Type 2 diabetes reversed after 26 years of insulin dependence!
in Diabetes, Diabetes stories, Digestive issues, Intermittent fasting, Success stories, Thyroid problems 
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Can you reverse type 2 diabetes after 26 years of insulin dependence? Conventional wisdom says it’s impossible. It can not be done.
Here’s how Barb Mynott did it:
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Greetings from India!
My story nearly matches Bernard’s! I was taking 170 units of Lantus a day and a handful of metformin along with meds for coronary artery disease, and a host of other illnesses. I was diabetic for 26 years, this poor old body has Crohn’s disease, Barrett’s esophagus, hypertension, hypothyroidism, esophageal spasm, gastro paresis, both types of arthritis and more… blah, blah, blah… I was taking close to $1200.00 a month in medications. I believe mainly based on inflammatory/autoimmune disease.
I began your program confused thinking I MUST eat all this food and three meals a day and honestly could not do it! Simply could not ingest that much in one day… did not want to! After a month more reading and viewing every offering on your site I began to understand… there is no rule save be smart and cut, cut, cut carbs. Next I joined up and cut down, exactly like Bernard to one meal a day with frequent three day fast and a miracle has happened!
Diabetes – after 26 years of insulin dependence – is gone. The neuropathy in my feet vastly improved. Crohn’s disease, after 45 years of agony, is in complete remission, cardiac issues are resolving themselves. BP is back to a healthy normal, esophageal issues are hugely improved.
I began this journey searching for help to prepare for three upcoming surgeries, a diastasis recti and very large hiatal hernia repair which scares me and I want to be at my best to undertake, a complete shoulder replacement on my right shoulder and a replacement of the prosthesis already in my left shoulder. I think your excellent advice and all the information on your site might just save me! Not only have so many autoimmune and inflammatory issues straightened themselves out, but I have lost fourteen pounds as a side effect. Thanks to you and Dr. Jason Fung my life has totally changed TOTALLY… you are miracle makers!
I would love to see more about the ‘psychology’ of this method of eating stressed on your site. As both Bernard and I said, satiety was immediate but the mental issues of converting were constantly creeping in saying… you should be eating… are you seriously going to eat that fat? Cooking eggs in butter, are you crazy? I think the diet is NO effort but the psychological issues may be what defeat many people! The thinking that you cannot fast or you cannot eat this and that is far harder to deal with than the eating plan!
Also, I am a Registered nurse (retired, I am 64 years of age) and have seen so many years of inflammatory and autoimmune disease killing people needlessly! I would love to see as much research shared on these issues as diabetes because all three in my case were hugely improved by this lifestyle!
I have watched every single interview, course and documentary on the site, it is so very full of wonderful information – you rock! Thank you, and please, keep up the better than excellent work!
Barb Mynott
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Congratulations on your spectacular health improvements, Barb!
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I don't know much about psychology but I hope my comments help. I've been eating LCHF for 11 years and will until I die. It is the only way to eat for me because my health is soooo much better now.
I suppose you have read Dr. Bernstein's book, but, if not, I would recommend it. It was my introduction into LCHF. As I was first reading it, I started yelling and cursing as I read about gastroparesis. I had self diagnosed myself with that complication of diabetes and the ADA diet. Anyway, I started eating LCHF immediately and the next day my frozen shoulders thawed and my trigger fingers relaxed. And many other things slowly got better. My A1c's now average about 5.7 down from 7.0.
Best of Luck!
Yes dr. Bernstein is the source for T1, T2, and every one who wants better glucose and insulin control
I have found he is right on the button for sooooo many diet items like his warning and observations of patients eating too many nuts, too much cream, or fruit. I finally decided to obstain and stick with meat, fish eggs and for the most part seaweed.
The one area he does not cover or not as much is fasting. However Dr. Jason Fung does a great job on fasting and the work of Valter Longo shows the benefits of 5 day fasting on glucose, insulin, white blood cell count etcetera.
Eric
http://medicc.org/mediccreview/articles/mr_119.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477773/
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/832732
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/dmrr.2519/full
What so anyone here - or does this go against your paradigm??
Thank you for the papers, we read them already, thank you anyway.
The crucial point is, as always, compliance. Some can do low-fat plant-only, others just can't (me included).
One aspect of this is energy density, another one palatability. I don't see how I could consume the vast amounts of greenery to supply me with the same energy as an average omelet with bacon and some butter. I'd be eating all the time, like a gorilla.
BTW - did you look at/read the studies I linked to?
Yes, we have a paradigm here: applied science and engineering. One looks at the science, posits engineered solutions, observes the outcomes and returns to the science to explore the root causes of roadblocks and then re-engineer. And this is repeated iteratively, always seeking recalcitrant experience to test and refine the engineered model. It is hardly controversial that type two diabetes is a condition of poorly regulated blood sugar derived from insulin resistance. Eating less food convertible into blood sugar and eating less insulin-stimulating foods is a plausible hypothesis. In fact, it has shown to work exceptionally well in large numbers of people in a clinical setting. Dr. Fung has gone farther to show the role of fatty liver and fatty pancreas and how LCHF supplemented with sufficient fasting can restore pancreas and liver function and thereby undo insulin resistance and, as a result, the type two diabetes. That is brilliant engineering: the reciprocal engagement of science and experience. Yes, that is the paradigm.
One explanation for some of the 5%: circadian mismatch
http://caloriesproper.com/dawn-phenomnomnom/
However, I do think some LCHF suggestions come across extreme (to the uninitiated) and are even possibly unnecessary if you're looking for a lifestyle change to heal yourself, long term.
Here is a study I valued that lends support to your post (although I disagree with you on the details), http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/53/6/1647S.long. This study is about obesity and CHD, but as we all know here they should be seen as different parts of the same beast (metabolic syndrome) of which diabetes is a part. The study involved returning a group of Hawaiians to their traditional diet which as it happens was quite high-carb and not particularly high-fat!
All participants benefited with weight loss, blood pressure, blood glucose, etc after just 21 days. Having been instructed to eat to satiety and without being calorie controlled the average calorie reduction was 41% (suggesting their brains were talking to their stomachs again, which is a good sign you're on the mend).
On the surface this might appear to advocate a nonchalant high-carb diet whilst still healing metabolic syndrome but if you look at what they actually ate you'll see they removed Grains, vegetable oil and all processed food (i.e the stuff filled with grains, seed oils and SUGAR), they ate a lot of fresh leafy greens and nothing but whole, unrefined foods.
The true message of LCHF is to eat real food, and inform you that products (or home cooked foods) that contain grains, veggie oil and added sugar are NOT real food! By conventional standards any diet devoid of grains could be considered low-carb, the philosophy's high-fat part is to eat fat to satiety, not eat fat for the sake of it, so high-carb is subjective.
Whilst you're eating acellular starch from grains your diabetes will only get worse! If you're eating a homeopathic amount then, sure, you won't likely turn diabetic, but expect to be hungry all the time and experience fluctuation of blood glucose, not to mention the inflammation, autoimmune issues, dental problems, etc.
You cannot possibly still believe a bowl of sugar (or equivalent glycemic load of bread or cereal) could be remotely a nutritious as fresh fruit, tubers, even maple syrup, honey and other high-carb paleo foods.
Stop trying to dissuade folk from reclaiming their health!
Charlie you may the first ever double recipient of the Golden Gezza. http://thelowcarbdiabetic.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=golden+gezza+grashow
The same goes for an overweight person. Unfortunately the media never let up on the overweight person. The term, which I personally hate is obese, to me it is derogatory and hateful. During my life time we have moved on from the jokes about the Black Man, Jews and Homosexuals, but the fat man or women is still a common target. The reality is the negative stereo typing of people regarding race, colour or religion was always based on prejudice, ignorance and irrational fear.
Imagine having a heart attack and being rushed to a casualty hospital, would you care if the medics were Black, Jewish or overweight? get my drift? it would not cross your mind. No sane person would believe the average person goes out of their way to become heavily overweight, but like the Black person, the Jew, the Gay person, we are what we are.
Clearly, for so many losing weight is extremely difficult, the person that comes up with a 100% successful way for all people who want to lose weight, would become so rich he or she would be sending welfare parcels to Bill Gates.
So, I say to the heavily overweight person, cut yourselves some slack. People only ever notice once, and only a bigoted fool and coward, with their own fears and prejudice, would ever make any mileage out of the situation.
For what my opinion is worth, eliminate sugar completely, dump all highly processed high carbohydrate factory produced foods. Base your meals on non starchy vegetables, nuts and seeds. Add high quality protein such as meat, fish and eggs. Do not fear the fats man has ate since the beginning of time, a long time before the epidemics of heart disease, type two diabetes and all that being heavily overweight can bring.
This is not rocket science, it's plan old common sense. "Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food." Hippocrates. Over two thousand years ago those words were uttered by the Father of medicine, they stand good today. Never has the food we eat had greater influence over our lives. Traditional foods and healthy eating has been usurped by the multinational food giants. Do not become a victim of poor dietary information. Eat the food we evolved from, the less man is involved, the healthier the food.
Does it mean we have a paradigm? Not really. We only have a basis to work with, nothing more. As long as science shows positive results it's correct. If not then you have to deal with the new data, Hegelian triad thesis-antithesis-synthesis.
To your studies: some of them are really interesting but High-Carb compared to Low-Carb mostly they show this: both avoid processed food. So the primary focus should lie on that.
So if Low-Carb or High-Carb does work for YOU... then what's the problem with this nice story?
The best of luck and health to you and yours, and all who produce and visit this great blog, even Charlie boy.
Skewered Fruit with dips (made with sugar). Total carb 38 grams per serving
Mackerel Salsa Wrap. Total carb 40 grams per serving
Blackeyed Bean and Feta Wrap. 36 grams per serving
If I understand correctly dividing by 4 gives the equivalent in teaspoons of sugar.......
btw. my point with fruit is that you can't say that the diet is just about eating whole foods, and limit fruit. Fruits are whole foods so if you must restrict them then clearly the diet is about something else. Also people were eating starches, and grains before obesity epidemic.
It has been very frustrating to see her unable to control her BG levels with the same diet as I have successfully used to avoid Type II, which runs in our family and which I am sure I was headed for before I also went low-carb in 1999.
Last week, my sister suffered severe stomach pain and was admitted to the ICU with blood sugar above 500. She was to see an endocrinologist and "dietician" and I'm not sure what will come of that. For her, the dietary changes did not work. We have no idea why not and I am upset and angry.
Maybe you should look what exactly she is eating? For some, Nuts and Dairy (Milk, Cheese, Yoghurt, Cream, ... except Butter) can cause many problems. Give Intermittent Fasting a Try, 16:8 is usually a good starting point. Cook only real food, don't buy any convience Products. Read the labels! There are so many hidden carbs.
Or, maybe, she even will be better on a different Diet, there are many possibilities.
In addition to Chris' good suggestions, I would ask which low-carb diet she's following. Some don't do a good job of encouraging people to eat healthfully, but allow wheat, high dairy intake and too much processed food. A really troubling development are the Atkins tv dinners, which serve everything from pasta to pizza, and claim to be 10-12 net carbs. There is nothing healthy about them. If a person ate them regularly, they'd probably be dealing with serious blood sugar swings.
As has been said several times on this board, the best diet is eating whole foods rather than processed, with a focus on leafy veggies, good quality meats, eggs, fish, and the occasional fruit, and very limited dairy. It's a good place to start.