DIABETES MANAGEMENT vs. DIABETES REVERSAL

DIABETES MANAGEMENT vs. DIABETES REVERSAL

Have you noticed? Lately there has been a plethora of ‘diabetes reversal’ programs offered by Doctors, Endocrinologists, Nutritionists and Health Coaches? It is time for us to understand what these are about and what choices lie ahead for those who have diabetes and want to manage and reverse it.

Firstly, it is clear that we are dealing with Type 2 diabetes, which is directly correlated with the food we eat and not Type 1 or Type 1.5 diabetes that comes from no production of insulin or insufficient production of insulin in our pancreas (actually in the Islets of Langerhans which are clusters of beta cells in the pancreas), and insulin regulates the metabolism of carbohydrates and sugar in our blood.

Without going into the mechanism and origin of how diabetes develops, let us just begin with the underlying two causes of Type 2 Diabetes. Firstly, some persons have a propensity to develop insulin resistance, which is a cell level dysfunction that blocks the insulin receptors on the cells. Secondly, chronic cell-level inflammation is a basic underlying cause which is at the bottom of several diseases including diabetes, like chronic heart disease, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, poly-cystic ovaries syndrome (PCOS), and some forms of cancer too. The causation and impact of cell level inflammation is as yet to be fully understood and much research is being done. Perhaps in a few years we will understand this better.

In the past, if you had diabetes, a difficult life ahead and early death was almost certain as the disease progressed. Today, new ways of dealing with diabetes both to manage the progress and extent of the disease and to reverse symptoms are emerging and if any person is diagnosed as diabetic, (s)he need not worry about eventual outcomes. A diagnosis of diabetes is a knock on the door to make the changes in physical and emotional health to reverse the disease and to live a healthy life.

Approaches to diabetes management and reversal are varied. A lot depends on the progress of the disease and associated pathologies like kidney problems and neuropathies of all kinds. Broadly two things happen:

Symptoms get managed:

That happens when we use either medication or food control, or both to keep blood sugar levels within limits and reduce our glycosylated haemoglobin levels. The basic approach is to medicate the client to reduce the blood sugar levels, or to reduce the intake of carbohydrates in the diet so that blood sugar levels are not created in the first place. People live long lives in this way. Most diabetics are treated in this manner by endocrinologists and general physicians who follow proper medication protocols in a professional manner.

This approach works in the short term and long term. I know many diabetics who lived long lives, relatively symptom free, by simply keeping their sugar level under control with medicines and some food control. However, there are many who find their sugar and HBA1C is completely out of control and beyond limits despite medication. Often the progress of the disease continues, and mostly the amount of medication increases and sometimes dependency on insulin jabs comes in eventually. It is sustainable provided there are some limited controls on food and exercise.

Diabetes gets reversed:

This happens when we attack the underlying cause of diabetes. Two aspects are addressed: INSULIN RESISTANCE and INFLAMMATION. Unlike those who ‘manage’ diabetes, we do not treat the symptoms but treat the cause instead. The insulin receptors on the cells are like locks which have been jammed since the disease began. These locks have to be cleaned up and opened and the insulin receptors of the cells have to be activated once again. Also, cell level chronic inflammation is another underlying cause which has many origins, mostly lifestyle factors like stress, wrong food and alcohol intake amongst other causes. The full cause-effect link of insulin resistance and inflammation is yet being researched and not fully understood.

The path to treating insulin resistance and inflammation requires a detoxification of the body to remove the jammed insulin receptors. There are many ways to detox the body mostly natural foods with healing and anti-inflammatory properties. You can, use food as medicine, home remedies and therapies that help reduce the insulin resistance and get rid of inflammation as the root cause. Additionally, an exercise routine is established which enables the client to build more skeletal muscle mass in the body and to raise the basic metabolic rate (MBR) . As the percentage of muscle mass increases through strength-building, and BMR improves through cardio exercises, the body’s ability to metabolize sugar improves. A good exercise routine helps the client achieve the challenge of taking a Glucosee Tolerance Test and emerging with great results.  Allhis involves introducing total transformational lifestyle changes, not just food and medicine. The big problem with this is the complete adherence to prescribed protocols for food and exercise, and stress management and meditation all of which are created in a “one size fits all” format.

It is now proven that all prescribed diet “protocols”  give rigid guidelines for what to eat and how to exercise, have extremely limited success. There are some that have claimed to have taken diabetics off medicines, but do not give the number of those clients who were taken off medicines, but went back to them after trying valiantly to stick to the protocols. The act of conforming to the protocols actually enhances the stress levels and artificial sense of achievement is created through flattering positive strokes and inflated compliments that create a pseudo sense of wellbeing. They even blame “stress” as the cause of why diabetics succeed in the short term, but later fall back into the old food and lifestyle habits that caused the diabetes in the first place. Some even have a prescribed “protocol

Choosing a Path:

Many folks get enamoured by the advertisements and testimonials posted by many doctors, endocrinologists, nutritionists and health coaches, and often people with no qualifications but plenty of well-deserved talent. Their claims of ‘reversal’ and taking diabetics off medicines, and corresponding weight loss programs are all valid and justified. Dreams of leaner and fitter bodies, disease free prevail in making decisions. But before you choose, remember a few decision criteria: What is your real purpose and intention in choosing the path for healing?  What are you prepared to change and what will remain unchanged? Do you have an open mind to accepting new ways of eating, exercising and living? What has been your past experience with diets and lifestyle changes?

In my six-month Health Coaching program, I help clients with diabetes and obesity deal with a total transformation in their lifestyles, not just in food and exercise but much beyond that.

We begin with intentions…. I believe that each client is on his or her own journey in life. Each bio-individual entity has their own unique preferences, lifestyles, relationship with themselves, the food and everything about life. These preferences keep changing with life incidents and as the individual journey keeps evolving. So, when we begin with intentions, the first conversations lie around helping the client understand what is their reason for seeking diabetes reversal and management program. From there onwards, it is a very unique and bio-individual journey for each and every client. While I do have some basic principles of healthy eating and nutrition, including integrative living aspects of exercise, career, purpose, spirituality, each client has his or her own way of adapting and adopting. In our fortnightly meetings we take stock of how much of the journey has been accomplished and find the next steps for ourselves to undertake. We do not compel you to meditate in a prescribed manner or to exercise in only one way and no other way, but we do help you seek solutions and reinforce them in ways that work for you.

There is no one fixed protocol that works and that is clear. Even each individual’s self-healing journey is so special and each one achieves different milestones. There is no compulsion, no comparison, no benchmarking with others, and definitely no competition.

Needless to say, individual clients stay anonymous without the concern of someone looking over their shoulders or feeling that there is group pressure and politics of competition and comparison that govern them.

Self-healing is a great purpose of life so, I encourage every reader to re-look at what are your own health goals, and if you are getting better or worse with all the medicines, healthy habits you think you are doing. If you are not getting the results you want, it’s time to change track.