cosmoscon

I’m coming up on m 4^th year of adhering to the Paleo lifestyle alone to control my Type 2 Diabetes and I hope the data I’ll show in this post will prove to those struggling with this disease that it is possible to achieve a ‘cure’ without medicine that has deleterious side effects or complicated insulin injections/formulations.

For those not familiar, an A1c is basically the gold standard of blood glucose measurements because it can go back as much as 3 months in the past to give an average blood glucose measurement.

“The A1C test is based on the attachment of glucose to hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen. In the body, red blood cells are constantly forming and dying, but typically they live for about 3 months. Thus, the A1C test reflects the average of a person’s blood glucose levels over the past 3 months. The A1C test result is reported as a percentage. The higher the percentage, the higher a person’s blood glucose levels have been. A normal A1C level is below 5.7 percent”

A person with Type 2 Diabetes can ‘fool’ themselves into thinking their blood glucose levels are good if they only take measurements with a home meter in the morning (fasting) but ignore the high glucose levels during the day after they eat foods that spike their glucose levels. You can’t ‘fool’ an A1c so that is why it is considered a true test of how a person is managing their Type 2 Diabetes over a long period.

Keep in mind that a normal A1c reading for someone without Diabetes is below 6% and you can see my A1c test results in the graph below (which includes the latest A1c I had last week during my annual physical).

After I was diagnosed I went the route of Metformin and while I achieved an A1c results of 5.6% (the first data point after the initial diagnosis), the side effects of those meds (which involved not being more than 2 minutes away from a bathroom at any time) caused me to switch to the Paleo lifestyle exclusively and I ditched the meds (red line indicates where I stopped taking the meds and switched to the Paleo Lifestyle).

Notice that when I was diagnosed in March 2013 I had an A1c of 11.5% so the results that I show above aren’t from a marginal person who was close to having Type 2 Diabetes. My Type 2 Diabetes was about as bad as it can be but yet my A1c test results over the past 3 years rival that of someone who is not afflicted with this horrible disease.

It should also be pointed out that the American Diabetes Association recommends that folks who have been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes maintain an A1c less than 7%. This is madness since an A1c of 7% corresponds to a blood glucose level of 154 mg/Dl and that level of blood glucose is WAY too high!

It continues to frustrate me that the accepted medical guidance of the day is to force meds and insulin into people and tell them that they can still eat all the pizza, pasta, bread, beans and whole grains they can get their hands on. Literally the medical community is encouraging folks to take the path of a slow painful death that includes blindness, decapitated limbs and heart failure.

If you are a Type 2 Diabetic, don’t accept this ADA solution from your doctor. There is a better alternative and it doesn’t involve spending money on doctor visits or medicine!

As I have stated in previous posts in 2016, I noticed my blood sugar levels were beginning to creep up and I struggled with the cause. I thought the reason might have been attributed to the Dawn Phenomenon, alcohol, reduced exercise or chewing gum. But after a few months of tinkering I think it was just that I got over confident in my success and decided to deviate too much from the Paleo lifestyle.

Even though I am a Type 2 Diabetic, for several years I have controlled my blood glucose within normal levels without the use of medication. And these “normal” levels are normal for someone without Type 2 Diabetes (fasting measurements between 70-100 mg/dl), not the “normal” that the American Diabetes Association says a Type 2 Diabetic should control his blood sugar (fasting measurements less than 130 mg/dl).

After 3 years of strict adherence to the Paleo lifestyle I had become over confident that somehow I had reversed my insulin sensitivity and my “cheat” days (which had previously been reserved for things like Thanksgiving, Christmas parties, etc.) were now a regular occurrence. Cheats for me consisted of beer, potatoes and grains such as grits, corn and chips and while I knew these were verboten, I refused to confront the brutal facts that these were not conducive to my genetic makeup.

I knew I needed a ‘reset’ and when Robb Wolf’s latest book – Wired To Eat – came out I quickly read it and accepted the 30-day back to Paleo basics challenge outlined in the book. The 30-day challenge didn’t just involve adhering to a strict Paleo diet, it involved getting 8 hours of sleep each night, moving every day and getting involved in community activities with friends and coworkers. Moving every day and socializing with folks is something I do every day so that was not a drastic change for me but getting back to Paleo basics and (more importantly) getting 8 hours of sleep each night was something that required effort on my part.

The results that I’ll share below mainly speak for themselves and this last month has reiterated the importance of following this Paleo lifestyle in not only controlling my Type 2 Diabetes but improving my general well being.

It should be noted again that my exercise regime was still the same – running, walking, biking or lifting weights 3-5 times per week – and the only thing I changed over the past 2 weeks was my diet and getting 8 hours of sleep every night.

Now on to the results….

The following metrics showed the improvement I made during this 30-day period:

The following chart shows my morning blood glucose readings prior to the 30-day challenge and during it.

Even more improvement is seen with the evening blood glucose readings during this same period.

During the mid way portion of this 30-day challenge I took my blood glucose readings about every hour in a typical day and the graph is shown below. (NOTE – the “spike” after dinner on this day was attributed to pineapple I ate with dinner.)

Now compare that graph with another graph during a day in late 2016 when I started to realize that my blood glucose levels were starting to be elevated.

The following chart is from my Fitbit app showing the drop in my resting heart rate during this period and this was not from an increase in exercise but instead from an increase in the amount of sleep I got each night.

You can see from the Fitbit app how my sleep each night during this 30-day period was about 8 hours per night and then you can see how this was a drastic improvement over what I had typically seen over the past year.

I’ll share more insights I gained from this 30-day reset in future posts and I’ll also explore the 7-day carb investigation that Robb Wolf explains in Wired To Eat but I want to stay on this strict Paleo lifestyle for another 30 days before I start that investigation. I need another 30 days to fully heal my body and complete the reset before I start experimenting with carbs and determining which are conducive to my genetics (and based on 3+ years of this, I don’t think there will be many that will fall into that category).

There was a great article on NPR today that talks about the paradigm shift in medical circles where doctors prescribe food instead of medicine and this is manna from the heavens for me!

As many readers of this blog know, I believe that any Type 2 Diabetic can have normal blood glucose levels but instead of doing that with medicine you can achieve better results by altering your diet and exercise regime. It’s not easy but it’s more sustainable over the long run than taking Metformin and Insulin injections.

I’ve chosen the Paleo lifestyle for me, but there is a link in the NPR article to a published article that suggest a Vegan diet helps other Type 2 Diabetics. The key is to find what works for your body but don’t default quickly to the medicine route but instead experiment with different foods and exercise routines that work for your body.

The money quote:

“What people eat can be medicine or poison”

Read the whole article, it’s good!

I had a previous post where I questioned why my morning blood sugar measurements were higher than normal and I had posited that this was due to the Dawn Phenomenon but I think there may be something else at play here.

To further investigate this rise in morning blood sugar measurements I decided to take my blood sugar measurements during a typical day approximately every hour to see if that data would point me to a culprit.

Before I dive into this data, let me share a graph that shows multiple blood sugar measurements during a day back in March of 2015.

As you can see, my blood sugar levels stayed very consistent through the day and never rose above 120 ug/dL even after a meal. This data validated that the Paleo lifestyle that I had been leading controlled my Type 2 diabetes without the help of medicine and that my blood sugar levels were indistinguishable from someone who didn’t have Type 2 diabetes. Normal blood sugar measurements should be less than 100 mg/dL at a fasting level (when I wake up) and not increase above 150 mg/dL 2 hours after a meal and that is exactly what my measurements show even though I have been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.

But as I mentioned above, something has changed and now my blood sugar levels are not consistent with someone who doesn’t have Type 2 diabetes.

So let’s see what the data looks like recently.

First off, notice that my blood sugar levels started off elevated and ended elevated as compared to the graph from 2015. This data proved to me that my elevated blood sugar measurements in the morning were not due to the Dawn Phenomenon but due to something else. Note also that this is a conclusion that I would not have been able to make until I did this experiment. Taking your blood sugar measurements only in the morning doesn’t reveal what happens during the day and this is further evidence that folks with Type 2 diabetes need to take more measurements than their doctor normally prescribes.

There were two spikes that should be investigated and maybe these will provide clues to the source of my elevated fasting blood sugar measurements.

The first spike occurred about 15 minutes after I finished exercising during lunch (run 800m, lift weights upper body, lunges with weights and then finish with another 800m run). I had not eaten lunch yet and this spike was due solely to the exercise.

I have noticed this over the past few years when I’ve taken a blood sugar measurement after an exercise so this is nothing abnormal and I think this is generally understood.

The other spike that happened before dinner is more curious.

This spike happened after I drove home from work and I was quite surprised by this but as I reflected on what may have caused this I realized that I had chewed two pieces of gum and eaten a few sour candies on the ride home and I think this was the explanation for this spike.

Over the past 6 months or so I have developed a habit of passing the long commute by chewing Cry Baby gum and eating Shockers candies and I had thought that this small amount of sugar would be negligible but obviously it wasn’t!

Although many people recoil at sour tastes, for some reason I love it (which might explain why I love Gose style beer) and the pictures and nutritional info of these gum/candies are given below.

As you can see, these items are loaded with all kinds of bad stuff including High Fructose Corn Syrup and sugar and these ‘treats’ on the ride home easily explain the spike in my blood sugar levels before dinner.

But back to my original question as to why my morning blood sugar measurements are higher than normal….

I think these candies/gums that I eat (not only on the ride home but I’ve started eating them after lunch too) have remained in my system and this might be the culprit of my elevated blood sugar levels.

I have since stop indulging in this sour treat and after a week of this I’ll see if this has an effect on my blood sugar levels.

As a type 2 Diabetic, I’m well aware of the strange blood sugar measurements I’d see before I learned to control my blood sugar levels by adhering to the Paleo lifestyle but recently I have struggled with seemingly unexplainable high measurements in the morning.

If you frequently monitor your blood sugars then you know what I’m talking about with regard to unexplainable high measurements in the morning but in case you don’t, here is what I mean. I could take my blood sugar measurement before bed and it would be normal after a meal (say around 110 ug/dL) but then when I wake up in the morning the measurement would be above 110 ug/dL even before I ate breakfast.

How can that be? I didn’t sleep walk during the night and eat a bowl of ice cream and during the night my blood sugar levels should’ve dropped like they would during the day if I skipped a meal but miraculously they are higher!

I am well aware of the Dawn Phenomenon (DP), which causes blood sugar levels to spike in the early morning hours, and this is most likely the cause of my higher blood sugar levels in the morning and a nice explanation of the DP can be found here:

“Organs do this to keep blood glucose from going too low at night or other times of not eating. From about 2 AM to 8 AM, most people’s bodies produce hormones, including cortisol, glucagon, and epinephrine. All these hormones increase insulin resistance and tell the liver to make more glucose. The idea is to get you enough glucose to get out of bed and start the day. The whole process is apparently started by growth hormones.”

And somewhere I remember reading where this spike in blood sugar is a holdover from our Paleolithic ancestors. Thousands of years ago we woke up to a long list of physical activities – hunting, fixing shelters, building fires, etc. – so we needed that boost of energy to get us going. Evolution has hard coded this into our bodies and those folks without an insulin sensitivity issue counteract this high blood sugar level in the morning by producing more insulin. But those of us, like myself, who have abused their pancreas can’t produce that much to overcome this spike.

So why all of a sudden did this happen to me?

As you can see from the following graph, my morning blood sugar measurements have spiked within the last few months.

I think this recent shift can be attributed to two changes in my lifestyle over the past couple of months – 1) getting more sleep and 2) reducing the alcohol I consume in the evening.

Due to my intense work responsibilities, sleep was one area of the Paleo lifestyle that I had avoided but I made a commitment recently to get at least 7 hours so sleep each night and I have to say I feel so much better. My mind is sharper during the day, my workouts are easier and I generally feel better in all aspects of my life. Maybe the cortisol levels in my body are increased when I get more sleep and this explains part of the change.

But I think the other piece to this puzzle resides with bourbon. I wrote before how I saw lower blood sugar levels in the morning after I had 1 to 2 drinks of bourbon and that correlation was pretty rock solid. When I used to stay up late working I’d have a couple of drinks and once I stopped working at night, the bourbon drinking stopped as well and this also might explain the increase in blood sugar levels.

Over the past couple of months while I’ve been adjusting to this lifestyle change of getting more sleep, there have been periods where I have not been able to do this due to work schedules and as you can see from the graph below (plotting morning blood sugar levels vs. hours of sleep the night before), there is a slight correlation between the amount of sleep I get and the subsequent morning blood sugar measurements.

You can definitely see that there are two distinct populations on that graph!

The correlation is weak (R² of 0.28) but the average of the two populations is definitely different (96.79 ug/dL when I got less than 7 hours of sleep and 113.10 ug/dL when I got more than 7 hours of sleep).

So what does this data lead me to do with my life?

I’m definitely not going back to getting less than 7 hours of sleep every night because the benefits I see from that far outweigh a mild increase in morning blood sugar levels due to the DP. I may start having a drink after dinner or engage in some high intensity exercise after dinner to help offset the DP and I’ll report on that later once I have more data.

I’m a Type 2 Diabetic and in September of 2013 I decided to control my blood sugar levels by adopting the Paleo lifestyle and the results have exceeded my expectations as evidenced by the fact that my A1C measurements have been indistinguishable from someone who is not a Type 2 Diabetic but being the man of science I am, I decided to really test out how well my body has adapted to insulin sensitivity by performing a short experiment and I’ll share these results in this post.

When I decided in September 2013 to stop taking my medication (Janumet) and adopt the Paleo lifestyle I first kick started my body by going on an extremely low calorie diet for 1 week that had scientific roots in a clinical study performed by Newcastle University.

This diet is not for the faint of heart and consists of only 700 calories a day and requires consumption of only vegetables and 3 shakes per day (complete diet details can be found here). It’s not an actual fasting diet in the truest sense of the word but it’s as close as you can get.  Its a low carb, no meat, no dairy, no processed foods, no sugars, no grains, no fruits, no alcohol type of diet and I’m not going to lie, it’s tough. But I noticed phenomenal results when I first employed it and I wondered what would happen now if I tried it again.

I didn’t “need” to do this as my A1C measurements and fasting blood sugar measurements were within the normal range but I knew that I still had an insulin sensitivity that caused my blood sugar levels to spike if I intentionally ate grains (which I was prone to do to test my body). I wondered if I could improve my insulin sensitivity by going on this diet for a few days so that is what I did.

I was on this diet for 4 days starting on 11-APR-16 but when I finished I occasionally ate foods that I knew would spike my blood sugar levels (fried chicken/duck, potatoes, rice, corn, etc.).

The graphs below show my morning and evening blood sugar levels before, during and after this diet experiment. The days preceding the diet are marked in blue, the days on the diet are in black and the days after the diet are in red.

The first observation from this experiment was that during the 4 days I was on the fasting diet my fasting (morning) and bedtime (evening) blood sugar levels were almost identical. This is not too earth shattering since this low carb/low caloric diet should have kept my blood sugar levels stable since I still have a functioning pancreas.

But the real surprise was the week after I went off the fasting diet. Notice that my morning blood sugar levels were significantly lower for about a week (magenta rectangle). It should be noted that the morning blood sugar measurement in the green ellipse happened after a dinner the night before of fried duck wings when my evening blood sugar measurement was 258 mg/dL.

So, what did I learn?

I think this fasting diet has some real benefits and I should try this again for a longer duration. It was obvious that my body responded the week following this diet but then my insulin sensitivity reverted back to its normal level. I would obviously desire that my morning blood sugar measurements would be in the 70 – 90 mg/dL range than the 90 – 100 md/dL range so maybe staying on this diet for 10 days may yield longer-term benefits.

It’s obvious that I’ve met my goal of controlling my blood sugar levels without medication but my stretch goal is to eventually get my body back to the point where my insulin sensitivity level is on par with someone who doesn’t have Type 2 Diabetes. Don’t misunderstand me, I’ve seen the benefits of the Paleo lifestyle and I’ll never go back to eating grains but I’d like to know that my body has “reset” to the point where my blood sugar levels are in the normal range when I unknowingly eat something that will spike my blood sugar levels. I only have 1 pancreas and I want to keep those beta cells happy so they don’t die off and I turn into a Type 1 Diabetic.