What are the pitfalls of Type 2 Diabetes?

Hey guys, this is Dr. Jason Shumard with Integrative Wellness Center of San Diego and the author of How to Reverse your Diabetes? More importantly, what is commonly been told the misinformation, if you will, I refer to as the pitfalls of type two diabetes. So we’re going to talk about a few of these, which I think are massively important. Because I guarantee some of you who are dealing with a condition like diabetes is focusing on some of these pitfalls. And unfortunately, if you continue to do that, it’s going to drive problems and make you get worse over time. So let’s just jump right into these because I think they’re massively important. We’ll talk about each one, and why they are so important that you really start to move away from the mindset.

This common misconception should be given through the traditional health model, and even maybe from some of your colleagues or other individuals who are trying to give information about diabetes. The number one pitfall that I see, is blood sugar. And I know some of you are thinking like, what do you mean, that’s the problem? Unfortunately, that is a misconception. When you focus 100% on blood sugar, and you’re doing things to try to lower blood sugar, trying to lower the symptom. See, the blood sugar that you’re dealing with the elevated blood sugar is not the cause of why you had diabetes, it is a symptom of your diabetic condition. Let that sink in a little bit there. That common misconception is if I just get down my blood sugar. Then my diabetic condition is going to go away, and I can get off my medication.

I guarantee some of you right now have known somebody in your life that has diabetes, having their blood sugar under control, or they’re managing, but they’re still taking medication. What’s even crazier is that some of those individuals, if they have their blood, sugar being managed, they still have complications of diabetes. They may still have the neuropathies, maybe their doctors already amputated a toe. Maybe they have cardiovascular issues, and they’re taking a blood pressure medication or a cholesterol-lowering medication. They’ve had some problems with their vision, or their kidneys are starting to become problematic as well. How is it possible that if your blood sugars are truly the cause of your diabetic condition, if you bring your blood sugar’s down, and you work your tail off, and your doctor says, fantastic, your blood sugars are being managed? How is it possible to still have complications?

The reason why it’s possible is that the blood sugars are not the cause. The cause will still be there, which is going to be contributing to the other symptoms, and other issues, or complications of the diabetic condition. So we have to focus on what the cause is and not the symptom, which is blood sugar. Number two is focusing completely on diets. Shouldn’t we all be eating some quality of food, we need to stay away from the fast foods, bad fats, you know, eating too much sweets and sugars? We should all be doing this. Number one, how is that specific to diabetes? It’s not what by doing that by reducing your sugars, your carbohydrates, eating better quality food, what’s that going to do? It’s going to address blood sugar, it’s going to try to decrease the blood sugar.

So just focusing on the diet alone is the only focus on symptoms. So even by changing your diet, you’re still focusing on the symptoms. So if you’re eating healthy right now, and you’re frustrated, because your blood sugars are coming down, but your doctor is telling you you stop staying on medication. It’s because whatever the underlying problem is that caused your diabetes in the first place is still there. And unless you find out what that is, it’s going to become more and more frustrating. Number three, focusing on exercise, right? Of course, another scenario. Shouldn’t we all be exercising, isn’t it good for all of us to keep you know, have a good time Do you have vascular to maybe do some weight training to help our muscles and joints? How is that going to impact specific to diabetes?

It’s not what is it going to address trying to reduce blood sugar, again, addressing the symptom only, and not addressing the underlying cause. Number four is weight loss. Other individuals are working with that the cause of your diabetes is because you have too much weight, you need to lose the weight, you need to lose 20 pounds, 30 pounds, 40 pounds, 100 pounds, whatever it might be. And if you do that, it’s going to help you and you’re going to be able to reverse your diabetes. Again, what well, this bag up even further, shouldn’t we all be keeping a good weight? Shouldn’t we all be focusing on our bodies and making sure we’re not overly over overweight? Too much fat, those sort of things? Of course, how is it specific to diabetes, it’s not what is weight loss going to focus on decreasing blood sugars.

So many times someone may get, you know, the sleeve or stomach stapling shortening the stomach, and the person loses a bunch of weight and their blood sugars come down. And maybe they even get off the medication. But then what happens a year two, three, four, or five years later, the problem comes back again, they’re back on the medication, back in the problems again, and they still haven’t really gained any weight, except for now. They’ve got stomach issues, digestive issues, absorption issues, things of that nature, they can’t eat enough food, they don’t feel good when they eat. Now, they’ve just got a problem in their guts at this point. So again, the focus was trying to lose weight, which is important. But it’s only focusing on trying to reduce the blood sugars.

The underlying problem for those people eventually catches up, the problem comes back, the diabetic condition comes back, they get sicker and sicker and the problem continues. The last one is focusing on meds thinking that the medication is going to fix the problem as well. The medication is focused on decreasing blood sugar so all the focus that you’re being told, right, to lower your blood sugar, change your diet, exercise, lose weight, make sure you take your medications, all of it is focused on trying to reduce the blood sugar. And as I mentioned in the beginning, your blood sugar is not the cause of your diabetic condition. It is a symptom of your diabetes. It’s like saying, okay, hey, what if you have a bacterial infection?

The doctor says you’ve got a fever, sore throat, runny nose, and let that bacterial infection get worse inside your body. I mean, how foolish does that sound? Now we want to give you an antibiotic to take care of the infection. So it goes away. So all your symptoms, the fever, runny nose, and sore throat go away. Does that make sense? Well, the same thing happens with diabetes. So right now the focus and most treatments are trying to get this under control. That’s why when you go get a blood test run, they’re running your hemoglobin a one C, they’re looking at your fasting glucose, maybe your median glucose, we’re looking at those things, but we’re never focusing on what is causing the elevated blood sugar. The conversation is never okay, you have a diagnosis of diabetes.

What we’re going to do is to run comprehensive testing to find out under the surface what is causing your inability to regulate your blood sugar. What is causing your blood sugar to go high? Why are these things happening inside your system? We’re going to put together a customized approach for you to reduce this problem and get you healthy again. How many times have you had that conversation with someone from your traditional medical model? Probably never. Because the focus is the same even if you go to one of their dietitians are nutritionist the food that intakes you’re being told to do is being told to everyone else, maybe there are 20 or 30 people in the room, and they’re all being told to eat the same this much of carbs and this much of the protein and this much of that. It’s not specific.

When you’re dealing with diabetes or any other health condition for that matter. You have to find out what is going on specifically in your body. So when we talk about helping individuals in our practice, we have a three-step approach. The first step is to find out what is going on and what is specifically happening to individuals, we look at all the different tissues and organs that are involved in blood sugar regulation, is all they work, are working efficiently? How is the immune system functioning? Is there toxicity? Is there stress? What’s going on? Is there inflammation happening in the body, and what is driving that whole dysfunction? Once we know what that is, then we can disseminate that information and pour it into the next stage, which is the optimization phase, which requires customization and has to be customized.

How you should be eating, what type of protocol should be doing, not just, oh, let’s take berberine not just cinnamon, you know, chromium, whatever it might be to help lower blood sugar because those are focused on blood sugar, which is where you’re going to find from Dr. Google. But we’re going to dress as specific organs, tissues, systems, and the body to help it get into a place where it’s an environment where healing can take place again, get it back into homeostasis. And once we’ve fully optimized everything, we then can move into the next phase, which is the sustain phase. So we’re going to help the individual to have a sustainable lifestyle, and teach them to continue living that way. So they never go back to this again.

I don’t know how to eat, I don’t know what to do and the reason for that is because you haven’t been evaluated appropriately. Unfortunately, and the traditional model, you’re not going to find this, you’ve got to find someone in a functional health model or functional medicine model. These doctors like myself are trained to analyze appropriately to comprehensively test to disseminate the information and put together the right customized protocols for the individual to help them reverse their diabetes, which is the reason why I wrote my book, how to reverse your diabetes because it has to be specific to the individual.