If you have Type II Diabetes...
You guessed it! It's your own fault & how I helped my husband cure his!
My husband, Jack will soon be 71 years old and has been using our area Veterans Hospital for “healthcare” for about 25 years now. He served four years in the Navy back during Viet Nam and as we’ve never paid for health insurance, it seemed like a good idea to have access to “healthcare”. Especially at his age, but now I’m not so sure. I can’t count the amount of medications they’ve sent him over the years that I just chunked right in the trash. There seems to be a “standard of care” that has nothing to do with an individual patient’s health. Aspirin, Gabapentin, statins, and blood pressure medications are handed out like candy on Halloween, whether the patient needs them or not. Yet they’ve never seemed interested in helping him with any actual health issues he has…the main one being high glucose levels. Oh, they’ve been thrilled to keep him on Metformin these last two decades, and they even tried adding the newer diabetes meds like Rosiglitazone and Alogliptin. The side effect list of these drugs is terrifying!
Just like all other forms of “healthcare” the doctor looks at the numbers on a page and despite the patient’s current state of health, if the numbers are good, they’re happy. Well, they don’t live with Jack. I do. And there’s quite an age difference between us, as I’ll soon be 50. I could see a decline in his overall health, so I knew something wasn’t right. Sure, everyone ages and thing’s don’t work quite as well, but he went from zero ED to having issues getting and keeping an erection. He also couldn’t bend his toes and his constant sciatic pain was joined in by several neck pain “flare ups”. But, what worried me the most was his cognitive decline. It seemed to worsen and become obvious overnight, but thinking back, it started about five years ago. Thank goodness, I’ve known about the “cholesterol lie”. I have read Dr. Tom Cowan’s book Human Heart, Cosmic Heart and know the true destruction that statins are wrecking on our population. Since I’ve never let Jack take them, I was surprised at his cognitive decline. I knew the VA wasn’t going to do anything about it… So, I went on a quest.
Over the last 18 months, I’ve radically changed our diet. In fact, it’s so much more than diet changes. It’s a complete lifestyle change. No more calling out for a pizza, no more hamburgers from Sonic or Braums on the weekends. We don’t even “go out to eat” at restaurants anymore. I’m too aware of just how much pesticides and preservatives are in our food supply to even want someone else to cook for me! It’s taken a couple of years, but I’ve removed all “fake” chemicals from our home. I use and make my own natural soaps, cleaners and healthcare products. Anything with artificial scents or dyes has been replaced by non-synthetic things to the best of my ability. I don’t shop at the big box stores or even do much shopping at our local grocery store anymore. Finding local beef, raising and butchering our own meat chicks and pigs and growing and canning our own tomatoes has made a big difference, but I couldn’t have restocked my pantry items with organic, non-GMO products without Azure Standard !
I started making curtido and sauerkraut, brewing kombucha, and I’ve stopped using store bought yeast and only bake with my sourdough starter. I make and pressure can my own bone broths and we can eat 20 pounds of onions, 20 pounds of carrots, and 40 pounds of cabbage a month! I don’t use olive oil (and certainly not seed oils) anymore and use coconut oil sparingly. Now, it’s butter, lard, and tallow only! I spend a lot of time on food preparation. Somedays, dinner get’s started around noon and sometimes, it may take 18 hours or so. Now, there are quick and easy recipes for those that don’t have the time, but being a housewife is my job and I love to cook. So, if diabetes is a “lifestyle” disease, Jack’s should have cleared right up, right? Well, it didn’t. He quit taking his pharmaceutical pills, but they were replaced by handfuls of vitamins and herbal supplements.
We both take Youngevity's 90 for Life vitamins and they made a huge difference in our overall health. I put Jack on their very expensive Glucogenix as well as extra Bitter Melon, Olive Leaf extract, and pancreatic enzymes. We were trying everything to get his sugar numbers down! They spiked at around 300 as soon as he stopped the Metformin, but despite all the supplements and herbs, they just wouldn’t drop below 190. While that’s really good for a Type II diabetic off their meds, it’s still way too high. He was doing well in every other way, but those damn sugar numbers were still a bother.
One of the amazing things that happened was a complete cessation of his snoring! This man had worse than just “snoring”…he had severe sleep apnea. It was so bad, he’d scare me sometimes and he’d snored the entire 27 years I’ve known him. I knew that he’d never consider a CPAP machine, so I didn’t think there was much I could do. Who knew that changing your diet would fix it?!?! He has lost about 40 pounds, too. At 6’1”, he’d weighed about 210 for years. We thought that was a good weight for his large frame, but now I think he’s down to 170. Our 22 year old son was also overweight and he lost 90 pounds in the first 9 months of our diet changes. That was amazing to see! I knew I was on the right track with our health as a family, as I was seeing (and not hearing) the differences, but Jack’s darn sugar numbers just wouldn’t budge…it was driving me crazy.
I have never followed the “American diet” of three meals a day. I have never been a breakfast eater and it’s not unusual for me to skip lunch too. This “one meal a day” is what feels right and I never thought of it as “fasting”. Over the years, I’ve even had doctor’s tell me it was unhealthy to skip meals! But then, we know what they’re after and it’s not their patient’s health. Jack, on the other hand, was convinced he HAD to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner and I couldn’t convince him otherwise…not for a long time anyways. Despite no sugar, carb restrictions, and all this good food, he was still “diabetic” and was beginning to complain about the handfuls of pills, as well as the price!
Now that I think about it, it was likely the price of the supplements that FINALLY got him to try the one thing I’d been recommending for months… fasting. Why he was so stubborn about even attempting it, we’ll blame on his age. The older someone gets, the more stuck in their routine they seem to become and he doesn’t like to change things that have to do with his personal “comfort”. He also liked to blame it on working. He really was convinced he needed food to have the energy to work, not realizing that his own sugar numbers were proving him wrong! One day, I finally got him to listen to an interview with a guy selling a book Mastering Fasting. Of course, I ordered it and followed the recommendations to find Dr. Jason Fung and his website The Fasting Method - I think it woke my husband up!
The best thing about it? FASTING IS FREE! While Dr. Fung offers thing’s for sale, and you can buy books about it, fasting can be started immediately without paying a dime to anyone!
Since Jack does work a full week at an advanced age, we decided to try a loose 16-8 schedule, five days a week. It’s much easier for him to go without food if he’s not home, smelling my cooking! I do my best to have dinner ready as soon as he walks in the door, knowing he’s going to be a hungry Jack! He eats a healthy, balanced dinner made with good animal fats and fermented foods, between 5 and 6pm and snacks a few times before bed around 9pm. Then, he has black coffee in the morning and takes a kombucha to drink after 3pm…if he needs an afternoon boost. During the weekends, he usually has a breakfast or lunch, but not both.
He checked his sugar after the first week and was amazed to see it was 90! I don’t think he’s been at 90 since he first started taking the Metformin over 25 years ago! He can bend his toes again too. And there have been other, happy developments in the “men’s health” department! All this, for free and just by skipping a few meals. Dr. Fung explains it so well, so go look him up. You HAVE to let your body empty it’s sugar bowl. Jack was just filling his up too often.
So, yes. You do cause your own health issues, especially diabetes. But the good news is that you can also fix them! No pills or doctors necessary. Just listen to your body and more importantly, listen to your wife… if she knows of what she speaks, that is. Needless to say, this wife doesn’t even want her husband to go back for his “check ups”. I’m sure they’re going to be happy about the sugars and say “those meds are working great”…the meds he doesn’t take. And I’m also sure they’re going to be unhappy about his cholesterol numbers, not realizing they have nothing to do with heart attacks. I suppose we’ll see how it all goes, but finally, my husband seems healthier and happier and just more “here” and those damn doctor’s didn’t have anything to do with getting him back to me! I’m sure you’ll understand my distrust and dislike for the whole cult that is Modern Medicine.
It’s a cult I no longer want to have anything to do with!
My experience with fasting. I came across the channel of Dr. Sten Ekberg, https://www.youtube.com/@drekberg, about health and intermittent fasting about a year ago. I was not diabetic but I wanted to loose some weight. I lost 8 kilos, and I couldn't even loose 1 kg before. I eat one meal a day, 6 days a week, one day I do not eat at all. I feel wonderful with this diet, one of the best things that has ever happened to me.
Thank you for taking the time to post this write up. I have read somewhere before that "fasting" could help against diabetes but didn't know the effect could be this significant. I'm glad your husband glucose levels are healthy again! By any chance do you know if he could become "diabetic" again if he starts eating three meals a day again? Is that something you have tried?