Welcome back to the stay off my operating table podcast with Dr. Philip Oveadia. Did I say Dr. O'Phillip Ovadia? Dr. Philip Ovadia. I'm your co host, Jack Heald. And we are digging into what happens positively for your body when you improve your metabolic health. Last episode, we dove deep into the mechanism of heart disease. And I want to move to one of the other big killers of
Americans: diabetes. So if you improve your metabolic health, according to this stuff I'm reading on your website, one of the things that will happen is you can not just manage diabetes, you can cure it. So let's do the same thing with diabetes that we did with heart disease. How does improving your metabolic health cure diabetes?
Yeah, so one thing I want to, you know, kind of make clear from the beginning of this discussion is that we are referring to type two diabetes, as opposed to type one
diabetes. And just to give sort of the quick differentiation between those two, type one diabetes, commonly, you know, known as juvenile onset diabetes, is when the body the pancreas, specifically is not able to make insulin, as opposed to type two diabetes, which is where the body is, the pancreas specifically is making insulin, but the cells of the body are no longer responding properly to
that insulin. And, you know, type two diabetes is clearly it is one of the hallmarks of poor metabolic health, it's one of the end results of for metabolic health is how I would put it. So we can very effectively manage type two diabetes when we focus on metabolic health.
Let's just let's kind of get the executive summary here on how we got here, type 2 diabetes is the cells of the body are no longer responding properly to the insulin produced by the pancreas. Correct. Alright, so let's, let's unpack how the body got to that. So that we can then unpack how improving your metabolic health reverses that. So how did we get to that state, where the body is no longer responding appropriately to the presence of insulin?
Yeah, so there are a couple of things that are going on, you know, within the body of someone who is not metabolically healthy, that ultimately is going to lead to type two diabetes, and, you know, realize that the body is very complex. And it's not just one thing going on at one. So it's not necessarily a real linear process we're going to discuss here, it's kind of a number of different factors that
are going on at once. But basically, you know, when we are eating a lot of processed food, a lot of high carbohydrate, highly processed carbohydrates. And when we're eating vegetable and seed oils, these fake oils that we've talked about, we're going to, basically, we're starting a process where, you know, the body is going to be making more and more insulin to deal with this elevated sugar load. And the insulin initially, like we talked about, is basically trying to get the
sugar out of the blood. And it can, you know, cause it to go into glycogen in the liver and the muscle, it can cause it to go into fat in our fat cells. And when we start to exceed, you know, that capacity basically, one of the things that seems to happen is that fat still starts to build up in places that it shouldn't occur, namely, the liver and the pancreas itself.
And this starts to interfere, you can't see that.
No, you can't see that. Well, you know, if you got like an MRI or a scan, you know, you wouldn't be able to see this ultrasound for the liver. You can see it, but you can't really see it from the outside. It's not the fat that
we see from the outside. Okay. So, one of the things that starts to happen is that, you know, when this fat starts to build up in the pancreas especially, and you get the inflammation that we talked about, you know that on the last episode, we talked about it occurring in the blood vessels of the heart, right? That inflammation is also going to occur in the liver and in the
pancreas. And when it starts to occur in the pancreas, it's going to damage the cells of the pancreas that make the insulin. And we're going to
So there's this vicious cycle that gets started, right?
We're not going to be able to make enough insulin now to keep up with the sugar in the blood. That is one of the problems that occurs in this whole process. People don't
realize that. So, you know, when I talked earlier about the difference between type one and type two diabetes, and I said, type one diabetes, you know, is is a, the pancreas can No, can't make insulin, and type two diabetes is that the cells of the body aren't responding to the insulin, what many people don't realize is that type two diabetes can then lead to a kind of type one diabetes, where now the pancreas is no longer able
to make enough insulin. This is oftentimes called, you know, type one and a half diabetes, some people call it there's a term called Lata la, da late. I just got here, but it's basically late onset, you know, type one diabetes, that occurs. And that is one of the you know, so that is one part of the equation that, you know, we're actually damaging the pancreas itself. And it's not able to keep up with the production of
insulin. The other side of the, you know, problem, the other side of the equation is that the cells that are supposed to be responding to the insulin, our fat cells, cells within our liver, and within our muscle, stop responding to the insulin, basically, you know, the insulin levels become so high, that the cells themselves, you know, get less and less responsive to the insulin. And that's a process that we call insulin resistance.
And this is what, again, one of the hallmarks of type two diabetes.
And the the lab tests that would imply insulin resistance is that fasting insulin test,
Correct. The fasting insulin test is, is, you know, one of the tests that can diagnose this, there are other tests that we sometimes look at. So there's a ratio, essentially, or I shouldn't even say a ratio, but you can, there's a calculation that can be done based on your blood glucose level, and your insulin level. It's called Homa IR, H O Ma, hyphen, IR. For anyone that wants to look that up. There's a
formula there. And that can be an indicator, it's sort of a, you know, it's giving you your relationship between your insulin and your blood sugar. To tell you, you know, whether or not you're becoming insulin resistant, right there, there's a more involved test. That's called a Krafd test. That can be done. KRAFD, ironically, it's not, it has nothing to do with the food company, which makes all the processed food that
leads to us having diabetes. But the scientist who figured it out a lot of this stuff that it was named Joseph craft. And he described a lot of these processes and derive these tests, where we actually measure a person's response of insulin, not only when they are fasting, but when we actually give them a controlled amount of sugar. And we see how much insulin they produce and how long you know, the insulin stays elevated after
they take in the sugar. And that that is really the the best test that can be done to look for insulin resistance. It's just a very cumbersome test to true so it doesn't get done very often.
Okay, so the mechanism as I understand it, you eat something that is digested goes through your digestive tract and the digestive tract. It's broken down and that goes into the bloodstream. That's where the sugar that's how the sugar initially ends up in the bloodstream. Some sort of signal goes from point A to point B. At this point, I don't care that tells the pancreas create insulin. And that whole shuttling the sugar out of the bloodstream into the various
places in the body. The process goes on, when there's too much sugar, and or there is insulin, since there's insulin resistance built up in the cells of the body already, among the things that starts happening is the pancreas itself starts becoming starts getting fatty, which reduces its ability to create insulin, which creates ever more stress on the body, which means the pancreas tries to work harder, then we get into this vicious cycle, where too much sugar, inflammation,
insufficient insulin, insulin resistance, and it just, it's a cascade of bad things all happening as a result of really bottom line dumping too much sugar into your blood is, is that right?
Yes, that's right. And one of the key things that I want people to realize is that, you know, many people will know that, you know, the treatment for diabetes, you know, this. So, type one diabetes, the way to treat it is to give insulin because the body isn't making...
Because there isn't any, right.
We have made a mistake, where we then think that is a good treatment for type two diabetes. And you know, there are plenty of people on with type two diabetes who get put on to insulin, sure. But the problem isn't that the body isn't making enough insulin, at least initially, in type two diabetes, the problem is that the body is not responding to that insulin. So it's a bit of a flawed concept, you know, that we can manage that problem by giving more insulin.
Just it just struck me. Yeah, problem, the problem is not that there's no passengers to get on the train. The problem is that the train is full. And adding passengers is not going to get more passengers into the train, referring back to our metaphor from the previous episode.
Right, right. And, and you know, the insulin and that scenario is, you know, again, people have kind of seen the video where there's, you know, these conductors or, you know, the workers that are trying to shove more people into the train. And so giving more insulin is basically getting more workers to try and shove more people into the train. But there's no room on the train. So, you know, ultimately, that's a flawed
strategy. And the real, you know, the best way to deal with this would be to get less passengers, have less sugar.
Make room on the train.
Exactly. Make room on the train. And so the way to do that is to stop taking in these processed foods that are, you know, being converted to sugar in the blood.
Okay, we've set up the, how this mess got created. Right, the exciting news is that type two diabetes can actually be reversed. Let's talk about the MEK, the mechanism of what what's happening, that we can actually reverse type two diabetes. Yeah,
so you know, that whole process that we described can essentially, you know, occur in reverse. So if you stop eating so much sugar, processed food and sugar, and the body doesn't need to make so
much insulin anymore. The cells themselves can, again become responsive to insulin, because they're not, they're no longer being constantly Bay's, bathed in insulin, and over time, they will actually become more responsive to insulin again, those those, you know, the fat buildup that occurs in the liver, and the pancreas can actually go away, you know, it can be pulled out of there, because we don't need all these fat cells any longer to shovel the sugar into and the whole
process can be undone. And we know that, you know, type two diabetics that get treated with, you know, carbohydrate reduction and a metabolically healthy diet, eating whole real food will, you know, see their type two diabetes get reversed? We have very good data on this. And, in fact, you know, brought if you go back to the medical literature before, insulin was commonly available before insulin was synthesized, you know, on a large scale level, the treatment for diet BDS was
sugar reduction. And when insulin was invented, we basically forgot that or got suppressed. You know, depending on how you want to look at things.
That's a different discussion.
Yes, exactly. We won't get into that during this episode, but the primary treatment for type two diabetes should be, you know, reducing the impact the intake of carbohydrates, especially processed carbohydrates, reducing the intake of processed food in general. And, you know, that will lead to an improvement in metabolic health and your type two diabetes.
So for listeners who suspect they might be dealing with the early stages of diabetes and want help, is that something that falls within the scope of your telehealth telemedicine practice? Yes, that is, alright. Well, this is a good time for me to talk about that, isn't it? Dr. oveja, has a telemedicine practice if you are within the United States, you can you can get get a hold of him and he can help you. He's licensed to do this kind of thing. So you can find Dr. Ovadia at Ovadia Heart Health
Dot Com. What's the URL for your telemedicine? Can they get to it there?
Yeah, Ovadia Heart Health Dot Com is okay to find that.
So I got to encourage you folks out there anybody who's who's aware that they're dealing with early onset or even full blown type two diabetes to yourself and your loved ones a favor and take care of it. And if you need help get a hold of Dr. Aveda of at a heart health.com And I recommend that you get his book cleverly named. Stay off my operating table. It's available on amazon.com and definitely follow him on Twitter at I fix hearts. Any last words for Dr. O before we sign off for the day?
Another great discussion, Jack.
Thanks, man. It is this these last two episodes have have really helped me to understand better what's going on. Alright, well for Dr. Phillip Ovadia. I'm Jack Heald. We will talk to you next time