Prepare to have your health questions answered here on Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions
with Dr. Todd Binkley, owner of Binkley Healing Center in downtown Ventura.
Now, here's Dr. Todd.
Good afternoon.
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley, board certified non-force doctor of chiropractic and practitioner of
functional medicine.
I identify conditions other doctors miss by doing tests that most doctors don't do, often
because your insurance company doesn't want to pay for them.
They only want to pay for disease, treating disease when you already have it.
If you want to prevent something or reverse it with a safe, effective, natural solution,
then you're usually going to have to pay a little bit out of pocket and manage that yourself.
With my help, I'm here to help.
It does cost a little bit of money out of pocket, but a lot less than you probably think,
especially when you factor in all of the costs involved when you are sick from work or lose
time from work or just are debilitated, the factor in the cost of just not feeling like
you should all the time.
It's a lot more affordable than you might imagine.
So today's topic is diabetes.
After the holidays, everyone's been shoveling cookies, cakes, pies, all that sweet, wonderful
stuff from the holidays.
Here's a perfect time to learn why it's really important to not get diabetes in the first
place, but also if you have diabetes, you can often reverse it.
I'm going to describe a case study here at the end of the show where a man was severe
diabetes at the point of requiring insulin, been on metformin, oral most common medication
for diabetes for a long time, and it's getting worse and he's about ready to be put on insulin.
He doesn't want to end up having to inject himself with insulin for the rest of his life,
so he came in and I was able to completely reverse, almost completely eliminate his diabetes
in four months.
Why is it so important to know about diabetes?
Well, diabetes causes a lot of problems.
It damages high blood sugar resulting from diabetes, damages blood vessels and nerves
throughout your body, and it starts on the ones that are the most sensitive or the smallest
or the most distant from your heart, so your eyes, your kidneys, your feet.
5.3 million Americans have diabetic retinopathy.
They basically are looking through these cloudy, splotchy fogs that block their vision up to
60%, over 60% of type 2 diabetics will eventually develop diabetic retinopathy.
21% have retinopathy at the time of diagnosis.
It is neck and neck with macular degeneration as the leading cause of blindness, and over
8,000 people lose their sight from diabetes each year.
How many people know someone who's had to have part of their foot, their toes or their
foot amputated because of diabetes?
86,000, over 86,000, these are statistics from 10 years ago, lose parts of their feet,
statistics from foot amputation because diabetes causes damage to the blood vessels and the
nerves to the feet, and if you can't supply nutrients and can't feel when you're cutting
or hurting your feet, you end up with ulcers that get infected and you end up having to
have parts of your feet cut off.
Not pretty.
Up to 40% of type 2 diabetics suffer from kidney failure, and the time from when kidney
damage first shows up to when your kidneys fail completely is usually about 5 to 7 years.
So over half a million Americans have end-stage kidney disease and over 87,000 die each year,
and over 100,000 are currently waiting for a transplant, and this huge, fast-climbing
incidence of diabetes has reduced the number of potential donors because so many people
have diabetes that even when they die from some other cause, their kidneys aren't useful
anymore to be donated to someone because they've been damaged by diabetes.
Well, you may have heard you can just go on dialysis if your kidneys stop working well.
Four hours a day, three times a week, strapped to a machine, it costs something like $25,000
a month.
Dialysis is not fun.
Plus the diet, here's the diet you have to do if you have to go on dialysis.
Use fluid intake to avoid swelling, avoid high potassium foods, and avoid high phosphorus
foods, and eat as much protein you can.
So basically eat a high protein, high carbohydrate diet with little vegetables, little fruit,
and little dairy.
How long do you think you're going to survive on a diet with no vegetables and a bunch of
starch that's just going to make your diabetes worse, by the way?
Not everybody ends up with this, but it's certainly a motivating factor for some people
to take better care of themselves.
Erectile dysfunction, diabetes damages blood vessels and nerves throughout the body, including
the ones that are necessary to have keep working to establish an erection.
So if someone you know is not performing like they want to or should be, that is a sign
of diabetes and a sign that they should get checked.
Fifty percent of men with diabetes will suffer from erectile dysfunction within 10 years
of diagnosis.
Long before you have kidney failure or blindness, one of the first signs of the nerve damage
that diabetics notice is diabetic neuropathy.
Usually in the feet, pain, tingling, numbness in the arms, hand, legs, or feet.
It's usually in the feet.
You can also have muscle loss.
It can contribute to carpal tunnel syndrome and plantar fasciitis.
Loss of nerves anywhere in your body, causing indigestion or diarrhea, difficulty swallowing,
poor absorption of nutrients due to impaired blood flow to the intestines.
And it can increase your risk of infections, especially the ear, nose, and throat, lungs,
urinary tract, and the female reproductive organs.
Nearly a third of diabetics will have severe periodontal disease, gum loss, eventually
resulting in loss of their teeth.
And here's perhaps the scariest one of all as you get older.
Even mild, this is from the Journal of Neuropsychology, even mild diabetes, well controlled, impairs
mental function.
Diabetics diagnosed before 65 have more than double the chance of developing Alzheimer's
disease.
It also increases your cancer risk.
You're 30% more likely to develop and die from cancer if you have diabetes.
And because of the constant damage to blood vessels and impaired neurochemical control
of the blood vessels, it causes high blood pressure and damages the blood vessels themselves
with all the inflammation that's caused by high blood sugar.
So having diabetes dramatically increases your risks of heart disease, the number one
cause of death, even pre-diabetes.
As research has shown, the long-term damage to the heart and circulatory system is occurring
during pre-diabetes, and you're 34% more likely to die from cardiovascular disease
if you're just pre-diabetic.
Well, half the US population is pre-diabetic or diabetic.
And the standard testing that most doctors do and the recommendations they make after
they do those tests is sorely lacking, and the evidence of that is all around you.
50% of Americans are pre-diabetic or have diabetes, and what's being done about that?
Well, I'm going to explain to you what you can do about it if you'd like to avoid that
fate.
And it starts with the testing.
So most doctors diagnose you with pre-diabetes and say, we need to start monitoring this
if your blood sugar is above 100, consistently above 100, and if your A1C test, which is
a measure of your blood sugar levels up and down all day long over a three-month period,
if your A1C is above 6, some labs are lowering that to 5.6.
And if your A1C is above 6, definitely, or possibly even if it's above 5.6, doctors will
tell you you're pre-diabetic.
If your A1C is above 6.5, that is a diagnosis of diabetes.
If your fasting blood sugar, morning fasting blood sugar, is above 125, that is also a
diagnosis for diabetes.
And that's when they'll start putting you on medication, usually metformin.
And they put you on metformin for a while, and you do nothing different.
You don't change your diet.
You don't exercise anymore.
And eventually, that stops working, and they put you on more medications.
Well, guess what?
Guess how long that's going to work?
How long do you really think you're going to survive?
What happens when you just take more insulin?
You keep eating starch and sugar that spikes your blood sugar, and you just keep taking
more insulin to force it into muscle cells and fat cells?
Well, let's start right there.
That's insulin's job.
It shoves sugar that you eat into fat cells and muscle cells.
Well, if you're exercising, fine.
Have a Snickers bar before you go run a marathon.
Your body's going to burn all that sugar immediately.
No problem.
But if you're not exercising, if you have a sedentary lifestyle, like most Americans,
and you just keep taking insulin to force sugar into fat cells and muscle cells, if
you're not using your muscle cells, guess where it's all going?
Into fat cells.
Insulin makes you fat, makes you fatter.
That's not much fun.
So if you're already diabetic and you're on medication for it, you're probably already
aware of some of these problems.
And if you want to reverse diabetes and get off of those medications, you usually can
if your glucose is not over 300 or 400 with the medications that you're already taking.
And if you're not already on insulin, for almost always, you can reverse and completely
eliminate it with better food, exercise, and supplements.
Well, what if you're not diabetic, but you know a lot of people who are, maybe in your
own family, and what if you're part of that huge percentage of the US population who are
pre-diabetic and don't know it?
Well, number one, get checked, get your A1C levels checked, and find out if they're above
5.6.
That's included on every blood panel that I do.
And more importantly, here's the big missing factor from the way, well, again, most doctors
don't really practice prevention of any kind, but even the ones that say they do or followed
the standard guidelines by the American Diabetes Association, for example, they just say to
check people's glucose levels and their A1C levels.
And if it's pre-diabetes, tell them to eat a better diet and exercise a little bit more
with no specific recommendations typically.
And then wait till you have diabetes and give you medications to treat the diabetes.
Well, here's the big missing from that.
Here's what people should be testing.
Everyone who wants to prevent diabetes should be doing another test.
Everyone who wants to prevent diabetes should be getting their fasting insulin levels checked.
Fasting insulin levels.
So just like you fast before you get your fasting glucose levels checked first thing
in the morning, if you don't eat for several hours and then get your insulin levels checked,
your insulin levels should be really low.
But the medical range is roughly 2.5 to 25, which is ridiculous.
Nobody's insulin, especially if they're not diabetic, no one's insulin should be 25.
No one's insulin should be above 10.
Many authors recommend it should be below seven if you're not diabetic, maybe even below
five, somewhere between 2.5 and five, somewhere between three and seven.
Different authorities recommend different ranges.
But the bottom line is it should be way lower than the standard medical range and even lower
than some functional practitioners recommend.
Most functional medicine practitioners recommend that your fasting insulin levels be maintained
below 10.
Personally, I think it would be better to maintain it closer to something below seven.
Again, if you're not already diabetic, if you keep it that low when you're diabetic,
that can be dangerous depending on what medications you're on.
And fasting insulin levels, if you're already diabetic, is a test that is sometimes used
by endocrinologists to see if your pancreas is still making any insulin at all, because
then you know you need to start taking it.
If your fasting insulin is below 2.5, then you're pretty much going to become dependent
on insulin because your pancreas isn't making anymore.
But you can identify the risk of becoming diabetic much earlier if you test your fasting
insulin levels.
This test costs, I don't know, something like $11, $15 maybe.
It's very inexpensive.
The only reason your fasting insulin levels go up is because you're eating too much grains,
starch, and sugar.
And doing that is eventually going to destroy the insulin-producing cells in your pancreas.
So if you identify this earlier and improve your diet and exercise more to burn off those
calories, then you can keep weight off without starving yourself, and you'll also end up
with lower inflammation, more energy, and reduce your risk of chronic disease.
Reduce damage from diabetes to the blood vessels and nerves in your feet and your kidneys and
your eyes and your sexual function, and especially your heart.
It'll dramatically reduce your risks of heart attacks and strokes.
So insulin resistance doesn't happen overnight.
When most of your diet is empty calories and an abundance of quickly absorbed sugars, liquid
sugars like fruit juice, soda, beer, any kind of sugary drink, those are the worst.
Those are going to spike your blood sugar the fastest.
And then the second worst are carbohydrates that turn into sugar almost immediately after
you eat them like bread, rice, potatoes, pasta.
And so your cells slowly become resistant.
When you do this, it spikes your insulin, and then your cells eventually become resistant
to insulin.
Well, why would your cells become resistant to insulin?
Does that even make sense?
I mean, insulin is essential.
Insulin escorts essential glucose into the cells of your brain, into your muscles, into
your fat cells if you're not burning it.
But insulin is essential.
So why would your body become resistant to anything that's essential for life?
Well, water is essential for life.
Can you imagine your body becoming resistant to water?
Well, what if someone sticks a garden hose in your mouth and turns it up on full blast?
Your body would become resistant to that pretty quickly, right?
So the only reason your body would become resistant to something that's essential for
life is if you're doing something that's causing it to produce too much.
Your body becomes resistant to insulin.
And when you read medical literature on what causes diabetes, if you can look it up anywhere,
Mayo Clinic website, Cleveland Clinic, good sources for information, it'll say, oh, diabetes
is just caused by resistance to insulin.
Your body just magically stops becoming sensitive to the effects of insulin.
Well, there's no mystery behind that.
When that happens, it's always, if you're type 2 diabetic, which is 90 plus percent of
diabetics, type 1 diabetes is a whole separate issue.
It's a genetic condition, an autoimmune condition that usually starts in childhood.
But most diabetes is caused by just eating too much grains, starch, and sugar.
If you stop eating too much grains, starch, and sugar, and exercise more when you are
having any of those things, then you don't get diabetes, and you can reverse it if you
get it.
But if you wait too long, this becomes very difficult.
The higher your insulin levels, the more your cells become resistant to insulin, which then
causes your insulin levels to become higher, which then causes your body to become more
resistant to insulin.
And around it goes, and your body starts to age and deteriorate.
And insulin is one of the most important things that can lead to premature aging, and heart
disease, and stroke, and dementia, and cancer.
All forms of cancer are worse if you have high blood sugar.
And dementia is now being called type 3 diabetes because high blood sugar destroys cells in
your brain.
And unfortunately, most doctors just don't test this until you show up with signs of
diabetes, if you show up with increased thirst, or increased urination, or other classic signs
of diabetes.
So I recommend early testing, having your fasting insulin levels tested for almost anyone
over age 50, definitely anyone with a family history of type 2 diabetes, anybody with central
abdominal weight, in other words, anyone who has a fat gut, anybody with abnormal cholesterol,
or any other risk factor for insulin resistance, even in children.
So here's the other thing they don't tell you when they just put you on medication for
diabetes.
It does nothing.
It's not a cure.
There's no drug that can restore the ability of your pancreas to produce insulin properly
again.
There is no drug that can reverse insulin resistance.
All that sugar just gets shoved into fat cells.
So even when you're on the best medication available for diabetes, the stress on your
pancreas, your kidneys, your liver, your heart, your blood vessels, and your nerves will continue
until one day one of these organs or systems just can't take it anymore.
So how do you prevent this?
Well, most people just say, most doctors will say, eat less fat, exercise more, avoid sugar,
and take these drugs.
That's what they've been recommending to people for decades.
How's that going?
It's not going very well.
One popular explanation is that maybe it's genetic.
Maybe there are certain genes that make you predisposed to have diabetes.
Well, genes take a long time to change.
The incidence of diabetes has been doubling every 10 years.
What changed in the last 10 years?
The genes didn't.
So all forms of carbohydrate cause excess insulin production every time you beat them.
The worst ones break down into glucose faster, faster than your body can burn them unless
you're vigorously exercising.
But all carbs eventually become glucose.
So if you consume more than a modest amount on any given day, even whole grains and brown
rice and beans can cause excess insulin production, over-stimulate insulin receptors, and become
fat.
Even more egregiously, for years, for decades, the American Diabetes Association has been
telling people their food pyramid, up until very recently, the bottom of the food pyramid
on the American Diabetes Association website is breads, grains, and other starches.
In the text, it says, eat 55% to 60% servings of grains, beans, and starchy vegetables,
basically more than any other food.
Well, they have recently changed that.
Now they have a plate method, and now they only recommend that you eat 25% grain, starch,
and sugar.
But that's still stupid advice.
No diabetic should be eating 25% of their diet in starch and sugar.
So why do they keep recommending this?
Well, medical doctors, nutritionists learn in medical school that your brain requires
a continuous supply of glucose to function.
So therefore, you must eat some kind of food that's going to turn into glucose.
No, you don't need to do that.
Your body can convert protein into glucose.
If your glucose levels are insufficient, your body can convert chicken, or fish, or nuts
into glucose.
And, of course, your body can also burn fat directly for energy.
That's why it's much healthier to eat more protein and healthy fats, and very little
grain, starch, and sugar for anyone.
And that's why diabetics should eat almost no grains, starch, and sugar.
No one needs any grain, starch, or sugar to survive.
Guess which part of your body is made from pancakes, and waffles, and cakes, and cookies,
and soda, and fruit juice?
Zero parts of your body are made from any of those things.
Zero cells in your body are manufactured from carbohydrates.
Carbohydrates are just fuel.
All of the cells of your body that you actually need nutrients to heal and repair are made
of proteins and fats.
So the structure of your body is mostly collagen.
The structure of your bones, and your skin, and the scaffolding that your organs are made
out of, your hair, and your nails.
Most of the structure of your body is made from protein.
And your cell membranes down on the cellular level, your cell membranes are made from fats,
your steroid hormones, your sex hormones are made from fats.
And then you need minerals to fuel all the reactions that heal and repair all of these
tissues.
And you need vitamins, like vitamin C, vitamin D, to make your immune system function, vitamin
E, et cetera.
But no one needs any grains, starch, or sugar to survive.
It's fine for most of us to eat some of those things.
But diabetics should eat hardly any of them if they want to reverse or eliminate diabetes.
Unfortunately, this has become much more popular now.
For three decades, since the 70s, up until a few years ago, we were told to count calories,
cut fat, eat low fat this, low fat that.
Don't eat anything that says low fat on it.
Don't buy low fat yogurt.
Get the full fat Greek plain yogurt and put your own berries and nuts in it for flavor.
Don't buy low fat milk.
The words low fat on anything you see in the grocery store basically means high sugar.
What do you think they substitute when they take the fat out of something to make it taste
good?
What do you think they put in instead?
Sugar.
So don't eat low fat anything.
Eat healthy fats like olive oil, avocados, nuts, seeds, fish, and healthy proteins, whatever
kind you like.
Most people know how to find healthy proteins.
I've helped scores of diabetics over the years get off of medication and go back to just
eating better food, exercise, and taking a few supplements.
Very few supplements.
There's not that many supplements that actually work well for diabetes.
There's a lot of them that are on sale on offer, but it's basically just about reducing
grain, starch, and sugar and exercising a bit more.
So for example, the most recent bad diabetic I can think of off the top of my head as a
guy that's about 48 years old, his fasting glucose levels were running 300 to 400.
His A1C was 12, which is really, both of those are really bad.
And in four months, we got his fasting glucose levels back down to under 125 back into the
pre-diabetic range and his A1C level down to 7 point something.
That is fantastic results.
That is basically reversing diabetes completely in four months.
Almost anyone can do that.
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley.
If you're feeling numbness and tingling in your feet, if you have persistent weight gain,
if you already know that you have pre-diabetes or if you know someone, you love someone and
you'd like to get them off of medications for diabetes, have them give me a call.
I'd love to help you or someone you love reverse or eliminate diabetes.
Have a great weekend.
See you right here back Friday at four o'clock next week.
Have a fantastic weekend.
You've been listening to Safe Effective Natural Solutions with Dr. Todd Binkley.
If you have a health question you want discussed on the show, email your health questions to
drbinkley at binkleyhealingcenter.com.
Take advantage of this opportunity to ask questions for yourself and for your loved
ones because our health matters.
Join him next Friday at four p.m. for Safe Effective Natural Solutions right here on
98.3 The Word, KDAR.