What Medical Doctors Won’t Tell You About Type 2 Diabetes
About one in ten Americans have diabetes, and 90-95% of those cases are Type 2 diabetes. If you have Type 2 diabetes, it means that your blood sugar levels are too high because your body doesn’t respond to insulin well or make enough of it. You may be prescribed insulin to help your body control your blood sugar levels.
What your medical doctor may not tell you, though, is that if you are prediabetic, you may be able to reverse and prevent the progress of the disease with your body’s healing principles. By making changes to prioritize your health and wellness, you may be able to heal your insulin receptors and reclaim your health.
Three tips to heal insulin receptors
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Eat fats.
Your body prefers to burn fat for fuel and energy, rather than glucose. The food pyramid got it wrong, and so did the American Heart Association, when they told us to cut out fat. Low-fat diets keep us craving, and since we can’t actually fuel up with what our body needs, we eat more and more carbohydrates to keep us going. Your body breaks most carbohydrates down into glucose. That glucose needs to get into our cells in order for it to be used for energy. Glucose raises our blood sugar levels, causing our bodies to release insulin, which is the protein that enables our cells to use glucose. This results in frequent insulin spikes, which cause our insulin receptors to burn out, so that our bodies think we need more and more insulin to deal with the glucose. Rather than the slow burning steady fuel provided by fats, we are on a blood sugar roller coaster all day long. So cut the sugar out and give your body what it needs — high quality fats like coconut oil, olive oil, nuts, grape-seed oil, organic butter, and ghee. All of these will give your body the fuel it needs to work.
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Fruit is not your friend.
Fruit contains fructose, and everything that ends in -ose is a sugar. All sugar triggers enzymes to accumulate fat and store it rather than use it. If sugar is available, our bodies will use that first and save the fat for later. So if you are going to eat fruit, keep it minimal and choose wisely. Low glycemic fruits like berries and granny smith apples are good choices. Eat your fruit in the morning so that your body uses up that energy right away and then can use fat for the rest of the day.
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Eat all the vegetables.
Your body does need carbohydrates, but the best way to eat your carbohydrates is as vegetables rather than sugars or grains. When you eat grains, enzymes in your saliva turn those carbohydrates right into sugar in your mouth. So choose a wide variety of vegetables instead, and you will be getting all the complex carbohydrates (along with fiber!) that you need.
If you are addicted to sugar (and you may very well be!) this might sound overwhelming. Your brain will try to convince you that you NEED sugar in order to function, and when you cut it out you may experience a couple of days of flu-like symptoms and fatigue as your body remembers how to use fat for fuel instead of sugar. By taking it one step at a time and committing to the change, you will bounce back with more energy than ever, and you will experience health from the inside out. Take a step back from sugar today!