Eat right. Live better.

Posted on January 27, 2020 by Donald Wilson

How should we be assessing the risk for someone who has just developed diabetes? What causes beta cell failure?

There is no going back. Damage to your nerves by neuropathy is a one way street. Start treating your diabetes while you still can prevent the worst of it.

Check out Professor Shaheen.s Tutorials in Medicine for a better understand about the science of diabetes.

The journey into becoming a diabetic is one that most of us join without knowing the consequences of what we’re doing. There are a lot opinions out there, even among doctors, as to what actually “causes” diabetes, but pretty much everyone I read knows that diabetes is highly related to obesity and carbohydrate overconsumption. And when I was diagnosed, more than twenty years ago, the information I was given was faulty and at the very least incomplete.

Professor Shaheen’s Tutorials in Medicine https://internalmedicine.blog/

What no one ever said was that if I continued to eat what I thought of as a “normal” amount of carbohydrates and sugar every day, by the time I retired my life would be severely circumscribed, with many symptoms of diabetes and other metabolic syndrome related diseases causing continuing pain, physical exhaustion and emotional distress. I also suffer from chronic fatigue and despite having lost some weight, am still fighting the good fight doing intermittent fasting three days a week for 36 hours.

So what should I have been taught as a younger person, that might have protected me from getting full blown diabetes and other metabolic syndrome diseases.

Eat less carbohydrates. A lot less. On my current low carb high fat diet I keep my carbs below 150 grams a day. Eat even less added sugar. I try not to eat anything with added sugars, and when I do offend I eat very small portions of any sweet at all. Mind you, my appetite for sweet things has pretty much disappeared since I started avoiding them. Stay away from booze. Period. Lots of doctors and dieticians say that a one or two drinks a day is okay. I don’t believe them. Alcohol does similar things to the liver as carbohydrates, without the redeeming quality of providing me with any energy.

Always seek to reduce the amount of starch and sugar, and fill up on natural food if you are going to eat carbs. Eat fruit in season, in your area, and don’t overindulge even in fruit and vegetables.

Try not to get depressed because you can’t have any “real” food. Try to redefine what constitutes a meal, and understand that the meat and vegetables are really enough.

A New Years Resolution

Posted on January 7, 2020 by Donald Wilson

Starting today, January 6, 2020 It is my stated intention to achieve a BMI goal of 25% during the current calendar year.

Later in the afternoon

I started working on my blog earlier this afternoon, but was interrupted by a request from a family member for a ride from Burnaby, where I currently work, home to Langley. But I’m back at it now, and would like to upgrade my resolution to include a little more detail about this pledge, seemingly coming out of the blue.

I started doing intermittent fasting in July last summer, and promptly lost 35 pounds before the end of November, fasting for three days a week, 36 hours each on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Pretty good results although most of the weight was lost in the first 60 days, and only a small amount during the last 60 days. In the last month I’ve pretty much given back ten pounds or so, depending on the time of day I weight myself.

Until Christmas holidays began I didn’t miss a single fasting day in my schedule, although I did start to cheat a little by eating Keto friendly pepperoni sticks and cheddar cheese sticks after a minimum of 24 hours into my fast. Checking my glucose levels shows me that the advisors are correct, and eating those two things, even combined, doesn’t raise my blood sugar at all, or not does having a handful of nuts. However, it does seem to have a negative effect on weight loss so I am going back to a more strict interpretation of fasting, which is eating nothing during the scheduled period.

During the holidays I broke the fast program only on two days, except for the cheating I’ve already mentioned, but my weight fluctuated from 209 back up to 222 and then down again to 216 and then back to 222. It’s amazing to think that I could regain basically 12 or 13 pounds, even attempting to keep my carbs down and no sugar to speak of at all, except for Christmas Dinner. Losing weight and keeping it off is a challenge, that’s for sure.

In addition, because I stalled quite a while before I started to cheat a little, I’m going to increase the length of my fasting period from a three day a week fast, alternative days during the week, to fasting for five days on and then four days off. My current plan, which I started implementing today with Day 1 of my first 5 Day Fast, is designed to kick start my weight loss again, so lose the next 25 to 35 pounds and get a lot closer to my goal of a BMI of 25, which as I said at the beginning of this blog, is my goal for 2020. I’m going to run with this schedule until my weight takes the next step down, past my previous barrier of about 209 pounds where I bounced back up to 222 over the Christmas holidays. .

My weight this morning when I weighed myself was 222.8 so a 25 pound weight loss would get my weight under 200 lbs, for the first time in a pretty long time. At 200 pounds my BMI will be about 31.2 instead of the current 34.8 (222 lbs) or 38.4 (245 lbs) when I started the program in July 2019.

Over the next few days I am going to re-read Dr. Jason Fung’s book the Diabetes Code, and also review his book on intermittent fasting. My own endocrinologist, Dr. Kang at VGH isn’t planning to see me again until about May so I hope my weight is down substantially by then, and my A1C levels at least down to 6.0, but we’ll see about that.

This plan to reduce my BMI to <25 and my weight to <160 is highly purposeful, in that I am attempting to do on my own what Dr, Fung achieves with his patients, a dramatic reduction in obesity and blood sugar levels. In the meantime I’ll continue to take my course in Pain Mastery from the Institute, and report back to my faithful readers my progress and challenges both in my fight against diabetes, and my battle to manage my chronic pain.

Obesity Week 2019: Why is it So Hard for Doctors to Admit Their Failure?

Posted on November 23, 2019 by Donald Wilson

By Dr. Tro Kalayjian
doctortro.com/obesity-week-2019-why-is-it-so-hard-for-some-doctors-to-admit-their-failure/

It’s Thursday night, and I’m sitting in an airplane, about to take off for New York. I’m heading home from Las Vegas after attending Obesity Week 2019, the world’s largest obesity medicine conference, a collaboration between The Obesity Society and The American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgeons.

I don’t quite know how to express my feelings and thoughts about this event, but the words ‘anger’ and ‘hopelessness’ immediately come to mind. My anger and hopelessness are best exemplified by the first keynote speech, delivered by Dr. William Cefalu, who is chief scientific and medical officer of the American Diabetes Association.

After accurately describing our country’s spiralling healthcare costs, and the morbidity and mortality associated with diabetes and obesity, Dr. Cefalu went on to discuss the benefit of low-calorie approaches for diabetes reversal. He also highlighted bariatric surgery and medications. But ultimately, he harped on one point, that is frequently repeated at conventional obesity medicine conferences:

“There is no best diet. The best diet is one that a patient can adhere to.”

The above article by Dr. Tro Kalayjian the physician behind Dr. Troys Medical Weight Loss and Direct Primary Care is a discussion about why it is so difficult for the medical profession to accept fundamental changes in medical understanding about diabetes and current treatments for it. It is why patients continue to get contradictory advice from doctors who really ought to know better than to recommend any number of established and well known dietary strategies that simply don’t work. It’s not that they don’t work anymore, it’s that they never worked, and there is no scientific basis for any of them.

This sounds pretty revolutionary to me. The esteemed Canadian doctor is joined by a number of US based colleagues who are challenging the status quo in the treatment of diabetes, and sending a message to their profession. Just stop! Stop misleading the public! Stop lying to patients! Stop killing your clients!

Closeup on medical doctor woman giving a choice between apple and donut

Of course, they are doctors and they don’t quite put it that way. But what else can you say when so many health professionals and authorities continue to promulgate misleading information, such as “moderation is the best strategy” when clearly, based on current information that is simply not true. Moderation will kill you if by moderation you include relatively mundate advice about carbohydrates and sugar. What sciences know is that consuming carbs in excess of certain pretty limited amounts leads to metabolic syndrome, metabolic syndrome leads to insulin resistance. Insulin resistance leads to diabetes. Diabetes leads to lots of really bad stuff that can kill you, or at the least, make you really really sick.

Stop being so gullible. Doctors aren’t necessarily up to speed on the current information about your health.

If you or someone you love is fat, obese, or has diabetes or prediabetes follow the link on this blog entry to the above article and understand what is being said. Doctors are willfully ignoring solid medical evidence in favor of standing by old, disproved theories because they are afraid of rocking the boat. Read Dr. Fung’s book, the Diabetic Code.

Stop believing anyone who says that eating many small meals a day is ok. Stop following advice so far heard that has led you to being overweight and obese. If you want to live and healthy, long life, fire your current endrochronologist if he or she disparages the most recent research and tells you not to follow Dr. Fung’s advice. Run away from anyone who says that carbs and sugars are not the cause of diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and many many many other life threatening diseases.

FB SUPPORT INTERMITTENT FASTING

Aside

Low-Carb and Intermittent Fasting support group by Dr. Andy Phung

by Dr. Andy Phung of NC Medical Weight Loss & Direct Primary Care

If you download the TOFI chart from this blog you’ll see how many different conditions and diseases are a direct result of eating too much carbohydrate and sugar over a long period of time.

As described by the Canadian Dr. Fung undoing the damage is a little more complicated than just reducing your carbohydrate and sugar consumption, it includes some level of intermittent fasting for long enough to effective reset the liver functions to allow the proper processing of carbohydrate and sugar, and eliminate the negative consequences of prolonged Metabolic Disorder.

There is now a lot of scientific support for carb restricted diets and lifestyle changes, but as I go along it is useful to collect other Facebook pages, Instagram, and other resources online to support sticking to a difficult but important process.

The Diabetes Code

Posted on July 21, 2019 by Donald Wilson

Prevent and Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally

I’m reinventing myself again. My goal is to eliminate or radically reduce prescription medications for diabetes, and a whole host of inflammatory diseases caused by the same thing that causes diabetes.

Change doesn’t come easily when one is used to surrendering autonomy to the medical profession and simply being the obedient patient. It is NOT SAFE to simply trust that doctors know what is best for us. We already know this, but it is no surprise when we obediently follow their advice. Like everything else in life, you need to check the information out for yourself, and ask a lot of questions.

It seems that diabetes is actually caused by the thing that is supposed to cure it – insulin. In his book, The Diabetes Code, Dr. Jason Fung has coined the word diabesity – combining the words diabetes with obesity, to indicate that diabesity is caused by excess glucose in the body stored as fat, particularly in the internal organs, particularly the liver. There is a cycle in the body, controlled by the liver, that triggers the production of excessive blood sugar and results in insulin resistance.

Too much sugar and the body develops insulin resistance because the body simply can’t absorb any more sugar into the cells. To make matters worse, the medical profession prescribes increased insulin, or even just metformin, which helps the body to try to consume even more sugar.

Dr. Fung’s prescription for the elimination of diabetes is contained in a book called the Diabetes Code. Read it and weep, but understand that it calls for regular fasting to reset the diabetes cycle.

This week I’m seeing my endocrinologist, and am going to be seeking support to follow Dr. Fung’s program. I’m curious as to what he will say.

Will he continue to prescribe insulin, Janumet, and Invokana to address my extreme diabetes? Or will he support a major lifestyle readjustment along with a fasting program to eliminate the disease altogether, eventually? I have already started to substantially reduce my carbohydrates and sugars in preparation for the revised program, and have already lost over 10 lbs in just under ten days.

I started writing about my diabetes and this journey several months ago, when I decided to review the prescription medications and their side effects, as a result of finally getting fed up with being sick, and seeming to get worse and worse and the years roll by.

With the encouragement of my middle son, Don, I began to look at diet as a major issue in my illnesses, as well as my diabetes. Sure, I went to many diabetes dietician clinics years ago when I first became aware that I was a diabetic. They always talked about reducing carbohydrates and sugars, and using diet and exercise to control my weight, and therefore help control my blood sugars.

As noted by Dr. Fung in his book, diet and exercise programs have been a massive failure, all over the world, in controlling or preventing diabetes or obesity. There are many reasons for this failure, but the medical professional continues to support this old and tired cant, that doesn’t actually work. I think the real reason that nobody wanted to actually examine diabetes and obesity with new eyes is that the old views are very profitable, to the pharmaceutical industry, the vegetable oil industry, even the health and diet industry itself.

But you’d have thought that somebody would have noticed that it didn’t work. And finally somebody has.

Anyway. Wish me luck on this new direction in my journey to solve my diabetes, and eliminate the side effects of so many medications by eliminating my need for them at all.

Finally, my wife Katherine has been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes in the past month, and has begun the journey through this ugly territory as well. Hopefully we can solve the riddle of the disease for both of us, and she never has to go through the years of pain and agony I am experiencing as a result of having poorly controlled blood sugar for the past twenty five years.