The Hard Facts

More than 37 million people in the United States have diabetes. People with diabetes are also at higher risk of heart disease, stroke, and other serious complications like kidney failure, blindness, and amputation of a toe, foot, or leg. People with diabetes spend more on health care and miss more workdays compared to people who don’t have diabetes. The leading categories of those at risk for diabetes are:

Overweight or have obesity, are age 45 or older, have a family member with type 2, are physically active less than 3x per week, had gestational diabetes or gave birth to a baby weighing more than 9lbs, are an African American, Hispanic or Latino, American Indian, Alaska Native, Pacific Islander, or Asian American person.

The CDC

Remember that what you’re reading on my pages is both regurgitated from health professionals and pulled from my own observations/opinions. Many have found the words from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to be factual and absolute. I will be quoting much of what the CDC website says throughout my discussions, as at the very least, you may find common ground with them long before you will take my words or the words of influencers as anything more valuable. I absolutely don’t agree with everything purported by them, as I feel much is biased toward serving the medical community, which is far more aligned with finance than it is with actual health advice.

Throughout this world of lower sugar/carbs, you’re going to meet several people who are no longer diabetic. You aren’t going to read my words. You’re going to read and hear theirs. You’re going to be told by actual survivors of deadly illnesses that your diet alone will help you overcome this deadly disease. Understand, I am not telling you that you’ll be healed if you quit all sugar, processed foods, seed oils, and other harmful foods and ingredients. But if you listen to the findings of others, especially doctors who have had personal success through their own bodies and the healing of others, you’ll learn how to control your glucose levels.

Prediabetes is a serious health condition in which blood sugar levels are higher than normal, but not high enough yet to be diagnosed as type 2 diabetes. A person with prediabetes is at high risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. An estimated 96 million US adults—more than 1 in 3—have prediabetes, and more than 8 in 10 of them don’t know they have it.

– The CDC

Blood Sugar and “Glycation”

Something you need to wrap your head around is how the body cells work. They control every aspect of your body, as you are literally a highly functional “clump of cells”. Every cell has a function, and the majority are replaced over 80 to 100 days.

How does this work?

The human body replaces its own cells regularly. Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, have finally pinned down the speed and extent of this “turnover.” About a third of our body mass is fluid outside of our cells, such as plasma, plus solids, such as the calcium scaffolding of bones. The remaining two thirds is made up of roughly 30 trillion human cells. About 72 percent of those, by mass, are fat and muscle, which last an average of 12 to 50 years, respectively. But we have far more, tiny cells in our blood, which live only three to 120 days, and lining our gut, which typically live less than a week. Those two groups therefore make up the giant majority of the turnover. About 330 billion cells are replaced daily, equivalent to about 1 percent of all our cells. In 80 to 100 days, 30 trillion will have replenished—the equivalent of a new you

Mark Fischetti, Jen Chrsitiansen on April 1, 2021, Scientific American

If you’re still with me, let’s get a little technical, but in the simplest of terms. You’ve heard the term Glucose, but what is it?

Perhaps you didn’t follow something that was said just now. Go back and read this again, and understand that you are being told that if it grows under the sun, a byproduct of photosynthesis is sugar. Yes, vegetables have sugar. Grass has sugar. So now think in simplest terms: glucose is sugar. It is absolutely correct to relate sugar to glucose and glucose to carbs. When you hear Keto or Carnivore, or “The Adkins Diet” you will hear synonymously: eat fewer carbs. This means eat less sugar.

To understand the term glycation as it relates to what it does to your body, consider this:

A drinking glass (your body) is full of small ice cube-shaped sponges. When you pour water (your food) into the glass, the sponges soak up the water (your food). The small sponges represent hemoglobin, the part of the red blood cell that carries oxygen throughout the body. When you have glucose (sugar) in your blood, it glycates (sticks) to hemoglobin. The more glucose in your blood, the more it sticks. And it can stay there for around three months, or about how long the average red blood cell lives.

If the food you’re putting into your body contains sugar, the sugar will saturate your blood cells, and the cells become “glycated” which essentially means they’re full of sugar. Think of ice made of sugar water, and your body is the glass of water. Sugar ice melts and makes the water sweet. But in this case, your body is full of sugar, and that sugar is going to every organ in your body. You eventually replace clean cells in your body with sugary cells. Remember what the quote said above about every 80-100 days?

As you look at others, picture them now as a “clump of cells” and imagine what their cells look like. Are the cells full of tobacco, alcohol, soft drinks, coffee, fried foods, vegetables, steak, or potato chips?

A1C Test

I’ll be willing to bet that off the top of your head, you know how much fuel is in your vehicle’s tank. You probably know when the last oil change was performed. You probably know how much milk is left in your fridge, or how much coffee is left in your pot. But do you know your A1C level? This is a test of your blood to let you know just how much of your body’s cells are glycated, which means just how much of your blood cells’ hemoglobin has sugar that has attached itself over time. The higher the number, the more glycation is present. This means the higher the number, the more sugar you have in your blood. A1C Ranges:

A1C Test Ranges:

Less than 5.7% means you don’t have diabetes.

5.7% to 6.4% signals pre-diabetes.

6.5% or higher means a diabetes diagnosis.

7% or lower is the goal for someone trying to manage their diabetes.

The Cleveland Clinic

Sadly, most doctors won’t test you for this because your insurance won’t cover it if there’s not an underlying diabetes suspicion revealed in a couple of ways. First and most obvious is your outer appearance. If you’re obese, the chance of diabetes is higher, and if you’re obese, it’s easy to see. But you could also be very skinny, yet unhealthy, and have diabetes. If your doctor doesn’t agree to get your HbA1c tested, do NOT let that stop you. Pay out of pocket. I have several resources to help you get this measured without waiting for your doctor or insurance. Here’s a $40 test you can buy online. I personally paid for this test in August 2022: At Home $40 A1C test kit

It takes a professional to read your blood results, and you should be having a conversation with your doctor about how to control your blood sugar without meds. Metformin is a commonly prescribed medication used together with diet to lower high blood sugar levels in patients with type 2 diabetes. Metformin is a prescription that works by lowering the amount of glucose absorbed from the intestines, decreasing how much glucose is made in the liver, and improving insulin sensitivity. As you’ll learn from doctors who want you off medications, your glucose can be controlled by proper dietary intake to begin with. You can easily control the amount of glucose in your body if you don’t introduce to it the easy way, i.e. drinking a heavily-sugared drink such as specialty sugar coffees, soda, sweet tea, or alcohol, or eating copious amounts of sugar-filled items like bread, donuts, candy bars, and cereals.

Remember, you cannot self-diagnose. However, you and only you can control what goes into your body to begin with. If you find yourself staring at a container of cookies on your counter or a tub of ice cream in your freezer, no doctor in the world can control that. It is entirely up to you.