Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You are listening to episode number 295 of Better Blood Sugars with Delane MD.
[00:00:07] Welcome to Better Blood Sugars with Delaine MD where you can learn strategies to lower your blood sugars and improve your overall health. I'm your host, Dr. Delaine 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.
[00:00:29] Hey there, and welcome to the podcast. I'm so glad you're taking some time for you and your health today. I feel privileged that you're spending it with me, and I feel privileged that you're listening and not actually with me. I just tested positive for Covid. We were on vacation in Chicago this spring break, and I started feeling really draggy yesterday, and my throat hurt all night long, and I was congested, and I thought maybe it was prayed, maybe it was allergies, but it turns out I have Covid, so my head's a little thick and foggy. Bear with me. Certainly you always know if I say anything in this podcast that does not make sense and you're trying to decide if I've given some groundbreaking piece of information or if it's my, you know, Covid talking, don't hesitate ever to email me. Delanelainemd.com I answer all those emails, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Today. I want to talk about what it means and how we start to see better blood sugars. Really? How better blood sugars and how insulin resistance and how your diabetes kind of all go together. Many people try to fix their diabetes. They try to try to, quote, unquote, reverse it. And I don't know that I love the idea of reversing it. You're not erasing anything. When you see better blood sugars, you're simply starting to live in alignment with your biology. That's all that's happening. But. But lots of times people try to do this by just focusing on their blood sugars, and they'll see really great results. They might do keto or they might cut their carbs to like 50 or 60 grams of carbs per day. And their blood sugars definitely drop. And after meals, their blood sugars look really, really good. Their fastings may be lingering in the low 100s, 115, that range, but they're so much better than they've been before. They're frequently. They'll see an improvement in their A1C.
[00:02:24] And they hold tightly to that strict low carb, higher fat, higher protein diet. And they'll believe you will believe you've done it. Like it's a victory count. One in the score books for me. Until a birthday party comes along or a barbecue comes along over the, you know, the summer's coming, there's going to be, you know, Memorial Day, Labor Day, you know, Fourth of July, barbecues coming along, or the holidays come around and they try eating. This is what I hear. I just ate just this one thing. One cookie, one piece of pie, one roll, one serving of stuffing, one ice cream, whatever it is, they just ate that one thing. And their blood sugars shoot up like fireworks. They skyrocket and they get really frustrated. They come to me and they're like, what gives?
[00:03:14] It is really easy in this moment, in this situation to feel defeated and to worry that you're never going to be able to fix your blood sugars. You're never going to be able to reverse your diabetes. And I want to offer. As far as what I know about the cause of type 2 diabetes, this story entirely tracks. It makes perfect sense. And it doesn't surprise me when people come to me and they tell me this. So today I want to discuss what the root cause of type 2 diabetes is and how the activities that you engage in create abnormal biology, abnormal metabolism, abnormal cell activity, and invariably, how they create abnormal blood sugars. These activities are certainly, you know, one of them is the way we eat, certainly the way we exercise, but also the way we sleep.
[00:04:11] You know, how much sleep we're taking each day, the way we're managing stress, along with a few other things like the impact of inflammation and toxins on our biology. These are the things that are creating the diabetes. They are creating the higher blood sugars. I want to talk about how we fix those things.
[00:04:32] And then that, of course, creates normal functioning biology. Your body starts to behave normal, your cells start to behave normally, and when they do that, you can tolerate a piece of birthday cake and your sugars don't skyrocket. You can tolerate barbecue, you can tolerate a holiday treat, and you don't see horribly abnormal blood sugars with that.
[00:04:59] And this is because you actually fix the cause. So we are going to talk about that. But before we get started, I want to give you the med warning that I give on every podcast. If you are medicated for your type 2 diabetes, understand that you have been medicated for the way you have eaten in the past. If you do the things that I recommend on these podcast episodes and change the way you live your life and the way you eat and and your body starts to heal. You're gonna need to adjust your meds because you're doing things differently and you are medicated for the way you were living before. If you're living differently, you need to adjust those meds. How you're going to do this is you're going to open a line of communication up with the provider who prescribed these medications. Call them, ask them, ask their nurse, how should you. How should I share my blood sugar logs with you? And then ask them how you can expect to hear medication change recommendations back from them. Some docs want you to call their nurse once a week or once a day. Some docs want you to email it. Some people will have you upload it on a portal. Whatever it is, they have a way they want you to share your information with them and then they have a way that they're going to share the information that they need you to hear from them with you. Get that line of communication open. If you don't, you can end up quite sick making these changes.
[00:06:25] The kind of sick that looks like an ER visit, hospitalization, and possibly even death. And you're not making these changes to end up in that boat, in that category. So open a line of communication up with your provider so you can do this carefully, wisely, and start to see the results you're looking for. If you're not sure what you need to be eating to see better blood sugars, I have help for you. You can go to my website, delanemd.com better b e t T E R. Go there and you can download my 14 days to better Blood sugars guide. This is a very clear guide set with breakfast, lunch and dinner menus. You eat those things and you will see your blood sugars drop, hands down. No question. I've yet to have anybody call me and say my blood sugars didn't get better. What I have seen is people call me and they're like they totally got better. But I don't know that I can live like that forever and that's okay too. If that happens, set up a better blood sugars assessment. Call with me. You do not have to eat those same 14 days worth of meat meals for the rest of your life. I don't eat like that anymore because my cells healed up. So you can heal your cells, but doing it like, how do you gauge when your cells are healed? That's something we can talk about on the better blood sugars Assessment call. You can schedule that at calendly.com forward/delainemd call. So calendly is C-A L E N D L Y.com forward slash dash E-L-A-N-E-M-D C A L L. That will get you to my calendar. You can schedule a an assessment call and we will go from there and get you set up on how the things that you can be doing going forward to live a naturally healthy life without medications. If for some reason you have a hard time getting to that calendar, you can always send me a message. Delanemd.com so what is insulin resistance? Insulin resistance is simply when your cells are resistant, they are not functioning in the presence of insulin the way that they should. A normal healthy cell is going to be in the presence of insulin, bind that insulin, open up, bring sugar inside, and burn that sugar off as fuel. That's what happens in a healthy situation. In an insulin resistant cell, for whatever reason, either they're not binding the insulin or the insulin isn't causing the cell to open up the way it should. Whatever is happening, your cells are not functioning appropriately in the presence of insulin, which means you're not fueling your cells effectively and the cells don't behave correctly. That's what comes down to. It's similar like if you think of an analogy of a car, you have gas or oil that you put into the car so that the engine will run effectively, producing movement, producing transportation in your body. Your cells are the car and you're inputting nutrient and food and then your output, you know, in a car, your output is transportation. In a car or in your cell, your output is performance, right? Like they're healthy and they're doing the function of the cell effectively and everything's working the way it should. When you're insulin resistant, you're putting, it's like putting bad gas or oil into the car. Like it will run for a while, but eventually it will stop.
[00:10:16] And you could tow that car everywhere you need to go, but it's not the same as your car running and performing the way it should perform.
[00:10:27] How you fix that?
[00:10:29] This is what I want to talk about today is kind of how do you fix the cells?
[00:10:35] If you put bad oil? If you've ever owned a diesel car, you know you can't put standard gas into a diesel car.
[00:10:41] If you've ever put the wrong oil into your lawnmower or your car, your car just does not perform correctly. And if you want to fix that, especially if you put like unleaded gas into a diesel tank. You've got to take your car to the mechanic and they take it all apart again. It's not running, it's not doing what it's supposed to do, and they fix it and it heals up. When you're fixing insulin resistance, recognize you can feed your body low carb foods and produce normal blood sugars, but it doesn't mean your cells are functioning normally. It's like towing your car around. I mean, it moves, but it's not functioning normally. It's like when you're running the car on the bad gas, it sputters, it stops, it like coughs all the time. It runs, but not normally. This is what is happening with your cells when you're feeding your cells nutrients that they're not meant to eat.
[00:11:45] And that's what the fix is to fixing type 2 diabetes, right? So you have to stop that. And maybe your cells still aren't functioning correctly, but over time they heal.
[00:11:59] You have to stop driving your car, take it to the mechanic, let them break things apart, let them clean things out. It's not going to run. But over the time period as the mechanic is fixing it, they heal and then they start performing appropriately.
[00:12:15] This is what happens with your cells as well.
[00:12:21] Again, you can. Your cells will function when they're sick, but eventually, like your car, they will stop functioning. That's when we see the negative outcomes of type 2 diabetes.
[00:12:34] So I want you to realize this is something I feel like I talk about a lot. But your numbers, the output, the transportation of the car, the car moving from point A to point B is not what makes it healthy. Because it will do that even when it doesn't have the right fuel in, just does it badly. The way the machine runs, the way the car runs is what is healthy, what is like normal. Your cells, their function is what's normal, not your blood sugar reading. That is not what's normal. Because I can help you get normal blood sugar readings. And your cells never repair and function correctly.
[00:13:16] What is healthy is not the blood sugar reading. What is healthy is the activity that you are doing every day. And this is what fixes your type 2 diabetes.
[00:13:29] Your cells are supposed to run on nutrients, on fuel that you feed them and do a certain action. Muscle cells contract, heart cells beat, liver cells detoxify, skin cells, you know are a barrier. Your cells have a function they're supposed to do, and they'll do it poorly with bad fuel.
[00:13:51] But feeding them, correct food, correct fuel, correct nutrients, that is how you Allow those cells to fix, right?
[00:14:00] Towing your car is not the same as your car. Driving your cells beating, but not metabolizing your nutrients appropriately is not the same either.
[00:14:10] Bad fuel makes your car sick, and bad fuel makes your human being sick.
[00:14:15] So how do we stop this? This is the question. What is causing this?
[00:14:21] There are a lot of things that cause insulin resistance. There are a lot of things that cause your blood sugars to go up or down.
[00:14:30] Drinking alcohol is a great example. Drinking alcohol will cause your blood sugars to go down, but it's not healthy. If your margarita has a bunch of sours in it, it is sugar. And so it's not just the alcohol, but alcohol itself alone actually causes your blood sugars to go down. Your liver stops metabolizing any nutrient and starts detoxifying the poison that you just put into your body. Recognize, like low blood sugars doesn't mean you're healthy, okay? And that is what I need you to hear. What you need to start doing is focusing on the actions. Are you feeding your human body human food or processed food? Because processed food is not human food. Some people will call it Frankenstein food, or some people will call it recreational food. There is no kind of like recreational drugs. There's no need. Your human body doesn't need any of that ever, forever, for the rest of your life. There were humans long before there were Twinkies, and they lived their entire life without any Twinkies. And they were probably better for is recreational food. There's no need for it. So what causes insulin resistance?
[00:15:44] First, processed foods. If you're heavily focused on convenient food, if you're heavily focused on packaged food, if you're not able to cook food, whatever it is, those foods are the foods that typically lead to type 2 diabetes.
[00:16:04] Realizing that. So I coach women on this all the time. I frequently hear, but I've got to eat something. My response to that is, if you have excess adipose tissue, Adipose is stored energy. Adiposes fat tissue. That's what it's called. I don't love that term, so I don't use it frequently. But adipose tissue is literally meant to store energy for another time when you need it. So if you have adipose on your body, you already have a meal you've eaten, you can tap into that. You don't need to continue to feed yourself food that's going to make you sick.
[00:16:41] Okay? So recognizing the food that you put into your body is the fuel that we put into a car. If you put bad fuel into your car, it Will run badly. If you put bad nutrients into your human body, it will metabolize badly. Diabetes is a metabolic disease. It is primarily attached to the food we eat. The second big cause of insulin resistance that we see is muscle and exercise.
[00:17:13] Muscle is metabolically active, so it burns nutrients even when we're not contracting. Number one. Number two, muscle is the primary storehouse in the human body to pull glucose out of the bloodstream and store it. When glucose is running around in your bloodstream and your blood sugar is 180, you're constantly sending a message to your pancreas to spit out more insulin. But your cells are insulin resistant. So it doesn't matter how much insulin comes out. Your cells are really resistant to doing anything with it.
[00:17:50] That insulin, that high insulin level keeps your cells insulin resistant. It's like somebody's screaming at your cells and your cells are plugging their ears going, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it.
[00:18:04] The high insulin levels are one part that leads to your cells being insulin resistant. And if your cells aren't doing what they're supposed to in the presence of insulin, but your blood sugar is continuing to drive your pancreas to make insulin, this keeps you in a cycle and keeps you sick.
[00:18:23] Muscle is the primary place in your human body that will take that blood sugar out of the bloodstream and store it, Meaning that there's no longer a message going to the pancreas saying, make more insulin. Make more insulin. Make more insulin. That allows your insulin level to drop. That allows your cells to unplug their ears and start re sensitizing, re listening, starting to listen again to the insulin that's in your system when it shows up.
[00:18:53] Muscle and exercise is a huge component of why we're insulin resistant.
[00:18:59] We have. We are in an epidemic of what we call sarcopenia. Small muscles, not enough muscle. We need to build bigger muscles. And that is a huge component of one of the activities that you can do. First being food, second being exercise. There's no amount of exercise you're going to do that's going to burn off a twinkie. A twinkie is still toxic. But exercise is the second most important thing that you can do. If you are interested in reversing your diabetes, if you're interested in normalizing your insulin function. And I would offer that. I used to say it was like 80, 20 split. I don't know that that's true anymore. With the latest information that I've come across, I really think it's much closer to half and half.
[00:19:43] Exercise and food have pretty equal effects. They must go together. You're not going to normalize your metabolism and your biology without both the other things that really impact our insulin resistance. Sleep studies have repeatedly shown that keeping a diet steady, the food you eat, the fuel you feed your body, and restricting sleep by one to two hours a night creates insulin resistance with blood sugars that move into the pre diabetic range in just one week.
[00:20:18] It is powerful. Human animals are meant to sleep. If you are not doing that, and the human animal needs somewhere between seven and nine hours is what we think.
[00:20:31] If you're getting six, if you're consistently getting seven, it probably isn't enough and you are probably driving that insulin level too high and creating insulin resistance.
[00:20:44] Another action that we do, the actions. Remember guys, actions are what create your health. Not your blood sugars, not your numbers. Actions, food, exercise, sleep. Another one. Stress. Managing your cortisol.
[00:20:59] Cortisol drives blood sugars up. Why? Because 10,000 years ago, when that system evolved or designed, however you want to look at it, what you were stressed about was something trying to kill you and you needed to run. And in order to run, you had to increase the sugar content, the glucose, the fuel that would go to your muscles so that you could fuel them to run. This is exactly what's supposed to happen in the setting of stress. If you are not managing your stress correctly, you're going to have higher blood sugars. We were never like naturally biologically designed to manage stressors that come from arguments of loved ones, bills, unexpected bills to pay, tests, I don't know, whatever else we stress about bad drivers, like that's my big one, right? That's the one that I really had to work on. We were never meant to manage that. That is not what that system was set up to do. But that's how it responds.
[00:22:04] So if you're not managing your stress, that is another activity that you have agency, you have a way to affect and change your biology and your insulin resistance. There are many others.
[00:22:18] Inflammation is a big one that comes to mind. Toxins. So inflammation and food. Like if you're eating processed foods, there are a lot of inflammatory chemicals and foods, flowers, sugars, alcohol and others that cause inflammation in our food. But there's other things, there's other exposures to toxins, molds, non natural chemicals, all sorts of things that we get exposed to. And then there's also adiposity. Adiposity leads to inflammation. We know that there is A threshold of adipose tissue collection on our human bodies that will change that tissue into being inflammatory. It calls in inflammatory agents and it creates inflammation.
[00:23:01] There are a lot of other things that go into insulin resistance that have not like very little to do with the less to do with the food you're eating and your blood sugars. Those. That blood sugar that you read is a marker. Right. Like your car driving. Right. Like, I can remember when my kids started driving, I was trying to find a car, but it couldn't go far. I didn't want to have such a great car that they could drive too far away. I wanted to like die on the outskirts of town. Right. So they couldn't get too far away and get into too much trouble is really what it came down to. So I wanted my kids to have a little bit of an unhealthy car. But certainly that outcome of being able to drive for long distances is an indicator of the health of the engine. Your blood sugar is an indicator of the health of your metabolism. Yes, that's all fine and well and true, but it is not the fix to the issue. All right.
[00:24:00] A lot of times we use these different things. The food, the exercise, the stress, the sleep, the others, the inflammation, the, you know, toxins, the adiposity. We do si do with these and we focus more on one and less on another and focus more on another and less than 1 until you get the results that you're looking for.
[00:24:18] And when you think about this dance that goes together and most people that I have ever worked with have had to focus on almost every single one of these at some point and clean up, get a little gain on every single one of these aspects in order to get the health that they are looking for. It's almost like this is the way our bodies were meant to live. Like this is an alignment. That's the word. The phrasing I use all the time. We have to align with our biology. And if we don't, we're going to be out of whack a little bit. So how do we fix it? How do we repair the car? You know, again, take our car to a mechanic. I always joke that my mechanics a magician. I have no idea how he fix it, but fixes it. But I'm always so grateful when he does.
[00:25:05] But the things that I know about, I know about this metabolic business. I know about this biology business. I know a lot of places to start to fix that.
[00:25:17] I always encourage people to start with the big players. Start with the four big ones, the food the exercise, the sleep and the stress. I've done podcasts on all of these, so if you look back through my podcasts, you can find them. I am not going to dive into all of them or this will be a three hour podcast and I don't do those. I think they're helpful. I listen to some three hours, but these are meant to be shorter bites. To help give you a boost on Monday morning to go forward, I did a podcast number 289 dives into food, what to eat, what to avoid, and why. I've done many, many, many, many, many podcasts and you probably, if you've listened to more than this podcast, you have heard me say we are the only animals on all of the planet that are not eating the food that the earth makes for us. Squirrels do not complain about acorns and ask for pizza. Deer does not get bored with grass and ask for Chinese food. We are the only animal that says, I see your lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes, but I don't think I'm going to eat that. I'm going to eat red bowls and Doritos and then we can't figure out why we're sick. That food.
[00:26:17] If you want a real simple rule of thumb, the question you should ask every time you eat something is, did that food grow on the earth? And if the answer is no, the second question I want you to ask is, will that food make me have diabetes?
[00:26:34] Maybe cottage cheese didn't grow on the I haven't found the cottage cheese bush. Yes, yet. If you find it, let me know. Cottage cheese did not grow on the earth. But hey, cottage cheese ain't causing nobody to be diabetic. That is not your problem, child. A Snickers bar, on the other hand, did not grow on the earth and will cause you to be diabetic. Recognizing that, this is a great place to start. But there are also a lot of really helpful books. There is a book by Chris Von Touliken called Ultra Processed People. There is a book by Ben Beckman called why We Get Sick. And then there's Dr. Lustig's great metabolical that I love. All of these dive deeply. These are great primers. Pick one of them and they will clearly identify why processed foods are the issue.
[00:27:18] Exercise is the next thing I always tell people to lean on, my friend. Lift heavy shit. Build bigger muscles. Cardio is not enough. I need you to build bigger muscles. You don't need to get beefy. You don't need to look like arnold Schwarzenegger circa 1985.
[00:27:37] You just need to start lifting things that feel heavy and hard to lift. I don't want you to hurt yourself. Don't go getting crazy, friends. But it will require you to work for it.
[00:27:47] Building better muscles builds a bigger space for you to store glucose outside of your bloodstream and inside of the muscle cell. And that means that you are not stimulating the pancreas to make more insulin. Building bigger muscles helps you store glucose outside of the bloodstream and fix your insulin resistance. You can check out episode number 290 of my podcast. It goes into this Sleep Find Information podcast. I did number 265 on sleep. There is also a TED Talk by Matt walker. It is 20 minutes. Well worth the time to spend it to let you know how important sleep is. It's called Sleep as Our Superpower. He also has a book, it's called why We Sleep. He has been on many, many podcasts. In fact, I think he has a podcast. Search his name Matt Walker and you can hear interviews with him. All of this is free and it's tons of really great info and it will tell you why sleep is only for metabolic health, but also for cancer, for all sorts of things.
[00:28:48] Stress. You can find the interview that I did with Eva Whitmer, lpc. She's a counselor. I always forget what lpc. Licensed Practical Counselor. I don't think that's right. Licensed Professional Counselor, I think is it. But she is episode number 265. I did an interview with her. We talked about trauma and stress and the response in our body, the physiology of stress and response in our body.
[00:29:12] You can find that number 265. And then lastly I did a podcast with Dr. Dr. Amy Beheimer. She is a pharmacist and she actually does work with people on autoimmune disorders. So she and it's podcast number 239. We covered a lot about inflammation and toxins and kind of the different things that you can do to start seeing these in your life so you can start cleaning it up. That's another really helpful podcast. If I went into all of these again, those 30 minute podcasts, this would be the longest podcast ever.
[00:29:45] If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to me. Delanedelanemd.com but my friend, there is help.
[00:29:51] I always ask women when they're like, I just don't know that it's going to work for me. I don't know that I'm going to be able to do it. I think there's something genetically driving this. And I want to ask you, are you doing everything that you can to live healthy?
[00:30:03] Maybe there needs to be a revision on what it means to be healthy. If you're holding on to the story that the food industry wants to give you about a little bit's okay, I want you to know that that is not true. That does not match your biology. And if that is keeping you stuck like we need to redefine what health means to you and all of it's available. There is help and there's lots of help out there. There's free help and then there's always hiring me as a coach. This is what I help people do. This is my jam. This is what I believe first do no harm is, which is an oath I took when I graduated medical school. And it seriously getting the things out of your life that are causing you to be sick is first do no harm. And that's what this podcast is dedicated to. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to me again. Delanend.com that is all I have this week and I'll talk to you next week. But until then, keep listening. Keep avoiding foods that are making you sick, and keep making choices for your health, your longevity and your vitality. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
