Did you know that a hundred years ago, the low-carb keto diet was used to treat diabetes? When doctors didn’t have any medications for type 2 diabetes, they understood that by changing the diet, you could actually treat and fix diabetes.
Keto addresses the core problem of diabetes
There was never a study showing that medication treatment of type 2 diabetes was better than using the low-carb keto diet. I find this diet is even better than using medications because you can actually fix the diabetes. When you address the underlying root causes of diabetes – blood sugar elevation from food and/or from insulin resistance (which is from excess body weight) – then you can actually fix type 2 diabetes. The low-carb keto diet is fantastic to treat type 2 diabetes because it lowers the dietary carbohydrate contribution to raising the blood sugar. It also leads to weight loss or loss of the insulin resistance that causes pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes in the first place. Until you lose the weight, if you have excess weight, you may not see total resolution of your diabetes. But, not to worry, all it takes is some time.
What is diabetes?
Diabetes is an elevation of blood sugar or blood glucose all day long. Normally, when someone eats carbohydrates, the body doesn’t like the glucose elevation this causes, so it sends out insulin to lower the blood glucose. That glucose goes from the blood into the cells. Some of it is used for energy, and any excess energy from that glucose is stored as fat. Insulin is what lowers the blood glucose and it is also the fattening hormone. (It facilitates the conversion of excess glucose into fat.)
The contradiction of diabetes medication
If you feed someone with diabetes carbohydrates, it raises the blood sugar. Then you give them medicine to lower the blood sugar, and that can actually be fattening, especially if you give insulin, because it’s a fattening hormone. That’s why treating diabetes with insulin makes no sense. If you look at the blood of people with type 2 diabetes, their blood insulin level is already too high. You are not going to fix type 2 diabetes by giving more insulin to someone who already has insulin at a high level and who has insulin resistance. (Insulin resistance means the insulin isn’t working as it should or that the body isn’t responding to it normally.)
The keto diet offers hope to diabetes patients
The good news is that with the proper management, you can actually reverse and fix type 2 diabetes. The doctors today should all give you this knowledge and you should be told by your doctor that if you want to go down the lifestyle route, you can fix diabetes. Sadly, most doctors are not informing their patients about this. The final criticism is, doctors say that no one can stick to a lifestyle like that (not eating carbohydrates). But that’s just not true. Find a doctor who can help you stick with it and find a social support system. It has never been easier to do a low-carb keto lifestyle diet than today because of all the support systems and products that are available in the stores.
Be sure to seek professional help to make this lifestyle change
There is no happier patient in my clinic than one I can get off of insulin and who no longer has to check their blood glucose with a fingerstick – because they don’t have diabetes anymore. It’s pretty fun! If you are thinking about using a low-carb keto diet and you have type 2 diabetes, please be careful. The blood sugars can drop immediately – on the first day. You have to be monitoring your blood glucose very carefully, ideally with a continuous glucose monitor where you can see your blood sugar variation every five minutes. You can also do it just by checking the blood sugars about four times a day. If you don’t know how to do this or it seems complicated, use the advice of someone who is trained in doing this. You have to get a personal expert to help you do that. Please be careful if you are taking medicines for diabetes or high blood pressure. It’s not that the diet is harmful, but rather that the medications can become too strong very fast, because keto is so effective at lowering blood sugar.
The low-carb keto lifestyle is excellent for type 2 diabetes because it addresses food contributions to elevated glucose and also the underlying insulin resistance from the excess body weight. With any lifestyle change, please consult your doctor or someone trained in how to do this. It is very effective and safe in the right hands. It is really exciting to use a low-carb keto lifestyle to treat diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome and many other medical conditions. Watch the full video here.