Progress

After changing my diet for about 6 1/2 weeks, my fasting blood sugar dropped 35 points and my doctor cut my Actos in half.  Over the next 10 days my blood sugar continued to drop to about 50 points below where  I started.  My weekly average fasting blood sugar dropped from 166 to 115, so I dropped the Actos entirely.  My fasting blood sugar raised about 15 points over the next two weeks and now appears to be dropping again.  Concurrently, it appears that my blood pressure is dropping too.

After some reading (not really research) and a lot of thinking, I've discovered what I think is a problem with current medical advice.  I've seen two general practitioners (my family doctor and an aeromedical doctor) and an endocrinologist.  They all preach lose weight and your blood sugar will drop.  There's some truth to the statement.  While it isn't exactly false, it isn't exactly true either.  Here's the truth (as I see it) - the problem is poor nutrition.  Here's what I mean.

Poor nutrition means you eat all the calories you need in a mix of proteins, carbohydrates, and sugar but your not getting the vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients that your body needs.  So while the body gets enough calories, it has to make accommodations for the stress caused by the lack of nutrients.  The result is high blood sugar, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and excess weight.

My theory is nutrition controls weight, blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol.  If you get proper nutrition, all four metrics will drop and the results will start to show up quickly.  In my case, after the first week of eating properly, my average fasting blood sugar had dropped 11 points and has continued to drop an average of 7 points per week.  Compared to prescription medicines or weight loss, proper nutrition has made a bigger difference. 

Now, what "proof" do I have that high blood sugar is a result of poor nutrition and not weight?  Two reasons.  First, about 8 years ago I lost about 50 pounds dieting and my blood sugar dropped no more than 20 points and I was taking 2,000 mg of metformin and 15 mg of Actos.  The drop in blood sugar was nominal at best.  My recent change in diet, aimed at getting proper nutrition, resulted in just a 20 pound weight loss (so far) but I've cut my Actos out and dropped my blood sugar by 50 points.  I'm now getting occasional readings before meals that are under 100.

So what's next?  I am attempting to find out if diabetes can be cured, not simply controlled.  Control to me suggests there's no reversal or an incomplete reversal of insulin resistance.  Under the best outcome a person can control their diabetes without medicine by simply controlling what they eat.  A cure suggests that insulin resistance is reversed to the point where a person can pass an oral glucose tolerance test.  Passing would mean a reading of less than 200, indicating the person was now "pre-diabetic."  Ideally, the reading would be less than 140, indicating a normal response to the challenge.

In order to solve this problem, the first step is to understand the mechanics of Type II diabetes.  The problem seems to be related to fat causing insulin resistance but the devil is in the details.  Next time the details as I understand them.