[00:00:00] You are listening to episode number 248 of Better Blood Sugars with Delaine, Md.
[00:00:07] 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 Vaughan. 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] Hello there. Welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:34] Thank you for joining me today. Thank you for taking out some time out of your day, some time that you're dedicating to you. Thank you for choosing to spending it, spend it with me, and thank you for committing to your health. I think it's important that we recognize these things that we're doing for ourselves and the things that we're doing for our health. So today we are going to talk about the three keys that really most women fall into one of these categories. These are three key things that we can do to improve our blood sugars. And most women fall into one of these three categories as kind of their starting place. They're like, oh, I didn't know this, or oh, I just need to do this, or oh, I need to stop doing this. These are the three keys that, again, all three of them can be used in any one human woman to fix or have better blood sugars. But most of us find that there is one specific thing of these three options or these three categories that we kind of fall into. So I want to talk about what they are and I'm also going to give some great books. There are at least resources and books that I've read that I feel help along the path of these different categories. So let's dive in. The three things that we're going to talk about are information. Like there are, you know, some women just need information. They need to have a little bit more information to help them break up with certain foods that are making them sick. I've got two books that I really highly recommend for that some other women need a strategy. They're like, I know that this food is a problem, but I don't know how to do it differently and they just need a strategy. And I've got a couple recommendations for books for that also. Lastly, some women have mindset issues or motivation issues. These are coaching issues and there are a number of books that really dive into these issues. So we're going to go into all of these things specifically and where women get hung up with this. And I want you to determine which strategy or which maybe category you fall into. Are you needing more information? Do you need a better strategy? Do you need to unpack some of your brain's self sabotaging behaviors? What is it that you need? And then, you know, dive into some of these book recommendations to start, start, you know, unpacking or fixing this part of your life. Okay, so some women just need more information.
[00:03:01] They don't understand what causes their high blood sugars because medicine and diet mentality or diet culture or our society in general promote that. This is a blood sugar issue and you need to fix your sugar. Like you need to change your sugar intake. They don't understand that the food that they eat and how it translates really truly into their higher blood sugars. They simply believe they need less sugars and less sugar eaten will be less sugar in your blood. They don't realize what the underlying issue truly is, is this insulin issue. They need to fix their insulin levels and their insulin function in order for them to see better blood sugars.
[00:03:41] When I am educating people or women about what causes type two diabetes, frequently they're shocked to hear that insulin is the issue, not sugar.
[00:03:53] Again, yes, the blood sugars. And I've said this before in the podcast, your blood sugars are a problem. High blood sugars, elevated blood sugars, the level of blood sugars that create type two diabetes, the diagnosis of type two diabetes, they are a problem. They are toxic to your body. However, fixing blood sugars is not going to fix your diabetes.
[00:04:14] Elevated blood sugars are simply a sign of a deeper issue of insulin resistance. You can eat low sugar foods and still be insulin resistant. You can have low blood sugars and still be insulin resistant. The disease is not the blood sugar. The disease is the insulin resistance. And you must fix the insulin before you can fix the blood sugars. Frequently, this is news to women, and this is a knowledge deficit issue. This is not an issue of strategy. Once you figure out that I got to fix insulin, I got to stop focusing on blood sugar, you start putting your mind to work finding ways to fix the insulin issue.
[00:05:00] Sometimes it's as simple as this piece of information.
[00:05:04] That's all that's required to create the changes that women need in their health for seeing better blood sugars. Understanding that highly processed foods are high in carbs and sugars. These carbs and sugars cause your body to make too much insulin. Then your cells become exposed to these high concentration of insulin over a prolonged period of time, and that's what creates insulin resistance. Sometimes we just need that particular piece of information.
[00:05:32] When your cells are resistant to the effect of insulin, it allows your blood sugars to climb. And after a period of time, like overexposure, like, too much time with this high level of insulin, that's what keeps your blood sugars high. Your blood sugars climb when your cells are insulin resistant. And over time, eventually those sugars climb out of the normal range. And that's what we pick up as type two diabetes. The fix to this is you have to stop eating foods that create high insulin levels all the time, like high, prolonged insulin responses. You have to stop eating that way. Processed foods are the most common culprit for this. They are high in flour and sugar, and flour is a carbohydrate that is converted into sugar in your body. So a lot of times, people are like, but I eat saltines, I eat crackers. I mean, they aren't sweet. I eat bread, I eat pasta. It's not sweet. It isn't sweet. So, in your brain, it may not seem like sugar, but recognize, your body still converts that, that flour, the bread, the saltines, the crackers, the pastas, your body still converts that into glucose. Okay, so if you're only avoiding sugars because. Right, because sugar equals high blood sugars, that's kind of what we think. If you're only avoiding the sugars but you're still eating the flowery foods, you're still not going to see the results you're wanting. In order to fix the insulin issue, you must understand which foods are causing your body to make too much insulin. This is a knowledge issue. Okay, so what is a processed food? For me, what I teach my clients, a general rule, is a processed food is anything that comes from a box, a wrapper, or bag. These are foods that you cannot find on the surface of the earth in a natural setting. These are foods that are only available if a human being is there making them. These are processed foods. Humans don't make bell peppers, cucumbers, or lettuce.
[00:07:26] Humans don't make chickens or cows. Humans don't make apples or berries. The earth makes those foods. Those foods are natural foods. Those are the foods you need to focus on. Humans. We make chips and crackers and candies and breads and pastas and all of those things. Those are the foods that cause insulin resistance. Knowing how your insulin responds to the foods that you eat is the knowledge that you need to start seeing better blood sugars. So some recommendations, some book recommendations, some great places you can find some really good knowledge. Ultra processed people by Chris von Tulikan. I love this book. I don't love everything about this book. Some in the beginning of the book, he talks about, I don't know, it almost makes it sound like humans aren't able to make a choice. Like they don't have control over what they eat or how hungry they are. And I think we do have a lot more control over that. Everything else in this book is golden. Um, doctor Van Tulek, and he's a primary care provider, physician in Britain. He goes through different categories of food ingredients and additives and talks about how they impact insulin, insulin resistance, metabolic health, your general health. Again, this is a knowledge issue. These foods are a problem because of these issues. So I really, really highly recommend ultra processed people. It was actually recommended by listeners, so thank you again for that. I really have loved this book. I highly recommend that the other ones that I recommend are Michael Moss's books. So he did salt, sugar, fat a number of years ago. The byline of that book is how the food giants hooked us. Love it. Brilliant. Great book. He's got a new one out. It's called hooked, and I'm currently in the middle of that book. It's another really great book. Michael Moss's work is fabulous, as when he looks into. He's basically a writer and journalist who goes in and exposes kind of our food industry for where they're not serving us and maybe doing things underhandedly that are keeping us hooked on foods that are making us sick. So highly recommend those books. When you're trying to determine what foods are really processed foods and what foods are, um, making you insulin resistant. So sometimes women need strategies. This is kind of the second category, right? They need strategies. They understand that they need to normalize their insulin function. But how I describe the function or the process of fixing your insulin resistance at a cellular level, I use an analogy of a sunburn. When your skin gets sunburned, you have to pull your skin out of the sun in order to allow it to heal. If you go back into the sun before your skin has entirely healed, you reburn and damage your skin again. And this burn occurs more quickly than it would had you allowed your skin to entirely heal prior to going back in the sun.
[00:10:21] Understanding that you can get more than one sunburn in a lifetime, right. You can entirely heal from a sunburn. But if you go out and overexpose your cells or your skin, I guess, to the sun again, you can reburn.
[00:10:35] How long does it take to heal from a sunburn? Well, that depends. The answer to that question is unique. As unique as the individual with the skin is. Right. Like, it depends on a lot of different things to determine how long it takes your skin to heal from a sunburn, but it takes as long as it takes. Right. Like, you can't rush it. There's no way to speed it up. So I use this analogy of healing your cells from insulin resistance, similar to healing your skin from sunburn. And this example of the sunburn, your cells are the skin, and your insulin is the sun, and insulin resistance is the burn. Okay. When your cells are insulin resistant, when they're sunburnt, you have to bring them out of contact with the insulin, the sun, in order for them to heal. If you don't allow the cells to heal entirely before you re expose them to high insulin levels, you're going to get resistant again. You're going to reburn quickly.
[00:11:32] This is. This will happen more quickly than it would had you. Like, if you're going to re stimulate insulin resistance, if you do not allow an entire healing of your cells, okay. Like, your skin, even after it's healed, you can get a sunburn again, even if you get overexposed.
[00:11:53] Whenever you get overexposed to the sun, you can get sunburned again. So even after your insulin function and your cells have normalized, you develop, you can redevelop insulin resistance. That is just like, you can get another sunburn. Okay. So I always tell women, a little bit of sun is okay, but you're gonna burn if you get too much. Same thing. Insulin is not bad. The sun is not a problem. Insulin is not bad. But if your cells become resistant there, your cells will become resistant. Like, your skin will get burned by the sun, even if you get too much. Right? Like, there's a poem, um, that I remember from my childhood, and it's like, even the sun burns if you get too much. And insulin isn't a problem, and it's a good thing, and it works in our body. It has a biological role, but if you get overexposed, you will get burned. Okay, so what do you do to limit. This is a strategy issue. What do you do to limit the concentration of insulin produced when you're eating food?
[00:12:50] Number one, you avoid foods that create a lot of insulin. Processed foods, again, are the primary culprit of this. I call this strategy cleaning up your diet. My coaching program, you know, it means breaking up. Like, when I am coaching women on this, I talk to them about, you need to break up with processed foods, at least for a while, until the sunburn heals.
[00:13:11] This means that the foods, this means that you eat foods that don't produce tons of insulin, and then that allows your cells to not be produced or exposed to a bunch of insulin, and they can heal it. Also, I also recommend intermittent fasting. That's another strategy.
[00:13:28] This is a style of eating where you spend a certain time frame, a certain amount of time hours each day without food in your system. And what that means is you're not exposing your cells to insulin. We call this a fast. During this time, your cells have an opportunity when they're not exposed to insulin, when they're not exposed to the sun, they have the opportunity to heal. Okay. The more faithful you are at keeping your cells out of the insulin, out of exposure to insulin, it's kind of like the more faithful you are to keeping your skin from being exposed to any sun, the more quickly they heal.
[00:14:04] Now, yes, there will likely be some insulin exposure, kind of like there's going to be sun exposure. Even if you're inside and you have windows, unless they're covered by dark, dark curtains, heavy curtains, there is going to be some sunlight getting in, and your skin will be exposed to some sunlight. The same thing. No matter what you do, there's going to be some insulin exposure. But the less exposure you can keep. Like, if you can keep your cells from being exposed to a lot of insulin, if you can keep them exposed to just a very small amount of insulin, you're going to heal them up quicker. So even when you're fasting, there will be some insulin, and that's okay. But the less exposure you have to the insulin insulin, the more quickly you are going to heal those cells.
[00:14:48] So if you're combining this fasting component with not eating foods that create a super concentration of insulin, all of these things together are going to help heal your cells as quickly as possible.
[00:15:02] These two strategies together will lead to normal cell function and better blood sugars over time. So the two books that I recommend to teach strategies for improving cell function and normalizing your insulin resistance. An oldie but goodie, Jason Fung's the diabetes code. It's golden. It is old. Gosh, I bet it's over ten years old now. It's a great book, though, and really does teach the basics about insulin resistance and type two diabetes. Another one, a newer one, is a really great book. It doesn't only address diabetes, it addresses all things that are related to insulin. It's by doctor Ben Bickman. He's a PhD. I think he's at Brigham Young, and he is kind of the hottest insulin researcher out there right now. He's got all the latest, greatest news about insulin, but that is primarily what he researches as insulin, insulin function. So, um, why we get sick? Ben Bikman. It's Bikman. And then the diabetes code by Jason Fung teaches a lot of great strategies for normalizing insulin function.
[00:16:03] Lastly, women sometimes need help from themselves. They need to improve the relationship with themselves. So if you've seen the discover card commercial, I think it's hilarious. It's with an actress named Jennifer Coolidge, and she's walking around the grocery store. She's grocery shopping, and there's this man following her. It's her bodyguard. And she's like, now, what are you? You? And he's like, my body. I'm your bodyguard. And she's like, and what do you do? And she's like, I protect you. And her question is, well, what are you protecting me from? And his answer is, mostly from yourself. It's very, very funny. I think that commercial is hilarious. And I think about it, but I think about it mostly when I'm thinking about this relationship with ourselves. Sometimes we need to be protected from ourselves. Lots of women need this. This is an issue of equality, of relationship, of the relationship that we have with ourselves.
[00:16:53] If you find that you cannot be around certain foods, you can't be around the candy jar, you can't be around the donuts in the break room, you can't have chips in your home, you've had to clear all the junk food out of your house because you don't trust yourself around them, this is an issue with your relationship with yourself. If you find that you have to eat a meal that's quote unquote good for you before you go somewhere, because they're going to have food available, and you worry you might eat the food that's there, even when you know it's not good for your health. This is an issue of your relationship with yourself.
[00:17:25] If you find that you are avoiding nights out with your girlfriends or date nights with your significant other or parties or family get togethers because you might lose control and eat something that makes your blood sugars higher, this is a reflection of the quality of the relationship that you have with yourself.
[00:17:41] If you have not built a relationship with yourself where you can trust yourself to do what's necessary for your health, to do what your body needs, this is an. This is an area we have to fix the fix to this is a coaching issue and it really does take a long time. You know, my coaching program is three months of one on one coaching and then long term group coaching available to my clients. And the reason that it's long term is because the fix to improving the relationship with yourself is a very long, tedious one. We're not taught this. I think it's just insane that we are taught so many amazing things in the public education system, in college, in society. There's a lot of really amazing things that we're taught. However, we are not taught how to manage our relationship with ourselves. Everybody's heard. I mean, we all know the Gottman's teaching about relationships with one another, with our husbands and our, you know, our spouses and our loved ones. We're all taught these things. These things are pretty common knowledge. Relationship with yourself, though, that's like a foreign entity. We don't even discuss.
[00:18:50] To fix the relationship with yourself, it really requires a brutal, a really harsh, stark honesty that's loving and compassionate. We're not taught how to do that. The fix to the relationship with ourselves requires learning how to trust yourself that you're not going to be a bitch even when you fail and you don't get it right, that you're going to look at it, you're going to glean the information that you need from it, but you're not going to beat yourself up and berate yourself over it. The fix to the relationship with yourself is knowing that even when you try and you're. And you fail, which you will fail, you're going to make a plan and you're going to believe that plan fixes a problem. And maybe it does. Like, maybe the problem is hunger and you're going to fix that problem. But what you're going to realize when you implement or execute that plan is that the timing was off and it didn't quite work right.
[00:19:43] Even when that happens, you are going to know, you are going to believe, you are going to trust that you're still whole, your value is intact, and you're going to keep trying at it until you figure it out. That is the fix that improves the relationship with yourself. This is exactly what my group program helps women do. If you just need to know not to eat chocolate cake, that's awesome. Let me tell you right now, girl, don't eat chocolate cake. Your blood sugar should get better if you continue to eat chocolate cake even though you know it's a problem. That's what my group program is for.
[00:20:21] If you don't believe that you can do this. If you have a thought in your brain like, I don't know that I can invest the money in that group program because I don't believe I'm going to do it. I tend to start things. I quit them. I'm not, not sure that I'm going to complete it. I know how I am around this food. I just can't be trusted around it. I need something else. If you believe for some reason that you're not able to do this, if you don't think you can live in a world that has Oreos without eating them, if you've tried a hundred times and quit or failed or simply not created the health results you want. My group program has been designed to fix this part of your life.
[00:20:54] Recommendations that I have for women who are ready to start working on this relationship with themselves. One, set up a better blood sugars assessment call. Make sure that you have a strategy that's clear and you know how to implement it so that you can make sure you're on the right path, number one. Number two, if you know that it's really like, yeah, if we decide on this better blood sugars assessment call that you're doing everything. You're just having a hard time being consistent or doing it enough to create the results you want. We can talk about what it looks like to work together.
[00:21:27] Other things that I recommend. Great book by Brianna Wiest. I don't know if you've ever, I feel like I've talked about her quite a bit on the podcast. She has a book called the Mountains is you. And really, it's a deep dive into self sabotage. And it's beautiful. It's just beautiful. This author, she seems very young, and I'm like, how do you get so wise and yet so young? I have no idea what's happened in this girl's life to make her have this deep, deep wisdom, but I'm so appreciative of it. She is an amazing writer. She puts it together in such a clear way that is really, really powerful for creating change. So I highly recommend the mountain is you by Brianna Weiss. Another book I also like, it talks about the biochemistry and the neurochemistry that occurs, how your brain behaves. It's a book called Dopamine Nation, and it's by an author named Anna Lemke. That's l e m as in Michael, b as in boy. K E. Lemke. I highly recommend that book. Great book as always. If you have any questions, email me.
[email protected] I do have an ask if you would rate and review the podcast in your podcast player. The more ratings and reviews this podcast get, the more people see the podcast. Share it with friends, either on your social media pages, via email, via text, whatever it is. Recognize 93% of Americans have insulin resistance, so they are either on the path to becoming diabetic or already diabetic. Help me get the word out to people they don't need to be sick. It is possible to live healthy. The more people that rate this, review it and share it, the more people are going to hear about that. If you are on meds, I want to encourage you to be very careful making the changes that I recommend in this podcast. You have been medicated for the way you have eaten in the past and if you change the way you eat, you're going to need to change your medications. You need to call your provider who's prescribed those medications. You need to get a good line of communication open with them. You need to find out from them how they want you to share your blood sugar logs with them and how they intend to share medication changes with you. Get very clear on that. If not, you can get very sick, the kind of sick that looks like hospitalizations and death. And that's not why you're making these changes. Okay? So make sure you're very careful and you have a good clear line of communication open through your medical provider.
[00:23:45] I do have help for your type two diabetes. If you haven't already done so, I highly recommend download my 14 days to better blood sugars guide. You can find
[email protected] forward slash better very clear plan laid out 14 days of meals. You will see better blood sugars with this plan. If you are medicated, you will need to be very careful using that 14 day plan again. Call your doctor.
[00:24:09] You'll get on my email list and you can get information about when I'm holding webinars and when I'm holding other informational training sessions for you. If you're interested in that, you can sign up for that through those emails. And then lastly, you can find me on Instagram and Facebook. I hope you found this helpful. I want to encourage you to keep listening, keep avoiding foods that make you sick, and keep making choices for your health, your vitality, and your longevity. I'll be back next week.
