This past Saturday, I had lunch in Washington DC with one of my professors. He was getting ready to leave for vacation, and I needed to return a bunch of books to the library, so we got together to talk about my doctoral project. It will be focused on helping people prayerfully transform their health, the target audience being folks who are overweight and have type II diabetes.
As we sat at the table at Union Station, we both looked around at the people near us, and just about all of them were overweight, many were obese. Without speaking, we both knew just how bad this health crisis is becoming. In my opinion, so many people don’t want to go down this path, but they simply don’t know what to do. I’m going to be writing a lot about this issue in the upcoming months, but for today I wanted to use a guest post from Dr. Laura Ruby to lay out some of the ideas from the book Blood Sugar Solution by Dr. Mark Hyman. I just ordered this book myself, and I’m looking forward to getting it.
I’ve heard a couple of local presentations by Dr. Ruby. I hope you’ll pay attention to what she’s saying, and think about ways you can make changes in your own life to better improve your health.
Intro to the Blood Sugar Solution by Dr. Laura Ruby
Dr. Mark Hyman’s Blood Sugar Solution is a comprehensive scientifically based program for reducing insulin and blood sugar. This applies to anyone on the Diabesity continuum, even if you have normal blood sugar. This is a functional medicine approach that looks at the whole person, not just the symptoms. Just cutting back on your calories is not the answer. Over the past few weeks we have discussed the connection between insulin resistance, inflammation, and chronic disease. This program is not just about the numbers, it is targeting the underlying inflammation that increases your risk for many chronic issues such as heart and vascular disease, stroke, dementia, autoimmune disease and cancer to name a few. There is NO PILL that can fix Diabesity — rather than healing the wound, they are merely covering it with a band-aid.
This approach requires you to make a paradigm shift, to understand the role that diet, environment, hidden food sensitivities, gut issues and stress have on your health. You may want to go back to the beginning of June and read my earlier posts on Diabesity if you have not already done so. Most of us will need to make drastic lifestyle changes to reverse the metabolic imbalance occurring in our bodies. I am not asking you to do anything that I am not willing to do. I am on week 4 of the Blood Sugar Solution’s elimination diet and am already seeing changes in my body. Over the past year I have lost 25 lbs following a low glycemic diet. I have been on a weight plateau for the past 4 months. I finally started losing belly fat again after eliminating gluten from my diet. So apparently, like many Americans (1 in 30), I am gluten sensitive. Losing weight again is great but more importantly, I understand the metabolic and anti-inflammatory benefits that are connected to making these lifestyle changes. The information that follows are a few key points from Dr. Hyman’s book the Blood Sugar Solution. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I highly recommended this book to anyone who has belly fat, insulin resistance, pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes. It may very well save your life.
Eat your medicine
- Focus on quality not quantity
- Food is information that impacts your genetic expression, hormones and metabolism.
Controlling glycemic load is an essential key for reversing Diabesity
- Remember it is no longer “Calories in versus calories out”.
- Eating foods that cause a surge in insulin will continue to fuel your insulin resistance and make it harder for you to lose weight.
- Chose low glycemic high fiber foods
- Adding lean protein to every meal with help decrease the glycemic load of the meal.
Dr. Hyman’s 7 step program to reversing Diabesity
- Boost nutrition
- Regulate hormones
- Target inflammation
- Optimize digestion
- Maximize detoxification
- Improve energy metabolism
- Stress management
Elimination Diet: Foods to Avoid for the first 6 weeks
- All sugar & sugar substitutes
- All flour products even gluten-free
- All processed foods, trans-fats and high fructose corn syrup
- All gluten & dairy (both are inflammatory)
- Advanced plan – also avoid all grains, starchy vegetables & fruits except for half cup of berries per day
- Look for animal products that are grass-fed & hormone, antibiotic & pesticide free
- Eat low mercury fish such as small, wild or sustainably farmed fish
- Eat “real food” – buy local whole foods, whenever possible
Reintroducing foods
Reintroduce dairy and gluten one at a time and see how it impacts your weight, metabolism, blood sugar and gut. If you notice a connection to certain symptoms and a specific food – fully eliminate it from your diet. If you continue with difficulties that do not correct with eliminating gluten and dairy you may need a more aggressive elimination diet or consider testing for food sensitivities.
Social networking & chronic disease
There is very clear evidence that your are more likely to be successful in reversing chronic disease if you do it in the context of a social group. So send this post to your family, friends and co-workers to get them to join you in your journey to reversing Diabesity. Later this week I will share the latest research related to the essential nutritional supplements that will help you reverse the metabolic consequences of Diabesity – so stay tuned 
