Living with diabetes is no fun. I know from personal experience. My mother had type 2 diabetes and heart disease. At one point, she was taking eleven prescription drugs and was in and out of the hospital. None of this saved her. She died at age sixty-seven after a heart valve replacement surgery. I was heartbroken, of course, and never accepted that her death had to be. It strengthened my resolve to find holistic answers to the malicious riddles of life-threatening diseases like diabetes.
My dad also had type 2 diabetes. When doctors counted him out at age seventy-nine, saying he had led a “good life,” I was angry—and so was he. I helped him change his diet, added supplements and hormones, and took him off three prescription medicines. He went on to live another twelve good, really good years.
Type 2 diabetes occurs when your body’s cells resist the normal effect of insulin, which is to usher glucose into the cells for energy. This condition is called insulin resistance. When insulin is not doing its job properly, glucose levels can become dangerously high and lead to diabetes. The disease can damage nerves and blood vessels, lead to kidney failure, and interfere with blood circulation in the legs and feet, to name just a few serious and scary complications.
Before people develop type 2 diabetes, they almost always have “prediabetes” – meaning that glucose levels are higher than normal but not yet elevated enough to be diagnosed as diabetes. With prediabetes, damage to the body has already set in, especially in the heart and circulatory system.
The good news is, with my Keto-Green™ diet, featured in my new book Keto-Green™16, diabetes is manageable, even reversible, and can be prevented altogether. Here’s how:
Go Keto-Green
Keto-Green16 is a combination of ketogenic and alkaline eating. The keto part involves lowering your carbohydrate intake to 40 grams daily or under while increasing healthy fats. Strictly limiting carbs is important if you have type 2 diabetes because carbohydrates convert to sugar and, in large quantities, can cause blood sugar spikes. Over time, replacing dietary carbohydrates with fats can reduce blood sugar levels.
Not only does Keto-Green16 lower your blood glucose levels, but it also:
- Reverses insulin resistance and thus helps your body use insulin normally.
- Restores you to a healthy insulin-sensitive state.
- Helps you shed pounds fast and effectively. Nearly ninety percent 90 percent of people with type 2 diabetes are also overweight or obese. Losing weight by going keto positively affects blood sugar levels and balances insulin.
- Eases your diabetes symptoms altogether, and may even reverse the disease.
I’m not alone in advocating a ketogenic diet to treat and prevent type 2 diabetes. Scientific studies among people with type 2 diabetes who were placed on a keto diet have found such dramatic glucose improvements that they were able to discontinue or reduce their diabetes medications—as my father did when he was seventy-nine.
Stay Alkaline
As I mentioned, Keto-Green16 is also an alkaline diet. Like all living things, our bodies have a pH (power of hydrogen) level – a number between zero and 14. Zero is totally acidic; 14 is completely alkaline. For optimum health, our body pH should be neutral – around 7. (You can measure your pH and your level of ketosis with my special Keto-pH Urine Test Strips)
Far too many people are walking around in an acidic state. This is created by eating a diet loaded with foods that produce acid when broken down – processed carbohydrates, refined sugar, cheese and other dairy foods, to name just a few.
Acidic diets can bring on many metabolic complications, including type 2 diabetes. Here’s where Keto-Green16 shines again: It prevents acidity. The diet is packed with foods that overturn the acid load – green leafy veggies, cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cabbage, and healthy fats like avocados and coconut oil. Keto-Green16 is abundant in high-fiber vegetables, which help with glucose and insulin control and regulation of the hunger hormones. Staying alkaline helps keep your cells and tissues functioning normally – and fights diabetes.
Practice Intermittent Fasting
This amazing dietary strategy is a key part of my Keto-Green16 diet. It involves going without food between dinner and breakfast the next day, overnight, for a total of 12 to 16 hours. (If you’re new to intermittent fasting, Keto-Green™16 features ways to ease into it.)
Science shows that intermittent fasting resolves insulin resistance – plus prevents it. Intermittent fasting is such an easy way to get insulin to work properly, because you do it mostly overnight while you’re sleeping!
There’s more to report: Intermittent fasting kick-starts “autophagy.” This is a process by which the body gets rid of cells that have a greater risk of becoming infected or even cancerous. These are cells that also lead to type 2 diabetes, accelerated aging, and Alzheimer’s disease.
Know Your Number
The number I’m talking about is hemoglobin A1C (HbA1c), the “heads up” early warning marker for blood sugar issues and for developing insulin resistance, prediabetes, and diabetes.
This simple blood test, referred to as the A1C test, measures the average percentage of red blood cells that are saturated with glucose over a two or three-month period. The higher the A1C figure, the more at risk you are for developing diabetes. Here’s how the test results are interpreted:
- 6.5 or higher qualifies for a diagnosis of diabetes;
- 5.7 to 6.4 indicates prediabetes;
- Between 4 and 5.6 percent is the normal range;
- Under 5.3 is optimal.
If you have diabetes, you need this test regularly to check your progression or improvement of the disease. Others can use it to show that our nutrition and lifestyle choices are working. Everyone should know their number and get it optimal.
Keto-Green 16 offers hope to people with insulin resistance, prediabetes, and diabetes who have had trouble controlling these issues. Not only do many people feel better with fewer diabetic symptoms, but they may also be less dependent on medications.
Stop living with blood sugar and insulin problems. Order your copy of Keto-Green™16 at any online or physical bookstore, and show your proof of purchase on the online forms to get a lot of FREE gifts: A Keto-Green Quick Start Guide, an additional 3-day meal plan with recipes, Keto-Green Recipe Videos (watch recipes being made!), and more recipes to help you “feast” healthfully.
