Got Type 2 Diabetes? Learn how you can naturally reverse Type 2 Diabetes in a natural and whole-person approach by making lasting lifestyle changes, and dietary changes and adding some natural herbs and supplements. Joining Dr. Lara is her colleague Dr. Myleen Simone, ND.
Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your well-being, spirit, soul, and body. Join me your host, Dr. Ana Lara, a naturopathic, doctor, entrepreneur, and servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body. We are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started. Hi everyone. Welcome back to Physician Heal A Self, the podcast. I’m Dr. Lara. This is episode 12, and today I have Dr. Simone back again with us, and we’re going to be talking about reversing diabetes naturally. So welcome back Dr. Simone. Nice to have
You. Thank you, Dr. Lara. I’m really glad to be here. And I love this topic.
Yes, yes. I asked you what did you want to talk about and you said reversing diabetes. And I was a little shocked at first. I mean, I love talking about this topic. We deal with it so much and it’s so prevalent in our country and around the world. Tell me why, and share with the audience why this was such an important topic for you to talk about.
So I had this friend who I went to medical school with, and he reached out to me literally in November of 2022, asking me how else he could help his health because his dad had just died a month before. And so mind you, this individual was overweight. He owns an entertainment company. So they go out and do events. And he told me he had, so he kind of ran down what his health issues were. And so I started to ask him questions. I was like, okay, this can’t be done via text message, I have to call you. So I talked to him and I was asking him all these questions, and one of which was he was pre-diabetic, but he had high cholesterol. And I was like, okay, well have you gotten your insulin checked? And he’s like, no, what’s that?
I’m like, well, that lets me know how bad your pre-diabetes is. Well, they don’t ever check that. I’m like, yes, I know, but now you should go ask and find out. And then he asked me some other things and I was like, okay, this is what you need to do. And I gave him some recommendations on how to do that. Well, I tried to reach out to him, but I was like, okay, maybe he’s busy, he’s not answering his call, whatever. Fast forward to this year, January 2023, I think it was just before his 40th birthday, he had a heart attack and complications of diabetes. And I reached out to his brother and I was like, dude, what happened? Because literally a little over a year ago, he was only pre-diabetic, which I knew was going to happen. I knew it was going to slingshot. And he said, yeah, he went full-blown diabetes. And then now he had a heart attack and then died.
Wow. So young.
And I was thinking to myself, and I’m on these Facebook groups for diabetes, and people are asking, and the comments are baffling me because it’s like there’s healthy options at McDonald’s. No, there isn’t. There the healthy options at Taco Bell. No, there isn’t. You go to a fast food, there are no healthy options. It’s the misconception that it’s healthy, but it’s not healthy at all. Right? Well, what can I eat? There’s a lot of things you can eat. You just can’t eat the crap that you’ve been putting into your body for the last 15 years, however long it was. And when I see these and then I see things like, oh, it’s okay to be at 7.0 or 6.5 for Hemoglobin,
For hemoglobin A1C. No, it’s not. Do you understand that there are four stages of diabetes? Lemme just kind of run this down for people who don’t understand that there are four stages of diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes.
Yes. Of type 2 diabetes. Mind you. So there is insulin resistance, there’s prediabetes, there’s actual diabetes, and then there’s insulin-dependent diabetes. Did you know that there are more people on insulin with type 2 diabetes than with type 1 diabetes? That’s ridiculous to even think that these insulin medications should be reserved for people with type one diabetes with this autoimmune issue, but not for people who have had lifestyle-induced diabetes.
And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. This is a conversation that really needs to happen. I am disgusted by how the conventional medical system approaches diabetes, the screening of it, pre-screening, right of it, and then the treatment of it. So we both do this and a lot of other naturopathic doctors I hope are doing this. When I get a new patient, I do a full screening, I do hemoglobin A1C, I do insulin, and I do the fasting insulin and I do also fasting. So the pancreas makes insulin and the peptide is a precursor to making insulin. So why would we want to check this? The reason we want to check this is because this lets us know if early on they have a risk of developing diabetes before they’re even pre-diabetic. Because hemoglobin A1C can be normal. And I’ve seen this where it’s normal, but then I check insulin and see pep type it’s, and they’re off the charge.
So now we know that they’re having problems, they’re making insulin, they’re fasting. The only time the pancreas releases insulin is when we eat a carbohydrate. So if we eat a carb, the pancreas is going to release insulin so that it starts its processes. So if you’re fasting and it’s in the morning, you haven’t had food for ten to eight hours and you’re fasting, there’s no reason why your levels of insulin should be elevated. So then we know that you have what’s called insulin resistance. And the signs of insulin resistance are very, very easy to identify. You may feel fatigued, especially after you eat a meal if you feel fatigued even after eating a salad, that’s a sign of insulin resistance for women. If your menstrual cycle’s off, there could be insulin resistance. Oftentimes women with PC oss, polycystic ovarian syndrome are insulin resistant. You may have brown lines and the darkening of the skin on skin.
That’s a sign. That’s early signs of insulin resistance as well. So this is why we want to check, because if we can catch that early on preventing it from becoming pre-diabetes or diabetes and not having to be on medications, then that would be ideal. And here’s the scary thing, Dr. Simone, is that younger people are getting this and it’s type two diabetes. It is induced by our behavior and we can reverse it. So I became very interested in this because it’s something that affects us in my family, but also our cultures. And now it’s not. I used to think it was predominantly Hispanic, but then I was like, no Native Americans also. And then I’m like, oh, Asian communities also have it. And then I’m realizing, nope, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white or Hispanic or what race, everybody. Everybody has this risk factor, especially in this country. It’s the food that we’re eating. It’s not moving our body. We don’t sleep well. And we got a lot, I was almost going to cuss here. We got a lot of stress. We got a lot of stress.
Because we have a lot of stress. And that will spike your levels as well.
Okay, let’s talk about that because doctors in science, and a lot of people don’t understand why stress causes diabetes over time. How does that affect your sugar and your insulin? And it does. If you’re spiking tons of cortisol, cortisol misses with your insulin and your blood sugars.
Let me intercede real quick because there’s a misconception about when they say cortisol and people think it’s bad. They think cortisol is bad. No, it’s part of our circadian rhythm. We need to have it there. It should be high in the morning, it should be low in the evening, but you shouldn’t be low at night, but you shouldn’t have a high level of cortisol or very low cortisol levels. There is a balance to be made.
Yeah. I find a lot of people, they’re very, very low almost in the morning, in the waking state in the morning, and then at night they get a little bit of a spike, so now they can’t sleep. So we call that you’re tired all day and you’re wired at night and you can’t sleep. And that’s an imbalance with cortisol. And so usually what happens is that people are living so much stress, have a lot of stress in their life, and they’re constantly making cortisol throughout the day and times that they shouldn’t. They’re releasing this and sometimes they’re high for periods of time. It could be years that they’re running on high cortisol.
That really stimulates the release of sugar, which is where this insulin resistance comes in because you are already having too much sugar, too much sugar in your bloodstream, and now you have stress coming in. So this is where we’re saying stress plays a big factor in this, and it’s just not your mental how you think of stress. Oh, I’m stressed out because my spouse is getting on my back or my kids are driving me crazy and my work is this and that. It’s not that. It’s literally your cellular stress, your environmental stress, your mental stress, what you put in your body, stress, chemicals. Yeah. All these things play a role in that.
There’s a chemical reaction. This is what I want people to understand. There’s a chemical reaction. Food creates a chemical reaction when we eat it, the hormones and the changes inside of our body, there’s a whole chemical reaction whether you want to believe it or not, whether you like it or not. So you could tell me to pray the diabetes away. It’s not going to go away. You can pray that God helps you change your mind, and change the way you behave with food. Help me change my relationship with food and my relationship with how I react to situations. Because once you start changing all of these things, then you’re going to find healing because we’re inducing this upon us. Yeah, that’s true. And oftentimes it could be diet, it could be stress, it could be a combination of all of them. So there is a chemical reaction that all of these things are changing. So I remember early on in learning all the sciences, the biochemistry teacher said, the one thing that we have control over is what we put in our mouth.
It was like a burn. It’s true. But if we don’t want to take ownership, we can’t say, okay, doctor, help me with this, because you don’t have to pay a doctor. You can just start this in your own kitchen. But oftentimes what I find is because of our nervousness and how we respond to life, the stress response, that’s what makes us make poor decisions. Look, hey, look, everything I’m saying, I’m saying it from experience. I did all of that. I was guilty in my early twenties. I did not eat. I didn’t feel hungry. I was like, I want to succeed. I’m working. I’m going to college. I’m doing all of these things at me, right? Yeah. Congratulate yourself. You end up with diabetes and thyroid problems, liver issues, and all of these conditions because I wasn’t giving my body the fuel that it needed to run at optimal levels. And what’s fascinating about our body is that it will run and operate at the expense of other organs, even if it doesn’t receive the energy and fuel and nutrition. It’s
So good at trying to balance out as much as possible. The body’s always going to try to survive and work with what it has.
So if you’re a very busy individual, that’s not an excuse to not eat. I’m too busy. No, you should actually, if you are very busy, you should make the time to do that because your body needs the fuel, the brain needs, the fuel, the glucose so that you can keep going and working. So I find that very common. I would say I don’t have an exact percentage, but if I had to roughly say, I would say about 90% of the people that come to me for the first time for me, or they’re going to get there because,
Or insulin resistant.
Insulin resistant because they’re not eating, they’re I’m not hungry. Yeah. I’m like, yeah, you’re not hungry because your body adapted to that. Your body adapts to whatever you put it through. It doesn’t mean it’s right. You feel good right now, but you won’t later. And that’s the dangerous thing about diabetes. Diabetes is a slow, dangerous killer. By the time you do feel the symptoms when you feel bad, it’s almost too late. It’s already done some damage. So go ahead and tack on that.
Women go through menopause, so if you’ve been healthy all your life, you were very regimented, you’re staying fit, and then for whatever reason you hit menopause, and now you have high cholesterol and you’re pre-diabetic, think about it. There’s a hormonal aspect that plays a role in your sugar levels and in your insulin.
I always explain to my patients that every hormone, everything in the body, it’s like an orchestra. There’s an instrument and every instrument has its part. And the moment that piccolo, that small little instrument that you need that part to play, and no one’s playing the piccolo, a good musician’s going to know we need a piccolo there. The same thing with hormones. They affect one another. They’re not working individually. Your blood sugars are affecting everything hormone.
It’s not compartmentalized.
I think that’s where medicine is. They want to compartmentalize everything. This is working in isolation when it’s not. They’re all affecting each other. And so once one thing is off, it starts to create a ping pong ball effect and affects all of the other systems. Wow. I mean, yeah, there’s a lot with these hormones and how blood sugar is and blood sugars will affect you, how you feel emotionally. People who have their blood sugars dysregulated, tend to be very angry, and irritable. They tend to lash out emotionally a lot more. They can feel more afraid and threatened because oftentimes they’re fight or flight.
They’re fight or flight.
The body has all this extra glucose there. The way I explain it to my patients, I explain it to imagine sugar, like the glucose molecule is a sugar molecule. Imagine glucose being a little broken piece of glass, just like if you look at sugar, the little greens and it’s very, very, very small, but you have a lot of it in your blood. So it starts to make your blood thick and the blood is not flowing the way it should. Like a river should flow. The blood is now thick, it’s viscous, it’s thick. So if the blood is thick, it cannot flow and bring oxygen and nutrients to the parts of the body that it needs. Especially areas with very small vascularity like our eyes, our kidneys, our heart, our extremities, our feet, and our hands. These are the areas that most commonly are affected by people who have diabetes because those arteries, remember we dissected the human body. That’s another thing we didn’t talk about last episode. We dissected a whole human body over the course of every part, every organ. So if you remember, the kidneys are small and all that vascularity, all the ins and outs of that. It’s amazing. Sorry, I’m remembering that organ and thinking how can people not believe in God?
I would just look at the human body and think about how this was created. So intricately.
Intricately, yeah, it looks like a little organ, but it’s so complex and it does so much for us. And unfortunately, diabetes is one of those things that will lead people to have kidney disease. There are four stages and then you end up in dialysis, which is a big, big money maker in that industry.
And on top of that, so I’ve treated people with chronic kidney disease and a lot of times, and even with diabetes or anything, right, diabetes, kidney disease, liver issues, it’s always like they have this, they’ve been told by their doctor something negative. And so now they have this preconceived notion that they can’t get it fixed, so, therefore, they have to stay on this medication or they have to be in this little area.
And oftentimes the medication causes problems.
It’s worse.
It worse. I don’t like the fact that even then they’re just like, oh, you’re only, it’s okay. It’s not that bad. Just change your diet. Eat healthier. We’ll see you in six months.
Yeah, just eat healthier. Just keep an eye on it.
What’s healthier? Yeah, what’s healthier for the person? You can’t tell me that all you’re looking at is the sugar level because somebody with Hashimoto’s is going to have a different diet than somebody who’s athletic or somebody with some sort of autoimmune condition is going to have something different. Their diet profile is going to look different.
Everyone’s diet is different. So we’re going to move into now what can our audience do on their own at home without having to hire us. Because it is something you can do at home and do it on yourself. So the very first thing that we always address is the diet. It’s the nutrition. I mean, the one thing the doctors don’t sit and talk to their patients about is where we start. What are you eating? When are you eating? Are you eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner? What is the time difference between each meal? How much are you eating? What are the foods that you’re eating? Right? And then what else do you ask when it comes to the diet, I know that a lot of times
Drinks, what are they drinks?
The sugary drinks, how much are they drinking? What are they drinking? So when people tell me, I drink a lot of water, okay, what is a lot of Water?
What does that mean? Oh, I drink like four cups a day. And you’re like four cups, huh? Do you realize your body needs 80 ounces just to survive optimally?
And here in Arizona more so hot, that we are just Dehydrated.
And there are studies other than that. When I was researching water intake, what’s a good water intake? We’re told 64 ounces. There’s no way 64 ounces is going to maintain you because that’s under the assumption You’re eating enough fruits and vegetables to support that. And who is doing that? How many people in our society are actually eating enough fruits and veggies that carry enough water content that we’re absorbing it? Most people are not.
No. And then fruits have so much sugar that someone who is pre-diabetic or insulin-resistant, can’t have that. Nope.
We will see how you work with patients. Because I know when someone’s diabetic, pre-diabetic, or insulin resistant, I really do cut back on the fruit. And I say you can have the berries.
That’s what I say. I said, all low glycemic glycemic. So low glycemic is foods that are low in sugar.
High glycemic. What does that mean? Peaches? Mangoes. Bananas. I think bananas are the big one.
Bananas.
A lot of people are like, well, what about my potassium?
Yeah, we’ll get it somewhere else. There are vegetables too. Yeah, exactly. Avocado. Yeah. But here’s the thing is that when, because I’m very familiar with the dialysis part of it, so I always began with the end in mind to not get there. When you’re on dialysis, your potassium and phosphorus, you got to be very careful. You cannot, the kidney cannot eliminate, even if you’re in stages three and four of kidney disease, you cannot have high phosphorus foods and potassium. And then water intake is critical. You the kidneys are not working properly. So I tell people if we can just prevent you a double-edged prevent, you just prevent you from getting there. Then you can have a small or half of a banana every other day. I don’t think it’s that it’s bad for you. It’s the frequency that you’re eating it. Moderation.
Yeah, moderation.
I was working, helping at a clinic, a community clinic once and a woman’s like, oh yeah, I’m doing really good. I had a little bit of some cherries. I had this fruit and that food. And I said, how many cherries did you get? Well, they were on sale. So I got two bags, and in one day I ate a whole bag of cherries. I’m like well, that’s why your blood sugars are high. I would’ve been like, I said, no, you could eat three, or four little cherries but not half of the bag in one day. So that’s where the education needs to come in. It’s like how much food, what food, what to avoid, and then know that you can still enjoy food, but you got, it’s the moderation. But oftentimes the people I work with, they’re developing diabetes because they’re not eating.
They’re starving themselves. They’re starving. Yeah. This is why I’m not a fan of intermediate fasting. I’m just not. I know there’s a lot of talk about that, but I don’t think that works for everyone. No, it doesn’t it. I had a gentleman come in who was intermittent fasting. He looked healthy, he looked fine, he looked fit, and he was pre-diabetic. And so I said, see, it doesn’t work for you. I’ll tell you if you’re Hispanic, I know for a fact that doesn’t work. You got to eat. And I am pretty sure most people are like that. If you wake up in the morning, say your first breakfast is at, let’s say your last meal, let’s start with the end of the day. Say your last meal is at six o’clock in the afternoon and you wake up in the morning and you’re not having breakfast and you’re having lunch at 12 o’clock.
So from six o’clock the previous day to 12 o’clock, you want a long time without eating. And some people are even going past 12. They’re eating one and 2:00 PM as a first meal. Some people only eat once a day. Yeah, it’s hours. It’s either I eat at two or I eat at six and seven or nine o’clock at night. It’s just the two meals. And so what I tell people, the time that you’re fasting is when you’re sleeping from your last meal and throughout the time you’re sleeping until you break the breakfast, the fast in the morning, that’s when you’re fasting. Why would you want to continue to fast? And especially if you’re going to exercise in the morning, you can’t fast and exercise exactly. You cannot fast and exercise, especially if you’re doing weights.
You can, the Muscles need energy.
You’re going to hurt yourself is what I tell people. Your muscles will not have the strength, the tendons, everything. You have a higher risk of injuring yourself. And like I said, we don’t see what’s going on inside of ourselves. So we start to deplete ourselves of nutrients and vitamins because we don’t have enough of the building blocks of what we need. So yeah, that intermittent fasting, not a fan of it. I’m just not, I mean, if you don’t for everybody, if you’re going to live in tbe or in the jungle and be not stressed and not do anything, then yeah, that’s fine. But we live in a city. You live in a city and it’s high, fast-paced and you got a lot going on. You need to eat. You need to have breakfast, lunch and dinner four hours apart, spread ’em out four hours apart and you’re going to be happier. So let’s talk about the things on, so the dietary stuff on helping with diabetes, I really recommend that people do 20, 30 grams of protein per meal. I do
Too, especially starting in the morning. I’d start in the tell my patients that you better start the morning with 20 to five to 30 grams in the morning.
And then with carbohydrates, I really say, Hey, really stick to the vegetables, not potatoes and not corn. They’re very, very high and carbs. So you want get used to eating some vegetables in there. Fruits are going to be in moderation and it’s going to be the berry family. But I’ll tell you, when people do 20, 30 carbs, 20, 30 grams of protein per meal, and then carbohydrates try to stay 15 to 20 net carbs. So a net carb, you take the carb, subtract the fiber, and that leaves you the net carb. So that way you can get a little bit more carbs in your diet. This combination of the two, you will reverse diabetes, you will lose weight if you want to lose weight and your brain will be happy. You’ll feel physically and mentally with more energy, you’ll have more mental clarity, better memory and concentration as well. Bottom line, just add more protein. By adding more protein too, you’re going to cut out all those cravings for sugar and all those other things that you don’t need to eat. See, the thing is people eat, don’t eat well, they don’t eat enough of protein, of healthy protein, and then they’re cells at the salad level, they’re starving. So it’s easy to grab chips and snack on things like that and your body will tell you, I’m hungry.
Yeah, it’ll give you signals.
Literally give you signals.
And it is a clockwork when people increase their protein, especially getting it in their breakfast, they will tell me, I don’t have the sugar cravings anymore. I don’t crave the chocolate. I have more energy. My brain feels better. Hey, guess what? Maybe all those that are having behavioral issues, they’re starving.
I want to hear your take on when people are like, well, how about a protein bar? I think I have the same response.
Yeah, I think that it’s okay here and there, but a protein bar is not food. So I tell people, look, it either had a pulse or it grew from a tree or a plant. That’s what we should be eating. So I get it. Some people don’t like to eat meat. That’s fine. Then you have to get it from other sources, plants or nuts and seeds and legumes to get it there to get that. So I get it a lot. Yeah, I do it once in a while as a backup, but that’s not my lunch and it’s not going to be my dinner.
Protein shakes go through my system fast.
That’s the thing. I do recommend people like, Hey, if you’re in a hurry in the morning, at least get a 25, 30 grams of protein shake. But you are going to be hungry within an hour or two. So it’s a great way to get the protein into the muscle, especially post-workout, right? You’re getting the protein in there, but it’s not going to sustain you. You’re going to be hungry in an hour or two. It does for me. And so it might save me some time in the morning like I’m in a hurry, getting my kids to school, that sort of thing. I’ll take my shake and then I’ll have my breakfast and then I’ll eat it when I am calm and sitting.
I also tell my patients like, well, what can I eat? How about we just stick to the outside of the grocery store instead of the inside where you have all the processed foods? Because that’s where I’m going to have to tell you. Then you have to start reading those ingredients.
That’s the problem. That’s the problem. Let’s just get used to eating outside and start with that.
I challenge our viewers that they do this for a month. Commit to it for a month. Protein and vegetable. That’s it. Don’t complicate it. Get enough. 20, 30 grams of protein in each meal. What can I eat? Protein’s. The other thing too that I get is like, but what about in the morning? Like cereal and pancakes, all that. You can have some chicken, you can have some eggs. I make my chorizo and eggs with a lower-carb tortilla.
There’s meat you could put together. You don’t need meat, you don’t need the cereal.
I could have a salad for breakfast too. So get rid of the American standard breakfast of pancakes and whatever. Most people’s breakfast though is coffee and toast. That’s what I hear. Or a cookie. I’m like, yeah, that’s not food. I don’t drink coffee and I don’t need it. And I tell people I don’t need it because I eat well and I move my body and I do make sleep a priority. I didn’t when I was younger, but I do now. So let’s go back again to the thing. So try to do for the next month, 2030 grams of protein and 15 neck carbs per meal to 20. Yeah, 15 to 20. And you’ll see that blood sugars will change, weight will change, and the way you feel, which is the most important, the way you feel will change. And if you feel better, you will make better decisions because your brain is happy.
Then make sure you’re drinking enough water.
I think I have to stress that because when we’re thinking of how much water am I drinking, I’m drinking four cups of water, I think that’s my average for my patients. Four cups of water is 32 ounces, but I do drink 24 ounces of coffee. Or they’ll say two cups of coffee. And so then I’d have to ask them, how big is your cup of coffee? Is it eight ounces, 10 ounces, 12 ounces, 16 ounces or 24 ounces? And they have to pause and they stare at me and they’re like, oh, I guess it’s like 12 ounces. So you’re telling me you’re drinking 24 ounces a day? Okay, let’s move on. Yeah.
So yeah, definitely stay hydrated. So do that for the meals. That’s one part. Now, depending if someone is diabetic or pre-diabetic or insulin resistant, that kind of varies. But some of the things that I have turned to that I’ve seen work very effectively is a nerve that we use a lot. And that’s Berberine. And unfortunately right now the media is giving all this attention because it’s for weight loss, it does help for weight loss, it helps for a lot of different things. And there are different types of berberine too. There’s some that are more for digestive. They do have an antiviral benefit as well. There are no negative side effects to it. A lot of it is going to be, I found that the dosing, how you dose, this is what’s going to help a person be successful in lowering those blood sugar. So berberine is a great herb to use.
Chromium. If you have sugar cravings, it’s a mineral. It’s in green foods, but you can get it as a supplement. Chromium will help with sugar cravings, but it helps to make the insulin receptors more sensitive, to work more efficiently so that it can take up glucose faster and remove it from the system. There’s gem, genea, genea, sylvestre. It’s a very good herb. You can get it in. The first time I tried that herb, it was in powder and someone mixed it in a little bit of water and I drank it. And then I worked with him and he said, why don’t you now eat something sweet? And I literally spit the sweet food out that I had. It’s too much. It was nasty. It was like I put dirt in my mouth. So that herb, when it’s on your tongue, anything you eat that’s sweet. After that, it tastes nasty. So you cannot, will not eat. Sweet. So that’s a good way. If you really have an intense sweet tooth, aside from adding more protein, why do you need it, you need more protein, that genea Sylvestre will get rid of that sweet tooth, but also it modulates. It will not drop your blood sugar too low. The plants have an intelligence where once it’s in the body, it’s able to modulate and no increase it or decrease it. So it helps with blood sugar. Those are the top three things. I think Bittermelon is another one.
Bittermelon is another good one. You could eat it or you can get it as a Supplement.
I didn’t realize. So growing up, my parents would actually make bitter melon. I absolutely did not like bitter melon because it literally tastes bitter. It’s very bitter, very bitter. And so they would put it in stews and that would be one thing I would push aside. But over the years I’m like, okay, let me just continue to take it. And I would eat that. And it’s an acquired taste, so if anybody here has ever tried that, it’s in a lot of Filipino recipes.
So it is an acquired taste, but it is very bitter, but it is really helpful.
It is medicine, food is medicine, and so if we eat the right foods, it’ll do that. Some people are just more, they have a higher predisposition to diabetes. And unfortunately, if you know that to be your case and you just have to change the way you’re eating, cinnamon’s another one too.
Which one?
Cinnamon. Cinnamon is. But you could overdo it. You got to watch that one.
Well, the thing with cinnamon is you have to do high doses of it to be effective. So I really don’t use cinnamon a lot with patients because I’ve seen these other three, or four that work. You overdo it. Yeah. Yeah. Really it’s the diet. I get the diet, and start walking. If you can walk even 20, 30 minutes a day,
You don’t have to go strenuous. No, just keep it easy. Let your body recalibrate. You’ve been stressed out, your body’s usually stressed out. So let your body calm down enough to be like, okay, now it’s time to focus in on this particular thing, but keep the body moving.
And so that’s a good transition into the stress management part because when we have a lot of stress, we’re going to make poor decisions when it comes to eating. We might not eat. We might eat the easy foods that we have access to. So if we can manage stress, the herbs that I like, the botanical herbs that I like to use are passion flour. There are lavender tinctures, not lavender essential oil. That’s a whole other conversation. But there’s a camel mile and lavender tea, that combo you can get. Ashwagandha is another one. Ashwagandha is good. Sometimes I combine the herbal that I have for anxiety for people. It’s valerian root, passion, flour, and lavender, and it’s very gentle and it helps with stress. I mean, there’s other herbal stuff, combinations that we use that people really don’t have access to, but there’s a lot of things that I do treat the nervous system, change the diet, give them these supplements, and then have a conversation with them about stress and life and why to do this. Because like I said, diabetes, is a silent killer. The number one organ that’s on a waitlist for organ transplants is a kidney. Most of the people who are on a waitlist for it is because of type 2 diabetes. If we looked at statistics or all the profits of the medicines that are tied to diabetes, whether it’s medications, insulins, or all the things that are, it’s billions and billions of dollars. And it all can be changed by changing what’s in our kitchen, what’s what we’re putting into our mouths.
And being committed to it. I think that if you need to detox, that also helps out in the beginning. But I think that when you are committed to your diet, it helps out a lot. It really does. And changing your mentality of then I can’t eat anything. Right? I think that’s the downside to when people are so hooked to the sugars, to the false sugars.
Look, sugar is crack. It really is. If you were to see the parts of the brain that sugar elicits the brain, it’s the same as cocaine and some of these methamphetamines, some drugs that are out there. It has the same response. We justify food though, because it is not a street drug. It’s not bad. But if we look at the Bible, it does say gluttony is a sin. And so we need to be careful with that. And it’s not to make anyone feel bad, because I’ve been there and I know what it takes. The hard work, I always felt like I was falling off the bandwagon when I was on my diet and it would upset me.
Why can’t I get this? I’m a smart person. This is before medical school. But what I didn’t realize was the amount of stress I had in my life was what was inhibiting me. So I always say, if I had a little magic wand and I could just get rid of one of your major problems, it would be the stress. It would be the way your body responds to stress so that you can have a clear mind and you can feel like you have the time to prepare a meal. You have the time to do these.
Find a way to just destress.
You have to find the way. We cannot make time, but we can find a way to make it happen. And even if it’s small steps. So small steps, we’re going to wrap here up. So the small steps of reversing diabetes, add more protein, cut back on carbs, drink your water, manage your stress, get your body moving for 20, 30 minutes a day. Doesn’t have to be a crazy activity. Just walking at the pace that you can handle. Make sure you’re sleeping and there are some natural herbs that you can take that we discussed, we talked about that you can do that will help you. And it sounds simple, but it’s not easy. No, it really is. So a lot of the time we have to identify, do we have a food addiction. Do we have a behavioral issue with food and life? And so look at the relationships in your life because those really play a big role. Is there anything that you want to end with that you want to share on this topic of diabetes?
No, I think we covered practically all of it.
I think we did cover the whole basis of the approach on how to actually reverse diabetes without actually coming in and getting your labs done here in Arizona.
Just know that you can do your own labs. You don’t need a doctor to write an order for you. You can go and order certain of them, not all of them, but hemoglobin A1C, and blood sugars, those are some that you can go to any lab and pay cash. That’s the only thing you pay cash, which is not a lot of money, and you can do your own labs. Now if you don’t know how to interpret them, then that’s a problem. But the internet has a lot of information. I think what I really want people to take away from this conversation is to really, really understand how serious diabetes is and the destruction that it does to your body slowly over the years. And if you’re young and you’re not taking care of it, it will end up in severe chronic disease. And it’s not going to only impact you, but it’s going to impact your family. That’s really it. Your husband, your wife, your kids are going to have to deal with the chronic side effects of this disease, that it is truly a silent killer in our country, and it’s unfortunately plaguing younger and younger children. So we need to be careful about what we are consuming. So hey, we are going to move into our segment of the good, the bad, and the ugly of our sick care system.
Of course, we’re going to tie that conversation to this topic, and really doctors are not educating their patients enough on what they need to do at home. They just give a medication and if there are no behavioral modifications or lifestyle modifications, they will be managing the diabetes for the rest of their life until they die of a complication. So I hope that’s not you. If you have any questions on this topic, you can reach out to me or Dr. Simone. I will be providing links in this video for you to reach out to Dr. Simone if you are interested in working with her. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode, and as always, be blessed. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe, help this message reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.