Doctors treat Type 2 Diabetes by treating
its salient symptom: high blood sugar. What they tell you
to do is “eat right, exercise and lose weight,” and when that fails, to
“fix” the problem, you get put on oral antidiabetic medications. But that’s why you went to the doctor, right?
For him or her to take care of you; to “treat” your pre-diabetes or Type 2
diabetes; to write a script to make you “better” (or at least to manage your
condition)? That’s THEIR
job, right?
But high blood sugar is only a symptom
of Type 2 diabetes!!!
So is being overweight or obese. They are not the cause of Type
2 Diabetes; they are only associated with it. But the doctor tells you to lose weight and
take the pills anyway. And when you don’t lose weight and as your high blood
sugars persist, your Type 2 diabetes inevitably progresses…
Did you ever wonder why
doctors don’t treat the cause of Type 2
Diabetes? They know the cause of Type 2 Diabetes is Insulin
resistance (IR). Why don’t they treat that? Or tell you how you became Insulin Resistant?
Well, I’ll tell you.
First you have a genetic
predisposition, and because of what you ate, those genes have
“expressed” an intolerance for processed carbohydrates. How? By eating too many of them for too many
years, as the government has told
you to do. Type 2 Diabetes takes many years to develop but, for some people
(the genetically predisposed), it inexorably leads to Insulin Resistance (IR).
And Insulin Resistance means that you are now, to some degree, intolerant
of carbs.
Here’s the mechanism: When you
overload your digestion/absorption system with glucose -- the breakdown product
of all carbohydrates
– the level of insulin, responsible for transporting those glucose molecules to
your cells, rises. Continued elevation results in a slight
resistance to its uptake, and continuous elevation, over time (from
years of overeating processed carbs at every meal and in between), your Insulin
Resistance gets worse. It’s a vicious cycle.
And when your blood INSULIN levels are in a
constantly elevated state – especially when you snack between
meals because you’re always hungry – well INSULIN,
besides being the glucose-transporter-gateway hormone, is also the fat-storage
hormone. Your
body (brain, stomach and gut) thinks that if you have an elevated blood
insulin, you have a ready source of glucose (carbs) for energy, so it blocks
access to its precious body fat stores for energy. In effect, you feel
“starved” and you get a hunger message to go out and snack on a piece of fruit.
Your body can conserve its fat.
That function of INSULIN – making and
storing fat -- for when it thinks you really need it (winter, famine), is
called, de novo lipogenesis. Your liver will make fat from anything
you eat, including carbs. This is a relic of the Paleolithic age – only 500
generations (10,000 years) ago. So long as you have an elevated blood insulin, in
modern tmes from eating processed carbohydrates in combination with the insulin
resistance you developed from eating too many processed carbs for too many years),
and glucose availability either from food-by-mouth or glycogen stored
in your liver (from carbs you ate yesterday), it won’t switch over to burning
your body fat. And you’ll be hungry…again, every few hours.
But let’s face it. Your doctor isn’t
going to tell you this. He or she would have to admit that the medical advice
you’ve been getting for over 50 years, that to avoid saturated fat and dietary
cholesterol, you should eat a diet of 55% to 60% carbohydrate, has been all
wrong. My doctor did tell me, however, but accidentally
and inadvertently. He thought that being obese was a cause of
Type 2 Diabetes, and he saw that my blood sugars were out of control even
though I was then taking 3 classes of oral meds, and maxed out on 2. SO,
ALL HE WANTED WAS FOR ME TO LOSE WEIGHT.
Here’s how it happened. One Sunday morning
in July 2002, he read the cover story of the New York Times Sunday Magazine. The cover depicted a rib-eye steak
with a pat of butter on top. After reading the
article, “What If It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie,” he tried the diet
himself and lost 17 pounds in a month. Then, when I walked into his office for
my next appointment, he said to me, “Have I got a diet for you!” The first day
on it I had a hypoglycemic episode (low
blood sugar) and the next day another. In less than a week he took me off one
antidiabetic med and had twice reduced the other two by
half. Later, I totally eliminated one of those and today take just a
small dose of Metformin.
And I did all that, “JUST BY
CHANGING WHAT I ATE…” PS: I also
lost 170+ pounds.
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