Read food labels and watch out for hidden sugar
Just because you don’t see the word “sugar” in the ingredient label doesn’t mean there’s none added. Sugar is available under several different forms, and it’s unfortunately up to us the consumer to know this.
My suggestion is to first cut out all artificial sweeteners from the products you buy. Unlike the natural sugars, they offer zero nutrients and the long-term effects on your health are often unknown. While natural sugar is a better choice than man-made sweeteners, it still raises your blood sugar and can lead to long-term insulin resistance. If you do purchase an item with natural sugars in the ingredient list, make sure it doesn’t belong in the first 3 ingredients listed on the label. Since ingredients are listed in order of the most predominant to the least, you don’t want sugar to be a main ingredient you’re eating!
Sugar, Cut it down gradually
From what I see, when people suddenly cut out ALL sources of added sugar, they hate how food tastes, have major cravings and end up with headaches, which is a common withdrawal symptom. No wonder it only last 2-3 days! Feeling defeated, they say they can’t do it, and just go back to their usual way of eating.
How about we just skip this part and decide to GRADUALLY cut down on sugar.
For example:
• Week 1: Add 1 pack/1 tsp of sugar to your tea/coffee instead of 2
• Week 2: Add ½ pack/ tsp of sugar to your tea/coffee
• Week 3: Add 0 pack of sugar to your tea/coffee
• Week 4: Check your pantry for all the items that contain added sugar.
Sucrose is used in prepared foods (e.g., cookies and cakes), is sometimes added to commercially available processed food and beverages, and may be used by people as a sweetener for foods (e.g., toast and cereal) and beverages (e.g., coffee and tea). The average person consumes about 24 kilograms (53 pounds) of sugar each year, with North and South Americans consuming up to 50 kg (110 pounds), and Africans consuming under 20 kg (44 pounds).
From Managing to Reversing Diabetes
Type 2 DM is a dietary disease. Insulin Resistance is also physiological adaptation. It’s a late-stage diabetes.
If you are eating 6 times a day, especially starchy food, you are pushing your insulin 6 times a day. Insulin then starts pushing the glucose into the cells. And the cells first are grateful for this fuel, but eventually when the cells have enough fuel, they start resisting insulin. It’s physiological adaptation. What else they can do for their survival! Enough is enough. We are closing down the gates (glut 4). It’s
not the cells being stupid, mistaken or broken. It’s just closing down the gates, to save their existence. It’s going to be insulin resistant until extra fuel stopped entering the cells. There can’t be a pill to balance physiology. Pills could be there to relieve the symptoms (actual definition of the word CURE). So, they are right in saying that we can’t cure Diabetes, yes we can’t find a cure. But we can reverse physiological adaptation. If we decrease the fuel load, they can get back to their previous state (Insulin Sensitive)
Check Insulin, Check Diabetes
People are metabolically broken now a days.
Diabetes is pre heart disease. 80% of diabetics, they die of heart disease. Insulin resistance is the real cause of Diabetes and Cardiovascular disease.
Conventional medicines are looking at branches, and they treat it one and other one is blooming. They don’t cut the tree i.e., insulin resistance. Infact conventional medicines nurture it. Some of you will be taking 3-4 or even more medications to control symptoms or the branches like hypertension, dyslipidemia, cardiovascular disease but we are not bothered about cutting the tree instead i.e., Insulin resistance in most of the cases if not all. We look at Diabetes as glucose disease, so we focus on controlling the numbers, thereby ignoring other things while treating numbers like weight gain, high BP and erectile dysfunction in men, PCOS in women. We are controlling glucose numbers, but insulin is going up. Insulin levels may go several times higher than normal but enough to keep glucose in check. With years, may be that person is swimming in a sea of insulin, and then we see hyperglycemia bouncing back strongly.
Conventional medicines only look at glucose pushing the insulin on higher side. We make the patients fatter and sicker and they die with good numbers.
Moderation will be death of you.
If your A1C is in 2 DIGITS or You have sky high diabetes, then you can’t think of taking carbs, sugars, fruits in moderation at this time. Moderation will be death of you. To fight this big monster (diabetes), you need strong weapons. 1st weapon is- Eliminate all carbs, all sugars from your diet and even fruits. Carb restrictions is the powerful weapon that you can use against these high numbers. This is no time to worry about nutrients that you are missing from fruits. Exercise is good but major strong weapon is zero carbs. Even if, then only dark green leafy vegetables. When you slash those carbohydrates from your diet, then you are literally starving diabetes, choking the life out of it.
2nd best strong weapon is- Intermittent fasting in fighting against diabetes. Some will say this is insane. No, this is not insane. Killing your eyes, damaging your nerves, losing your legs, etc etc is insane with self-satisfying word- moderation. Keto is like a sword and Intermittent Fasting is like machine gun, when you think of fighting with diabetes. Exercise is good and monitor your glucose more frequently to avoid hypos if you are on insulin secreting drugs/ insulin.
How I treat my diabetic patients
Type 2 Diabetes is not a glucose problem. Glucose is the sidekick of a story called diabetes. It’s a metabolic syndrome and other name for this is INSULIN RESISTANT SYNDROME. It’s a high glucose and high insulin disease. But year over years we will be measuring glucose and trying to keep it in control with drugs but the other markers of disease are getting worse day by day like- gaining weight , hypertension, heart problems , neuropathy, Erectile dysfunction in males and PCOD in females. Then we Start treating these problems with drugs.
In those years, glucose levels could be staying normal but insulin levels are going high (which is the real cause of above problems).
How I treat my diabetic patients-
I shift my focus from glucose to insulin problem in my patients with type 2 diabetes. I never tried to lower the glucose levels by pushing the insulin levels up. My motive is always to normalize the glucose levels without pushing the insulin. This is the only way to reverse the diabetes, as well as preventing complications.
The secret to Reversing most ailments
There are 2 types of fat that get deposited on your body-
1. Subcutaneous fat
2. Fat found directly Under the skin
Visceral fat or angry fat or belly fat or bad fat or inflammatory fat-
Underneath the muscles, packed in around the viscera or internal organs (liver, stomach, pancreas and intestine). It cannot be pinched but it does expand your waist line. This is the fat which triggers insulin resistance. There is no way to target that particular fat so we got to lose weight overall.
It’s possible to store both types of fat in our midsection. Important point is Visceral fat is more metabolically active than subcutaneous fat. It actively contribute to diseases like heart problems, type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance. Many studies are there that low carb diet is more effective than low fat diet in reducing Visceral fat.
Another way of reducing Visceral fat is by doing Intermittent Fasting, that is splitting your day between period of eating and fasting.
The mechanism is similar as with low carb diet. By blocking insulin spikes that prevents fat loss, it keeps you in the stage where there is fat burning.
So best way to get rid of belly fat is by combining..
1. Low carb diet
2. Intermittent fasting
And you can enhance the results with Exercise (aerobic as well as anaerobic- HIT( high intensity interval training)).
How to lower the fasting glucose levels
Some of you have been trying to do it for years but won’t be able to do it. Type 2 diabetics can do it in few weeks if they really want to. You have to take some steps to get fasting sugar down. Exciting thing is, it will not take years to get fasting levels down, it need only few weeks and you will see the results. Start eating dinner much earlier, as early as 6 pm. No more food should touch your lips after 6 pm until 6 am, or you can create eating window of 8pm to 8 am. Very low carbs or no carbs in dinner. You can have Salad, vegetables, meat, avocado and eat a lighter dinner. It’s better to delay your breakfast by 1,2,3 or 4 hours in the morning giving more time for fats to burn. It will not take long for results to manifest. I am not going to tell you to skip dinner. It can make us or break us. If you take high carb meal, you are forcing your pancreas to overwork. You see your glucose levels sky high and insulin levels too far beyond the healthy range. This could go on for hours and hours. Your dinner is the last food that your body sees for a long while. If you eat a high carb meal, you are asking for trouble. Even moderate carb food can play havoc with sugar levels but eating low carb with high fiber, you are doing yourself tremendous favour. Your blood sugar will return quickly to normal levels in days, may be weeks. When you are sleeping, your glucose levels will be lower, insulin levels will be low. You are setting yourself for much healthier levels. Last but not the least: Good sleep for at least 7 hours.
Are doctors and nutritionists guiding people in the right way!!
I come across many patients daily, they are not drinking sugary juices, they are not drinking stuff with white crystal sugar cubes in it but their A1C is climbing up and up every 3 months.
Why? Infact they were following their doctors/nutritionist’s advice very strictly for last many years. Even with drugs, their A1C is creeping up every 3rd or 6th month.
Where things went wrong? Nutritionists tell them to stop eating white bread, instead take whole grains. They say stop white rice and take brown rice instead. It makes you feel good, but it doesn’t work. I’ve already checked it on so many patients and every time their glucometer says- no that’s not a good food blood sugar wise. If you are shifting from white flour to whole grains, from white rice to brown rice, you are not doing any favour for yourself. So don’t take my words blindly just try if you are diabetic or prediabetic. White carbs, brown carbs- it’s all sugar in your gut.
Nutritionists/ doctors feel like oatmeal and whole grains are their best buddies, they go around saying oatmeal is best for diabetics. In reality it isn’t, it raises the blood sugar.