Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You are listening to episode number 273 of Better Blood Sugars with Delane, Md. Welcome to Better Blood Sugars with Delane MD, where you can learn strategies to lower your blood sugars and improve your overall health. I'm your host, Doctor Delane Vaughn. Ladies, if you know you're capable of doing badass things at work and for your family, but you're confused and frustrated with why you can't seem to stop eating the chocolate cake, this podcast is for you. Let's talk. Hello. Good morning. It's morning for me, recording this. So I don't know what time of day you're listening to it. Maybe it's the morning, maybe it's not today. I want to talk about what it is that we do or that we need to do to fix our type two diabetes. To see better blood sugars. I think it's very easy to.
[00:00:51] I don't. It's very easy to listen to what the mainstream medical community or what you hear on the Internet or what you hear from the medical providers about what's going to fix this, and it doesn't always fix your diabetes. And this is why women are not seeing long term changes. It's why you're not seeing those lifelong changes that you want to see. So I know over the last few weeks, I've really been talking about, you know, what is it? What makes you, what makes you want to fix your diabetes? The women that I work with and what the kind of women who want to fix their diabetes, what it is that is different about them. They're typically badass women. They have, you know, they have professional careers that, like, they love. They're really outstanding in. They have wonderful connections with their family. They're great spouses. They're great parents. They're great, you know, daughters to their aging parents. They have a purpose in life, and they generally are fulfilling that purpose in a way that they're really, really proud of. These are the kind of women that are like, I am not ready to be on a med for the rest of my life. I'm not on board for regular medications, regular doctor's visits. They and me see this. You likely see this as a start down a path that you're not really interested in going on. Like, the end of that path is, you know, sick, decrepit, you know, all sorts of, you know, negative health consequences related to uncontrolled diabetes. And you see the starting of meds as the first step in that path. Understand that. And so you're not the kind of woman that shies away from a challenge. And you're really confused why you can't fix your blood sugars because of this. Why are the blood sugars persistently elevated? Because you're doing the hard things. And again, you're understanding the importance of the work. You're understanding that you long, the long term consequences of having type two diabetes are things that you do not want the, you know, vascular disease, whether it be cardiovascular vascular disease or cerebral vascular disease. You don't want kidney to, you don't want to lose your vision. You don't want to have feet and toes amputated. You want a full life. You want it full of memories and experiences. You want to travel and see places that you've not seen before. You want to enjoy your loved ones and experiences with your loved ones. You want to be able to keep up with your kids. You want to be around for your grandkids and maybe even, you know, rolling on the ground and being active with them. And many of us even have dreams of seeing our great grandchildren or our great great grandchildren. I think of my 95 year old granddaddy grandmother, and she has great great grandchildren that she sees that she gets to, like, enjoy and hold.
[00:03:37] You may have dreams of these things, and you're certainly not. Maybe more of what drives us is you're not the kind of woman that wants to be pulled around by desires for foods that make you sick.
[00:03:50] You understand that these foods seem to have a control over you that you do not seem to be the one managing. And you're sick of being yanked around in a way that is keeping you sick. You're ready to be in control of your desires. You're ready to stop cutting years off of your life. And that, you know, I've talked a lot about this over the last couple of weeks. That is what drives women to do this work. So I want to discuss what you've been doing and what actually fixes this so the medical community, and it's not that the doctors are bad guys. Listen, again. I'm an, I'm an MD. I get it. I went through medical school. I'm still a practicing physician. I'm still board certified. I'm still practicing. I'm an MD. I understand this. It's not that they are bad human beings. It's that they got into a profession that presents themselves, a profession that says it's health care, when really what it is, disease care. They were trained how to manage diseases. They were trained to hear your symptoms, make a diagnosis, and give you a med that matches that diagnosis. That's literally what we're trained to do. So when we're looking at chronic diseases, medications very rarely fix a chronic disease. Medications are wonderful. Gosh, if you have strep throat, that's awesome. I have a med that can fix that. If you have an ear infection, that's great. I've got a med that can fix that. Those are acute diseases. Those are acute infections or acute diseases that we can fix immediately. But if you have a chronic disease, we do not have meds that actually fix it. We have meds that manage symptoms. The disease is still present. And you know this because if you come off the meds, your numbers go back up your. You still have evidence of the disease. We have meds that put a band aid over the symptoms of your disease, and they treat those numbers. Those symptoms, not the disease. So hear me very clearly. If you are taking meds for your type two diabetes, it is not making you healthy. It is not fixing the cause of your type two diabetes.
[00:06:05] So what most women have been doing is what they have been told by their doctors, which is take meds and then make some dietary changes. And we got to get that backwards. Like, we got to make the lifestyle modifications. You got to get really clean on those lifestyle modifications. And then if you need meds still, we are graced enough to live in an age where there are plenty of them. You can use meds then, but if you truly want to be healthy, you have to do those lifestyle things differently, your diet and your exercise differently. Get that real clear, get those cleaned up. And almost always, if you will, do that, if that is what you do, you don't need the meds because you're healthy. You're literally doing the actions that are healthy in the world.
[00:06:51] So I want to talk about what, actually the things that you can be doing to fix this. Not the meds you can take, but the things that you can be doing to fix this part of your health. So, first, recognizing that type two diabetes is an element of insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is what causes type two diabetes. It is not your blood sugars. It is not God, for the love of all that's holy, it's not your genes. It is not those things. Your cells have been overexposed to foods that have made it. They made them major cells not respond appropriately to insulin in your bloodstream. Okay, what should be happening? You eat food, insulin levels, your blood sugar levels rise. Then your insulin responds to those blood sugar levels, and that insulin tells your cells to open up and bring that energy, that glucose inside the cells. That's what should be happening. And then with inside the cell, your cells should be burning that glucose, that energy office fuel. That's how this should be working. But you have either been overexposed to insulin for so long that your cells no longer open up in the presence of it, or there are things, usually from our foods inside the cell, that are blocking the mechanisms in the cell that lead to burning that glucose as fuel.
[00:08:12] These two things happen, most prominently from processed foods. These are the things that cause this cellular change in your body to lead to insulin resistance. Processed foods. What is a processed food? Most simply, a processed food is anything that comes from a box, a bag, or a wrapper that's processed foods. For me, what I would tell you and what I tell my clients and what I tell patients is, if you're looking at a food and you think, is that food, was that available? Was that somewhere where a human being 10,000 years ago could have run into it on the earth? If you're looking at a food and you say, yes, it was available 10,000 years ago, that food is probably okay to eat. If you're looking at a food and you're going, probably this food was not available 10,000 years ago, then you really need to seriously question that food, because it probably will make you sick. It probably will cause the cellular change in your body. Hyperinsulinemia is what leads to insulin resistance, low sugar foods. So if you eat low, like carb, low sugar foods, they do not always cause less insulin production. They don't always fix this hyperinsulinemia. So artificial sweeteners is a great example. You can have an artificial sweetener. There's less sugar, less carbonate, but there is evidence that you will still produce insulin in response to that. And if we're trying to address the root cause of your type two diabetes, it's not the blood sugar, it's the insulin. So we have to not consume. Consume the artificial sweetener, which will lead to high insulin production. Okay? Low calorie foods, artificial sweeteners, all of them understand, when they are clearly processed, like apple trees are not like, this is the locale apple that was not happening 10,000 years ago. All of them are processed, and they do not treat the cause of your blood sugars. They treat only the blood sugar. Again, they're just, like, taking the meds. They treat the blood sugar. What we need to do is stop producing insulin. We need to cut our insulin production down so that our cells are not exposed to it all the time, and they can start to heal up and start functioning normally in the presence of insulin. That is what fixes your blood sugars. That's what fixes your diabetes. It is not the low sugar, low calorie, low carb foods that you're eating. That's not what does it. It is lowering that insulin level.
[00:10:44] And then there is this intracellular blocking that happens. So, inside the cell, right? Like that insulin resistance that occurs from being exposed to insulin, your cell being exposed to insulin for a prolonged period of time, high concentrations, prolonged period of time. That part happens on the outside of the cell, on the inside of the cell. These processed foods and the some of the, I don't know, chemicals, some of the additives, some of the ingredients of these processed foods get inside our cells, and they block the mechanism that allows the insulin to tell, like, the. What is supposed to be happening inside the cell, right? Like, insulin binds at one part of the cell, and that binding opens a glucose channel on another part of a cell and allows that glucose to flow inside the cell. Some of these additives that are put into our foods, they block the message that goes from the insulin binding to opening that glucose channel so that we can bring it in. And then there are other blocks within the cell that can block the glucose once it gets inside from being burned as energy, as fuel by ourselves. And these are going to be things like acylglycerides. So diacel, glycerides, triacylglycerides, monoacelglycerides, these, I mean, theyre fats, theyre things that we like. The texture on our tongue, its smooth, and thats great and grand, but it makes us sick. And this only happens in processed foods. These chemicals are not found in apples like they're not found in natural foods.
[00:12:18] So, recognizing that there's a couple of different ways, and really, and I don't mean to, like, try to demonize anybody, but really, the fact of the matter is, processed foods are made to make you want more of them.
[00:12:30] They are made to make you want specifically one brand of them. And they are made to make you want to eat them even when you're no longer hungry and to never feel full from them.
[00:12:43] They are made, in a way, to make you want them, buy them, overeat them, so that the food manufacturers can make a dollar. And I'm not trying to say, I mean, I get it. They've got, like, they want to make money. I understand that. But the food manufacturers know these foods make you sick, and they continue to make them that way anyway. They are making them that way to make a buck off of you even when it makes you sick.
[00:13:11] So being really aware of that, like, these processed foods are made in a way that you really like them. You like the way it feels on your mouth, you like the way the smoothness of the food, you like the enhancement of the taste, you like all of it. They are made that way because they want to make more money off of you. The food manufacturers do. If you have not read Michael Moss's work, I highly recommend salt, sugar and fat. And then the other one that he wrote more recently is called hooked and great, great information on the food industry and what it is doing, and it is making us sick. Okay? So I don't mean to rail on one specific thing of food, but guys, nobody got sick from a banana or an apple or a carrot. That is not what makes anybody diabetic. It is these processed foods that come from boxes, bags and wrappers that will make you sick. So let's talk about things that the tools that we have to fix these things.
[00:14:09] First, your diet, again, not terrail, unprocessed foods, but you really must cut that out of your, your diet every time you eat that, it is making you sick. It is making you sicker, or it is moving you away from being your healthiest self every time you eat anything that's processed. Okay, if you ever have a question what's processed, you send me a message. Delaney, MD I do this no less than 3000 times a day where I am looking at somebody's food label to let them know what the food add are in there that are a problem and then teaching them. This is the stuff you look for in all of your foods. So then you will know how to do it. So if you have a food that you're not sure of, send me the label. I'm happy to look at it. Delanemd.com dot but we really have to clean the diet up. You know, I promote a very basic, um, strategy, like, I don't know, philosophy on food.
[00:15:04] The food that is like, works for our biology. What matches our biology, that's what we need to be eating. Recognize your biology that works today is the same biology and actually kind of was developed tens of thousands of years ago, probably million years ago, many, many years ago, way pre modern. The way that our biology works today actually came to being. Whether you believe in a divine intervention or whether you believe that this is all natural selection, I don't care. It all happened the same time. It was way back then that our biology developed. And what that means is the food that was available to us way back then is the food that matches our biology.
[00:15:52] So when you're looking at what you should be eating, what is dietarily? Okay, that is the first question you need to ask yourself. Is this food? Was this food available to a human being 10,000 years ago? Would they have ran across it on the earth somewhere 10,000 years ago?
[00:16:11] And if your answer is yes, then that food will not make you sick. Like, it will not create diabetes. Okay? Understand that there are some caveats to that, right? 10,000 years ago, when you came across grapes on a vine, you would eat the grapes, and they were delicious, and you'd probably eat them all. And they were amazing, and they fill your brain with dopamine, so you'd remember where those grapes are. But once the grapes were cleared from that vine, there were no more grapes. You didn't go back to the grocery store and get more grapes. They weren't there. You were out of grapes, and then you had to wait for that. That plant to make you more grapes. Right? Same thing with potatoes. Potatoes were not available all the time, so we didn't eat them all the time. Rice.
[00:16:58] Rice was available, but it was very, very.
[00:17:02] It was a burdensome, it was a labor intensive act to harvest that rice and eat it. So you weren't eating it by the court like you would get at a chinese restaurant. You weren't eating it by the cup.
[00:17:15] Like, think about how. How were these foods available 10,000 years ago? How were they available to the human being 10,000 years ago?
[00:17:24] People get very worried. They're like, I'm going to starve. There's not going to be enough food. I'm going to be hungry, and we might be hungry, and we have to deal with that. That's something that we work on in coaching. But recognize, 10,000 years ago, food was not abundantly available to human beings.
[00:17:40] It required an investment of energy to go out and hunt and gather so that we could get energy.
[00:17:47] There was this trade off, and it was there for a reason, because it's brilliant.
[00:17:52] You don't over consume foods when you don't need them, because there was an intensive, there was a labor intensive, there was an energy investment made in that action, in the consumption of food and the hunting and gathering of foods. There was an energy investment, and you had to decide, do I need that food enough to invest the energy into getting the food, or am I okay? There was not overeating. People worry that, like, oh, we're going to starve to death? They starved to death back then. No, we did not starve to death back then. We populated the earth living that way. We became the dominant species on this planet.
[00:18:31] Doing that. We did not starve to death. We did die of injuries frequently, and maybe infections occasionally, but we did not die from starvation. We populated the earth living like this. That's the way we're meant to eat. So, being aware, like, what the food is, I think that's probably the most important thing to think about. What is this food? Was it available to me 10,000 years ago? If it wasn't, it doesn't match my biology.
[00:18:59] And then if it did match your biology. Okay, fine. How did the earth make this food for us? And do I need to, like, moderate how much I'm eating of it? Maybe that's very possible. Okay. Those are the concepts. Those are the basic philosophies I teach about diet. The other tool, the other strong, powerful tool that we have to fix this is exercise.
[00:19:24] Yes. Cardiovascular is great, girls. I'm ladies, I'm a runner. I love. I love cardiovascular exercise. I would run for hours. However, it's not as powerful. It will not do nearly as much for your metabolic health, your blood sugars, and your insulin resistance as muscle work well as we work well as strength training well. Ladies, let's lift. Heavy shit. That is what we need to be doing. We need to be building muscle.
[00:19:53] The muscle in our body is a great place for our bloodstream to deposit glucose into it. So muscle is a place for our body to store glucose.
[00:20:06] When there is not glucose floating around in our bloodstream at a high level all the time, there is no longer a message going to the pancreas, telling the pancreas to spit out more insulin. Right? And insulin, too much insulin is the problem. When your blood sugar is constantly elevated, you're constantly sending a message to the pancreas that we need more insulin. And when we're exposed to high concentrations of insulin over a prolonged period of time, that is what leads to insulin resistance.
[00:20:36] So what you need to do is build bigger muscles so that you have more of a storehouse for you to put your glucose. If you have a low, low muscle mass on your body, you have a very limited space, a small closet, per se. To store glucose, you need to increase the size of that closet. You have a 1ft by 1ft closet. You can store a lot less stuff in your house. If you have a ten foot by ten foot closet, you can store a lot more things in there. You need bigger muscles so that you can store glucose outside of the bloodstream and stop sending a message to your pancreas that says, we need more insulin, will lead to insulin resistance.
[00:21:19] That's what has to happen. These are the two most powerful tools that you will use to fix your insulin resistance. Fasting helps, and I love to talk about that. I still do a fasting regimen. It's much different than it was when I fixed my insulin resistance. Fasting is great. I'm not against it. It's not a bad thing. I still think it's a powerful tool. I do not think it's as powerful as these two things. Cutting processed foods from your diet and adding muscle work. Those two things are far more powerful.
[00:21:50] Stress management, very powerful tool, very important. And sometimes a big game changer for some of my clients. Yes, it's important, but I still think these two things are going to get you more bang for your buck. Diet and exercise, sleep, same thing, very important. I still think you're going to get more bang from your buck by diet and exercise. Until these issues are addressed, you are not going to see long term changes. The ones that you're wanting to getting better blood sugars, lasting improvement in your blood sugar and your diet, blood sugar management and your diabetes. You're not going to reverse your diabetes until you address these things. So if you are ready to do this, if you're like, I've been doing this stuff and it's not working, listen, dlane, it's not working. We got to do something else. I want you to set up a better blood Sugars assessment call. You can find that link. It's a better blood sugars assessment call at www.calendly.com forward Slash Delanem D. So Callan Lee is calendly.com forward slash D e l A n E m d. Okay, set that up. You and I are going to go over your numbers. We're going to look at what you've been doing, like what's your diet look like? What's your exercise regimen? We're going to look at what changes that got you, and then we're going to figure out what you can do more. You're going to get some laser sharp, focused information about what more to be doing, okay? Like where you're going to get the next big gain in improving this.
[00:23:19] So set that up. Calendly.com delanemd betterblood sugars assessment call. Set that up and get on the call. It's a 45 minutes zoom call. You can stay on camera. You don't have to be on camera, whatever you want to do, but get the help you need. It's out there, it's free. These calls are, there's no charge for these calls. Get that help that you need. Lastly, I definitely want to give you the message that I give every podcast. If you have been medicated for your diabetes, be careful making these changes. Your meds have been added to your life because of the way you ate in the past. If you change the way you eat, you're going to need to change those medications. If you do not, you can drive your blood sugar so low that it becomes deadly. It can be very dangerous. You are not doing this work so that you have early death because of these meds on board and not paying attention. You need to pay very close attention. You also need to contact your primary, whoever the provider is that has prescribed your diabetes meds. You need to contact them and you need to let them know I am making these changes and I want to come off my meds. How can I share my blood sugars with you? And they are going to tell you what they want you to do. Email them, upload them on the portal, call their nurse, whatever it is, they're going to tell you, I want you to share these blood sugars with me in this way.
[00:24:36] And then you're going to ask them, how can I expect to hear what changes you want me to make in my meds from you? And they're going to tell you, I'll call you in for an appointment. I'll have my nurse call you. I'll send you an email. They're going to tell you exactly how to do that. You must have this line of communication open with your provider or you can get very, very sick. So I need you to hear that if you need to know what to eat, if you're not sure, like you're like, I don't even know what this looks like. This is all new to you. I have help for you. There is a 14 days to better blood sugar guide. You can find that at my website, delanemd.com forward slash better. If for some reason you can't get it there, sometimes these links get broken. Send me an email, delanemd.com and I will email it to you. But this is 14 days. Again, very powerful. You're gonna have to have a conversation with your doctor before you start these 14 days if you're medicated because it's a very powerful 14 day guide that will lead to letter better blood sugars for you. Okay, so you can check that out and if you have any questions, you can always email me delanemd.com.
[00:25:39] lastly, if you are finding benefits from this podcast, please rate it. Please review it on your podcast player. The more times this podcast is rated and reviewed, the more people get to see this, the more the podcast player puts it into new in front of new people. Recognize nine out of ten americans have insulin resistance. If we look for it, they have insulin resistance. Again, this is not biology guide. This is genetics. This is an element of the food we eat. People need to hear they do not need to be sick with diabetes for the rest of their life. The more people that write and review this podcast, the more the podcast player puts this out so other people can hear this message too. So if you could do that, that would be great.
[00:26:19] I will be back next week, but until then, keep listening. Keep avoiding the foods that make you sick. Keep making choices for your health, your vitality, and your longevity. And I will see you next week. Bye.
