Do You Know with Dr. Dwain Woode

Which Diabetes Medication Should You Stop

• Dwain Woode

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Embark on a transformative journey with me, Dr. Dwain Woode, as we enter week three of "New Year, New You." If you're grappling with type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes, I'm here to reveal a game-changing strategy that revolves around insulin reduction and fasting. This approach isn't just theory; it's a proven path that some of our listeners are already walking, witnessing first-hand the remarkable drop in blood sugar levels and the tangible possibility of medication reduction. This episode is dedicated to unpacking the 'lock and key' model of insulin function, addressing insulin resistance, and the sweeping effects of this hormone beyond glucose regulation.

In this revelatory episode, we're tearing down the complexities of diabetes treatment and the infamous 'ominous octet,' laying bare the intricate relationship between different organs, insulin, and sugar. Understand how medications like sulfonylureas and DPP-4 inhibitors play diverse roles in your body's insulin dance and prepare for next week's continuation of this critical discussion. But it's not just about the medicine; I'm advocating for lifestyle revolutions that challenge the status quo of insurance-covered treatments and place your well-being back in your hands. I'll share my personal experiences in weight management and how a simple yet potent strategy like fasting can turn the tide against diabetes.

As we wind down, the conversation shifts to a practical guide on implementing fasting to manage diabetes, emphasizing the need for a tailored approach and the right mindset. Plus, we'll look at the broader medication landscape, considering what might be worth adding to enhance our health journey while navigating the maze of current prescriptions. As your guide, I'm committed to empowering you with knowledge, encouraging positive change, and supporting you every step of the way toward seizing control of your health. So, join me, and let's create the life you've always envisioned, one step at a time.

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Speaker 1:

And we are back, y'all. Hello, hello, hello. Good evening, good morning, good afternoon, good night. Wherever you find yourselves, all right now, welcome back, hope. You had a great Monday, had a great weekend and are ready to be here. So we are.

Speaker 1:

I am in the middle of new year, new you actually, we're at the beginning, right? So this is our third week in this new series New year, new you where we I attempt to help our adults with type two diabetes decrease their medication, cut their medication, get rid of their medication and put their diabetes in remission. That's our goal, y'all. That's what we're working on and that's where we're heading. We talked at the end of last year about this war that we are in for our health. We talked about what we need to do, the first steps. Right, that was our very first show. What are the first steps you need to do to get ready to be on this journey? Last week, we talked about fasting, the one tool, right, the first tool that we are using in this war, in this fight to put our diabetes in remission. And over the course of the past week, you've watched me right, I've come on live. We've done the check ins right, the 72 hour fast that we did so that you can see what the blood sugars do and what the results are, that you can get. Some of you right now, even by doing the fast, are able to get off of some of your medication.

Speaker 1:

And tonight, in this show, we're going to answer the question what are what diabetes medications can I really get off of? If you're new to me, I'm 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, your life, avoid complications and go to the next level. We're creating the life we've always wanted and in this year 2024, our new theme is New Year who you? So we're talking, we're talking about diabetes and I want, I want you to hear me. I want you to hear me, I'm I'm zeroing in on the adult with type two diabetes and our goal is we've got 12 months, we're heading right. So, so this is not okay. We're going to do this for two, three weeks, but we've got a year, 12 months that we're working on this and, as we come on, we're going to be focusing, focusing in laser sharp on what are the things that we need to do to help you achieve the goal.

Speaker 1:

And so what is the goal, y'all? The goal is, by the end of the year, that some of you are going to be off of diabetes medications. Some of you are going to cut your diabetes medications significantly and I'm going to propose a percentage here before we end the show tonight and some of you, right, you are in the first throws, you're in the steps of putting your diabetes in remission, because this year, new year, new you, new year, new you, right. So that's where we're going, all right, so let's hop to it, y'all. Let's hop to it. So, if, if we think about diabetes, right, I want to pull up, right. So that's the.

Speaker 1:

That's the flyer that you guys saw. That's the flyer that you guys saw, right, that's a, yeah, a funny looking fella, a funny looking guy. But anyway, when we think about diabetes, this is the treatment algorithm, and I put this up for you simply so that you can understand the intricacies of what we've done to the treatment of diabetes. I want you to see the extent that we've gone to try to fix this problem. That seems to be unfixable. Why do I say seems to be unfixable?

Speaker 1:

Well, you've heard me say the numbers that in the United States alone, there are 37 million people with type two diabetes. Around the world, between 430 and 460 million people, almost half a billion people on the planet with diabetes, and the numbers continue to grow. Now you're standing out there. You're sitting out there and you're saying, hey, dr Wood, well, thank you for talking to the diabetics, but that has nothing to do with me. Well, listen up here for a minute. In the United States alone, there are 88 over 88 now million people who are pre-diabetic, that is, people who have blood sugars that are higher than normal but not quite where it needs to be for them to be classified as diabetic. But they're heading there.

Speaker 1:

And the things that we talk about here in terms of putting diabetes and remission, decreasing the amount of medication people are taking the very same things that we do here are the things that prevent people from progressing to type to diabetes if they're pre-diabetic. Things that help people deal with their metabolic syndrome, things that help people deal with their coronary artery disease, decrease their risk for high cholesterol, decrease their risk for high blood pressure, decrease their risk for strokes, polycystic over-in syndrome, obesity, and on and on and on. So while we're talking to the diabetics, specifically the people that are surrounding diabetics. Those are the folks that get, I mean, a lot of benefit as well. Okay, so, a lot of people.

Speaker 1:

And so, as we've talked about the treatment for diabetes, we continue to become more and more and more complicated. As you know, our plan for diabetes is a simple one. Our plan for diabetes is a simple one. It is one decrease our insulin. And that is whether exogenous, that's insulin that we're taking in, or endogenous, that's insulin that the body is making. And tonight we're gonna talk about one of those places where the body is making insulin and how we can decrease that. So that's number one. How do we decrease the insulin?

Speaker 1:

Because, remember, the insulin itself, while it is beneficial and I had a conversation in the office today with someone and I was saying to them if you walk into the office and I say to you, hey, I'm putting you on insulin, I want you to understand that the reason we're putting you on insulin is because your numbers are of such, they're so out of control that we've gotta plug the dam, y'all Right, we gotta stop the leakage, we gotta stop the boat from sinking before we even talk about anything else. So, when you're talking to your doctor and your doctor is putting you on medication. Right, they're not putting you on medication simply because they want to get you on medication. It's like we've gotta do something now. It's like if you walk into your house and there's water coming out of your wall, you gotta do something you can't like. Well, you know, I guess I'll figure out where that's coming from here in a minute. Let me go put up these groceries. No, right now, let's figure out. You know, let's stop it, we'll figure it out later. Let's stop the water from coming through the wall. Let's stop the ship from sinking.

Speaker 1:

I could not do what I do on a daily basis without medication. Sometimes people walk into that. Well, let me say sometimes. Let me tell you, I went to the hospital recently to see a patient and they were in the ICU. Their blood sugars were 1,545, I think. 1,545, 1,543, y'all, I want you to hear that number. A normal blood sugar. A normal blood sugar Goes anywhere from 70 to 99. That's a normal blood sugar. A diabetic, we tell them that their blood sugar, if you read the guidelines, they say anyway, you should be from 70 to 180, right, I've got a little narrower requirement, but those are numbers. But here's somebody whose blood sugar is 1,545, 1,543. Do you think for that patient I should say to them you know what? Yeah, go away, come back later. You know, go exercise. You know, go drink some water. No, right now we gotta stop it. Stop the ship from sinking, okay. So that's the premise, that's the basis, that's the background, because some of you are on medication, or some of you will walk into an office, some of you will come to my office, some of you will come to get a consult with me and I will say to you you have got to get on some medication. And you'll say to me, like people say well, I thought you want to get me off. I say, yes, I wanna get you off, but right now we got to save you.

Speaker 1:

Our first goal in the process of putting our diabetes and our first mission is how do we deal with insulin? And that is insulin that the body is making or insulin that we are giving. As you're aware, the blood is flowing through the body and in the blood there's a lot of different components. There's white cells, there's red cells, there are platelets, you've got some viruses that have attached themselves to cells, you've got cholesterol so many different things that are flowing in the blood. One of the things that's in there is the insulin and it attaches to the receptor and so once the insulin attaches to the receptor, the sugar gets brought into the cell.

Speaker 1:

As physician, we were trained on what's called a lock and key model, and you guys have heard me talk about the lock and key model here before. The lock and key model says that there is a key insulin that opens a lock, which is your cell, and once the lock is opened, then the sugar goes in. And we've said that the reason that things don't work is, for some reason, either the lock is clogged up or the key is not working well, so the body continues to make more and more and more and more insulin, and that's this concept that we call insulin resistance, and that's an amazing concept. An amazing concept Because it's helped us actually treat a lot of people who have diabetes, and there are a lot of people who were treated with insulin, a lot of people who are currently surviving because of insulin. Type one diabetics need insulin, they can't live without it. So insulin, great thing.

Speaker 1:

But insulin causes some other issues and tonight we want to talk about how do we deal with insulin. So the first thing that we want to do is we want to decrease the amount of insulin in our body. The body produces insulin as a response to high blood sugars. If I'm diabetic and I eat my very favorite ice cream, cherry Garcia, from Ben and Jerry's I have no allegiance to these guys, I just know that they make an amazing ice cream Okay, so when I eat that feed, that ice cream, my blood sugars rise. And when my blood sugars rise, then my insulin rises to try to bring it down. So the the body produces insulin to try to lower sugar.

Speaker 1:

If you're a non diabetic, the same process happens and the more and more and more the body has to deal with sugar, right, so you, you're putting on weight, you're eating more and more sugar, you're eating more and more carbs. Then the body has to increase the amount of insulin that it makes to compensate for the fact that it has to get more sugar into the, into the system. It's kind of like you know, if you, you know, have 10 friends, you're on college, you're a college campus, or you're at church or you're somewhere, and you got 10 friends and you got a truck, maybe 10 people can hop into the truck and go where you guys are going. But now if you do 20 people, maybe you got to get another truck. You got to get somebody else to bring another truck, and if we got 30 or 40 or 50 people, the more people, which represents sugar, the more trucks we've got to get, and so that's been the idea that we've used before.

Speaker 1:

So my agent man, james Riley, is out there, and when I was going out to California I packed a suitcase and I put all this stuff in my suitcase. Somebody else in my house said hey, you know, I got some stuff that won't fit in my suitcase and I put them in your suitcase. If my suitcase is packed, I can open up the suitcase and I could put their stuff or try to put their stuff in. But I literally have to sit on the suitcase now to try to close it right To get the stuff in there, and then, if I try to put more stuff in there, I just can't get it in. So what if the reason the blood sugars are high is because there's already stuff in the suitcase and we keep making more and more and more insulin to try to get it inside the suitcase and we've essentially forced more things in? And that's equivalent to like getting your suitcase is so packed now you got to get an elephant to sit on it so you can close it. So that's what we've done, that's the model that we've used and that's how we've treated diabetes for years and years and years and years. And we're finding now that, hey, we're having more and more trouble.

Speaker 1:

Right, people are developing fatty liver because insulin is a storage hormone. So when you have those excess sugars, even if you're not diabetic, as you are eating more, the stuff you're eating has to go somewhere, and the hormone that treats that. We always talk about insulin as a blood sugar hormone, but insulin does some other stuff. When insulin can't, when the body can't use the sugar, the excess sugar, when it comes from the carbs or whatever we've eaten, it goes to insulin and say hey, insulin, what do you want me to do with this? And insulin say I got an idea what I'm gonna take. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take that, I'm gonna turn it into fat and I'm gonna take the fat. I'm gonna take that. I'm gonna distribute it throughout the body. So notice what happened. I'm supposed to eat, and the food that I eat is supposed to go to run my brain and my heart and my kidneys and my lung and my muscles and all the stuff that I need right now. And then it's supposed to store a little of it for me to be able to use it later.

Speaker 1:

But if I have excess beyond the ones I need right now and beyond what the body needs for other functioning and a little bit for storage, the rest of it get turned into a bigger storage component. It's kind of like getting food at your house and you fill up the refrigerator, you fill up the pantry and you're like okay, what do we do with the rest of this? Right in my house, sometimes what we do is we free stuff. Right, some people can things. Right, you go to their house and they've got beans or whatever tomatoes that they've canned two years ago.

Speaker 1:

And that storage process when the body is storing the excess, that gets put into the liver. Now we develop non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. That gets put into muscles, we get myositis. That gets put into the pancreas and we start to damage the pancreas. And then we say, hey, the pancreas is not producing enough insulin, so now I'm diabetic. Well, the pancreas didn't produce enough insulin because you stuff stuff in there that shouldn't be in there. Now we've got metabolic syndrome. Now we've got high blood pressure, because insulin, the excess insulin, the excess energy that it has, will cause blood sugars to go up. And when the blood sugars go up and when we are storing stuff, you know what that leads to? Yeah, it leads to obesity. We're getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So all of that comes almost as a direct consequence of insulin. So our goal is always as little insulin as possible.

Speaker 1:

We're going to talk about getting off of the insulin you're taking for your diabetes, but right now, what I want to do is I want to hop over and we're going to talk about getting rid of some medication. So this is the complication. This is where we are in terms of our understanding of diabetes and what we've done in terms of treatment. But in terms of medication, we've got a lot of different types of medications. We've got non-monotherapy, we've got dual therapy, triple therapy. You don't need to have to know all of that, but I want to get to some prescription medication. So we've got insulin, we've got non-insulin injectables, we've got some oral medication.

Speaker 1:

Tonight we're going to talk about insulin and the medications that produce insulin in the body. So the first thing that we want to get off of is we want to try to get off of as much insulin as possible. Now you're going to ask me some questions here in a minute that I'm going to preface them by saying you're going to ask me okay, how do I get off of insulin if my blood sugars are high? And I want you to start thinking about what that means. So all the medications that we use for the management of diabetes, they touch one of. Well, now we've added a couple of things.

Speaker 1:

One of eight basic areas of the body Either they touch our, their. Number one our gut, the GI tract, right when we're digesting food, and this is where that stuff that people talk about, that the non-diabetics are using for weight loss. One and two, that's where it is. That's why they work, right, cause that's where they hit. Number three on this diagram, right, muscle cells. Muscle cells. So how do we get muscles to use sugar more efficiently or use insulin more efficiently? Number four the kidneys. If you, when you not if when you come back next week, we're actually going to talk about the kidneys, we're going to talk about the gut, we're going to talk about that big belly and the brain. Number five.

Speaker 1:

But one of the big culprits in diabetes is that guy right down there in number six, that's the liver. The liver is like the workhorse, y'all, cause the body takes sugar, sends it to the liver, and when the liver gets too packed Because insulin stuffed it in there, then the liver says, with the insulin, they come together and they say, look, I can't take any more in here, right? So now we have fatty liver disease. And the liver says to insulin, hey, you can keep pushing this in here, but I can't keep this, I'm popping it back out. That's where we get that term. Try glyceride, y'all. Yeah, buddy, right, you starting to see it. So that stuff comes out and Then it goes in and gets stored into all those other tissues that we talked about. All right, so. So the liver, right, one of the big guys that play to play in this whole thing. And then, of course, the pancreas, right, the pancreas can be poisoned by high sugar. It can be poisoned by those high Triglycerides that's pumping out. So this is called the ominous octet. Didn't come up with this? A very, very smart fella. I proposed this, and so we've used it as a model for a very, very long time.

Speaker 1:

But let's hop over and let's talk a little bit about medications. So there are two groups of medications that I want us to talk about specifically tonight. Those are the sulfonal ureas, the glipazide gliburide and glumipuride, and the DPP force right, genuvia, trigenta on Glyza. So the way that the this is the DPP force the way they work is they inhibit an enzyme that's in the body, right, and what it essentially does is it causes what's called glucose dependent Insulin release. Glucose dependent insulin release what does that mean? That means that you take the medication. Let me pop over to our diagram, our video again.

Speaker 1:

You take the medication and when the medication goes into your body, it sees sugar coming and it forces your body to make insulin, if it can, right, so it sees sugar coming. You eat a cookie. The cookie gets broken down and the white balls, the sugar, shows up in the blood and it makes those little flowery looking things come out of the pancreas and they take sugar. They put it in the body I'll put it in the cell, right, that's how they work. So the, the mechanism for them is to produce insulin so that the insulin can then go Decrease the Sugar. That makes sense. So glucose dependent. So it has to see the in the glucose coming first before it works, but it's in the body and it produces insulin, right? So that's how the sulfonyl urea is work, I mean, sorry, the DPP force. So how then Do the sulfonyl urea is work and the DPP force, like I said, these are the names of them, right? So we're not talking about any specific brand, but these are representative ones of them. So how do the and we said we're gonna skip those how does the cell phone of urea is work, because we've come back and talk about those next week.

Speaker 1:

By the way, the way they work is by what's called glucose Independent, and this is where they cause more trouble than the previous class, right? Glucose Independent. That means, then, that they don't have to see sugar coming. They just go into your body and it's kind of like having a faucet in your kitchen and Say say, you're sitting there, right and you're in charge of the kitchen. Somebody brings a plate and you turn on the faucet and you wash the plate and you turn the faucet back off Because the plate's clean. Somebody else brings a plate. You turn the faucet on, you wash the plate, you turn it back off because the kid, the plate's clean, and you keep doing that. Every time you see a plate, you turn the faucet on and you wash the plate. That is what the previous class did. Those are the DPP force that is called glucose dependent. So because you have to see a plate coming before you turn the faucet on, glucose independent Means that you just turn the faucet on so you don't wait for plates to come. So if somebody brings a plate, fine, the fox with faucets running. If nobody ever brings a plate, the faucet still running.

Speaker 1:

Now the problem with with both classes is that they force your body to make insulin, and we said that one of the things that we want to do is we want to decrease insulin, right. So if we're on a medication that's forcing the body to make insulin, right, that goes against what we are saying that we want to do. So that's the first thing. The additional problem with this second class is that you're always making insulin. So whether you're eating something that has sugar or not, the body is making the insulin and we just said that insulin has some Ramaph.

Speaker 1:

Having an elevated insulin has some other ramifications. So it's one thing to have a high sugar and then have the insulin come, but there's another thing to not have a high sugar at all and have insulin come, and so this one is People are prone to have low blood sugar. So hypoglycemia right, we're cautious in this one when we talk, when we talk about elderly people, because they are already prone to have low blood sugars, and the reason for that is that they don't eat a lot sometimes or they may be ill, or they may be having some other medical problem, and so they're not putting things in, they're not eating things, and if they're not eating, the blood sugar continues to drop and drop and drop until they run into trouble. Okay, so those are the glucose dependent. All right, glucose dependent. Those are the DPP4s and glucose Independent.

Speaker 1:

And the guys that are in this class are Glypizide, glyburide and Glymepuride. And I'm putting these names specifically Because I want you, if you're out there or in any of these medications, I want you to be able to look at your prescriptions and say, okay, oh, that's the one that he talked about, okay, so that's why I'm putting those names, so that you can see those, all right, so, so, so what medications, what diabetes medications should we stop? These are they right? So Glypizide, glyburide, glymepuride? And then Now you're asking me a question. Everybody's asking the same question what if my blood sugars are high? Isn't that what you're asking? I can hear it. So we've said that we don't want to use medications that are Producing insulin in the body. So so let's see.

Speaker 1:

Teresa says Fasting with exercise, fasting with exercise, I love it, love it, love it. And then Gary says decrease the amount of bread I enjoy, decrease the intake, decrease the intake, decrease the intake. You guys are, you guys are like the top of the class, right? So? So the reason that we talked about fasting first, talked about fasting first, is If and you guys are very right, right, I love that, I love those, right. So so, decreasing the amount of food, exercise. So, remember, think about the, think about that suitcase. Right, think about the suitcase, the suitcase model. Because we talked about two models. We talked about the, the lock and key, which is where the insulin can't open the door for some reason, and we talked about the fact that maybe the suitcase is just too packed. Okay, so let's go to the suitcase model.

Speaker 1:

So, if the suitcase is packed, and and and you have, you have one of three choices, right? Either you get a bigger suitcase, and that's the option that a lot of us choose, right. The cells keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Now here's the thing. Do you know that the same number of fat cells that we're born with is the same number of fat cells that we keep throughout life? But I know you're out there, you're looking me say no, no, no, we, I have to have more than I was born with. Well, no, it's not, you don't have more, you just put more stuff in it. So that's what we've done. We got bigger suitcases, right. So either we can get a bigger suitcase or we could take stuff out of the suitcase, or we can stop trying to put so much stuff in, right.

Speaker 1:

So when we were traveling, what we decided to do is, well, we actually tried, because we took a extra bag with us to the airport. And when we got to the airport, we stopped, got to the back of the car and we decided which of the things that we had extra we really needed to take. And we were able to whittle it down to just our carry-ons, right, and our one-roller bag. But we were trying to get more suitcases. We were trying to take more suitcases with us, Right, so you can get more suitcases or you can take some stuff out, right, say, hey, you know I'm going to take that out so I can put this other stuff in. Or you can say you know the things that are not in the suitcase right now, I'm not even going to try to put them in, we leave those here.

Speaker 1:

Now it turned out when we got to California there was something I should have taken with me, but that's a whole nother conversation, right? So exercise, exercise, burns sugar, so we're actually hitting it by decreasing the sugar that's outside that we're trying to put into the suitcase. When we exercise, when we fast, when we cut back on the bread, gary, when we cut back on the things we're eating, we're decreasing the stuff we're trying to put into the suitcase. If I decrease the stuff I'm trying to put in, that's the sugar that's rolling around outside my blood, right, Remember, that's what's going on the sugar that's rolling outside my blood. If I decrease that, then one I don't have to produce my body doesn't have to produce insulin to bring the blood sugar down, and I don't have to take a medication that's forcing my body to produce insulin to bring the blood sugar down. You guys get that. So that's why these are the very first medications we want to try to get rid of. And in order to get rid of them, we've got to put some things in place that lowers the blood sugar so that we don't need the insulin, got it. So our plan is our plan, even though the plan is that we're treating diabetes and the plan is that we are trying to get the blood sugar down or trying to get the insulin to go away. The way that we do that is by not needing the insulin.

Speaker 1:

Now here's a thing I have a conversation with with my patients a lot. So I write a prescription for some medication right, and I'm talking now specifically for diabetes or I write a prescription for some device Like I have these devices here that we'll do a show at some point so you can see the devices and the apps that I use and the insurance doesn't cover it because, as you know, you know, insurance doesn't cover everything Not everybody's insurance covers everything and the patient comes in and they complain and say, man, I needed that, whatever the medication is, and I can't get it because the insurance company doesn't cover it. Right. And they're mad at the insurance company, which makes sense because first of all, I am paying money to the insurance company for my prescription coverage and then they decide which ones they want to cover. But that's right Another conversation. But I say you know one way you can stick it to the insurance company Not needing the medication. So if you're not on the medication, if you're not on the drug, then it doesn't matter if they cover it or not.

Speaker 1:

But sometimes we get bent out of shape and now, once again, I'm talking specifically diabetes. Now you may have some other condition that requires a medication that you have to be on, like a type one patient, patient who has type one diabetes. And notice, when I started, I said we're talking about type two diabetics. We're not talking about getting type one diabetics out of the insulin because we can't do that yet. Right, we're talking about type two diabetics. If they don't cover it and you're not on the medication, it doesn't matter. So your goal is to not need the medication, and so that's what we're doing, saying, hey, there are these medications here that I'm on. How do I decrease my requirement on that medication? I got to lower my blood sugar. How do I lower my blood sugar? I've got to do the things that are necessary to get it down.

Speaker 1:

Now, why did I pick fasting as the first tool that I taught you. I pick fasting as the first tool that I taught you because fasting is relatively simple. If I say to you, hey, I want you to for the next 30 days. I want you to cut the amount of food that you eat by 35 grams of carbs per day, or I want to cut back 500 grams of carbs, 300 grams, whatever the number of grams of carbs per day. So for 30 days you're going to go and you're going to get your food and you're going to say, oh man, is this 30 grams? Is this 50 grams? Is this 1,000, is this 1,800 calories? Oh man, I ate 1,500 cookies. Is that half a cookie like two calories? Or 10 calories? Or five calories? Okay, I'm going to go exercise. I'm exercising. Oh, did I exercise 500 calories, but I ate 600 grams or calories. Right, do you see? Not that it can't be done.

Speaker 1:

And there are a lot of apps that we use. Once again, I will show you some apps that I use. But, yes, perfectly doable. There are a lot of people who do that. I've got some folks in my that I see that I work with and they are meticulous Y'all when I say meticulous, like if there is an extra crumb of cookie on the plate. They've recorded it. They can tell you to the second how long they exercise. They can tell you you know how many drops of sweat they wiped off. They are on it and they are. They are grinding and they are doing it Right. They're in their peak and they love that. That's what they do. But for all the rest of us and I put myself in the category of all the rest of us To be able to do that right and to be able to sustain it because, remember, we're not doing anything just for today or tomorrow or even for this year. We're doing something that we want to do forever.

Speaker 1:

To be able to do that can be sometimes challenging, and let's just say that, okay, one of the issues with the way we manage diabetes, the way we manage weight, is we pretend that all the stuff that we talk to people about is simple and easy. That you know it's kind of like Superman, like you step in the, you step in the phone booth, right, and you come out the other side, or you close the door and you come out and you're like changed Right. And I want to say to you that that's not the case. It doesn't happen like that. It starts and stops, in fact, let me, let me go back and show you and you guys have seen this graph before, and I continue to show this graph Because it is it is an example y'all of, of one of my, of my struggle, okay, and the struggle that I have has to do with with weight, okay. So I want you to watch that, don't you watch that? And this is now, let's say, that's two, two thousand twenty. So ups and downs, y'all ups and downs, and sometimes look at that way up there, and we come down and we go up and we go down, we go up and we go down, all right. And so we pretend when we talk to people that, oh yeah, just go home and do this. Hmm, because life happens, life happens and we will share some of life happening with you guys as we go through the year.

Speaker 1:

So the reason I chose fasting is Because let's assume that you decided you're going to implement and this is what I'm proposing to All of you as we begin and I challenged you last week to go ahead and begin working towards being able to fast for a 24-hour period once a week, 24-period, 24-hour period, because For that, for that 24-hour period. You don't have to worry about which calorie I'm eating or how many calories I. Did I cut back one calorie? Did I cut back two calories? Did I cut back three? Did I eat right? So you don't have to worry about that 24 hours. You don't have to buy any equipment. There's one that I'm going to propose that you get, but you don't. It doesn't cost any money, it's free. There's no food.

Speaker 1:

People say, oh, I'm going to join weight watchers and I'm gonna join, and that's fine. Do you know why weight watchers works? Because it's calorie restriction. What better way to restrict calories than to not eat? That's the ultimate calorie restriction. Y'all. You can do that at your house, you can do that on your job, you can do that on vacation, you can do that when nobody knows. You can tell everybody in the world that you're doing it, or you don't have to do tell anybody. It doesn't cost you any money.

Speaker 1:

So imagine what happens to your blood sugar level If you don't put any food in for 24 hours. Right, blood sugar goes down. If the blood sugar goes down for 24 hours, the body doesn't have to produce that much insulin and if you do that, maybe that day you don't have to take any medication. So simple process, simple process. Now there's a nuance to that that we'll have to talk about. Right, and notice. I say I want you to do this at least one 24-hour period per week, right? So that's four days out of the month that you're fasting.

Speaker 1:

During the fast, during the fast, there are some things that you're going to be paying attention to. Right, you're gonna be paying attention to how your body responds to stress, how your body responds to fatigue, how your body responds to the habits that you have. Right, because there are some times when you're fasting, you're not gonna be hungry but you're gonna be pulled to eat. And you're being pulled to eat because everybody at your job just got up and they're going to eat. Right, we've been socialized. You're pulled to eat because you're up late at night working on a project. And while you're working on a project, your mouth, you want your mouth to be moved, you want to be doing something right, so we're programmed to eat. You eat because you're stressed. Oh, I can't think about that right now. You walk into the kitchen, into the pantry, grab a bag of chips. So during that 24-hour period, you're gonna be learning your body. You can be learning the signals, what are the things that push you to do and eat various things? So, 24-hour period.

Speaker 1:

Now, let me say to you that the 24-hour once a week is just a start. Okay, but for some of you, right now, you're on one glip-aside, you're on one glim-eperide, you're on one glib-gliburide, right, you take, I don't know a 100 milligrams of Citiglyptin, which is, you know, one of the. I guess I'll start calling the, let me just say it. So you take, you're taking, a small dose of genuvia, or on Glyza, or one of those, and when you fast for that 24 hours, your average blood sugar becomes what you need it to be, your A1C drops, your insulin level goes down, your hunger begins to improve, you start to lose some weight, simply by decreasing how much stuff you're trying to put into the suitcase. You guys like that Right, decrease of the stuff you try to put into the suitcase. Okay, so what diabetes medication? What diabetes medication can you stop? Well, that's the class. Those are the classes, all right.

Speaker 1:

So our challenge for today what do I want you to do? What I want you to do, I Want you, if you are currently on any Secretagog that's a medication that we talked about tonight or You're on insulin Right, you guys knew that part was coming. Okay, if you're on a secrete of God, one of those medications, or you're on insulin, I want you to talk to your healthcare provider and Say to them hey, I want to get off of this medication. How can I do that? Or, better yet, I want to get off of this medication. This is what I plan to do, right? So if you're one of my patients, come to me with a plan. You're hearing my plan for you right now.

Speaker 1:

A Big part of the plan is integrating fasting into your regimen. Come to me say hey, dr Wood, I'm on glipizide, liboride, glimpride, I'm on genuvia, I'm on on glisa, I'm on a sine, I'm on Tredenta, whatever the medication is, I'm taking insulin. I Want to be able to get off of it, and this is my plan. I'm gonna be fasting 24 hours a Week, right, for one day a week, right? Let's see what that does to blood sugar.

Speaker 1:

Now I'm gonna pause here and I'm put a big pin, a huge pin, if your A1c is high and your blood sugar is in the three, four hundreds. Don't have that conversation with me, because you're not there, right? Remember? We got to save you first, okay. So what are the things that you're putting in place to get to the point where we can say, hey, let's get rid of this medication. But if you're A1c's 14, your blood sugar is running for 500. Yeah, you need insulin. And and then now let's talk about okay, how do we not put more stuff in the suitcase, right? So we got to put this in perspective and don't get upset with your health care provider if they say to you hey, your blood sugars are too high right now for us to Attempt this. Let's put some other things in place. Some of you out there You're like well, blood sugar, blood sugar. Not only are we managing blood sugar, we're managing weight as well. So if you're struggling with your weight, don't Discount what we're talking about because you say I'm not diabetic. Most of these tools are very applicable to you as well. All of the shows that we are doing in this series are in the playlist how to put your diabetes and remission.

Speaker 1:

So next week we're gonna continue the medication trend. Now that we've talked about some medications we need to get off of, what are some medications we probably should think about getting on as we get into this process and the reasons. I think that's a good idea, right? Because you say wait a minute, doctor, we're trying to get off medication. Why are you trying to get us on some medication? Well, there's a method to the madness. So one the first steps make sure you watch that video. Number two fasting. We're gonna do 24 hours once a week. Number three talk to you about getting off of any of these Secretogogs and insulin, and then come back next week. We'll talk about some things that I think you should be on. 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, avoid complications and go to the next level, Creating the life you always wanted. And for this year y'all, new year you.

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Dwain Woode

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