Podcast 12 – Diabetes
Transcription
Dr. Chad: You are listening to podcast number 12 of Against the Grain. Are you tired and fatigued? Are you frustrated with doctors because they don’t listen? Do you want to fix your pain without surgery? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then we are the clinic for you. Tulsa prolotherapy
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Announcer: Welcome to Against the Grain podcast, with Dr. Chad Edwards. Where he challenges the status quo when it comes to medicine. We get into hot topics in the medical field with real stories from real patients to help you on your way to a healthy lifestyle. Get ready, because we are about to go against the grain.
Brian: Welcome back to Against the Grain. I’m Brian Wilkes, here with author and doctor Chad Edwards. How are you doing today Dr. Chad?
Dr. Chad: I am excited. It’s Friday, end of the week.
Brian: P.T.
Dr. Chad: Ready for the weekend.
Brian: 70 some odd degrees outside.
Dr. Chad: Oh dude, it’s awesome.
Brian: Looking good.
Dr. Chad: For January.
Brian: Yes.
Dr. Chad: Yes.
Brian: We got a good topic today. Fun topic.
Dr. Chad: Yes. This is a big topic because it represents one of the largest medical problems that we deal with in this country.
Brian: I just got to say it though, I know you are trying to be serious with me but I got to introduce it the right way.
Dr. Chad: Let’s do it.
Brian: Right. You remember the Last Comic Standing, the show, the Last Comic Standing?
Dr. Chad: Of course.
Commercial: I said, “Mama, I got the sugars,” she said, “Oh Lord!”
Brian: We are talking today about the sugar.
Dr. Chad: Yes, the sugar.
Brian: Everybody knows what the sugar is now.
Dr. Chad: It’s kind of like the pressure.
Brian: It is, yes. Talk to me about how diabetes is a big issue these days, right?
Dr. Chad: Yes.
Brian: It’s because 29 million people have it and more are undiagnosed. Is that right?
Dr. Chad: Of the 29 million people in the United States that have diabetes, 8.1% of those, almost 30% are undiagnosed. Don’t even know they have it.
Brian: Then more people are what they call, and you’ll have to explain this to me, pre-diabetic, right?
Dr. Chad: Yes, and that’s the purpose of this show is we want to talk just a little about diabetes. But why did this disease or why is this a disease? Why do we care about sugar and –?
Brian: The sugar.
Dr. Chad: The sugar. Why do we care about this? Diabetes certainly represents a whole host of problems, it puts you at increased risk for cardiovascular disease, and there’s all kinds of complications that come with it. Why? What happens? Then what do we do about this? Tulsa prolotherapy
I would argue that 86 million people have what’s called pre-diabetes. Not talking about those 29 million that have diabetes, we are talking about a large percentage of the population that are not yet diabetic. Now, traditional medicine, we would say the reason we care about this term pre-diabetes, is because you are at increased risk of developing diabetes.
It’s almost like we don’t care until you are diabetic. That’s what it seemed like to me. I would argue that we need to care much much sooner, even before this definition of pre-diabetes. Tulsa prolotherapy
Brian: I got one quick question for you. I’m a business man that cares about the sugar. What does it cost me as a business man, as a tax-payer, this diabetes thing?
Dr. Chad: Well, across the country, diabetes costs the American economy $245 billion.
Brian: Seems like a lot of money.
Dr. Chad: If you have patients that are diabetic, not patients, if you have employees that are diabetic, their health costs are double across the board, they are double a non-diabetic healthcare cost. This costs a lot of money. It results in multiple problems. It’s a big problem that we got to address. Tulsa prolotherapy
But again, my focus in this, we are talking about it as diabetes, but I want to steer away from diabetes and talk about where — Because we focus, at Revolution Health & Wellness, we focus on normal and optimal.
Brian: Right, we’ve talked about that before.
Dr. Chad: Yes. And who wants to be normal? We want to be optimal. We certainly don’t want you to have disease, but by definition disease and health are mutually exclusive entities. You can’t be healthy and have a disease, and you can’t have a disease and be healthy, just by definition. Tulsa prolotherapy
Brian: I got a stupid question for you on that note. I would never ask that question, but let’s say someone would out there.
Dr. Chad: One of your friends, not this friend.
Brian: Before we get into the normal, what’s not normal, what is diabetes?
Dr. Chad: Diabetes is a condition in which you have increased risk of multiple medical problems, but your blood sugar is out of control. It’s no longer in the normal range. There are several different ways that you can diagnose diabetes, and it’s usually with a blood test or a finger stick.
We call it a finger stick blood sugar, where we are checking fasting blood sugar levels. One of the things that I like to do is measure what is called a hemoglobin A1c. Hemoglobin is a protein that lives in your red blood cells, and your red blood cells live in your blood for 90 to 120 days.
The hemoglobin obviously stays in those red blood cells 90 to 120 days. We are actually measuring what’s called an advanced glycation end-product. That’s a big word. We abbreviate it A.G.E. A-G-E.
Brian: Fancy. It’s a fancy word.
Dr. Chad: Yes. We are measuring this A.G.E. Now ultimately in diabetes, the primary reason we care about diabetes is because of the formation of these A.G.Es. These are the substances that are really problematic. When your blood sugar goes up, you have this reaction where glucose molecules get attached to proteins and fats, and they make these advanced glycation end-products, or A.G.Es.
Those A.G.Es, I think the best way to think about it is like rust. It contributes to the aging and the degeneration of our bodies because of these A.G.Es. Diabetics, they get neuropathy. It’s the proteins around the nerve that are getting glycated. When you have retinopathy, meaning that you are losing vision, the retina falls apart, and all these kinds of things that some diabetics get, it’s because of these A.G.Es.
Our risk of cardiovascular disease increases because of A.G.Es. Our lipoprotein molecules, the L.D.L, the “bad cholesterol” that a lot of people refer to the L.D.L. as. You can actually glycate that molecule and that glycated L.D.L. is severely problematic, and at much higher risk for developing into an atherogenic particle. When we are talking about multiple of these diseases — Did I use a word that I shouldn’t have used?
Brian: Yes, I maybe didn’t understand that last word that you said, I could say it back to you.
Dr. Chad: The atherogenic particle?
Brian: Correct.
Dr. Chad: Sorry. Atherogenesis is the development of plaque in your arteries.
Brian: Okay, I got you.
Dr. Chad: The stuff that causes heart attacks.
Brian: Of course, I knew that.
Dr. Chad: Atherogenic particles, they are cholesterol molecules that lead to the formation of these plaques. They are atherogenic. They lead to these plaques. The glycated L.D.L is much more atherogenic. It’s a much higher association of those things than being an L.D.L.
Brian: Bottom line, it can block your arteries quicker or more substantially.
Dr. Chad: It contributes to, that’s correct. It contributes to it much more so. One of the biggest things that we want to do is control your blood sugar, because it reduces these advanced glycation end-products.
Brian: Let’s go back a little bit though. You began with optimal versus disease, okay?
Dr. Chad: Yes.
Brian: So that was a good point. With these kind of levels, these A.G.Es and how they are affected through diabetes, what’s optimal versus diseased?
Dr. Chad: Again, going back to that hemoglobin A1c, that is measuring that one of those advanced glycation end-products. It is important to understand that those A.G.Es when you make them, they are made. They are basically permanent. It does not go back and undo it.
Since the red blood cells live 90 to 120 days, it only matters for 90 to 120 days, but it’s a marker of everything else that’s going on. So you can diagnose diabetes when you do this blood test and get a hemoglobin A1c, and your A1c is 6.5 or greater, that then makes the diagnosis of diabetes.
That would indicate a certain amount of glycation of these proteins. At lower levels, 6.1, 6.2 on down, but beginning at 5.7, we have pre-diabetes. Again, the medical community would say that if someone is pre-diabetic, they are at higher risk for developing diabetes.
So that’s why we care about these advancing, increasing levels of hemoglobin A1c, is because we know what’s happening to that hemoglobin is also happening to the nerves, to the eyes, to the heart, to the L.D.L, to everything else all over your body that same process is happening.
The higher your blood sugar, the more you glycate these things, so the more damage you could have. I’ve thought for a long time, you got diabetes over here, and then you could have horrifically uncontrolled diabetes and your A1C can go up dramatically 14, 15, 16 those kinds of ranges.
We know the disease part, and then we have this thing of pre-diabetes, I don’t think that anybody can say that that’s normal. It’s not really diabetes, it’s not the disease. We’ve diagnosed this, now we have this entity known as pre-diabetes, but is that optimal? The lab test would say 5.6 is normal, but is it optimal?
I was kind on this quest for a long time to figure out what is optimal as far as the hemoglobin A1c. also going back on this A1c it’s an average blood sugar, anyone interested in statistics you could use this as an area under the curve. After meals your blood sugar goes up, but it’s going to go up for a shorter period of time.
That’s going to cause some glycation within that relatively narrow window, but it might go up a little bit. Or you could raise the baseline level, and both of those you’re kind of measuring that area under the curve if that makes sense.
Brian: It makes sense.
Dr. Chad: It’s just this average blood sugar over the lifespan of that protein. When we check an A1c it tells me what your blood sugar is over 90 to 120 days kind of that window. It is not affected by what you ate that day. It does not have to be a fasting lab. Some people are wondering do I have to fasting for this lab? No, it doesn’t matter because it’s a 90 day average.
Brian: I hate fasting labs.
Dr. Chad: Because you have to not eat.
Brian: Right.
Dr. Chad: I was looking for this answer to what would we consider optimal. Because again we’ve got normal, we’ve talked about this on multiple podcasts and we’ve got talked about in the past about with labs, what’s normal how do we get normal and all of those kinds of things?
It’s a big concept for us at Revolution. I looked for what is this optimal level, and there was a paper that was presented by Dr. Perlmutter, he’s a very well-known respected neurologist out of Florida. He’s a best-selling author, and he’s got some very great stuff out there.
In one of his presentations that I went to, he presented a paper by Enzinger that was in neurology in 2005. In it they were looking at the change in brain volume. We know that over time your brain shrinks, and that brain shrinkage is associated with Alzheimer’s disease or I should say with Dementia. They can look at brain volume on an annual basis, the more your brain shrinks the more likely it is, the greater that the Dementia.
Brian: I actually didn’t know that, I want you to explain a little bit more to me about brain shrinkage because that’s interesting to me right after this break.
Dr. Chad: It shrinks.
Brian: All right.
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Brian: We’re back here, Brian Wilkes with Dr. Chad Edwards. I was in the pool and my brain shrank.
Dr. Chad: Yes, that’s not how that happens.
Brian: [laughs] It’s not cold.
Dr. Chad: Costanza.
Brian: Costanza. Probably our listeners don’t — Most of our listeners — We’re are old, and most of our listeners don’t know who Seinfeld is, let alone the show.
Dr. Chad: That could be.
Brian: Right, but if you know the show you’re going to appreciate brain shrinkage being associate with being —
Dr. Chad: You have to understand that it shrinks.
Brian: – in the pool.
Dr. Chad: In this paper that Dr. Perlmutter discussed, he was talking about the change in brain volume on an annual basis. They actually studied this and they watched how the brain volume changed in this —
Brian: Over a period of time.
Dr. Chad: Right. So on an annual basis, then they correlated that with their blood sugar. Now the interesting thing to me is the way they presented this was by hemoglobin A1c. Hemoglobin A1c of 9 was associated with a certain brain shrinkage. When you looked at the graph, the biggest difference was not of a hemoglobin A1c of 7 to 9, but for those would-be diabetics.
Not that difference, it wasn’t even from 6.5 to 7. It wasn’t even from 5.7 to 6.5 the pre-diabetic range. It was when your hemoglobin A1c went from 5.2 to 5.3 that there was the biggest jump. Now the higher your blood sugar the higher the Hemoglobin A1c over time, the more the brain shrinkage you had. The biggest change was noted when your A1c went from 5.2 to 5.3.
Brian: Did the study have any suggestions that you could reverse brain shrinkage if those numbers didn’t decrease?
Dr. Chad: Well it’s not an issue. What we’re looking at is a preventive approach. We want your brain not to shrink to begin with. There are some things that you can do to manage you’re not going to get that brain volume back, but there are some things that those patients in the Dementia state, there are some things that could be done —
Brian: To prevent.
Dr. Chad: — to enhance their brain. Now what we want to do is prevent this brain shrinkage to begin with. If this paper presented in neurology is accurate then there is a high correlation between blood sugar and brain shrinkage. In fact Dr. Perlmutter frequently refers to others as well, frequently referred to Alzheimer’s as Type 3diabetes.
Brian: Interesting, this is probably a question because my brain has completely shrinked down to a very —
Dr. Chad: Is your blood sugar that high?
Brian: I don’t even know.
Dr. Chad: Okay.
Brian: Okay my question is for people listening out there, is the volume of the brain directly correlating to Alzheimer’s in the sense of, does it diminish your brain productivity with volume? It may seem like a stupid question —
Dr. Chad: We’re talking about memory, so specifically there are plaques, and yes your brain overall does shrink with Dementia.
Brian: That causes lack of memory when it’s smaller?
Dr. Chad: With Alzheimer’s we’re specifically addressing the loss of memory and Dementia. The inability to recall, and there is a whole host of things that go along with that. Specifically the point of this study was correlating blood sugar with brain volume which is correlated with Dementia in general.
Alzheimer’s is a specific set of Dementia. You can have like Mohamed Ali, he had Dementia but not Alzheimer’s Dementia. He had loss of — He had brain atrophy, and you can have traumatic brain atrophy and all those things can result in Dementia, but not Alzheimer’s Dementia.
The interesting thing to me is how higher or increasing levels of blood sugar lead to impaired brain function. Meaning that your body is not performing at its optimal level, it’s not an anti-aging. We’re not maintaining our optimal health and performance over time as we age.
It’s one of the things where blood sugar being out of control is one of the biggest contributors, I would argue, I don’t have the actual numbers, but I would argue that it’s one of the biggest contributors to health problems across the board. Cardiovascular disease absolutely increases.
In fact when you look at cardiovascular disease and heart attacks, diabetes is considered what we call an MI or an event equivalent. You are treated as if you have already had a heart attack, because your risk is so much higher because of the fact that you’re diabetic.
Brian: So I want to talk about this. I spent many, many months in Seoul South Korea a few years ago and I noticed, well I know the facts are that they live longer. Korean people live on average longer than American people, the average American. I began to think about that when I was there, and one of the things that I saw was a moderate diet.
I did not see, maybe the whole time I was there months and months and months, did not see an obese person. I did not see one obese Korean person. I’ve got to believe that it’s common knowledge that diabetes is associated with weight or obesity. I also saw when I was in Korea that it was commonplace for people even in really very cold weather to walk everywhere. I don’t see that in America [chuckles].
Dr. Chad: Yes. We know that exercise, actively —
Brian: Right.
Dr. Chad: — decreases blood sugar independent of the action of insulin. We don’t understand the mechanism well, but what that means is, if you’re a Type 1 Diabetics. There’s two different types of diabetes. There’s Type 1 and Type 2. Type 1 diabetics do not produce sufficient amounts of insulin.
Type 2 diabetics, generally, produce insulin, but they have insulin resistance. The physiology is different. You got the juvenile onset, the adult onset, that’s not necessarily true, 100% of the time. We know if you’re a Type 1 diabetic and your blood sugar is too high and you didn’t have insulin, if you went out, went for a run, your blood sugar would come down. Maybe not enough or whatever but you can lower your blood sugar independent of insulin with activity.
Brian: Interesting.
Dr. Chad: Going up and going for a walk and things like that, improves this stuff and independent of insulin and insulin resistance and all of those kinds of things.
Brian: Is the weight issue have any bearing to it or is that just symptomatic of you haven’t exercised, right?
Dr. Chad: Well, I think it’s both.
Brian: Right.
Dr. Chad: Part of it is that, especially in an insulin resistance, and this is probably beyond getting a good grasp of this is probably beyond the scope of this podcast today. But when you look at the actions of insulin, insulin is the hormone of plenty. I like to think about the bible story where there’s seven years of famine, seven years of feast, so to speak.
They’re supposed to store up for seven years. I think of insulin as the primary hormone in those seven years of plenty. When you have sufficient amounts of energy, and food, and things like that, insulin levels are higher. The purpose of insulin is to store that stuff. You’re actually driving glucose into cells and it can only hold so much, the rest stays in the bloodstream, goes into the liver and is converted to fat in these triglycerides, and they’re then deposited into adipose tissue, so fat.
If you’re in a constant state of hyperinsulinemia, so too much insulin over time, then you’re constantly storing fats. Now, the interesting thing about that, is that if you eat a big carbohydrate meal your insulin levels are going to go up, whether or not you’re diabetic or not.
Your insulin levels go up, your blood sugar level goes up. With high insulin levels, you don’t activate fat. Not only do you not pull it out of – When I say fat I mean the fat molecule or the triglycerides. You don’t pull them out of fat cells as an energy source and take them to the cells that are burning up like muscle, and get them into the mitochondria. Mitochondria a little organelle, a component of the cell it’s kind of —
Brian: Studied that in high school.
Dr. Chad: Yes. I love mitochondria.
Brian: Loves – Love —
Dr. Chad: Get–
Brian: You probably love it more than me?
Dr. Chad: Yes, but I get kind of geeked out about it.
Brian: Right.
Dr. Chad: But–
Brian: Was that when it happened, you studied mitochondria and you said that’s it, that’s what I want to do?
Dr. Chad: No.
Brian: Okay.
[Laughter]
Dr. Chad: The mitochondria is where these fats get burned as energy.
Brian: Right.
Dr. Chad: All those processes pulling the fat out of the cell. The utilizing the fat as an energy source. Getting the fat into the mitochondria. All of those processes are dependent upon the insulin levels, insulin glucagon ratios. That’s what derives those processes. If you eat a high carbohydrate meal, you get a lot of high insulin floating around, and you go exercise, you’re going to burn the glucose.
Brian: Before you get to the fats?
Dr. Chad: That’s correct. You have to let the insulin — You have to let the hormones – I’ll say normalized, but you have to let the insulin levels decline enough, and the glucagon levels to rise enough to activate those enzymes like hormones [unintelligible 00:23:56], to get the fat out of the cells and utilize them.
Brian: I’m going to throw out a scientific word here, and you’re probably going to laugh at me, right? What’s ketosis in the body?
Dr. Chad: Ketosis, is actually by definition, the condition of ketones. When you burn fat, these fatty acids — There’s fatty acids or chains of, they’re hydrocarbon chains. They go into the mitochondria and they’re broken down. You take two carbons off at a time, like take a fat.
Now usually there’s short chain, medium chain, long chain triglycerides. What that means is the number of carbons in these chains like EPA, one of the fish oils, is a 20-carbon fatty acid, it’s got 20 carbons in it. If you’re to run that one through the beta oxidation or through the mitochondria or using it for energy, you take two carbons off at a time. You chunk these off.
At the very end, triglycerides have these glycerol backbone and there is a chemical structure at what we call the alpha end of that fatty acid. That’s kind of the extra, the leftover that doesn’t get used. Your body takes that extra and converts it and it becomes a ketone.
When you’re using fat as energy the byproduct is ketones. You can make ketones, and they could be floating in your bloodstream. You can be in ketosis, which means you have elevated ketones, which means that you’re burning a lot of fatty acids.
Brian: You’re going straight to the fat?
Dr. Chad: Correct, or you’re burning more of them.
Brian: Right. Your body is in state of perpetual fat burning.
Dr. Chad: Correct.
Brian: Until the ketones are not released at a natural level.
Dr. Chad: That’s correct. That is based on insulin glucagon. You think about the diabetic and if anyone’s heard of the term keto@diabeticketoacidosis or DKA.
Brian: Right.
Dr. Chad: That is because they don’t have enough insulin levels. They don’t have insulin. They’re chewing up fat because insulin slows those processes down. They’re burning all their — They’re mobilizing fats from their fat tissues. When Type 1 diabetics when they’re diagnosed are often skinnier because their blood sugars are high, but they can’t store anything.
They’re pulling out all these fats out. It’s going to the mitochondria, they’re chewing it up for energy because the cells think, “Hey, we don’t need glucose because we can’t get in there because of insulin.” Then there’s the machinery is just going crazy burning these fatty acids and it produces these ketones.
When you get to a point that you can — And these ketones are acidic. When you get to a point that you can no longer buffer them, you become acidonic and your pH level in your blood changes. Normally, we maintain a very tight range of acid base with a pH of 7.35 to 7.45, and if you start going 7.3, that’s acedonic.
Brian: Which means what? Why is that harmful to me?
Dr. Chad: Because it affects multiple processes in the body, and you start to have electrolyte shifts. Potassium begins to shift, calcium can shift, and too much potassium can affect the heart. It’s a real problem. It can kill you.
Brian: Dr. Chad you come across like you understand the human body. This is crazy stuff.
Dr. Chad: It’s that mitochondria biochemical mumbo jumbo. I just — I get really geeked out on that stuff.
Brian: Everything starts with that right? Yes. Okay.
Dr. Chad: Yes.
Brian: [laughs] Talk to me about people who – I guess the question that most people is like, how do I know what symptoms do I have to indicate that I might be pre-diabetic?
Dr. Chad: Well, I would [crosstalk]
Brian: — population out there.
Dr. Chad: In my clinic, we screen for this frequently. Most of our patients do receive an evaluation because we want to know how they’re handling glucose. How are they handling all of these things?
Brian: Of course.
Dr. Chad: The reason we get labs for it, is because often there is not a symptom for it. It’s kind of like having — I don’t know if this is a good example. It’s kind of like having a $1,000 in your savings account. If you’re not checking the amount of money in your savings account or your checking account and you’re constantly pulling money out but you’re never checking that level.
Brian: Right.
Dr. Chad: You don’t bounce a check until you don’t have enough.
Brian: Good.
Dr. Chad: What we want to do is make sure that there’s plenty of money in that account so that you never bounce ta check.
Brian: Yes.
Dr. Chad: When you bounce to check is kind of too late. In this case, when you’re diabetic, the cats out of the bag, we want to know if you’re already set out on the road. Have you already written too many checks? Or are you writing too many checks? That’s what we’re interested in. There’s not really a symptom. I would argue you need a comprehensive screening.
Brian: Got you. What are the symptoms of diabetes in general?
Dr. Chad: Type 1 versus Type 2. Symptoms of Type 1 diabetes will again be weight loss, they tend to burn fat, what you call polyuria, polydipsia, meaning they’re drinking more water because the glucose is what we call osmotic reactive.
Brian: Thirsty, incredibly thirsty.
Dr. Chad: That’s right.
Brian: Yes.
Dr. Chad: Drinking lots of water and when you drink a lot of water you pee a lot out. Drinking a lot, peeing a lot. In fact, [chuckles] one day my daughter came to – Her mum and I we were — And she said, “I am just so thirsty. I’m drinking all the time.” We both – She’s a nurse. We both looked at each other and I was like, “I’m going to check your blood sugar.” It was completely normal but boy that was scary.
Brian: There are some downsides to having parents that are in the medical profession?
Dr. Chad: Yes.
Brian: It’s kind of like having the web and the app. You just got to put it down at some point.
Dr. Chad: Right, exactly.
Brian: Let the kid live.
Dr. Chad: Exactly.
Brian: Yes. Okay. Drinking a lot, peeing a lot.
Dr. Chad: Yes. Energilization, you could — You’re burning fat.
Brian: Right.
Dr. Chad: Losing fat.
Brian: That’s Type 1?
Dr. Chad: That’s correct.
Brian: Yes.
Dr. Chad: Type 2 Diabetes, is a little bit different because there is insulin, and sometimes I’ve seen patients with the blood sugar in the 500s and they didn’t really have any symptoms. They didn’t really seem fatigued. They were new onset Type 2 diabetic and they felt pretty decent. So again, that’s a lab test.
Brian: It’s pretty scary, is it?
Dr. Chad: That’s what I would say.
Brian: Basically, what we are saying is you can be unsymptomatic [sic].
Dr. Chad: That’s correct.
Brian: Right. Percentage-wise are most people not symptomatic?
Dr. Chad: Well remember in the statistic, 8.1 million diabetics in the United States have never been diagnosed. They don’t even know they are diabetic, 8.1million.
Brian: Wow. And so you definitely want to get screened, that’s the first step.
Dr. Chad: Yes.
Brian: It is just that, this is one of these things that it’s such a common disease. I guess best practice if you will, for a person would be, go get your cholesterol checked, go get your, if you’re a male, go get your prostate checked. But Diabetes is one of the things you need to get screened for too. Your-
Dr. Chad: Right.
Brian: Your sugars.
Dr. Chad: This should be checked and a comprehensive annual physical.
Brian: Right, right. What a great topic.
Dr. Chad: Good stuff.
Brian: Yes, great stuff. Before we go, give me a quick story on someone that came to your clinic, and they may be pre-diabetic and what you did and how it turned out.
Dr. Chad: I can actually give you a case of one that was diabetic.
Brian: Wow. Okay.
Dr. Chad: This patient came to me, he actually had a Hemoglobin A1c above 13, so that’s really high and corresponds with an average blood sugar in the 300s. So that’s average and not after meals, that’s average over 90 days. He came to me; we put him on a comprehensive-
Brian: He had the sugar, sugar.
Dr. Chad: Maybe the sugar, sugar, sugar.
Brian: The sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar.
Dr. Chad: No.
Brian: Okay. I got it.
Dr. Chad: We put him on a comprehensive last hour evaluation. There were a couple of herbal supplements that we put him on. I actually started him on a couple of medications.
Brian: Got you.
Dr. Chad: Not insulin.
Brian: Interesting.
Dr. Chad: For him, because again he had insulin. His problem is insulin resistance and his nutritional lifestyle and those kinds of things. And, in fact, I saw him about two weeks ago. He’s on a very, very low dose of one Diabetes medication called Metformin. He’s literally on 250mg once a day, normal starting dose would be about 500mg twice a day.
So he’s on one-quarter of a starting dose of Metformin and his Hemoglobin A1c today, it’s ranged between 4.8 and 5.2. So he is no longer diabetic. He’s no longer a pre-diabetic. He is in the optimal range.
Brian: Wow. You’re smart Chad. Dr. Chad, you’re smart. It’s been a great show.
Dr. Chad: Thanks, Brian.
Brian: Thanks for the details. It’s been a detailed show. We’ll probably at some point need to kind of untag diabetes and talk a little bit more about it.
Dr. Chad: Yes, absolutely. My point with this one is just to understand that high levels of blood sugar cause you to age, they cause the body to kind of erode or rust if you will, and this needs to be checked, and 5.7, 5.8 is too high. We’ve got to get optimal levels in order to maintain optimal efficiency of the human body.
Brian: Sounds great. I got to go because I got to eat a big candy bar. It’s in my car right now, but you’ve been great.
Dr. Chad: [laughs] Thanks, Brian.
Brian: All right.
Dr. Chad: Have a good day.
Announcer: Thanks for listening to this week’s Podcast with Dr. Chad Edwards. Tune in next week, where we’ll be going Against the Grain.
[00:33:48] [END OF AUDIO]
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