How Can You Reverse Diabetes?

Hey there, this is Dr. Jason Shumard with Integrative Wellness Center of San Diego and the author of How to Reverse Your Diabetes. And that is exactly the topic that we’re going to be discussing today. Today, I want to talk about how it’s possible to reverse diabetes. It is so amazing to me how many individuals that I speak with on a regular basis, a weekly basis, in some cases, a daily basis, that don’t know that it’s possible to reverse diabetes? And that is absolutely correct. You can absolutely reverse diabetes, we see this in the research, we see this clinically every single day. And we’re seeing it with our current patient base, however, they’re showing reversal of diabetes. And what does that mean?

So what we see with our patient base is with reversal of diabetes, number one, they are eliminating, and or reducing medications across the board, meaning we’re seeing them get off their blood sugar medications, we’re seeing them get off their blood pressure, medications, cholesterol, and it’s not the fact that we’re they’re just stopping the medications for no reason whatsoever. They’re stopping it because their body no longer needs it, everything is regulating on its own again, and the body is now controlling the regulation of blood sugar, cholesterol levels are coming down, blood pressures coming down, etc. We see our patients losing weight, with little to no exercise, many of you are just being pounded over the head, you have to exercise, and in some cases that can be more harmful than good.

And the last thing is we see our patients reducing the risks of future complications. And in early death, we know that diabetes increases the risk of early death. But what’s interesting to me as well, is that almost every single person that I speak to that is dealing with diabetes, the focus, and essentially what’s been ingrained in their head are three things they should be doing every single day to fix their diabetes, and that is to lose weight, change your diet and exercise, I can tell you with absolute certainty, that those three things will absolutely help you lower your blood sugar. And if your only goal is to lower blood sugar, then that’s what you should do.

But if you want to reverse your diabetes, math to go beyond blood sugar, I thought my blood sugar was the reason why I had diabetes. And that is the number one misconception. So, let’s talk about that first. The number one misconception is that decreasing blood sugars will fix diabetes. And that is absolutely incorrect. So the reality is, that your blood sugar is elevated is nothing more than a symptom of your diabetes. So if your goal is to only reduce blood sugars, and by the way, you should be thinking about reducing blood sugars, because we know the significance it has on your body, and how it can impact the nervous system, the cardiovascular system, basically every single system in your body, which is why we have so many complications with diabetes. So you should be lowering your blood sugars.

But if you think by lowering your blood sugars alone, it’s going to fix your diabetes, that is incorrect. There is much more to it and we’ll get into what I mean by that in a second of how we help individuals reverse their diabetes. So, misconception number two. Number two is genetics. People believe that diabetes is genetically predisposed, that if your mom had your dad, your brother, your sister, aunt and uncle, then you’re going to have diabetes. And the reality is, there really is no correlation with genetics. Specifically, what we do see is we see families that have a correlation with diabetes, one person as well, mom, dad, sister, brother, etc. Why is that? And that is because of the lifestyle. Right? When you look at families, they all eat similarly. They’re all doing similar things. They all have been overweight.

Now, I didn’t say that. That will change your diets and lose weight. So those things aren’t beneficial. What I said was they’re focusing on blood sugar alone, and that’s what we don’t want to focus on. And so if somebody is there, they’re overweight, they’re eating poorly. Well, they’re going to be vulnerable to things like diabetes, but there are other diseases that they’re vulnerable to as well as cardiovascular problems, liver issues, gi issues, and there’s lots of things beyond that, but specific to diabetes. It’s not going to be about those items. Which reminds me of the last thing. Only, if you’re only focused on changing your diets, exercise and weight, that is not going to be helpful at all for diabetes in general. Now, again, it will be helpful to help you lower your blood sugars.

So if your goal is to help lower the blood sugars, then you want to do and focus on this, you want to keep your weight at a good weight, you want to exercise regularly, and you want to make sure you have a good diet if you’re focusing on trying to lower blood sugars. But if you’re not focusing on blood sugars alone, and you’re looking at how to reverse diabetes, this is not going to help you. Because I’ll ask you this, shouldn’t all of us have a good diet? Shouldn’t all of us be exercising and having good weights? I’m referring to every single human being? Of course, we should. So how was it specific to diabetes, and it’s not what it is, it’s management. So, and this is the problem with the traditional model, it is completely focused on trying to lower blood sugars.

So you’re taking medications to lower blood sugars, you’re being told to change your diet to eat healthier to lower blood sugars, you’re being told to exercise to lower blood sugars, you’re told to reduce your weight to lower blood sugars. So everything is focused on blood sugar alone. And unfortunately, if that’s your focus, you’re never going to reverse your diabetes. Now you may get your blood sugar is better, you may get better hemoglobin of one C, but you’re still going to be diabetic, you’re still going to be showing signs, and you’ll still be at risk of future complications. What I mean by that is even the CDC has their own problems, right, but even the CDC states that if you have a balanced or within what’s considered a managed hemoglobin, a one C, you are still at risk of developing complications of diabetes.

How is it possible that your blood sugars have been elevated to the cause of your diabetes, and you get them down to a managed situation? How are you still at risk? And the reason is that your blood sugars are not the cause of your diabetic condition. It is a symptom of the disease itself. So we have to remove ourselves from thinking, focusing on blood sugar alone, and really get into what’s really going on with the cost. So that’s what we want to talk about next. What is the cause of diabetes? And that is the million-dollar question. Because here’s where it all comes down to the specific cause for your diabetic condition: maybe your spouse’s diabetic condition, your brother, your mom, your dad, your friends, whoever else in your life that is having diabetes or has been diagnosed with diabetes, if we tested them all.

Let’s say we tested 20 people dealing with diabetes, every single one of them is going to have a different cause. So if they’re having a different underlying cause, what’s really driving their diabetic condition? What does that require the treatment to be? It requires their treatment to be customized to their specific issues to the specific problems they’re dealing with. And the problems are exponential. I’ll write down some common ones that we see with our patients, but they’re not going to all be the same for every single person. And if you look at the current treatments, right now, the traditional model, what are people doing, they’re all being told, take this medication, increase this medication, add an additional medication on, change your diet, exercise, and lose weight. And that is the standard across the board. And guess what?

Regarding diet, everyone is given the same diet, if you go to one of those diabetic classes, guess what? You’re all being told the same thing? How do they know what you should be eating? What’s the proper food for you? That’s how customized this has to be all the way down to the specifics, including what you’re putting in your body. You see food as I really talked about food in regards to diabetes, as you know, either a retarded to the fire or making the fire worse. Basically, increasing the fire and burning off what’s really going on inside your body because diabetes is really nothing more than an inflammatory disease process. So are you calming the fire, or is it increasing the fire? So you can eat something that is, you know, totally healthy.

A solid with some good food in there and everything and your blood sugars go up Why? Well, it could be that the food that you’re eating is making you worse even though it’s a quote-unquote good type of food. So you have to know what you should and should not be eating. Let’s talk about some of the causes that we specifically see. So the first one, we have to look at different areas in the body that are involved in the regulation of blood sugar. We know the pancreas is involved in blood sugar regulation. But the pancreas is typically not one of the major causes that we typically see, for most individuals, their pancreas is functioning perfectly fine. We know that the liver is a very important organ involved in blood sugar regulation.

But unfortunately, most individuals dealing with diabetes, they’re not getting comprehensively analyzed to evaluate the liver-based. Most of it is just based upon what kind of medication they can get from the adrenal gland. Right, this is a gland that sits on top of your kidneys. One of its most important jobs is to regulate blood sugar. Did you know that? And how often are you getting your adrenal gland to analyze guesses is not very often, how are you going to find out what the cause of your diabetes is? If you’re not getting fully analyzed, we know that the brain is heavily involved, obviously. And in diabetes, we know that the brain can be impacted by high amounts of sugar in the body, just like your nerves can be impacted, starting to create neuropathies.

And those sorts of things. Well, that high blood sugar can impact the brain as well. And what’s going to happen over time, it’s going to degenerate the brain increasing the risk of things like dementia or Alzheimer’s, that’s referred to as type three diabetes, right? So, let’s put that down here. Type three diabetes, something you should probably research and look into. I don’t have too much time today in this video to go over that. We know that the GI is heavily involved in blood sugar regulation, of course, it’s where you digest your food, it’s where absorption happens, it’s going to be involved in your ability to regulate blood sugar. The thyroid is heavily involved in blood sugar regulation, you may not realize that. And some of you may have a thyroid condition, and you may be taking medication to regulate your thyroid.

But is it fixing the underlying problem that’s causing the thyroid? Guess what, in many cases, what’s causing that thyroid malfunction is also involved in blood sugar as well, your diabetes. We know the immune system is heavily involved in blood sugar regulation, because it can start to cause autoimmune diseases and start attacking food causing foods to start attacking your joints, what if your immune system is attacking your pancreas or to attack your insulin receptors. A lot of problems could be going on to the body in regards to the immune system that has to be evaluated. We know that hormones are involved in blood sugar regulation, did you know that in many cases, fluctuations of hormones or increased hormones can cause blocking the ability for your body to accept insulin, it can block the insulin receptors.

So if you’re a female and you have elevated testosterone, that’s going to be an increased risk for your diabetes. If you’re a male, and you’re increasing, have increased levels of estrogens, that’s an increased risk of diabetes. Are you being fully evaluated to see this project go on with you? And of course, we know infection patterns and toxicities I mean, the list goes on and on. How many of these are you being analyzed for regularly? On your normal analysis? Every three months every six months with your doctor? Probably hardly any of these. What are you being evaluated for? What are your glucose levels? What is your hemoglobin a one c? What are your liver or your cholesterol levels like?

How’s your blood pressure? How’s your neuropathy? How are the kidneys? Why? Because those are the complications and they have medications and drugs to treat you for those types of things. And it’s just the progression of the disease getting worse over time, nobody is looking for the underlying mechanisms or the cause. This is what we do in our office. And this is how you can reverse your diabetes. If you don’t know the cause, how are you ever going to be able to come up with a customized plan of action to address it. So hopefully this starts to open your mind. Hopefully, it starts to get you a little excited, there isn’t a possibility there is an opportunity to get my diabetes reversed and to fix the underlying problems that are really going on at the surface.