My diabetes story - Part 4: The Big Lie
My diabetes story
I've just tried this ridiculous new diet and people have been lying to me. I'm about to get angry. Very angry.
This is part 4 of the story and continues on from a previous part. If you want to read the whole lot, please start at Part 1: Diagnosis.
This is my story about my journey to diabetes and back. It's what happened to me, and I'm not saying that this same thing will work for everyone, but I hope that if you're out there suffering through this insidious disease, maybe you can consider doing something similar and it works for you too.
The Big Lie
I didn't know I could be this angry.
It wasn't a loud outburst type anger, nor a punch something inanimate really hard type anger. It was a slow, seething, sense of betrayal. A betrayal born from knowing that those who should be looking out for your best interests, are not doing so.
A day later, just 24 hours, on this stupid diet. My blood sugar levels are down to normal levels. Not diabetic normal, but normal people normal.
Many people don't realize this, but the normal they have for diabetics is about 6.5 - 8.5 mmol/L. Normal people dont usally get even that high, they tend to stay around 4.5 - 6.5 mmol/L. I literally have to stop taking my meds now because otherwise I'm going to go under 4.5. I've never in the last 3 months seen my blood levels under 8.0.
I had to tell my wife. I showed her the blood readings and had to explain what was going on. She was a little upset that I would be so reckless, but my wife is great, and very supportive.
The next thing I had to do was find out what the heck is going on here, I just don't understand because it's going against every single thing that the doctor, dietician and diabetes educator has told me I need to do.
It was then that I began to deep dive into the material on Diet Doctor. They had some videos I could watch if I signed up, which while initially it had seemed a bit scammy to me,now was a no-brainer, but they are still going to let me have a month's free access. I would have paid straight up. Even if it is useless junk in there I can watch all the videos I need to in that month and cancel though, so that's good.
The first video I chose was one by a Doctor Jason Fung, called “The 2 Big Lies of Type 2 Diabetes”. I don't know why out of all the videos there I chose that one, maybe it resonated with my thinking that people have been lying to me.
What I saw in that video blew my mind. All those questions I had, all the confusion about what was happening to me. It was one of those rare moments of instant clarity. It finally made sense of what was happening to me, and what I needed to do to fix the situation that I'd managed to dig myself into through decades of poisoning and abusing my body with highly refined carbohydrates.
You Mad Bro?
Yes, the fact that the entire establishment has been knowingly lying to us for at least the last 10 years about wheat being good and fat being bad for us, just so they can continue to get us to eat their grains, and put money in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies, and have us be a generally docile, rapidly ageing and dying population that needs heaps of medication to get through it?
I'm still not able to put into words exactly how I feel about that. But it's big, it's a big word, and I don't know what it is.
I mean, I understand. There's a lot of money at stake. But people's health... I've got family and friends that've died, you've got loved ones, we all do. This is betrayal at the highest level.
Many of the world's escalating health issues of the last 35 years can be laid directly at the feet of the ass-backwards food pyramid we're all been taught to believe in. You think about all the things that have been on the increase since the lipid hypothesis came out 40 years ago and put that squarely at the feet of too much carbohydrates and you're not too far wrong.
There's a bunch of modern health issues which have been directly linked to either:
- inflammation problems caused by highly refined carbohydrate consumption
- having elevated blood sugar levels most of the time and thus feeding things like cancers and diseases, or
- the fact that the body has a repair mode that is shut down while you're busy processing carbohydrates, and it can't do things like, oh I don't know, repair brain damage, broken cells and tissues, insulin producing beta cells in the pancreas, etc
Here's the list of things that they're beginning to link, I can testify to a few of the following things clearing up, or beginning to, and my wife can testify to a few of the others, as she's been step by step with me through this lifestyle change too:
- Decreased Insulin Sensitivity (Diabetes)
- Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)
- Infertility
- Erectile Dysfunction (ED)
- Alzheimer's
- Dementia
- Epilepsy
- Coronary Heart Disease (CHD)
- Cardiovascular Disease (CVD)
- Cholesterol
- Asthma
- Parkinsons
- Cancer
- Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)
- Strokes
- Brain Trauma (from getting hit in the head)
- Anxiety and Depression
- Autoimmune Diseases
- Mitochondrial Disorders
- Sleep Apnea
- Acne
- Dry, flaky skin and scalp
- Premature Ageing
- Anxiety
- Depression
My Take On It
If you have diabetes, generally want to live healthier and longer lives, or just want to know exactly what the science is you should watch the videos yourself, but this is what I took away about how it impacts me, personally, with respect to my diabetes, from what I learned after first watching that video and then everything else I could lay my hands on. (I apologise in advance if I get any of the following wrong, It's my best attempt at describing what I've read, but you should really watch the videos and do your own research to be sure.)
The result of continually eating carbohydrates for metabolically slow people is that we're continually ingesting things that break down into glucose.
When the body sees too much excess glucose (more than it can use), it produces insulin which pushes the glucose into the fat cells and liver. Our bodies aren't good at releasing these fats when we're hungry (because we metabolise slowly), so we get hungry and eat more. What do we eat more of? Carbohydrates of course!
Eventually the liver gets full of fat and storage of the fat in fat cells gets equally hard. At this point insulin has to work really hard to put that fat away, this is what they call insulin resistance insulin can't do a proper job of storing the glucose converted to fats that it used to be able to do.
The liver can't just stop processing the fats though, so it starts sending fats out to other previously un-utilised parts of our body. Our eyes, our heart, our veins, our pancreas. This is where we get the double whammy. The pancreas is now storing fats, covered in it in fact, so it's less capable of producing and releasing insulin in a timely fashion. and this is the second part reduced insulin sensitivity.
Insulin resistance started the whole thing, glucose was't getting stored quickly, but it was getting stored eventually. Now we have reduced insulin sensitivity, the insulin's not even getting out there at the correct time or in the correct quantities. These two things are now playing off each other in a vicious cycle. Then we add medicine to the mix to either elevate the body's natural insulin levels all the time, or injecting much synthetic insulin into the blood stream (both of which will eventually cause insulin toxicity).
Sound pretty dire, doesn't it?
Next
The next and final part is Lifestyle Change, where I summarise all the things that I needed to do to start turning this ship around. I'm in safer waters now, but I'm still too close to those rocks, and it'll be years of dedication to this lifestyle before I'm completely healed of 40 years of stupidity.
If you want to read the whole series, please start at Part 1: Diagnosis
welcome to the world of the sane, and longer lived. good to have you alive, and healthy.
that "big word" that you speak of, i have been contemplating for a while. i think it may be more of a sentence, one that goes something like, the largest class action ever in history, against the FDA, USDA, grain lobby, big pharma, and insurance industry, for premeditated mass murder, physical, mental, and emotional suffering. i think there is plenty of evidence of intent, but it is demonstrably evident how much damage has been, and is still being done. an argument could be made for charges of genocide.
this story is excellent. i'm eager to continue reading, and i know others can benefit by understanding the facts surrounding this story.
thank you for these posts.
I agree, but this fight is even bigger than the tobacco class action, and you see where and how far that hasn't gotten. You go into a supermarket and look at the tobacco section and see how small that is. Then look at the carbohydrate section. That's how much bigger and worse this is.
And it may have started with the USDA, but literally every single food manufacturer is no better than a tobacco producer, producing an addictive, harmful substance and putting it on the shelves, and they all have shareholders and profits, and will spend seemingly endless amounts of money muddying the waters with fake and contradictory research papers, blocking actual research that shows promise, and funding any research that is willing to be skewed to their favour. Not to mention funding legal attacks against proponents that disagree with them, trying to get their medical licenses revoked, or tying them up in court, or heck offering them cushy, well paid jobs to sit on their hands or corrupt their research for money.
I don't know how much longer they can stretch this out for. I just hope we can all help shed some light on this for everyone out there who is being slowly euthanised by Big Carb, in enough time to make a difference.
I used to enjoy going shopping in the big supermarkets, but now it's painful to watch people filling their trolleys with poison. I much prefer to go to smaller markets, purely so I don't have to face my inability to do anything about it.
it may well be with food as Max Planck said about science. he said "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
it would be a sad thing for so many people to be killed by their mistaken beliefs. it may be that all we can do is take care of ourselves and talk to anyone who will listen, but how much evidence should be needed when half the population of the developed world is set to develop diabetes and/or cancer in their lifetime?
I'm also at a loss for what that "big word" is... I have a few "choice" words, but those are NSFW words. For me, there's no doubt that modern medicine has its benefits. Simultaneously, there's also no doubt that Big Pharma has hijacked modern medicine.
A few years ago, I had the misfortune of watching my next door neighbor (a lady my family adopted) die from a series of misdiagnoses. She topped out at 40 different prescriptions. I didn't know until it was too late. I got her a copy of the Physician's Drug Handbook, and we slowly went through the 40 pills and found that the side effects of almost all of them were precisely the problems she'd been having that her doctor said was Lupus. I told her to stop taking all that crap. She went back to the doctor and told him my suspicions, after 4 years of Lupus treatment and a steadily worsening condition, the doctor apologized, told her she'd been misdiagnosed and took her off all the medicines.
None of it mattered. She passed away. I know that that misdiagnosis shortened her life. And, it angers me that just because she was old, the doctors didn't cross check the plethora of prescriptions. She was one of the last generation to grow up without grocery stores. She had so much love and knowledge to pass on about farming, gardening, making, and caring. The doctor should have been sued for malpractice, but her family chalked her death up to old age.
Very big words, indeed.
Take care of you, man! Looking forward to the next part.
I'm sorry to hear about your neighbour. It's always hard to lose someone before their time, regardless of their age.
Though, that's not actually the worst part for me. I mean I get choked up about it when I think of the people who have passed that we could not help, but the very worst part of it for me is facing the people I still can't help.
There's family, friends and complete strangers I see everywhere that I see are in pain, in trouble, and I want to help them out so badly, to tell them that they don't have to live like this, there is an answer. But while you can tell them, you get all kinds of different reactions, from silent denial to outright anger, or some kind of bargaining. I know, I've seen the lot.
It actually makes me realise and appreciate even more what phenomenal bravery my friend had when he told me about his diet. He didn't say much, and left the research and whether to do anything about it to me, but he planted the seed, for which I am eternally grateful, and have told him so. He basically saved my life through a few short, well placed, brave words to a sceptic.
I understand the reactions that people have when I tell them that there's an answer, because I had exactly the same ones when I was faced with the truth, but ultimately I think my friend did the right thing with me. This is a change you have to want to make. Someone just needs to plant the seeds and see if they'll take root and grow, because this isn't a quick fix, it's a complete upheaval and reversal of decades of learned behaviours and tastes.
It's completely worth it and you know it's working about 3 days into it, when you're finally starting to detox of the sugars and getting into ketogenesis for the first time, experiencing the euphoria and boost in energy, stamina and mental cognition, but getting to that point, and learning everything you need to know is a lot of work and research.
Mainly because we don't have our parents showing us how to live properly for the first 20 years of our lives anymore. Most of this knowledge society has been losing steadily for the last 200 years. We have to relearn all that knowledge day by day, meal by meal, making mistakes, having relapses and learning lessons.
Thank you. She was a wonderful lady that is greatly missed.
You make such valid points. It really is painful to think of the people who we've lost, yet heart-wrenching to think of the people who are still living with these problems...myself included. As you say it's a matter of relearning, making mistakes, relapsing, and starting over.
My family and I have gone on a voyage to find "real" foods. We've even gone so far as to start "urban foraging." Since cutting processed foods from our diet and putting in actual food, we've all begun to feel the difference: increased metabolism, quicker recall, and so much more. Between the three of us, I'm certain that we've lost an entire person.
Keep on, rocking on @triddin!
Hi, this sounds so much like me. I was so mad for so long!
I've reposted this part to Paleo-Trail mostly so more people can see what you went through. Hopefully it will get you a few more votes too! The main site, Steemtrail should pick it up and you might see a slight second payout.
This post has been ranked within the top 80 most undervalued posts in the first half of Dec 27. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $3.42 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Dec 27 - Part I. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
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