Did you know that diabetes and pre-diabetes is reversible?

A few dietary changes can make big difference. Type 2 diabetes can be described as carbohydrate intolerance. In the same way if you have lactose intolerance you are better to avoid milk products, when you have diabetes you are better to avoid or reduce carbohydrates - ie sugars and starches.

Did you know that when you eat carbohydrate (ie any sugar or starch containing foods) your body produces insulin to process it and remove the sugar from the blood stream. 

Insulin pushes the blood sugar into cells. It gets stored either as readily accessible energy (glycogen) or as fat. If the cells as full already the body has to produce more insulin - essentially to push harder to get blood sugar into the cells, more fat is stored and a vicious cycle continues until the cells can't take anymore and the body can't produce enough insulin to keep up so blood sugar goes up. High insulin levels lock the fat away in the cells. This is type 2 diabetes in a nutshell.

Therefore the quickest was to help the body is to reduce the amount of sugar and starch going in.  This stops adding to the glucose  overload, and also means the body doesn't have to produce so much insulin so the fat in the cells can be unlocked.

Low carbohydrate, healthy fat diets have been used for over 100 years to reverse type 2 diabetes and help weight loss. BUT - they go against the dietary guidelines set by the government because they advise that healthy, natural fat is ok. This confuses many people as we have been told so many times that fat causes heart disease and fat makes us fat. 

There is NO evidence to show that fat causes heart disease. It will not put up your cholesterol. In fact a diet high in natural fats - olive oil, butter, lard, nuts and seeds has been shown to be heart protective. The problem is high insulin, and high insulin comes because of high carbohydrate. 

If you would like to know more about reversing your Type 2 diabetes please have a look at the links and if you want to discuss this with someone please make an appointment with Dr Weir.