Type 2 Diabetes is a disease process that can be cared for naturally and even reversed in certain situations.
The key is not to think of managing Type 2 Diabetes, but rather helping the diabetes patient fix the underlying cause or causes– before the condition is irreversible.
With Type 2 Diabetes– a point of no return does exist
The biggest concept to understand is the labeling process of the disease and the standard medical approach of treating just the label– not the individual.
Treating the label is NOT what the topic of this article is about. Rather, the core of the information you are about to read is how can YOU reverse the process that led to your body’s inability to control blood sugar.
Having the labels of pre-diabetic, metabolic syndrome, syndrome X, Type 2 Diabetes are just that– labels. Labels are a convenient way to classify a set of signs and symptoms into a name.
The classical way a medical doctor, also known as an allopathic physician, handles any labeled disease is to use a medication to control symptoms or control chemistry that is out of balance. The term allopathic means opposite of the pathology. So, in allopathic care, if you have high blood sugar, you are prescribed a drug that lowers the blood sugar. If you have pain, you are given pain relievers, inflammation is treated with anti-inflammatory drugs. And on and on the cycle goes.
And there are dangerous, potentially deadly mistakes diabetics make everyday based on this misinformation from the allopathic system.
Are You Caught in the Allopathic Cycle?
Taking the Type 2 Diabetes medications makes it almost impossible to feel good again, especially if you’ve been taking them for more than a few months.
This Type 2 Diabetes monkey on your back forces you to take high blood pressure medication and cholesterol medication — all of which have debilitating side effects.
And the biggest side effect the allopathic doctor won’t tell you about is this— you don’t get to feel like yourself anymore.
Let’s Dive Deeper into the Functional Medicine Solutions
When you work with a functional medicine practitioner, you are working on a root cause approach. You and your doctor are working to find the cause of your disease and find real and lasting solutions that heal the entire body, including resolving the disease.
A health practitioner using functional medicine to care for loss of blood sugar control will look at the following:
- Cortisol
- Inflammation
- Vitamin and mineral deficiencies
- Toxin overload
- Adrenal gland health
- Liver health
- Thyroid hormones
Functional medicine offers unique tools to manage insulin and blood sugar — including diet, exercise, stress management, detoxification, and maximizing essential nutrients.
To understand how all these tools apply, it’s helpful to know how insulin works.
Insulin and Blood Sugar: A Balancing Act.
Insulin helps keep glucose (sugar) levels in the bloodstream within normal range. When you eat, carbohydrates are broken down into glucose, our primary energy source. When glucose enters the bloodstream, the pancreas responds by producing insulin, which enables glucose to enter the body’s tissues.
Excess glucose is stored in the liver; when needed to sustain blood sugar between meals, the liver releases sugar and the pancreas responds with more insulin to help it enter cells. This balancing act keeps blood sugar stable.
When the pancreas secretes little or no insulin (Type 1 Diabetes), when your body doesn’t produce enough insulin, or when your cells are resistant to insulin (insulin resistance, common in Type 2 Diabetes), sugar levels in the bloodstream can get too high. Chronic high blood sugar can lead to complications such as blindness, nerve damage (neuropathy), and kidney damage.
Managing Insulin with a Multi-Faceted Approach.
Certain factors increase the need for insulin: diet, exercise, stress and toxins.
Diet
- What you eat affects your blood sugar and insulin levels.
- Not eating regularly, and eating larger meals causes drops and spikes in blood sugar and insulin, driving insulin resistance. If blood sugar is a problem, better to eat smaller, more frequent meals to keep blood sugar and insulin levels stable.
- Processed and fast foods drive inflammation, which causes insulin resistance and other disease processes. It also increases cortisol levels, which can increase blood sugar levels.
- Food sensitivities cause immune and inflammatory responses, which causes insulin resistance. Many people have food sensitivities they don’t know about.
- Pay attention to Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load. Glycemic index measures the insulin response your body has after eating a food. The higher the number, the more insulin your pancreas needs to secrete. Glycemic load is the amount of that food eaten.
Exercise
- Fat cells have insulin receptors.
- Exercise burns calories and fat; fewer cells mean less need for insulin.
- When you exercise, your muscles need more energy to fire and insulin receptor sites become more receptive.
- Even a short walk can reduce blood sugar levels and insulin demands dramatically.
Stress
- Up to 90 percent of doctor visits are related to chronic stress.
- Stress has big impact on insulin by decreasing insulin receptor sensitivity, elevating cortisol, and causing the liver to raise blood sugar (the body’s way of increasing energy to handle stressful situations).
- Raised blood sugar means more insulin.
Toxins
- Toxins are found throughout our environment — in body products, food, air, and water.
- The body gets overworked trying to deal with them, causing inflammation and increasing insulin resistance.
- Inflammation shuts down receptor sites, requiring the body to make more insulin.
For proper diabetes management, we must provide adequate exercise, proper nutrition, and manageable stress levels. As a functional health provider, I understand that you have unique needs and I am prepared to help you develop a customized action plan to help you manage your blood sugar and insulin levels. The functional health provider has to be a good health detective.
We have to dig. You’ve go to investigate cortisol, adrenal gland health, food sensitivities, bacterial infections, immune system problems, vitamin and mineral deficiencies and toxin overload. A doctor has to look at all those things and that’s one of the reasons why we can create success for people that have been labeled with Type 2 Diabetes because we realize it’s just a label.
And what I do in my program is look at you and your inner workings. We treat YOU– not your label. I treat the person, not the diagnosis. I treat you, not your Type 2 Diabetes.
Let’s start finding your true solutions to Type 2 Diabetes today, please call us (586) 731-8840 and make an appointment today!