This month my wife came back from the dentist, and after 6 months of being off of coffee, they told her that her receding gums have actually grown back significantly!
This news was consistent with the Medical Medium's radio show on "Oral Health Essentials" that I recently listened to. He says that coffee does serious damage to gums and causes teeth problems.
Other reasons we deal with receding gums, he says, are:
Gut health
Our stomach loses all its Hydrochloric Acid (HCl). That's why celery juice is helpful. It brings the HCl back. Toxic bad acids take over and they start to rob gums of life at night when sleeping.
The second problem is food not breaking down in our gut so it is rotting and the ammonia is produced, which eats away at our gums and teeth.
Coffee. Coffee does serious damage to gums and causes teeth problems.
Processed food is also bad for teeth and gums.
(As a side note he says, "Is fruit bad for your teeth? No it is not. Fruit actually keeps disease at bay in your mouth. Biting into a fruit brings oxygen and is an antibacterial for your mouth. Vitamin C saves your gums and protects your gums. Fruit is the number one source of vitamin C.")
So I went off of coffee this week. And, lo and behold, my teeth sensitivity has gone away! I am no longer needing to use sensitive toothpaste to numb my mouth up.
I will say it was EXTREMELY difficult for me to give up coffee. I work in an office where we have an amazing Nespresso espresso machine and I can make a latte everyday if I want to for free. And over the past 10+ years I have grown to love coffee and the social aspect to it.
How did I do it, then?
First, I replaced the coffee with green tea.
Secondly, I tell myself every morning when I get the temptation to make a latte that I want my teeth and gums to be healthy more than I want a cup of coffee.
I'm looking forward to hearing what they say at my next dentist appointment ;-)
Shortly after starting the Mastering Diabetes program back in April 2018, I learned about a guy named Anthony William, who calls himself the "Medical Medium."
Who is the Medical Medium?
Here's an excerpt from Anthony Williams' website, but his first book goes into greater detail about his story:
#1 New York Times best-selling author of Medical Medium, Life-Changing Foods, Thyroid Healing, and Liver Rescuewas born with the unique ability to converse with Spirit of Compassion who provides him with extraordinarily accurate health information that’s often far ahead of its time.
Since age four, when he shocked his family by announcing that his symptom-free grandmother had lung cancer (which medical testing soon confirmed), Anthony has been using his gift to “read” people’s conditions and tell them how to recover their health.
His unprecedented accuracy and success rate as the Medical Medium have earned him the trust and love of millions worldwide, among them movie stars, rock stars, billionaires, professional athletes, best-selling authors, and countless other people from all walks of life who couldn’t find a way to heal until he provided them with insights from Spirit. Anthony has also become an invaluable resource to doctors who need help solving their most difficult cases.
I realize this sounds a little "out there" and I was skeptical at first, but since listening to all of his podcasts, reading all of his books, and listening to half of his radio shows (it's taking me a while because there are currently over 100!) I gave his suggestions a try.
Belly bloat and celery juice
One of the biggest things I was struggling with over the past year was major belly bloat. I could tell that my food was not all digesting, and I felt constipated...even after switching to a high fiber vegan diet (the real problem, I discovered, was years of being on a high fat/protein Paleo diet...keep reading to learn why). Despite drinking my gastroparesis herbs again, asking my acupuncturist if he had any ideas, and trying to incorporate my old tried and true herbs/foods for digestion (ginger, peppermint), I was still bloated and constipated and not digesting my food. I could tell it was all backed up around my intestines and I was intensely frustrated about not knowing what to do about it. My belly kept growing and looking like I had a bowling ball in there!
Well, one of the Medical Medium's big suggestions is for people with a chronic disease and/or "mystery illness" and/or symptoms to drink 16-20 ounces of fresh celery juice every morning on an empty stomach. I started doing this back in late April and WOW, it has been clearing my belly bloat up every day! After drinking it I would not be constipated and I can tell that my body is slowly but surely getting rid of all the backed up sludge that was putrefying in my intestines.
Anthony (through "Spirit") gives the reason behind this belly bloat problem, and it makes so much sense in my experience:
"When you eat, food quickly travels down to your stomach to be digested with the help of hydrochloric acid. Although science hasn’t discovered this yet, hydrochloric acid isn’t just one acid—it’s actually a complex blend of seven acids. If hydrochloric acid levels are out of balance or low, your food won’t be sufficiently digested in your stomach. That means the food won’t break down enough for your cells to access the nutrients, and instead the food will just sit there and rot, causing bad acids to develop.
This gut rot, or putrefaction, creates ammonia gas, which has the ability to float, ghost-like, out of your digestive tract and directly into your bloodstream. It can also cross into organs such as your liver and brain. This is what I call ammonia permeability.
Millions of people walk around with digestive health problems, and one of the contributing factors is ammonia permeability, along with underlying sluggish liver issues. (The truth about ammonia permeability hasn’t yet been discovered. Similar though mistaken concepts are often referred to as “leaky gut syndrome” or “intestinal permeability.”)
Another condition that worsens low hydrochloric acid and creates ammonia permeability is a sluggish, stagnant, fatty liver. Underlying liver conditions are extremely common. Medical communities don’t yet know how prevalent they really are or what’s behind these issues in the first place. A sluggish, stagnant, fatty liver causes lower bile production, which means the body can’t break down and disperse fats easily, and that also contributes to gut rot, causing even more ammonia permeability.
Here’s where our heroic celery juice comes in: It effectively rebuilds the stomach’s complex balance and supply of hydrochloric acid. It also strengthens the digestive system by helping to heal the liver, which leads to an increase in bile production, easing constipation and bloat. Plus by lowering levels of pathogens such as bacteria and viruses and invaders such as fungus and mold, it leads to strengthened intestinal linings. Celery juice is one of the most profound ways, if not the most profound way, to restore digestive health. It is that powerful."
That was the answer to my problem. Celery juice has been my cure. I am so thankful for discovering this valuable information!
Diet recommendations
In addition to the celery juice, the Medical Medium has some specific diet recommendations as well.
He recommends removing the following foods from your diet:
Eggs
Dairy
Gluten
Canola Oil
Soy
Corn
Pork
Why? In general, he says that these foods all feed the Epstein Barr Viruses (of which there are over 60, and the majority of the U.S. population has). Wheat, corn, and soy have been ruined a lot by GMOs (they used to be fairly good for you). Eggs have been ruined by all the testing science has done on eggs with viruses (they used to be good for you as well). Pork is just too dang fatty. Canola oil (especially GMO) ruins your arteries.
Foods he recommends for healing are:
Fruits and vegetables
Herbs
Spices
Wild foods
He has a 28 day cleanse (from the book "Medical Medium") that involves eating nothing but raw fruits and vegetables for 28 days...and keeping your fats low (from things like coconuts, olives, avocados, nuts and seeds) during this time to give your liver a break. I started this a little while ago and made it 1 week but then had to stop. I am hoping to try it again and make it the whole month if I can! This protocol is very consistent with what the Mastering Diabetes program recommends, which is very science based, so it really helped increase my trust in the Medical Medium's suggestions.
However, the Medical Medium is not anti-meat. He does say that you don't want to be eating meat more than once a day. You want to eat as many good foods as possible, which will ultimately leave the less helpful foods less room in your diet.
He also recommends some specific supplements depending on what symptoms/conditions you have. Some foundational supplements that he says most people can benefit from are:
B12 (adenosylcobalamin and methylcobalamin) is most important. Don’t get B12 shots - they are not the right kind of B12 and they are instigating for sensitive people, getting some people's’ bodies to overreact. This is a baseline supplement. So you don’t get neurological disorders, immune system breakdowns, low platelets, thyroid problems.
Zinc. The more pollution we get slammed with, the more zinc we lose. It protects you from virtually every disease. Our food has lost all of its zinc these days. Look for an ionic liquid zinc. Don’t get one with tons of preservatives. The zinc liquids are often loaded with poisons (i.e. citric acid).
DHA/EPA not from fish oil. Very important for surviving today. Look for plant based ones.
Probiotics. Get a time released, non dairy one.
Hawaiian spirulina is an amazing multivitamin. It is bioavailable.
Herbs. Are loaded with nutrients, phytochemicals. Nettle leaf is a good baseline herb. It is a protector, adaptogenic.
The Unforgiving Four
Lastly, the Medical Medium talks about "the unforgiving four" things that are wreaking so much havoc in our world today. These are:
Radiation (xrays, atomic bombs)
DDT
Mercury
The virus explosion
He goes into greater detail about each of these things in his books and radio shows. Check them out if you want to experience healing.
I have been doing the Mastering Diabetes program - which advocates a whole food, plant based, low fat diet - since April 10, 2018.
My perception was that it seemed to be helping me, but I started to grow discouraged because sometimes it can be more work than I am used to (i.e. cutting up greens and fruit for breakfast instead of a quick bowl of cereal, as well as being mindful of how much fat - that's right, fat - I am eating everyday). Then I went to get my 3-month labs done and holy cow was I encouraged and re-energized to keep this up!
First, here are my biomarker goals:
LDL Cholesterol: under 100 is ideal. This is the most important number for determining risk of heart disease.
HDL Cholesterol: when you have less LDL cholesterol you need less HDL cholesterol. OK for HDL to go lower!
Triglycerides: under 150 is ideal. This is a measure of how many fatty acids are floating around in your blood stream.
Hemoglobin A1c: between 6-6.5% is best for type 1 diabetics. This is an average of your blood sugars over 3 months.
Systolic Blood Pressure: goal is to get below 120. Top number.
Diastolic Blood Pressure: goal is to get below 80. Bottom number.
Vitamin D: goal is to keep above 30. Lower than this is often due to insulin resistance. Things that can help are to get more sunlight, eat shiitake mushrooms, take a supplement.
TSH: is an indicator of how well your thyroid is working. More is not good. You don't want it increasing over time - this means you're suffering from thyroid dysfunction.
C Peptide: is the molecule attached to insulin. If you are not making insulin then you won't have this.
Here were my lab results: Woohoo!After being at my highest weight, A1c, and cholesterol OF MY ENTIRE LIFE, they all came down significantly after only 3 months! On top of this, I have still been losing weight (although a little more slowly) and my blood sugars have been getting better and better as my body is growing less insulin resistant. If I eat a lot of carbs, my blood sugar may spike a little bit but it quickly comes back down - this never happened before (it would take a long time to come back down to normal).
Basically, a low carb, high fat/protein diet really screwed my body up these past 5 years. In the LONG term, it made me super insulin resistant, spiked my blood sugars/A1c, caused me to gain weight, and increased my cholesterol dramatically. It also made me super constipated.
I've since learned that the reason a Paleo or Ketogenic diet works in the SHORT term (about 3-6 months) is because people get rid of all the crappy processed food they were eating (bread, cakes, muffins, chips, breakfast cereals, pizza, TV dinners, etc.) and they start to eat more whole foods. Foods in their whole, natural form are the way nature intended them to be and your body knows what to do with them/how to process them for energy. But eating too much fat (or "protein" - which these low carb diets like to emphasize - which is always attached to fat!) overloads your liver. People should not be eating more than about 30 grams of fat per day. An overloaded, fatty liver leads to the LONG term health problems I mentioned previously (weight gain, higher and more difficult to control blood sugars, high cholesterol) as well as heart disease: the #1 killer of Americans.
Did you know that a whole food, plant based, low fat diet is the only diet scientifically proven to stop and even reverse heart disease (the #1 killer of Americans)? That's right. So eating this way not only got rid of my eczema and improved all of my biomarkers, it also puts me at lower risk of getting heart disease!
Dr. Michael Greger, who started www.nutritionfacts.org, does some great videos about this fact, and gives his sources (scientific studies) as to how this statement can be made.
After experimenting a little bit with a low carb, mostly vegan diet I grew frustrated with the variability of my blood sugars on this diet and how tired I was. So before I embarked on the pH Miracle "Liquid Feast" I did a little digging around the internet and found a couple things:
1. The video I had found previously of a pH Miracle client telling of the supplements she used while on the plan was taken down and on her YouTube channel she said she now recommends a whole foods, plant based, low fat diet for type 1 diabetics.
Hmm. That gave me pause.
2. I also discovered the "Mastering Diabetes" program, which uses low fat, whole foods, plant-based nutrition to help reverse insulin resistance in type 1 diabetics (and to reverse type 2 diabetes). This is a program put together by Robby Barbaro and Cyrus Khambatta. They are both type 1 diabetics who found out that fat a is a huge problem (the main problem) in trying to control blood sugar. Cyrus figured this out when he got his PhD in Nutritional Biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley. Robby figured this out after trying a Weston A. Price diet, and a low carb vegan diet and not having any energy.
That is what gave me pause as well. 2 people who said the low carb, vegan diet did not work for them - that it gave them 0 energy and they did not reverse their diabetes doing it.
So... I'm doing a 180 and switching to the Mastering Diabetes program/diet/lifestyle. It fits with what has worked to reverse my eczema. So I just joined yesterday! It is so great how much information they give you and help figuring out how to get your blood sugars under control. There is a whole online Teachable course you go through with videos and documents to fill out. There is also a private Facebook group you get to be a part of with health coaches and others to offer tips and recommendations. Robby and Cyrus both aim for A1cs in the 5-6.5% range. They post their most recent A1c numbers on their website. That is what I'm hoping to get down to!
I follow "bluezones" on Instagram. If you're not familiar with the Blue Zones, they are basically areas of the world where people live the longest, healthiest, happiest lives. Here's a graphic that shows the 9 common areas that people all over the world share who live these long and healthy lives:
Yesterday bluezones posted an interesting photo with a caption that is supporting what I am trying to do: detox with green foods.
"Green foods get their color from chlorophyll, a natural blood purifier that supports the liver and kidneys in the elimination of toxins. Among many other nutrients, green foods also contain high amounts of vitamin K, a nutrient that further benefits your blood by helping it to clot properly. One large green tomato provides about 10% of your daily requirement for the B vitamins thiamin, vitamin B-6 and pantothenic acid, as well as a little less than 10% of the riboflavin and niacin you need each day."
This has been a consistent theme with the things I've read, and is a good reminder about why I need to be eating my greens!
One of the first steps of the pH Miracle for Diabetes is to go on a 14 to 21-day liquid feast. This is something I plan to talk to my endocrinologist about tomorrow; how I will need to adjust my insulin for this. Here is an overview of it:
14 to 21-day Liquid Feast
The idea of the liquid feast, or cleanse, is to rid your body of the excess acid buildup from years of poor nutrition and high-sugar foods, get rid of negative microforms and their toxic wastes, detoxify your blood and tissues, normalize your blood sugar, and begin the process of healing your pancreas. It will also normalize digestion and metabolism, helping you regain pH balance. The regimen will have a laxative effect on your system (which is exactly what you want). Your body has to expel the acid wastes from your body. Until you see how your own body reacts to the liquid feast, plan to stay close to a bathroom--most people will need 6-10 visits per day. The exact length of the liquid feast phase will vary from person to person, depending on what your body needs and how your body reacts to it. Typically, two weeks will give you the start you need to reverse your diabetes, though three is optimum. This is not a fast - you will eat as much and as often as you want. Eat until you are satisfied, not too full. The idea is to eat mainly green food (veggies), and to have them in liquid form--pureed soups, or shakes, or juices. You'll have a few nongreen items as well: tomato, lemon, lime, bell pepper, jicama, and healthy oils. The first hunger pangs are the worst; eventually they will stop.
You should drink at least 4 liters of green drink a day, including 1 Liter of pure water and four 8-ounce glasses of fresh green vegetable juice (diluted with 10x as much water as juice). Try juicing cucumber, kale, broccoli, celery, lettuce, collards, okra, wheatgrass, barley grass, watercress, parsley, cabbage, spinach, and alfalfa sprouts. If you have low blood sugar you can add a little carrot or beet juice.
That's the "feast." The "liquid" part is there because everything you eat in this first phase should be pureed or juiced. That way, the food requires very little energy to digest. Normally you use more than half your daily energy digesting. Removing that energy drain for a while means your body can use the bulk of its energy for regeneration of all your 75 trillion cells. Pureeing or juicing also makes the nutrients in food up to 20x more available. Your body gets more water as well.
Here's a typical day on the liquid feast, plus a menu plan.
7 AM:
1 Liter green drink or green shake (see page 107)
Supplements
8 AM:
Soup
Supplements
9 AM:
Supplements
9 AM - noon:
1 Liter green drink
10 AM:
Supplements
11 AM:
Supplements
1 PM:
Soup
Supplements
2-5 PM:
1 Liter green drink
Supplements
5 PM:
EXERCISE!
6 PM:
Soup
Supplements
7-9 PM:
1 Liter green drink, or plain distilled water with sodium chlorite and lemon
Supplements
Notes:
Take capsule supplements with meals, and liquid supplements before meals.
All soups should be pureed in a blender or food processor.
If at any time during the day you are hungry, you can always have more soup or green drink. You can also juice fresh vegetables (no carrots or beets though). Dilute fresh green vegetable juice, one part juice to ten parts distilled water, and add 5 drops of sodium chlorite or sodium silicate.
See pages 65-66 of the pH Miracle for Diabetes for meal plan.
As I am embarking on this journey to reverse my autoimmune disease, I thought it would be helpful to further look into how other people have said they have reversed theirs.
I started with Sergei Boutenko, who said he reversed his Type 1 Diabetes through a raw food diet. I checked out his YouTube channel first and watched all the videos on it. Then I emailed him. Here was his general response:
After over 20+ years I’m still diabetes free, healthy and strong. I’ve had a few hiccups along the way, but nothing has ever made me feel worse than eating a standard world diet (I don’t think it’s fair to pick on the US alone in this sector). I can’t recommend any specific diets or practices as I’ve come to realize that people are all different and must experiment on themselves in order to find what works and what doesn’t.
Here are a few guidelines that have helped me personally:
Eat lots of fresh whole food (70% of my diet consists of this)
Eat lots of greens (I try to eat greens with every meal)
One quart of green smoothie everyday (if you’re worried about the fruit, make them savory): https://youtu.be/G45bHOrZKUM
Eat a little animal protein (mainly grass-fed meat and eggs from chickens that eat grass and bugs)
Drink water when I’m thirsty (I believe you can drink too much water and thus should use your thirst as a guide)
Exercise vigorously for at least 50 minutes per day / six days per week
Got to sleep by 10:30pm
Rest from exercise one day per week
Mandatory food cheat day one day per week (I’ve found that if I scheduled a regular cheat day, I don’t every need to binge on bad food)
I also think incorporating wild edibles is especially beneficial for diabetics as bitter plants are good for the pancreas. I recently uploaded my feature-length wild edibles movie onto YouTube. Check it out: https://youtu.be/NSxjozvB43Q
Then I watched his "I Want Abs" documentary, which was pretty inspiring for getting healthy. So I started drinking a quart of green smoothies per day. The problem with this has been that green smoothies spike my blood sugars too much, even when I only use lower sugar, lower GI fruits. So I think I need to try making savory green smoothies for 2 weeks when I do my detox. Then I can see if my body is able to tolerate a little fruit after that and titrate up.
This week I have been reading a book by Dr. Terry Wahls, who reversed her Multiple Sclerosis (MS) through lifestyle and diet - especially diet. The book is called The Wahls Protocol which outlines her story and what she did to turn her life and her autoimmune disease around. She places a big focus on getting your cells healthy - especially the mitochondria - by eating the right foods to nourish them.
She had 7 years of steady decline, 4 years in a tilt recline wheelchair - she couldn't sit up - despite getting the best therapy from the best people around the country, taking the latest, newest drug. She tried the Paleo diet for 5 years and that was not enough to fix her, supplements were not enough, and Functional Medicine with their supplements was not enough. It was when she did a very intensive diet and lifestyle change (The Wahls Protocol) that in a 1 year period got her back upright, walking around again and doing an 18 mile bike ride with her family.
In addition to her book, I re-watched her famous TEDx Talk on YouTube called "Minding Your Mitochondria," which I will put below.
Here are my notes from this talk about her recommendations:
3 cups sulphur rich vegetables (i.e. the cabbage family: cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, rutabagas, radishes, collards and kale. The onion family: onions, garlic, leeks, chives, shallots. Mushrooms. Asparagus.)
3 cups of bright color - preferably 3 different colors every single day (colors = flavanoids, polyphenols, Retinas, mitochondria and toxin removal. i.e. beets, carrots, red cabbage, peppers, berries, peaches, oranges)
Eat once a week:
Grass fed meat (i.e. wild fish = omega 3 fatty acids = myelin and straight teeth. Salmon and herring, grassfed meat)
Organ meat (concentrated sources of vitamins, minerals, coenzyme Q. Once a week.)
Seaweed (= rich source of iodine. Eat at least once a week)
Eating this way helped her go from being in a tilt recline wheelchair to using a cane to walking normally again.
I also watched a couple videos on Terry Wahls' YouTube channel about her perspective on a number of things, and took some notes.
What are her favorite foods?
Huge kale salads (raw)
Kale chips
Bacon and greens (cooked)
Roasted garlic
Fruit (strawberries, raspberries, kiwis) with full fat coconut milk
Create an edible landscape
How to begin to eliminate toxins?
Eat the Wahls diet to maximize nutrition
Eat organic
Use organic personal care products
Why do I need to be in ketosis?
You shift your metabolism from sugar burning to fat burning. This dramatically lowers the risk of cancer. Good benefits for brains.
What fuel the mitochondria in your cells are using. Sugar or fat. They generate energy for the cell.
If you go into ketosis too quickly you can get the keto flu: nausea, vomiting, body aches. Ease into it over 2-4 weeks. Your liver makes the ketone bodies from the fat that you consume. Coconut oil, coconut milk, and medium chain triglyceride oil are the best forms of fat for this. When first monitoring for ketones you can use ketone strips. After 2-3 months you won't be spilling as much ketones in the urine. She went very vigorously in ketosis for 18 months. Now when she is home she goes into ketosis, when she travels she goes higher carb Paleo type diet. Now she has been adding some low glycemic fruits in the summer months, like berries. You can eat winter squash raw. You are really feeding the 100 trillion bacteria living in your bowels (gut bacteria). Traditional societies have 100-150 grams of fiber per day. If you're having any starchy vegetable (i.e. carrots, beets, squash), have it raw.
A healing crisis when you are detoxifying compounds, you want to rapidly get them into the phase 2 step so they aren't harmful to you. If you have a slower problem in phase 2 than phase 1 you can go through more pain. Then you are detoxing too quickly. Think about what you are taking for phase 1 and phase 2 support. Some people don't do well with meat. Others don't do well with grains/legumes. 6-12 ounces of meat/day
What do I eat for breakfast?
Coconut milk and berry or coconut milk and green smoothie. Some protein leftover from the night before (i.e. steak, liver pate, chicken, pickled herring). Smoothie plus a rich supply of protein.
Thankfully there are a lot of commonalities between Dr. Wahls' recommendations and Sergei's. These commonalities are the things I will be striving to do :-)
To reverse his type 1 diabetes he ate: Vegetables, nuts, seeds. No fruit, no meat, no dairy. Now he eats 80-90% raw. However, if he gets sick and his blood sugars go up, he goes 100% raw.
Breakfast is the hardest meal of the day for me (and other Type 1 diabetics that I've heard about) because of the dawn phenomenon which makes my blood sugar rise and makes me insulin resistant. Here is my experience with breakfasts so far, wearing a CGM and seeing what certain foods do:
Breakfasts that make my blood sugar go above 300 mg/dL:
Jamba Juice Greens n Ginger smoothie
Oatmeal with berries, walnuts, flax seeds, soy milk, maple syrup
Breakfasts that keep my blood sugar fairly stable:
2 slices Ezekiel bread, 1 avocado, handful of sprouts, tomatoes, cilantro, lemon juice, sea salt
Vegan lentil soup with 2 slices Ezekiel sprouted bread (this made my blood sugar go high one morning though)
1 young coconut
Based on the pH Miracle book, they suggest having vegetable soups for breakfast. So I am starting to learn some good vegetable soup recipes. I'm very glad I love soup!
In summary, the best breakfast foods seem to share the following characteristics:
Here are some updates on how I've been decreasing my insulin dosages on this new diet.
My blood sugar keeps going low at night on this new diet. Last night at 1am, despite decreasing my Lantus insulin yet again (from 11 units 3 nights ago, to 9 units 2 nights ago, to 7 units last night), my blood sugar still went low! Down to 49 mg/dL to be exact. Granted, this may have been from the 4 units of Humalog I took at 7:41pm (that would mean a peak of almost 5.5 hours later...), but I am sure glad I have a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) to watch how I'm doing overnight as I make the transition to this low carb, high good fat diet.
This morning I decreased my Lantus as well (from 13 units 2 days ago, to 11 units yesterday, to 9 units today).
In summary, my original Lantus dosages were:
Morning: 13 units
Bedtime: 11 units
Now I have adjusted my long-acting Lantus insulin dosages to the following:
Morning: 9 units
Bedtime: 7 units
So, in total, I am down 8 units of Lantus (!).
This may require some additional tweaking, as I have been running a little higher numbers today with the change. I've also been eating some grains, though, so that may need to change. I had a small bowl of millet with breakfast, and a few sprouted pretzels and sprouted bread with lunch.
The insulin decrease has also come with a small decrease in my body weight thus far (0.8 pound). Those 2 things usually go hand in hand, so if I am able to continue decreasing my insulin I expect my weight will go down as well. This would be a welcome change, as I could stand to lose a few pounds.
One other note in regards to the low blood sugars I've been having at night. Normally after I have a low blood sugar at night I would eat some carbs and it would be my blood sugar up to 140 or more, then stay there for the rest of the night, and around 4am or so my body has the "Dawn Phenomenon" whereby my blood sugar shoots up before I wake up.
That has not been happening these past few nights.
Here's what's been happening: I go low, I eat something (fruit + almond milk), my blood sugar goes up to almost 120 then it comes back down to normal range in the 80s and stays there all night until I wake up (no Dawn Phenomenon)! Here's an example photo from my CGM:
That is very odd to me because I wonder what is causing my blood sugar to come back down to normal. Lantus usually just keeps things stable where they are at. And all of my Humalog should not be affecting my blood sugar after 6 hours of taking it. It leaves me wondering: is it the chlorophyll?
This was an incredibly helpful video for me. In this video, Dr. Bruce Vinikas of the National Candida Center articulates the concept of an alkaline diet and the science behind it very well:
Here are my notes on it:
The ocean of blood that nourishes your body has an identical pH (alkaline) of 7.4 to the ocean that nourishes the earth. As long as the blood stays alkaline, things are good in the body and the ocean. As soon as the pH drops into the acidic range, catastrophe happens. The prime directive of the human body is to keep the ocean of life (blood) alkaline. The symptoms of disease are the body trying to heal itself. We look at it as disease and try to treat the symptoms.
1st step of disease: fatigue and brain fog
Your body grabs alkaline reserves from somewhere else to get it into the blood. Then it grabs it from your brain and you get brain fog. The body tries to heal itself by taking alkalizing minerals.
2nd step of disease: the body creates fat (adipose tissue) to store the toxins.
This is why you cut the fat off the meat because that is where animals store their toxins (up to 10x the toxic density of the meat). A human body does this as well. Some people store their fat externally, some people don't. Some people store it internally, around the heart/liver/etc. which is actually worse for you. You have a limit to how much fat you can put on your body before the acid starts oozing back into the muscles (and you have sore muscles: fibromyalgia). Then it moves to the joints: gout and arthritis. Then you've got acid rushing down the veins. Acid is caustic - it eats away at things and will start eating away at the artery. So the body creates some triglycerides to patch/plug this up in your artery. If that doesn't clear it up it creates plaque on the arteries. Then it creates a specialized fat from the liver called cholesterol: HDL and LDL. That means cardiovascular disease, inflammation, pain, suffering. In a last resort the body will start to canabalize the bones and take the calcium right out of there: osteoporosis.
3rd step of disease: cancer, MS, alzheimers, etc.
It's like the Pacific garbage patch! Complete breakdown.
These steps of disease are what happens when the body is trying to keep alkaline blood. The body trying to heal itself to restore an alkaline blood stream. You see the body shift from the growth stage to the decay stage. The undertakers of the natural world (yeast, mold, fungus, bacteria, parasites) take over in the decay stage. We see a proliferation of these bugs take over the body. In each stage, an increase of that. Then we start to see a systemic breakdown. It starts in the bowels with dysbiosis, constipation, farting, bloating, burping. Then it moves to the liver and we have hormonal problems, PMS, sugar problems. Then it may move to the lungs with asthma or bronchitis. It's these bugs digesting the body, rotting the body to recycle it.
Dr. Young says that these yeast, mold, fungus, bacteria are progressive based on the pH of the blood. You can take a red blood cell and as its pH moves into the acidic range, that healthy red blood cell is going to get shrivelled like a prune and then it's going to look like a donut. It's got a white "hole" in the middle like a donut. But it's actually a white yeast cell that births out of the red blood cell. That yeast cell will morph into a rod bacteria. This is like if you fed a cat dog food and then came back the next day and it turned into a dog! It's a different species! And yet Dr. Young showed this.
Cause of the problem?
Overacidity:
1. Stressful lifestyle (living)
2. Negative thinking (thinking)
3. Improper diet (eating)
Prime directive of the body is to: Alkalize the BLOOD, NOT the body!
We need to look at the pH scale to measure fluids. 1-7 is acid (7 = neutral) and 8-14 is alkaline.
All manmade chemicals are plastic that create acid in the body. Aspirin creates bleeding in the stomach.
He recommends xylitol and says it is a miracle food. It's from birch trees. All the sweets/sweeteners in the natural world (stevia, honey, glucose, sucrose, molasses, agave, maple syrup, etc.) do 2 things: 1) stimulate the growth of pathogenic bacteria and 2) stimulate insulin; effect blood sugar. Xylitol is the only sweetener on earth that does not do these 2 things. It does the opposite. It inhibits pathogenic bacteria and promotes GOOD bacterical flora - probiotics. It's a prebiotic. It doesn't require insulin.
Dentists recommend taking xylitol before bed, after you brush your teeth. In Scandinavia they have several 20-30 year studies measuring the effect of xylitol on kids and they don't get gum disease later in life.
If you have dysbiosis (lots of bacteria/yeasts that feed off sugar) you have to introduce xylitol slowly. Buy a bag of xylitol, use 1/8 tsp and increase by 1/8 tsp every day until you are able to consume 1 tsp or more daily.
We can see that foods create an acidic problem in the blood because in the Standard American Diet, is 80% acidic foods and yeast foods (i.e. white flour).
Some people have so little HCl they can't even digest peanut butter. This opens the intestinal tract to a whole plethora of bugs. We have to restore the acid to ignite the gastric fire.
If you want to get healthy, you have to cut all the junk out. All the acidic food.
The pH scale is exponential. So coffee is 1,000x more acidic than water. Alcohol is 10,000x more acidic than water. A glass of Coke is 100,000x more acidic than water.
Get the body healed first, then if you want to eat things like a margarita and ice cream those things can be done in moderation.
Diet is not enough. The bugs go into remission. But you must have the right supplements in the right sequence as well.
Dr. Young found that the blood of the animal kingdom is red because of the hemoglobin. The blood of the plant kingdom is green because of the chlorophyll. He looked at chlorophyll and hemoglobin as molecules and found that they are IDENTICAL except for one thing: in the center of hemoglobin is IRON and in the center of chlorophyll is MAGNESIUM (which is an alkalizing mineral). That means if we drink more chlorophyll we can make more hemoglobin and new red blood cells, which means more oxygen and less toxins. He found that there are over 250 chlorophylls in the food chain! He threw out 200 of them - if they weren't bioavailable or if they were acidic to the blood (the sea algaes like spirulina, chlorella, and blue green algae). Sea vegetables (dulse, nori) are different. The algaes do the same thing in the sea that yeast does on land: they digest and eat things and create an acidic effect on the blood. As a general rule, don't eat the sea algaes.
49 of these greens alkalize the blood. Dr. Robert Young created a product with these greens called InnerLight SuperGreens. You must drink it at the proper rate: half your body weight in fluid ounces daily. If you don't drink enough you don't have enough fluid to get rid of your metabolic waste. That means you're increasing your acid and you are not healing.
Alkalized water is good but it's not enough. Adding SuperGreens to your water spread throughout the day is what you need. These provide intense alkalization. Combine this with a proper alkaline diet and people start getting healthy!
Realistically this is a process for most people that takes about 6 months. Start the diet, add the supplements, and you'll know if you're healthy or not.
The other green he recommends is meringa. It is a plant that the UN uses for starvation. It's one of the most nutrient dense plants on earth. The elixir of life. They give it to women who don't have milk for their babies. It provides nutrition.
I watched a video about a type 1 diabetic who went through the pH Miracle program and she told about the supplements that she was/is on to help reverse her diabetes. I am going to get these supplements and start taking them.
Here's the video:
And here is a summary of what she recommended:
The basis of this program is "COWS" (Chlorophyll, Oils, Water, Salts):
Chlorophyll: DeSouza's liquid chlorophyll (no glycerin in it) - drink every single day, as much as you want. Helps build new red blood cells. She drinks roughly 8 Tbsp per day (2 Tbps, 4x/day). Try to drink a whole bottle a day if you possibly can!
Oils: for omega 3s and 6s. Hemp oil, flaxseed oil, coconut oil. 1-2 oz per day depending on weight. 3-4 Tbsp per day. She likes to do 1 Tbsp of oil with 2 Tbsp liquid chlorophyll and a splash of homemade almond milk 3x/day. She uses Nutiva Organic Cold-Pressed Unrefined Hemp Oil.
Water: 4-6 Liters of alkaline water per day. She was using PURIPHY water drops from phmiracle.com. Put 5 drops into 1 Liter of water. It raises the pH of your water and makes it very alkaline. Then she invested in a water ionizer by Vitev. $429 installed in counter. You don't have to put drops in there. Gives water a 9-9.5 pH.
Salts: Phour Salts: 1 scoop in water, 3x/day. Or you can ask your health food store for the following salts: sodium, potassium bicarbonate, magnesium, and calcium mineral salts - then make an equal combination of these 4 salts and take 1 tsp per day. If you can't find all 4 then try your best and take whatever combination you can. Use salt liberally on your food. She uses Real Salt (can also use Sea Salt, or Pink Himalayan Salt).
Additional supplement necessary:
Supplement to help with elimination and digestion. It is crucial to use something to help eliminate and restore the bowels. Need to remove the toxins that have been stuck in our bodies. Type 1 diabetes originates in the toxicity of the bowels. PHLUSH powder. 1 tsp before bed. When you do not eliminate daily it causes your blood sugars to rise. If you cannot afford this product then you can purchase 100% magnesium oxide powder and start slowly with 1/2 tsp once per day (at bed) and work your way up to 1 tsp per day.
I just had my 35th birthday this year, and I like to make goals for the year at each birthday (I'm very motivated by goals...checking off boxes is so gratifying).
Well, this year I decided I want to attempt to reverse/cure/heal my type 1 diabetes.
I have had type 1 diabetes since I was 10 years old, so I have had it for 25 years.
Wait, isn't it impossible to reverse/cure/heal type 1 diabetes?
That's what I was told for my whole life, and I used to think so until...
Through my nutrition and health journey (reading 100s of books, watching hours and hours of youtube videos, listening to countless #s of podcasts, etc.) I have healed some of my own health challenges (gastroparesis and eczema) through diet and lifestyle, and I have come across a number of people who have healed their autoimmune diseases - including Type 1 Diabetes - through diet and lifestyle changes as well!
One example of this is Dr. Terry Wahls who reversed her MS. I heard/read that she did this partly by eating 9+ cups of (dark, leafy) greens per day. Another example is Sergei Boutenko who reversed his type 1 diabetes by going on a raw food diet, drinking lots of green smoothies, and eating wild edibles. Thirdly, I got a book called The pH Miracle for Diabetes, which advocates an alkaline diet using lots of dark, leafy greens to get your pH level in balance.
There's a lot of B.S. and misinformation out there, so when I read things now I look for consistent themes across all of the other things I've read. And in relation to this...
Notice the common denominator?GREENS.
This past month I learned that greens are very detoxifying. Go ahead and google that to see for yourself. And overall, according to Dr. Lonnie Herman, I have to clean up any toxins in my body that would cause a tissue to fail. His YouTube channel has lots more info about this.
I'm starting to record short videos to document this journey (I've been slowly making these changes over the past week), so you can see firsthand the day in and day out stuff it has entailed. I know this will not be easy, but I'm excited to see what happens!
Next Steps:
1. Get baseline labs done
2. Eat/drink lots of alkaline food
Go off of coffee, black tea, alcohol (too acidic). I'm switching to green tea at least temporarily.
Eat greens with every meal (9+ cups per day)
Eat plenty of grasses (wheatgrass, barley grass especially). They are an excellent source of protein and help balance blood sugar levels.
Eat 80%+ whole raw food
Lots of good fats: avocados, coconuts, raw nuts and seeds, some wild caught fish
Fresh mountain spring water straight from the source or water that has been purified through reverse osmosis filtration or distillation, then put through the process of electromagnetic micro-ionization to add electrons.
Your water should have a pH or 8.0 or above.
Drink at least 4 Liters per day.
5. Go to sleep by 10:30 pm every night
6. Do castor oil packs if additional detoxification is necessary
We are a sister and brother living in different states, attempting to "go Paleo"! Andi is a type 1 diabetic, using the Paleo diet as a means to achieve better blood sugar control, and Mitch is a weight lifter with an interest in how nutrition can affect both his health and athletic performance. The Paleo Diet is a way of eating in the modern age that best mimics diets of our hunter-gatherer ancestors - combinations of lean meats, seafood, vegetables, fruits, and nuts. By eating the foods that we are genetically adapted to eat, followers of the Paleo Diet are naturally lean, have acne-free skin, improved athletic performance, and are experiencing relief from numerous metabolic-related and autoimmune diseases.
