For Physicians The Paleo Diet And Reversing Type II Diabetes

As a fellow Physician, I first want to thank you for taking the time and making the effort to investigate what I have found to be a better way to help our patients address their Type II Diabetes. The benefits of this approach far outweigh any risk I am taking in presenting this information to you.

We have been taught that Gluconeogenesis should be a secondary or backup source of sugar: this is incorrect. Gluconeogenesis should actually be our primary source of sugar. Shifting this paradigm allows the liver to control sugar levels. Therefore, sugars never go too high or low. Tell your patients to think about protein as time released glucose. This is a far superior system, because it eliminates the boom and bust carbohydrate roller coaster. We have also been taught that protein is distressing to the kidneys. In fact, it is a higher protein diet that protects the kidneys, because high glucose levels and insulin levels destroy the kidneys. Today, there is plenty of research to support this. I know a lot of what I'm saying here is heresy but it is the truth and explains why we're having so much trouble staying healthy. My treatment plan includes the Paleo Diet, appropriate diagnostic testing, and supplementation.

The Paleo Diet is the most powerful tool I have to help my patients no matter what their disease, but especially Type II Diabetes. It typically will reverse patient's Type II Diabetes to achieve a hemoglobin A1C under 6.1 within 90 days, even in patients with a starting A1C as high as 12 or 13. The diet is the healthiest on the planet, and is based on the principle that 99% of our genetic history has been lived as hunter gatherers.

Hunter gatherers are typically free of chronic diseases. Only in the last 10,000 years have humans suffered from chronic disease. Chronic diseases including osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, crooked teeth, gum disease, diabetes, narrowed faces, smaller brains, tooth decay, and a marked increase in infant mortality followed the introduction of agriculture all around the world. The average hunter-gatherer workday, by the way, is 2 1/2 hours and the average Neolithic farmer work day was 10 hours. Hunter gatherers do not eat grains except under starvation conditions. They do not eat legumes (beans), potatoes, and dairy after three years old. True hunter gatherers grow none of their own food. Research and the archaeological record show that the average hunter gatherer gets 70% of their calories from animals, and 30% from fruits, nuts, and vegetables. The animals they eat are wild and thus they eat only their natural diet. I would ask you, have you ever seen a wild animal overweight? The answer is, of course, no. Wild animals eat what they're designed to eat. The wild animals on the pristine parts of our planet do not get chronic diseases. The same is true for humans in spite of what we may have been led to believe about hunter-gatherers. A natural diet for our patients includes free range chicken, free range beef, etc. Hunter gatherers start their day with leftovers consisting of a large serving of animal protein. This is essential to successfully reversing Type II Diabetes. We have data on 228 groups of hunter gathers, but they are disappearing very quickly and the knowledge is being lost.

Cholesterol is also generally very well controlled on this diet. I check cholesterol levels mainly to get the triglyceride and HDL ratio because this is a measure of insulin sensitivity. I strive for a ratio of 2:1 or less.

You're going to have to teach your patients the diet yourself because Dietitians are defiantly not trained in the Paleo Diet. There are some Nutritionists who are experts in the Paleo Diet and will visit your office to help teach your patients.

The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain, Ph.D, is a wonderful book that my patients have enjoyed reading. The author is a professor at Colorado State University whose area of expertise is Paleolithic nutrition. Loren is very science-based and teaches graduate students in writing research articles. I have witnessed him debate on three occasions, and he quickly dispatches his adversaries including Walter Willett, M. D., epidemiologist from Harvard and food pyramid developer, and Colin Campbell, Ph.D. food pyramid consultant and author of “The China Study.” The book also provides a great plan outline and great read. It explains so much the “why” we've been telling our patients the wrong thing. The book can be found at Nature's Nutrition, on Amazon.com, and most of the People's Pharmacies.

If you are working with patients taking insulin evaluate their C-peptide immediately after consumption of a regular Coke or similar liquid candy to measure their intrinsic maximal insulin production, and pancreatic burden. As a review, remember that insulin is made in a very long molecule that is cut just as it leaves the beta cell. One-piece folds up to be insulin and the other one floats off as C-peptide. By measuring C-peptide, lab error is avoided in confusing intrinsic and injected insulin. If a patient has a C-peptide even as high as three or four and they are motivated to follow the diet, most will typically control their blood sugars into the normal range without the use of any drugs.

All patients should be on high quality omega-3 fish oil, as this improves insulin sensitivity. Not all fish oil is the same. Even the prescription version is inferior. Omega-3’s come in nature as one of the three fatty acids attached to glycerol. In other words, omega-3's come as part of a triglyceride. In an effort to concentrate omega-3's the manufacturing process removes the fatty acids from the glycerol producing an ethyl ester and then distills off the finer oil omega-3's from the heavier oil omega-6’s that were also previously attached to glycerol. The better manufacturers add the omega-3's back to the glycerol molecule to produce a triglyceride. The triglyceride form is four times better absorbed, and is nontoxic. Most manufacturers sell the omega-3's in the ethyl ester form and causes problems because they are only one fourth as well absorbed, and the enterocytes in the intestinal wall must put them back in a triglyceride form. Therefore, ethanol is released as a byproduct.

Also, over-the-counter alpha lipoic acid in a dose of about four to 600 mg per day is very helpful in lowering blood sugars.

When combining and executing these methods your patient’s sugars can drop rather dramatically as did the patient’s in the graph provided below. If patients are on medication and the sugars are fairly well controlled, my tendency is to reduce or remove medication as they start to diet.

Common mistakes made are starting the day with some cereal grain and also eating too many fruits. Fruits that we eat today have a lot more sugar than they did in their original wild state for we began selectively breeding for higher sugar content. Additionally, fruit was originally only seasonal but now it is available year-round.

The fundamental biochemistry mistakes aforementioned have been disastrous for our health. There are a few articles found on this website that I believe you will find interesting and helpful but I would suggest reading, What Does It Really Feel like to Be a Healthy Human ? This shows you not only how far out of sync we are with our own genetics but what level of health potential we actually have without any technology at all.

Good luck and get ready for incredible results. You will become a hero to your patients.