What do we say is completely neglected in the medical model: cortisol and inflammation surges. It’s got to be addressed.

Other Sources of Gut Inflammation

Now there are other sources of gut inflammation. Remember, inflammation you’ll learn that inflammation has to be tracked down whether it’s leaky gut, whether it’s small intestinal bacterial overgrowth where you have an overgrowth of opportunistic or bad bacteria in the small intestine, whether it’s Candida or yeast infection of the GI tract, whether it’s parasites, parasites that grow in the GI tract. You’ll find that if you ever swim in a lake or swimming pool, if you’ve ever written lettuce or sushi or sashimi, or if you’ve ever eaten undercooked foods, we’re constantly exposed to these things. A healthy and properly acidic GI tract is protective for that, but most people have symptoms of heartburn and actually have low stomach acid. I don’t have time to go into that, but you have hypochlorhydria, low stomach acid insufficiency. That’s what happens as we age, but the symptoms are the same: heartburn because it’s still acid. I don’t have time to go into that, but there are still other sources of gut inflammation.

The most common , parasite, I talked about this, is the roundworm. It penetrates the wall of the small intestine and then it enters the bloodstream. What it does is it goes to the liver, the heart. It goes into the circulation and what it does is it goes into your lungs and actually breaks into your alveoli that you use to extract oxygen from the air and you cough it up. Literally, this is the most bizarre thing, but this is really how it happens. You cough it up and you swallow it again, and it repeats the cycle.

We know these things can lay 200,000 eggs per day for a year. Here’s the thing with this: you don’t know this unless you’re tested for it. We look at certain labs and we look at your white blood count. We can see if there are shifts. We can see if your white blood cell count is lower, which is typically indicative of chronic inflammation, chronic problem. We can look at shifts of the different types of white blood cells and identify if these are potential things that are happening. We look at the very detailed and extensive healthy history because you have to consider everything. You cannot leave a stone unturned to determine what’s going on.

This is a roundworm. You can see them if they’re scoped sometimes, but very frequently they don’t. You can just see in the GI tract here. It’s disgusting, but it is what it is. This is the reality of the situation. You have to look for things that other people don’t look for if you want to get to people that no one else can get better healthy.

Other Possible Causes of Inflammation

What about the other possible causes that are driving inflammation? We talked about a lot of different things, but all these antigens, these inflammatory proteins, the leaky gut, the adrenal issues, thyroid function. Man, hypothyroid is a huge problem and it affects every systemic function. It [unintelligible [0:48:42] barrier systems like your gut barrier, your blood brain barrier.

Anemias can cause a lot of problems where you don’t have normal functioning hormonal systems. I mean everything is dependent upon oxygen and that’s what anemia is – deficiency. These intestinal pathogens, all of these things. Genetic issues, I mean that’s something that we’re seeing more and more that we’re able to test for but the genetic issues are typically secondary. I don’t have time to get into that, but we use that. We do genetic testing here as well. If you don’t heal the gut, you will have chronic inflammation and immune system stimulation.

Structures in the Body Damaged by Inflammation

Here’s the deal: inflammation causes damage to what two structures in the body – the neurons, which are in your brain and your nerves. You can’t have chronic inflammation. Then also blood vessels. Blood vessels are extremely important because they’re important with circulation and healing. What happens when you lose circulation and healing in your feet? We have problems, right? What happens when you can’t feel the nerves in your feet? There are big problems. What happens when you don’t have good circulation to your brain? The neurons in your brain start to die. They start to atrophy. Big problems, big, big problems. All are related to blood sugar.

For healthy regulation of blood sugar, what do we need to consider? What do we need to look at? Food triggers, your gut health, cortisol problems, liver function, inflammation, your brain health. These are all things we’ve already talked about, so this is what we need to consider. That’s great. Let’s just test the food triggers. Test the gut health. Test the cortisol. Test the liver. Test the inflammation and test brain health. Test all these things. Let’s figure out what’s driving it. Let’s get it done. Let’s figure it out. We know what to look for, so let’s do it. Let’s just order the test. Let’s send it off to Medicare. Let’s send it off to your insurance because they’re going to pay for it, right?

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Check this out. This is a quote from Medicare Guidelines, section 2251.3. You look it up. “A support plan that seeks to prevent disease, promote health and prolong and enhance the quality of life; or therapy that is performed to maintain or prevent deterioration of a chronic condition is deemed not medically necessary.”

How do you feel about that? How do you feel about that because I’m going to tell you what they’re going to do. All the stuff we just talked about, they’re going to tell you that’s not medically necessary. What is medically necessary? Unbelievable, right? Unbelievable.

We need to revoke. You need to call your insurance company. You need to call your local representatives. You need to need to say we demand preventative healthcare that is real. We demand preventative healthcare that looks at the causes of disease processes and not something that’s called preventative where it’s just a once-a-year checkup where we just go to find disease. Then when you find a process, you want to manage it with a drug.

We want to be healthy. We don’t want to be on drugs, but there’s no big money in that. There’s no big money in this stuff that we’re talking about. Where there’s big money in is there’s a diabetic medication that last year was the second-grossing medication that’s prescribed in the entire nation – billions of dollars of profits. When you got billions of dollars of profits and you got shareholders and you’re a business, guess what you got to do? You got to keep making that money or guess what happens, you’ll lose your job.

Guess what happens there’s two things that there’s too much money in them: healthcare and politics. That’s right – two much money in healthcare and politics. Healthcare should be about being healthy, not about profits.

The Current Medical Model

The current medical model, here’s what it is: it’s insurance-driven. It’s not based on current literature. The stuff I’ve just told you is all science-based, but it’s not based on current literature. It’s not designed to restore intrinsic function, so no one is concerned about getting your health back. What they will do is they’ll prescribe you a medication and they’ll say, “Go ahead. Take this, and we’ll just see how you do.” Diet and exercise, completely disregard for what’s driving the process.

Here’s a thing. I’ve got a lot of doctors in my family. I’ve got good friends that are doctors. I’ve got great family – all these people mean well. They’re not bad people. They’re stuck in the model that is broken. They don’t have the education.

Here’s the thing: it’s profit-driven by drug companies. I mean you shouldn’t be able to watch a commercial for a drug. I’m sorry. You shouldn’t be able to go to your doctor and say, “Hey, I want that drug with the lady dancing in the field that looks so happy. I want what’s going to control my blood sugar.” That is the doctor’s job. They should be able to tell you what you need. You shouldn’t be marketed to by an outside company that is simply trying to persuade you to buy a medication. That is the doctor’s job. I’m sorry, but that should not be legal.

Doctors’ education comes from drug reps. Listen a salesperson is teaching your doctor about the latest medications for you. That is ridiculous. This is a system that is bought and paid for, folks. I am sorry. That is my opinion, and I’ll say exactly as I feel.

Diabetes is progressive. That’s the model. They believe that diabetes is progressive. It’s not something that can be reversed. They believe progressive means you got it, you’re always going to have it. It’s going to get worse. I disagree.

What can you expect from this model? If you follow this model, you want to go with exactly what your insurance tells you you should do. What can you expect? It’s a valid question. You need to think deep and hard about this.

Life as a Diabetic on Dialysis with End-Stage Kidney Failure

Life as a diabetic on dialysis with end-stage kidney failure because what’s affected? Your kidneys, their filtration rate, the tiny vessels that supply the kidneys, the nerves that supply the kidneys, and you want to be on dialysis? Because this is what this model leads to because remember it’s progressive, but we’ll pay for this. We’ll pay for this because it’s medically necessary.

Diabetes and Blindness

What about this? What about your blood sugar levels going up? Increased inflammation, we talked about, damage to the nerves, damage to the tiny blood vessels that supply the retina. This is a picture of the retina. You get these things called diabetic retinopathy, these exudates, this damage to the vessels, blurred vision. Then you develop these things like proliferative diabetic retinopathy where you have floaters. You have these vision problems, and that ends in what? In blindness, in vision loss.

[0:55:00] Natural Support for Type 2 Diabetes

This is what we’re going to let these problems progress to because addressing the cause and working with the person on the root cause is not medically necessary. But treating these billions of dollars of consequences as a society is more cost-effective and more medically necessary when it’s a crisis and there’s nothing else that you can do about it, then we’re going to treat you.

Diabetes and Peripheral Neuropathy

What about damage to the nerves? Have you heard of peripheral neuropathy because most of my diabetic patients have, and most of the people that seek out our help for peripheral neuropathy, they have diabetes. It’s the number 1 cause. It’s when the nerves get damaged.

You see in this picture? Let’s look at this. What happens with it is the nerve coating that’s called myelin gets damaged and destroyed because the blood sugar spikes and dips and lack of blood supply to the nerve, because of the spikes and dips in blood sugar and inflammation destroy the myelin coating.

Here’s what happens. You got a foot, your brain, and here’s your spinal cord. What happens is you got nerves in your feet. The nerves in your feet send signals to your brain so that your brain knows what’s happening. It’s hot, it’s cold. There’s pressure there. I know where my foot is at. That’s what the nerves are telling the brain. That’s the whole purpose of it. It goes from the foot all the way to the spinal cord to the brain. The brain can perceive what’s happening with the foot.

Then your brain sends a signal down to the foot to activate the foot, so that if there’s too much pressure on it, you can lift it up. If it hurts, it will stop doing what you’re doing, right? It controls it. It’s this feedback loop.

Well guess what happens when the blood sugar breaks and you can’t feel your feet. What do you do? Well, you’re clipping your toenails and you cut your toenail too deep in. You bleed. Then guess what because you don’t have good vascular supply because your blood sugar has been too high and low and you collapse the small vessels, which you talked about earlier, right? The decreased circulation, now you don’t have white blood cells in the area, so you’re more susceptible to infection, so you get an infection. Maybe you’re like some other patients. I have some patients step on a nail. Nail went right through his foot; he didn’t even know it was there because he couldn’t feel it, so you got this wound.

Maybe you walk and you walk so much that you get blisters and you don’t even feel it, so you don’t know to stop. You get this big ulcer on the bottom of your foot that can’t heal. It gets an infection, right? This is the real situation. Many of you watching this know that this is exactly what the truth. You get that. You can’t feel it. What happens is you realize it’s there, and then you get an infection. That infection, you can’t get rid of. You take antibiotics, you can’t get rid of it. What does it do? It progresses, then it gets gangrene.

This is the reality of the situation. This is the model that’s okay. This is the medically necessary model. Then you get an infection. Then the infection gets gangrene, and then you can’t do it. What do they do? What do they do? Well, we know what they’ll do. We know what they’ll do. They have to amputate the toes.

Diabetes and peripheral neuropathy, some of these nerves get damaged. Here on the left or to my left, to your right, this is a normal nerve. It’s got these blue little bulbs on it. Those are myelin sheaths, just the nerve covering. But as your blood sugar spikes and dips, and you have inflammation and decreased blood flow, it damages that nerve covering and you develop peripheral neuropathy.

Myelin Sheath

Now that myelin sheath, that covering, it’s the insulating layer that forms around the nerves. What it does is it helps the impulses transmit quickly across the nerve. It actually speeds up the impulse. The thing is that that myelin sheath is made up of water, protein, fat and mostly cholesterol. How many of you are on cholesterol medications?

I’m going to tell you something. Cholesterol is not the problem. It’s heart disease, ladies and gentlemen, but it does make a lot of money with statins. When it used to be 250 mg/dl as the level of your cholesterol, it was okay. Then they lowered it to 199 mg/dl and they got another third of the population on statin medications. Now you’ve got suppressed cortisol and you can’t make myelin and you can’t make energy.

What happens? You’ve got two different types of nerves. These are unmyelinated nerves, nerves without a coating and then you’ve got myelinated nerves, which have that coating that we talked about, the myelin sheath. What happens is in unmyelinated nerve, the impulse travels down the length of the nerve and it just goes straight down. But in myelinated nerves, it hops. See it jumps across the nerve and speeds the conduction, so it’s faster. That’s the normal nerve. When that’s not functioning, that’s when you get the blister on the foot. That’s when you step on nails. That’s when you get all these problems where you develop infections and you get gangrene and then what happens?

What happens to your nerves when they stop working properly and you can’t feel? You trip and fall because now you’re not getting feedback because the nerves will tell you the joint position, the pressure on your foot, you don’t feel them. You fall and you’re more at risk and more susceptible to injury. You develop neuropathies and now you get infections that you can’t beat and then you get gangrened and what do they have to do?

This is the reality of it. When you actually think about it, this is what you have to consider because that’s what your insurance considers as medically necessary. We’re going to let you amputate your toes, and this progresses to limbs. This is completely unacceptable, completely unacceptable!

[1:00:01] Natural Support for Type 2 Diabetes

Getting an Idea of What’s Contributing to Your Diabetes

How do we get an idea of what’s contributing to your diabetes? Well, you have to ask the right questions and get the right tests. That’s what it comes down to. We have to be very frank about this. We have a detailed health history. We take the most detailed health history you’ve ever seen. My intake forms are 14 pages. I’ll have you type or write out a narrative medical history. I’ll have you send your test results from previous tests to me because I want to know everything about you because I am serious about getting you better.

We get the needed testing regardless of what’s considered medically necessary because that system is antiquated. We’re going to do what’s right to get you what you need. You get to the “why” and you don’t just treat the symptoms. That’s how you get results!

This is not acceptable to me! I refuse this. I refuse for an insurance company to dictate to me what they believe to be medically necessary because they’re outdated and we can do things differently. We can get better results and we have to. We have to. We don’t have a choice. Once you’re exposed to the truth about what drives these problems, you know you know that you cannot continue practicing in a way that just puts someone’s health at risk in the future.

Indications for Successful Outcome

If you want to get successful outcomes with the type of care that we do in our office and with functional medicine, your health has to be your top priority. You have to be willing to make lifestyle changes for this care to work for you. It’s active care. You have to make differences. You have to change your life and your diet.

You have to ask the question who’s responsible for my health. If that answer is not you, then you would never succeed with this because you have to accept responsibility and you have to care about your health. If not for you, then care about it for your significant other, care about it for your grandkids, care about it for the people that you care about in your life that you want to be there for. They depend on you.

Insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid are not going to pay for this type of program. Here’s the thing: if that insurance base if that is the standard of care that you want, what do you want for yourself in your future? If that’s what you want, then that’s the model that you have available to you.

I’m offering you a different path. Your answers to these questions reveal your priorities.

First Two Visits in our Clinic

This is how it works in our clinic – the first two visits. The first visit what we do is you submit prior to coming in at least a minimum of 2 days. You have to submit a complete history review. That’s the intake packet that we will send you in advance and you complete that in advance. We review your existing labs that you return with that packet because I ask you to send existing labs if I can use what you have and get information from it, let’s do that. Let’s be efficient with time. Let’s be efficient with your money.

Your spouse or significant other is encouraged to be there for that first visit, so that we can discuss what’s going on. We offer Skype visits because we can work with people from around the country to help them out. They don’t have to be local, but your spouse needs to be there because they need to understand what we’re doing.

Testing maybe ordered at this time depending on what your findings are because like I said I’m going to get the tests that are needed, not the tests that your insurance company tells me are necessary.

After we get those results, after we go to that visits, what we do is we follow up with a second visit. Usually it’s about 2 weeks later if we have some testing done. We’ll get those results in after I have reviewed it. I can sit down and I’ll meet with you. Typically, that takes us about 2 weeks.

What we do in this visit is I communicate with you if I can accept your case or not. I do not accept everyone as a patient in my office. There are a number of factors that I consider when considering you as a patient, and it comes down to you have to be a good fit because I want you to succeed. If I don’t think you’re going to succeed, I will not take you as a patient. It’s not personal, but I only want you to be a patient if I think you will be successful.

We will review testing results and discuss if further testing needs to be done because sometimes testing leads to more questions and what you do is we would discuss why. I’ll tell you exactly why I suggest it. We will look at an overview of my recommendations. If I can formulate a support program for you to help you to heal your body, we will review that there and we will also review your financial obligations.

You have to have your spouse or significant other with you if you have one. They have to be with you. I will not discuss any findings with you or go over this with you without them present, and the reason for that is because this requires diet and lifestyle changes. I have done this so many times where I’ve gotten a call from a spouse or significant other and they completely don’t understand. I’ll spend 30 minutes to 1 hour explaining it to you in great detail and they didn’t take the time because they didn’t care enough about you to be there for that appointment. I require it. It is a prerequisite. It has to occur or I will not meet with you, and that’s because I’m not going to set you up for failure. I’m not going to spend time in a scenario where you’re going to fail. Take it from my experience. I know.

[1:05:02] Natural Support for Type 2 Diabetes

This is how it works in our office. I hope this information will help you out, but if you’re interested in becoming a patient, give us a call. Let us know. Our number is (828) 324-0800. We can do Skype appointments. We do in-office appointments. We have people that visit us from hours and hours away that fly in to us. We will do everything that we possibly do to help you.

I want you to be empowered. I want you to take your health back. I want you to reject this garbage standard of care that’s been put out there for diabetes and make us a stand. I am here to help. We will help in any way that we can.

I appreciate you taking time to listen to me, to learn more about your health. If there is anything that we can do for you, we would love to help you. We would love to give you guidance in any way that we possibly can.

I appreciate your time and I hope you have wonderful day. Thank you!

[End [1:05:51] Natural Treatment for Type 2 Diabetes

If you are interested in seeing if our care may be able to help you with your diabetes please call our office at (828) 324-0800(828) 324-0800, or request an appointment through the form at the bottom of the page.