Mastering Diabetes: How Your Lifestyle Can Set You Free

What if you could manage, or even reverse, your type 2 diabetes with minimal medication? In this enlightening dialogue with Dr. Dwain Woode, we shred the illusion of the impossibility of this and guide you on the path to controlling your health and, in turn, your life. Our focus is on lifestyle and environmental changes that improve health, reduce diabetes symptoms, and eventually, shed the need for medication.

Diabetes is not just a health issue—it's a dietary puzzle, and we're here to help you solve it. We've all been lured by misleading food labels and fallen victim to unhealthy diets. Together, we explore these deceptions, revealing the truth about what we're eating, and how fear can drive change. Understanding the contents of our food is critical to our health, and we delve into the intricacies of sugars—natural and added—and their impact on diabetes. We also highlight the importance of choosing whole foods over processed ones and how occasional indulgences, like a chocolate bar, can be enjoyed without harming your health.

Healthy eating doesn't stop at food choices—it's also about meal planning and time management. We share practical advice on meal prepping and planning and show how food can be more than just nourishment, it can be medicine. We touch on the sensitive topic of emotional eating, the effects of stress hormones, and how they can lead to overeating and weight gain. We encourage you to take control of your health, embrace the food you eat, and ultimately create the life you've always wanted. Join us as we navigate this journey to reclaiming our health, and who knows—you might even reverse your diabetes along the way.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello, hello, good evening everybody and welcome to the show. I, as I always say, I'm happy that you are here. Hope you had a great weekend and had an amazing Monday. We are in our series, the War for your Health, and we are continuing down that track. You know, we just came out of the month of November, which was Diabetes Awareness Month, and we continue talking about the war for your health. And tonight we continue talking about the war for your health and, specifically, we're going to go back and we're going to talk a little bit about diabetes. We're going to present kind of a model, if you will, a place that we can couch our thoughts and our ideas about how do we manage diabetes. And, specifically, we're going to use the word reversing how do we reverse diabetes, and we'll talk about what that means as we get into the show tonight. But I am glad that you're here.

Speaker 1: 0:53

If you're new to me, I'm Dr Dwayne Wood, that's Wood Within E. The E stands for Endocrinology. Here on the channel, I educate, I empower and I encourage you to take charge of your health, your life, avoid complications and go to the next level, creating the life you've always wanted. And I'm going to add something there I am Dr Dwayne Wood. I help people with type 2 diabetes reverse their diabetes when they feel stuck, so that they can take charge of their health, so they can avoid complications and so they can live a long life Well. So, the war for your health, the war for your health. We continue in our trek, right? We continue in the process of talking about our health and we're going to see here in a little bit I've got a slide that kind of talks a little bit to this and it is that the two most valuable things that we own are our time and our health. Our most valuable possessions are our time and our health. Do you believe that? Do you believe that? We'll see that here in a minute? But the treatment for diabetes, let's start there. Let's start there and, in particular, let's start by talking about diabetes. And we've said it here.

Speaker 1: 2:24

If you've not been, if you've been here for any amount of time, you've heard me say over and over and over and over that diabetes continues to be one of those diseases that that plagues us. We're not quite sure. We're not quite sure, to be honest, how we treat diabetes, how we fix diabetes, and you know the numbers support this, this idea that we're not sure right, because we've got 37 million people in the United States, we've got almost a half a billion people on the planet. Right, it's actually 462 or 63 million people right On the planet that are diabetic, and I'm told that over the course of the next several years that number grows and just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And so we're not, right now, doing an effective job of managing diabetes, of preventing it. Right, we're not doing a good job of preventing it and certainly we're not doing a good job of treating it when someone has diabetes.

Speaker 1: 3:31

And so you know, we talked a few weeks ago about this concept of reversing, concept of reversing, and let's talk about what we mean when we say reversing. What we mean when we say reversing is diabetes, a person who has diabetes, and specifically we're talking about type 2 diabetes. We have not been able to, we are not anywhere near to being able to cure, prevent or reverse type 1 diabetes. Those are insulin requiring folks and their issue is that their pancreatic cells have been damaged to the point where it no longer makes insulin or makes a significantly decreased amount of insulin for what they need. And those folks, those people who have type 1 diabetes are insulin dependent, insulin requiring, and there is no way around that. So let's couch it, let's go ahead and say that upfront. So when we're talking about reversing diabetes, we are talking about talking specifically about those who have type 2 diabetes. As we know, type 2 diabetes is a disease of inefficient or insufficient insulin, right, inefficient in that the insulin that is being made does not work well, and that's the whole idea of insulin resistance or the body does not make enough for various reasons, and if you've not been with our show for a while, you can go back and look at that. We've done several shows on insulin resistance and so forth. Okay, so these are the folks who we're talking about type 2 diabetes, type 2 diabetics, whose problem is inadequate functioning of their insulin. All right.

Speaker 1: 5:26

Another caveat that we've got to say is that there are a group of people, unfortunately, whose disease process has progressed to the point where their beta cells have been damaged so significantly that it's hard, it's hard for them to be managed without medication Now, notice, I didn't say insulin, right, so without medication. And so there's still a lot of things that we can do for folks who are in that situation, right, but just some of those thoughts I wanted to throw out there. So when we talk about reversing, what we're really saying is we're talking about people who can manage their diabetes without medication. Right, without medication, you got that, or very little medication. Let me throw that in because I want, I want, I don't want to exclude a lot of people who may have to take a small amount of medication. Right, there are people right now who are on hundreds of units of insulin, plus oral medication, plus other injectables, and to significantly reduce their medication burden is a big deal. Okay. So reversing?

Speaker 1: 6:45

Now, when we talk about reversing, what we want to say is that reversing diabetes is a process of making changes in the body, in the lifestyle, in the environment of a person, so that they no longer are showing the symptoms of diabetes, a particular symptom, right? So we said that sugar. High sugar is a consequence of the problem in diabetes. So high sugar is not diabetes. High sugar is not diabetes. Diabetes is a problem with insulin usage and so it results in high blood sugar. So what we're saying is that we want to take a person who's having significantly high blood sugars and treat their underlying cause of their disease process to the point where their blood sugars are normalized, so he has to see that process right. We want to take someone who has diabetes and treat them to the point where their blood sugars are in the normal range, whatever the pathology is, whatever the reason for that is. That is what we're talking about when we talk about reversing diabetes.

Speaker 1: 8:13

Okay, and so, as we think about diabetes, one of the things that we want to make sure that we understand is that diabetes, as I mentioned, is an insulin issue. Diabetes is an insulin problem, and so, because it is an insulin problem, what we want to do is we want to attack it at that space. We want to attack it in the insulin space, because if we don't attack it in the insulin space, then we're not having success. Okay, and so here is a simple model. Here is a simple model that I want you to remember, and the model is this here's the model we want to understand insulin, we want to understand carbohydrates and we want to understand exercise Insulin, carbohydrates and we want to understand exercise. Now, how do those fit together is what we're going to be talking about. Okay, how do they fit together? That is the discussion that we are getting ready to jump into. Y'all Getting ready to jump into that discussion right now and right.

Speaker 1: 9:36

So, reversing, reversing diabetes, reversing diabetes, a model for reversing diabetes, and look at that handsome guy right there. So, do you think that eating a healthy diet is important? Right? If you think yes, go ahead and pop that in the chat. If you think no, pop that in the chat. Yeah, yes or no? Do you think it is important? Okay. And then secondly, do you think you are a healthy eater? Yes or no? Right, so, put that in the chat If you do. You think you're a healthy eater, yes or no?

Speaker 1: 10:14

And the reason for that, the reason for that, the reason I ask that question, is that I have a lot of patients who come into the office or I talk to some clients. I talk to people who me and people at church that may stop me, and we talk about their diabetes, we talk about their blood sugars and I start beginning to ask them questions about the things that they're doing in their lifestyle, in their life, right, so, diet, exercise and so forth. And so they begin listening for me, the things that they're eating, and they say, well, I'm eating a good diet, right, I am. You know, I've changed from sugary drinks I'm now drinking diet soda or diet drinks. I've changed from fried foods and now I'm eating salads. I've changed from, you know, eating pizza out all the time and now we're cooking at home. Now, all of those things sound good, right, and in fact, in fact let me put a pin there and say this that if you have made those changes already, you've made significant improvements in your diet, you've made significant improvement in your lifestyle, particularly if you compare where you were before. Okay, so I'm going to say that I want to acknowledge it. I want to acknowledge that a lot of people have made those changes.

Speaker 1: 11:44

When we delve a little deeper, though, when we delve a little deeper, we find out that there are certain things that they're doing that predisposes them to that unhealthy diet, for example and I'm going to tell on myself, do I have? No, I don't have one in here, but I have said, hey, I drink diet drinks. Right, I'm not going to say which one. I was going to show you, but what I found, what I found and my wife reminded me of this just the other day, right, she said to me because I was complaining if you guys have been following me on social media, you see, I've been showing, you know me exercising and me going out and I've been showing my weight right. And so I said to her the other day that, hey, you know, I'm a little, I'm a little annoyed right, because my weight's kind of plateaued, okay, and so she and I'm going out and I'm walking right, doing my time.

Speaker 1: 12:45

I've been trying to get that, you know, seven days a week I'm getting out, like we tell people to do. And so she said to me I noticed that you're drinking a lot of diet drinks. Now here's the kicker right? So the diet drinks are good for my blood sugar, right, so they help me so that my blood sugar doesn't go up. But what happens is the sugary drinks or the diet drinks make me hungry. So what do I do? I eat, and sometimes the things that I eat offsets the fact that I didn't have a high blood sugar. You see what just happened, okay, so, so there are little things like that that go on. Where we are not, we're not.

Speaker 1: 13:26

If we're not careful, then the healthy diet that we think we're having can sometimes not be as healthy, in fact. Let's go back to the salad that the person said that they don't. They don't eat pizza anymore, but they eat salad. Now, I've seen some people salads and I've thought to myself, wow, have you seen? Have you ever seen one of those? Right, you're like okay, okay, yeah, it is a salad. It's not a salad, but the amount of croutons, the amount of dressing, the amount of cranberries, the amount of whatever else that they've put in it, right, the carbs that are in that salad sometimes are more than the carbs that it would be in a pizza. Okay, so that's the. That's the healthy diet, okay, so, yeah, so we've got our little survey.

Speaker 1: 14:20

Yes, yes, we know we probably don't eat as healthy, healthily as we thought. Okay, right, so the impact of unhealthy foods and we know, we know a lot of this. Right, we know that if we, if we, eat unhealthy foods, then you know we are predisposed to strokes and diabetes, dehydration, obesity, heart disease and heart attacks. Right, so that that stuff that we know, and it is a lot of people say. Well, let me say a lot of people. The thought is that if somebody knows that this stuff happens, then it is a push for them to not eat the way they eat.

Speaker 1: 15:00

And the truth is that fear a lot of times is not a good motivator for diet. What do I mean by that. So I've had people who come to the office because they have either requested from their doctor or they have been a patient and they have not been controlled. And all of a sudden they come in because they want to get controlled and I say to them well, what happened? And they'll say you know, my cousin had a stroke, my dad had a stroke, my somebody had a stroke, and, and, and you would think that because of that, everything goes well from there. But what happens is they come in because they are afraid and after a while gets what happens to the feeling of fear. The feeling of fear goes away because the further away you get from the fact that this person had a stroke or died, the less intense the emotion, and so after a while, right, the motivation from the fear is no longer there. So I tell people that that's not what we want to do. We don't want to to scare somebody into quote unquote changing their lifestyle. Now, it will work for a while, and there are a group of people that they were scared once and for the rest of their lives. Right, they don't do any, they don't, they don't go back. But for the majority of people, the further away you get from that fear, the less impact it has on what we do and how we, how we adjust our diets. So, things to pay attention to when we're eating, things to pay attention to when we're eating.

Speaker 1: 16:39

Number one the ingredient list. That's the ingredient list on the package and the ingredient list in your life, in your home, in the foods that you eat. Okay, we want to look at the nutrition claims of certain things, and this one. Sometimes I am. I am annoyed with the industry as they portray things For me. Give you an example this is diet bread. This diet bread will help you control your A1C. And you go and you buy the diet diet bread or the low carb bread or the no carb bread and what you find is that blood sugar still spikes. And because people are eating low carb, no carb, diet bread, they think that when they normally used to eat like one slice or two slices, they can eat three or four. So three or four slices of a diet bread is just like eating one slice of regular bread. Or hey, eat this food.

Speaker 1: 17:46

Or, for instance, shakes, right, so we've got the, the, the diabetic friendly shakes, or the low glycemic shakes. Well, if you look at those shakes. They have 20, 30 grams of carbs and so if you're not paying attention to the packaging, then you think, oh, it's a, it's a diabetic friendly shake, so I'll go drink that and we don't consider the fact that that continues to have or play havoc on our blood sugars. Okay, so the first thing and we're going through this and I'm coming back to the model here in a minute right, just want to make sure that that we understand. So, coming back to the model, all right, so you look at nutritional claims, we're going to look at health claims. So, not just the nutritional claims, but the health claims.

Speaker 1: 18:33

So we did a one of our one of our online courses is called unmasking the sweet truth about sugar, and in the course, what we're doing is we're walking through, talking about the effects of sugar, where sugars are and so forth. One of our, one of our shorts and one of the videos that we did talked about the, the names of sugar. I think there were, I think I gave I don't know 15 of them. Right? No-transcript high fructose corn syrup I mean, there's one in this, it's cane sugar, all right. Sucrose, fructose galactose, and if you're not aware that those names or those words mean sugar, then you think that this thing does not affect my blood sugar, when it does. So the nutritional claims, the health claims and, of course, the sugar content.

Speaker 1: 19:28

Now here I want to make a distinction between, well, between, three things. Number one I want to make a distinction between natural sugar or added sugar. An apple has natural sugar. A chocolate bar has added sugar, and there is a difference. There is a difference because the way the body processes, even though it all turns into glucose, you get a higher spike in your blood sugar if you eat a chocolate bar versus an apple, or a chocolate bar versus a banana, or a chocolate bar versus you, pick your fruit of choice.

Speaker 1: 20:15

The benefit of eating the fruit that has the natural sugars is that the fruit also has other things in it, like what it also has fluid. I don't think there's a lot of fluid in a candy bar, right? So the fruit has fluid. The fruit has other nutrients, so vitamins and minerals. The candy bar may have some added vitamins and minerals yeah, that are added, but the fruit has it. And the fruit also has fiber. Fruit has fiber, so fluid, vitamins, minerals, other nutrients and fiber, and that fiber that I mentioned. The fiber helps to blunt the rise in blood sugar, and we're going to talk here in a minute about what the rise in blood sugar does, because that's a big part of and Tech Troublemaker here talked about cravings the fluctuations in our blood sugar has a big part to play in our cravings. So sugar content.

Speaker 1: 21:24

So we want to make a different distinction between sugar, so natural and artificial. Not artificial, but added sugar, natural or added sugar. And now we haven't even talked about the artificial sweeteners. This is like true sugar that they put in there. That's the first thing. The other thing that we want to make a distinction between are the sugar and carbs. So if you look at a package, it will list on that package the number of carbohydrates that are in the package. It will list the number of sugars that are in that package and it will list the amount of fiber that's in it. So carbs, sugar, fiber.

Speaker 1: 22:15

Sometimes you'll see something that says no sugar added. So you look at the package and you look at that sugar line and it'll be zero and that's great. But if you look right above that sugar line, you'll see 35, 45, 50 grams of carbs. So what happens to carbs? Carbohydrates get turned into sugar in the body. So just because something says no sugar does not necessarily mean that it does not cause a rise in blood sugar. So, once again, look at the list of ingredients, look at the nutritional claims, look at the health claims and then look at the sugar content. So things to pay attention to when you are eating.

Speaker 1: 23:12

And then here are some dos and some don'ts. Y'all here are some dos and don'ts. So do prioritize whole foods, and you will hear me more and more talking about the benefit of whole foods If you go back and listen to one of the earlier shows that we did as we walked through the War for your Health. We talked a lot about processing, processed foods, and this is a space, this is a place, right here, for us to talk and say, hey, whole foods are better for you, they tend to be more healthy, they tend to have more things that we want in our diet as we are working to fight this war. So whole foods, that is, eating things that are as close as possible to the original form. That is, eating an orange instead of drinking orange juice, eating an apple instead of drinking apple juice. So make sure that you understand that. So this is dos and dos. So do read food labels. Do read food labels carefully, as we just talked about, as we just talked about.

Speaker 1: 24:29

So making sure that you are going through and you are paying attention to all the things that are there that can derail your quest to reverse diabetes. Do stay hydrated with water. Stay hydrated, because if you don't stay hydrated, then you sometimes will feel like you are hungry. The insulin that your body is making doesn't work as effectively. You don't wash out those toxins, your blood sugar stays higher. All those things are benefited by hydration. So those are the dos. And then don't overindulge in processed foods. So that goes right along with eating more whole foods. And then don't overindulge in processed foods. Now it's worth mentioning here and I got to be careful as I say this because I don't want Well, I'm just going to say it, maybe I'll clean it up in a minute Just because you eat, I mean pick your thing of choice Just because you eat the chocolate bar, that one chocolate bar, doesn't mean that you have screwed up your entire life.

Speaker 1: 25:49

That's right, I said it. So there are some people who say that never, ever, ever again should you ever put a chocolate bar in your mouth. I'm not one of those. Now, is a chocolate bar the best choice of a meal? No, is a chocolate bar the best source of nutrition? Nope. Is a chocolate bar going to give you all the balanced food that we talk about? That we will talk about. The answer is no. So why would you eat the chocolate bar? Hey, because it tastes good and because I like it and because, right, we go on those because and because and because.

Speaker 1: 26:40

So one of the things that happens when we talk about food and we talk about diabetes and we talk about weight and we talk about health in general as it relates to our eating, is there's this idea of scarcity, scarcity. Scarcity says that I'm probably never going to get another chocolate bar, or I can never eat another chocolate bar for the rest of my life. And so what's going to happen is, when I see a chocolate bar, or I see I have access to chocolate bars, I'm going to eat as many of those chocolate bars as I possibly can, because I don't know, because it's scarce, I don't know when I'm getting any more. Thank you. I don't know when it's coming back in the house. I don't know when my husband, my wife, my father, my brother, sister, I don't know when they're going to, let me have another one.

Speaker 1: 27:38

So on Thanksgiving night, right when I'm sitting at the table and they're eating the apple pie or the peach cobbler or whatever they've made, right, and I'm not having any In my mind, I'm thinking to myself I can't wait till everybody go to sleep, because when they go to sleep it's going beyond. I'm coming down, right, and here's what happens. Right, I had a lady recently said to me. She said you would think that he would just eat one. All right, whatever it was. I forgot what we were talking about. She said man, I have all this stuff and you would think he would just eat one. But I come out and he's eating. Every single one is gone. It's like you know we've been robbed and you know why that happens.

Speaker 1: 28:38

That's the scarcity mindset. It says I'm not, I'm not going to get any more, so I'm just going, I'm just going to eat it as soon as I can. I'm eating every one of it. Okay, all right, don't rely on fad diets. Don't rely. We were talking about dos and dos, so don't rely on fad diets.

Speaker 1: 28:58

I tell, I tell my folks that I would much rather you lose weight and get blood sugars under control in a control manner than I would. You you know, hopping on a diet on and off, on and off, back and forth. Now I'm going to say that and the screws, I said that I'm going to put a, put a caveat and put a pin right there. If your blood sugars are like out the roof, yeah, we need to control them right now. We're not waiting for six months. We got to control them right now. Okay. So if you walk into the office and your A1C is 14, 12, 13, 11, 10, right, any of those numbers are higher than that, or even sometimes a nine. Right now we've got to control those blood sugars. So I don't want you to say to me when you see me next and say, wait a minute, dr Wood, you sit on the show that you want us to go slowly. Yeah, that's within reason and that's you know, that's a whole nother conversation. But right now we got to control those blood sugars, right.

Speaker 1: 30:09

So don't rely on fat diets because the now, now, if you are using the diet as a lifestyle, you have decided. You know what. I'm going to be low carb. I've decided that that's the way, that's the place I'd like to be, that's the position I'd like my family to be in, and this is what we're going to do. It's fine, you've made a decision, but it's not. I'm going to do low carb until my blood sugar gets better and until I lose some weight, and then, boom, I'm going off to diet. That's not what I want you to do. Right, make a lifestyle decision. Make a lifestyle choice. Now here's what I love about diets if there's anything beneficial about diet.

Speaker 1: 30:59

Who says that you have to be quote unquote on a specific diet all the time? I give the example of seasons. Right, we do different things in spring than we do in summer, than we do in winter than we do in fall. We wear different clothes. Why? Because there are seasons in our lives, there are seasons in the world, and so you can decide hey, this is how I'm going to function. In the wintertime, I'm going to pick one of the diets. We did a show, by the way, on the diets. I'm going to be vegan. In the summertime, I'm going to do Mediterranean. In the fall, I'm going to be whatever it is. But what you want to do is you want to decide how the trend of your life is going to be, and if you do that, then that is where we want you to be.

Speaker 1: 32:11

And then don't, right, we're talking about do's and don'ts, do's and don'ts Don't eat mindlessly. Do not eat mindlessly, right, do not eat mindlessly. Let me see, there you go. Do not eat mindlessly, because when you do, I was talking to my son recently and I was telling him these devices that were all on or the TV that's playing, so he was sitting down to have a, to eat something just a couple of weeks ago and he went to the refrigerator, got it. I think I was in here, mom was doing something else and he was getting a snack and he sat down at the table with his device. So I said to hey, man, just turn the device off for a minute, just eat the food, just enjoy it. Right, because what happens sometimes is because we're eating mindlessly, we don't realize what we're eating and how much we eat, right, so you just grab it and you scarf it down and if you're not careful, then you're like oh, my goodness, look at that. Okay, so so here's a guide, here's a guide. Here's a guide to healthy eating. Here's a guide to healthy eating Number one plan your meals for the week.

Speaker 1: 33:36

Plan your meals for the week, so decide. Okay, this is what I'm going to eat this week. Now, in that planning, you can put in there that I'm going to have I don't know, pick your fast, your favorite fast food restaurant. This is what we're going to do, but you've planned it. It's not a. I'm driving home and, oh, there's the. I see the sign, let me go grab something. And that happens. We tend to not eat the way we want. So what does that mean then? If I'm planning my meals for the week and this is what I'm going to eat for the week, that means that when I do eat, I have to eat enough and eat in enough balance and enough quantity and enough variety, so that when I'm driving home and I see the sign on the highway, my brain doesn't say to me, hey, let's go get some of that. Let's say, hey, let's go get some of that. And we're going to talk here in a minute about why we eat.

Speaker 1: 34:46

Number two prep ingredients in bulk. Prep ingredients in bulk. If every time you go to eat I don't know, pick something, you've got to go and you've got to chop it up and you've got to do this and you've got to wash it, then that's more work and our brain doesn't like to do that kind of work. So prep for the week, prep your meals and prep your ingredients in bulk. Chop up all the onions and have a bag of onions in the crisper. Chop up your lettuce, put them in one of those containers that you spin it, get all the fluid out and it's in there. So now you've got lettuce, chop up your cucumbers, have them in there. Wash the tomatoes If you do that then it doesn't become as burdensome and here incorporate some no-cook meals like that salad.

Speaker 1: 35:53

Get the salad and maybe and of course now I told you to use whole foods but maybe you go out and maybe you grill some chicken. You got those chicken strips, strips, that's the chicken strips. You got those chicken strips that they're already grilled. You've got the salad that you've already prepped all the things. Now you put that in a bowl. You take the grilled chicken, you put it in the microwave or you can even drop it in a pan for a couple minutes and then you just lay it on top, boom done. But if you've got to go through and clean the chicken and season the chicken and then cook the chicken and then go make the salad because you've got to chop up the lettuce, you've got to dry the lettuce, you've got to wash the tomatoes, you've got to cut the cucumbers.

Speaker 1: 36:49

All of that work sometimes makes it difficult to be healthy in our eating and then eat foods you like. Oh man, let me pop off of this one. I'm stopping right there for a minute. Yo, listen, listen, listen. This brain that we have. It is an incredible part of our body, but it can do some crazy, crazy things.

Speaker 1: 37:12

Now, a lot of people I fall into this category too, right. So people come into the office or I talk with them and they'll say to me, they'll say to me, I have, I went home and I threw away all the bread, I got rid of all the rice, I got rid of, all the potatoes I got rid of. And they go through this list of stuff, right, that they got rid of. So I say to them okay, what do you have left? And so they go through the list of all the things they have left and all the things that they bought to replace the things that they threw away. And I said, well, do you like that stuff that you just bought? And they're like, not really. And I said, well, do you like the stuff that you threw away, and they'll say, yes. And let me ask you a question how long do you think it will last this thing that they just did? Right, they brought all the stuff they don't like in the house and threw away all the stuff that they do like.

Speaker 1: 38:16

I don't see that. That's not a formula for success. Now, within reason, right? I don't say you should, in your refrigerator, have 10 gallons of ice cream or a whole 10 quarts of juice, so that's not what I'm talking about. But I want you to eat foods that you like. So go and sit down.

Speaker 1: 38:36

Well, let me give you an example. One of the places where I think we fail is in discussing ethnicity in our diet. That's right, I said it. So you go to the doctor, right, wherever you're from, I mean, whether you're from the south, from the east, from the west, whether you come from another country or you live in a particular area, and you guys eat a certain way, whatever it is. And so you show up in the medical system the way you eat, and then you go and the doctor me says to you hey, all the stuff that your family has taught you to eat, going back generations, we're throwing all of that away and now you're going to eat this way. That is a recipe for failure. So eat foods you like. So go through your foods, the foods that you eat, and pick out from those foods the healthiest things that are on that list that you like to eat. Now there's going to have to be some sacrifice. There's going to have to be some decision that there's certain things that I can't eat a lot of. But eat foods that you like and let food be your medicine. Let food be your medicine. I mean, that's something that people say all the time Let food be your medicine.

Speaker 1: 40:05

So our most valuable y'all this is the one I was telling you about our most valuable possessions are our time and our health, our time and our health. So later on this evening we're going to be doing a show called. We're doing a series called Q4 winning moves Q4 winning moves and part of what we're talking Q4 winning moves is how are you prioritizing? How are you using your time effectively? Are you using your time efficiently? Because the time goes away. We're not getting it back. You can't go to tomorrow or yesterday and say, hey, you know I didn't use this efficiently or effectively. Can I have it back? The answer is no, you got it, you squandered it, that's it. So make sure that you are managing your time, using that effectively. And then the other thing that we have, the other valuable possession, is our health. Now, y'all it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how much money you have, it doesn't matter how many possessions you have, it doesn't matter how successful you are, how many degrees you have.

Speaker 1: 41:19

If you don't have health, you can't enjoy it. You have those beautiful grandchildren and you can't throw a ball. You can't go outside because you've got heart failure and you laid up in a bed. You can't spend time with the family on that special vacation or whatever, because you got to be a dialysis. You can't play basketball with your son. You can't take your grandson fishing because you can't see Effectively, you can't see well, Right now.

Speaker 1: 42:05

There are ways around some of that. There are things that people do to compensate for that, but I'm saying to you let's do a good job of Managing our time and let's do a great job of taking care of our health, because once again, that's another one. When that goes, you're not getting it back. Time and health, y'all. Time and health. And here, right here, this is my, this is one of my favorite. This is one of my favorite parts of this discussion, and it is.

Speaker 1: 42:46

It is Reasons it's hard to eat healthy, all right, and tech troublemaker says he's an emotional, emotional eater. Right, so, an emotional eater, and that is. That is so true, because a lot of what we do, a lot of why we eat, is Because of our emotions. Now, emotions and the reason so emotions is a big one, and and I actually lump cortisol Into that space right, I say cortisol is what causes us to eat. One of the One of the things that cortisol does is the cortisol is responsible for getting energy. Cortisol is responsible for getting energy. Cortisol is one of those stress hormones. Okay, and let me give you an example, or use this example to explain.

Speaker 1: 43:41

So you're a zebra, all right, and you're outmining your business. A tiger shows up and the tiger is hungry and tiger starts chasing you and, as a Smart zebra, you don't just hang around, right, you take off, whoo gone, and You're running, you're running, you're running, you're running, and your body during that process is Pumping out cortisol. Right, because it's one of the stress hormones. Cortisol goes and it mobilizes sugar, and if your body effectively and efficiently mobilizes sugar, then you don't become tiger food, you get away. But if, for some reason, that tiger is hungrier than you and more determined and your stamina Goes down, guess what? Tiger food. So let's assume that we got away, let's assume that the tiger was chasing us and we got away from the tiger. Now the tiger's gone and the stress level begins to come down.

Speaker 1: 44:45

Do you know what the cortisol makes you do? The cortisol says, hey, that was great, we got away from that tiger, but we don't know if we're gonna have to run again. So now I've got to go replenish the energy stores that I just used. And so it makes you do what? How do you restore energy stores? You eat, so it makes you eat, and You're pumping that in that. The tiger is gone and so the instincts of the Zebra to run this gone. I mean, there's no more stress. But it's eating because the cortisol levels were high and it forces it to eat and Insulin takes that food and it stores it Right. So cortisol makes you eat, insulin stores the food. Now take us.

Speaker 1: 45:37

We're not zebras, we're not running from tigers, we're not out. You know, in the, in the jungles, you know, with animals looking to eat us. But our lifestyles are stressful and it keeps us in a space of stress. And In that stressful space, our body produces Cortisol, mm-hmm, that same cortisol that the zebra had, same thing, stress hormone. And Because the cortisol is up, what is it? What does cortisol make you do?

Speaker 1: 46:11

We just talked about it, right? Cortisol makes you eat because, the cortisol being one of the stress hormones, your body thinks that it is in danger. And so the cortisol is up because you're stressed, because, in the zebras case, the zebra got away from the lion or the tiger and it's no longer thinking about the lion or the tiger, it's just responding now to the natural hormones that came out during the stress response. And so it goes and it eats, it replenishes the food and it's full now and it stops eating. The cortisol level is done and it's not hanging around thinking hey, wait a minute. That lion or that tiger chased me at this Same spot yesterday. I wonder if he's around that rock, I wonder if he's behind that tree.

Speaker 1: 46:51

The zebra is not thinking that, but our stress response, our stressful lives, keeps us in a constant tonic state of stress and Because of that, the stress hormones are there and they make us eat. So we're eating because the cortisol and we're storing it because of the insulin. So what does that sound like? That sounds like weight gain, so, so, so those are the reasons, right, say emotions and Then taste.

Speaker 1: 47:23

Well, let me go back to emotions for a second. The other, the other thing is so we eat, right, because of emotions, and and emotions can come in lots of different ways. For example, you remember what it felt like when mom made that particular meal? Yeah, that emotion comes up, and so we want to recreate that emotion, that safety, the warmth, the connection, emotions when I am Angry or when I'm mad, or when I'm sad, or when those emotions come up because I don't know how to really deal with the emotions, then I eat, and the eating for a moment, for a little while, soothes and calms the emotions. When I'm tired, I eat. When I'm sad, I eat when I'm happy. Now, here's the thing, right.

Speaker 1: 48:21

So most, a lot of people think that, oh, it's only negative emotions that trigger eating. Well, if you are not yet able to manage emotions negative or positive emotions, anytime the emotion shows up, what do you do? You eat, so you go and you have an amazing time with the family, right, there's nothing wrong. Nobody's like burning stuff up, nobody's like tearing things down, just a wonderful experience with the family. And because of the emotions that come up, we eat as a result. So emotions taste right, it tastes good. That's the bliss point.

Speaker 1: 49:06

That place, that spot where there's just enough sugar, just enough salt, just enough fat, that thing that the company created when they designed that food. That makes you say, mm, mm, mm. I can't just have one. That taste. It tastes good. I like how it feels in my mouth, like one of the things I was telling somebody recently is when I drink some soda, whether it's diet soda or regular soda I like that burn in the back of my throat. So I'll drink and drink and drink, and drink and drink until I get that burn I'm like. So whatever that is, that taste, the feel Some people like crunch, some people like to swish things in their mouth, they like the grittiness of certain things. So that taste that's created for us. And sometimes there's an emotion associated with that as well, because your mother made cornbread a certain way and the feel, the taste of her cornbread, sparks an emotion.

Speaker 1: 50:00

And then habit Habit is the other reason why we do the things that we do, because our habit is to eat that when we get together, we eat. That you know, at different times of the year we eat that you know. We get up in the morning and we eat a certain things. We've created a habit of doing that. Friends comes into town, we take them out and we eat. We have a christening, a blessing, a marriage we eat. All those reasons reasons why we eat the way that we eat. So when we talk about reversing diabetes, right, we're talking about staying healthy. Reversing diabetes means living longer and better, so as we talk about the diabetes model and the reversing diabetes model, let me say it that way your thought for diabetes has to be how do we manage insulin?

Speaker 1: 50:57

Insulin is that substance that stores energy, and insulin is responsible for lots of abnormalities in the body. It's a growth factor we put on weight If somehow we are able to get the insulin to work effectively. It also, though, manages blood sugar. So a question is why is the insulin high? One of the reasons insulin is high is because our body is compensating for increased weight, and the amount of insulin that it needs to keep the blood sugar down at a certain weight is higher, so it needs more power. The insulin has to work harder, so the body says, hey, I want to make sure these blood sugars stay as good as possible. So I'm going to pump my insulin up. And when the body pumps the insulin up, the insulin causes weight gain and we get insulin resistance. And because insulin is resistant, the blood sugar gets higher. And the blood sugar gets higher, we put on weight because the insulin goes up. And we go through the cycle. The insulin makes us hungry, we go and we eat, the blood sugars go up and now the body has to make more insulin. You see the cycle. So how do we decrease the insulin?

Speaker 1: 52:18

Carbohydrate management and exercise Carbohydrate management. One don't put as much in that the insulin has to manage. So manage carbs that, I'm going to say to you, is not as easy as sometimes we make it out to be. So either we put less in or we burn it off. Put less in or we burn it off, and that's the exercise part. If we burn the carbs off, then the insulin becomes more effective. So that's the model and we're going to be talking more and more about that model. We're going to expand on that as we come back over the next couple of weeks.

Speaker 1: 53:00

As we are talking about diabetes, we're not in diabetes awareness month anymore. We're talking about the war for your health and of the diseases that are out there. They used to tell us in medical school that if you knew all there was to know about syphilis, then you knew medicine. Now, if you know how to manage diabetes, then you know medicine, because diabetes and the reason they were saying that is because syphilis affected so many parts of the body Diabetes affects an enormous amount of the entire body. Every single cell in your body is affected by diabetes. Now we talk about the triopathy the eyes and the feet and the kidney but all of the body is a wash in elevated blood sugar. So we want to make sure that we are managing diabetes and we reverse it Reverse diabetes we find ways to decrease insulin. We find ways to manage our carbs in terms of what we're putting in and, number three, we work on expelling as much of the carbs from our body as possible. That's the exercise. Now, each of those. We're going to come back and talk more about them specifically Insulin, carbohydrates and exercise and how they play a part in the reversing of our diabetes.

Speaker 1: 54:44

This is Dr Dwayne Wood, that's Wood with an E. The E stands for endocrinology. Here on the channel. I educate, I empower and I encourage you to take charge of your health, take charge of your life, go to the next level and create the life you've always wanted In 2023,. We're no longer allowing life to happen to us. We are taking charge. We're getting unstuck this year. We'll see you next week. Thank you, bye, everybody, oooh.