My diabetes story
I've just tried this ridiculous new diet and people have been lying to me. I'm about to get angry. Very angry.
This is part 4 of the story and continues on from a previous part. If you want to read the whole lot, please start at Part 1: Diagnosis.
This is my story about my journey to diabetes and back. It's what happened to me, and I'm not saying that this same thing will work for everyone, but I hope that if you're out there suffering through this insidious disease, maybe you can consider doing something similar and it works for you too.
The Big Lie
I didn't know I could be this angry.
It wasn't a loud outburst type anger, nor a punch something inanimate really hard type anger. It was a slow, seething, sense of betrayal. A betrayal born from knowing that those who should be looking out for your best interests, are not doing so.
A day later, just 24 hours, on this stupid diet. My blood sugar levels are down to normal levels. Not diabetic normal, but normal people normal.
Many people don't realize this, but the normal they have for diabetics is about 6.5 - 8.5 mmol/L. Normal people dont usally get even that high, they tend to stay around 4.5 - 6.5 mmol/L. I literally have to stop taking my meds now because otherwise I'm going to go under 4.5. I've never in the last 3 months seen my blood levels under 8.0.
I had to tell my wife. I showed her the blood readings and had to explain what was going on. She was a little upset that I would be so reckless, but my wife is great, and very supportive.
The next thing I had to do was find out what the heck is going on here, I just don't understand because it's going against every single thing that the doctor, dietician and diabetes educator has told me I need to do.
It was then that I began to deep dive into the material on Diet Doctor. They had some videos I could watch if I signed up, which while initially it had seemed a bit scammy to me,now was a no-brainer, but they are still going to let me have a month's free access. I would have paid straight up. Even if it is useless junk in there I can watch all the videos I need to in that month and cancel though, so that's good.
The first video I chose was one by a Doctor Jason Fung, called “The 2 Big Lies of Type 2 Diabetes”. I don't know why out of all the videos there I chose that one, maybe it resonated with my thinking that people have been lying to me.
What I saw in that video blew my mind. All those questions I had, all the confusion about what was happening to me. It was one of those rare moments of instant clarity. It finally made sense of what was happening to me, and what I needed to do to fix the situation that I'd managed to dig myself into through decades of poisoning and abusing my body with highly refined carbohydrates.
You Mad Bro?
Yes, the fact that the entire establishment has been knowingly lying to us for at least the last 10 years about wheat being good and fat being bad for us, just so they can continue to get us to eat their grains, and put money in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies, and have us be a generally docile, rapidly ageing and dying population that needs heaps of medication to get through it?
I'm still not able to put into words exactly how I feel about that. But it's big, it's a big word, and I don't know what it is.
I mean, I understand. There's a lot of money at stake. But people's health... I've got family and friends that've died, you've got loved ones, we all do. This is betrayal at the highest level.
Many of the world's escalating health issues of the last 35 years can be laid directly at the feet of the ass-backwards food pyramid we're all been taught to believe in. You think about all the things that have been on the increase since the lipid hypothesis came out 40 years ago and put that squarely at the feet of too much carbohydrates and you're not too far wrong.
There's a bunch of modern health issues which have been directly linked to either:
- inflammation problems caused by highly refined carbohydrate consumption
- having elevated blood sugar levels most of the time and thus feeding things like cancers and diseases, or
- the fact that the body has a repair mode that is shut down while you're busy processing carbohydrates, and it can't do things like, oh I don't know, repair brain damage, broken cells and tissues, insulin producing beta cells in the pancreas, etc
Here's the list of things that they're beginning to link, I can testify to a few of the following things clearing up, or beginning to, and my wife can testify to a few of the others, as she's been step by step with me through this lifestyle change too:
- Decreased Insulin Sensitivity (Diabetes)
- Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)
- Infertility
- Erectile Dysfunction (ED)
- Alzheimer's
- Dementia
- Epilepsy
- Coronary Heart Disease (CHD)
- Cardiovascular Disease (CVD)
- Cholesterol
- Asthma
- Parkinsons
- Cancer
- Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)
- Strokes
- Brain Trauma (from getting hit in the head)
- Anxiety and Depression
- Autoimmune Diseases
- Mitochondrial Disorders
- Sleep Apnea
- Acne
- Dry, flaky skin and scalp
- Premature Ageing
- Anxiety
- Depression
My Take On It
If you have diabetes, generally want to live healthier and longer lives, or just want to know exactly what the science is you should watch the videos yourself, but this is what I took away about how it impacts me, personally, with respect to my diabetes, from what I learned after first watching that video and then everything else I could lay my hands on. (I apologise in advance if I get any of the following wrong, It's my best attempt at describing what I've read, but you should really watch the videos and do your own research to be sure.)
The result of continually eating carbohydrates for metabolically slow people is that we're continually ingesting things that break down into glucose.
When the body sees too much excess glucose (more than it can use), it produces insulin which pushes the glucose into the fat cells and liver. Our bodies aren't good at releasing these fats when we're hungry (because we metabolise slowly), so we get hungry and eat more. What do we eat more of? Carbohydrates of course!
Eventually the liver gets full of fat and storage of the fat in fat cells gets equally hard. At this point insulin has to work really hard to put that fat away, this is what they call insulin resistance insulin can't do a proper job of storing the glucose converted to fats that it used to be able to do.
The liver can't just stop processing the fats though, so it starts sending fats out to other previously un-utilised parts of our body. Our eyes, our heart, our veins, our pancreas. This is where we get the double whammy. The pancreas is now storing fats, covered in it in fact, so it's less capable of producing and releasing insulin in a timely fashion. and this is the second part reduced insulin sensitivity.
Insulin resistance started the whole thing, glucose was't getting stored quickly, but it was getting stored eventually. Now we have reduced insulin sensitivity, the insulin's not even getting out there at the correct time or in the correct quantities. These two things are now playing off each other in a vicious cycle. Then we add medicine to the mix to either elevate the body's natural insulin levels all the time, or injecting much synthetic insulin into the blood stream (both of which will eventually cause insulin toxicity).
Sound pretty dire, doesn't it?
Next
The next and final part is Lifestyle Change, where I summarise all the things that I needed to do to start turning this ship around. I'm in safer waters now, but I'm still too close to those rocks, and it'll be years of dedication to this lifestyle before I'm completely healed of 40 years of stupidity.
If you want to read the whole series, please start at Part 1: Diagnosis