December 26, 2017

Most doctors understand medicine. And medication. What they don’t always get trained in, though, is nutrition. Is your doctor approaching your type 2 diabetes care the right way?

Two things surprised me the most after working with members here at the Wellness Training Institute for just a few months.

First, because one in ten Americans now has type 2 diabetes, data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) shows that roughly two percent of Americans are injecting themselves with insulin each day.

That’s 7 million people… and that’s just in our country. For perspective, that’s roughly the populations of Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston combined.

The second thing that surprised me was how easy it is to get someone off insulin. And the changes necessary are all lifestyle-related. Building healthy dietary habits to crowd out the old, bad ones, and your type 2 diabetes all but disappear within a matter of months.

So, I wondered. Why are doctors putting people on insulin in the first place? If it’s so easy to get off of it, why not nip it in the bud before you even think about pulling out the prescription pad?

When I asked Dr. Dangovian about this, he told me that it’s not that simple.

Doctors, he said, know medicine. They know medication. That’s what they learned in medical school. They rarely understand how lifestyle changes can affect their patients and if they do, they don’t have a system that is effective in following up with their patients to make sure they are making the appropriate steps to reverse their disease.

And, honestly? It’s not their fault. Not at all.

For one, it’s hard to know something you haven’t been trained in. And the life of a med student, intern, or someone up to their neck trying to fulfill their residency requirements… they’ve got a ton to learn, to remember, and manage.

Also, the medical system isn’t set up for timely follow-ups. Let’s say you’re a doctor and someone comes in with type 2 diabetes. You know you won’t see this person for at least a few months, so NOT treating their condition the best way you know how—i.e., prescribing insulin or other diabetic medication—would be a massive breach of medical ethics. As a doctor, even if you know the lifestyle elements in treating type 2 diabetes, your hands are tied as to what steps you can legitimately take.

So, again, let me be clear: If your doctor doesn’t know how to reverse your type 2 diabetes effectively, it’s not their fault.

But, here’s the thing…

Taking Ownership

It’s not their responsibility anyway. It’s yours.

It’s your health, and you’re responsible for it.

And once you take that responsibility on and educate yourself about how to reverse your type 2 diabetes? Amazing things can happen.

We have a member now who’s A1C levels were off the charts just a few months ago. The A1C (or hemoglobin A1C, or hbA1c) test is a three month average of glucose levels in your blood. If your A1C levels are below 5.7 percent, you’re good to go. No diabetes. If your levels are between 5.7 percent and 6.4 percent, you’re considered prediabetic. Anything 6.5 percent or above and you’re diabetic.

Here at the Wellness Training Institute, we shoot for 5.5 or below and believe prediabetic should be just as big of a red flag as diabetic.
This particular member’s numbers were close to 10.4… which is HIGH.

But through some simple changes in her diet, her A1C is now at 5.8 percent… and it only took four months. AND NO MEDS.

Which is even more amazing when you understand how hard it is to move that number. Since it’s a three-month average, it can take a while for those numbers to come down. Her turnaround is drastic… and it all happened because she educated herself, entered our program, and followed through. Her goal is 5.5 percent, which would mean she’s no longer diabetic. And that goal is in sight!

Type 2 Diabetes is Not Your Fate

The key here is to understand that whether you’re diabetic or pre-diabetic, it could be reversible. And often it can be done without adding more medication. In fact, our goal is always to reduce the number of meds you’re on.

Your doctor may not even know that it’s possible to reverse your diabetes.

But our program members are inspiring examples of the fact that it is possible. And not that hard to do!

The post Is Your Doctor Treating Your Diabetes the Right Way? appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

September 22, 2016

Do you feel good?

Right now, at this moment, do you feel good?

As a cardiologist now halfway through my third decade of practice, I’ve noticed two things about the possible answers to that question.

The first: Most people don’t feel good.

The second: Sadly, most people don’t even know what feeling good feels like.

Living in this toxic culture, eating what we eat, racing through our day, and rarely stopping to take inventory of what out bodies are telling us—most people I’ve talked to over the years have been miserable for so long that they have no idea what it means not to be miserable.

It’s sad. Heartbreaking, really.

And although there is no one cure for this problem, there are some systematic steps you can take to at least begin to understand what feeling good is like.

The good news here is that once you understand that feeling, you’ll want to preserve it. You’ll want to keep feeling good.

Here are two of the things we teach our members at the Wellness Training Institute. They are steps in a larger process, but they really all fall under one category: Getting Quiet.

Awareness

I preach awareness constantly. And there’s a reason for it.

Health is built upon the integration of the body, mind, and soul. If all of those things are working together, then you are healthy. It’s as simple as that.

One of the best ways of getting those things working together is through a practice of mindfulness… about everything you do.

It makes a lot of sense: To do something, or make something, or even consider choosing one thing over another, it takes a certain amount of concentration. It takes information. It takes awareness. You have to know that something is there, or that there’s even the potential of a choice.

The way to do that is to become quiet. To sit inside an individual moment. To understand where your body is in relation to the rest of the universe. To watch and listen for what’s actually going on inside your body.

It’s also about documenting what you do. We use a gratitude journaling exercise with our Wellness Training Institute members. It’s a highly effective way to force someone to pause, to look for the positives in their lives, and it sets them up to find more positive things throughout their day.

It’s about getting the mind quiet, calm, and ready to choose life over death, one minute after the next.

Want more great information about the foundations of a healthy life? Download the first installment of our NEW 7-part eBook series The 7 Habits of Highly Healthful People for FREE right now, right HERE!

Elimination Diet

An elimination diet is used, first and foremost, to quiet the gut. What I mean by that is this: By taking out potentially reactive foods from your diet (foods that might be causing problems, either by themselves are in a cross-reactive way with other, non-problematic foods), we can get your body to a place where it can just work the way it needs to.

A good example of this is gluten. For a lot of people, gluten doesn’t cause much of a problem. But for those whose bodies react to it, that reaction is usually pretty extreme.

So, by removing gluten from the diet for a little while, the body—the gut—can quiet down and get on with the business of doing its job.

Just like cultivating awareness, an elimination diet allows things to reset, to quiet down. It also allows you to understand what your body needs—as well as what it doesn’t.

It’s probably not an accident that in most cultures (but not ours, for the most part) there’s a time of fasting. For some, it’s a day. Or a week. Or, like Ramadan, a month.

They seem to know something that we don’t here in our culture. There’s power in putting the brakes on constant consumption. There’s power in letting things get still to the point where we can sense things, hear things. There’s power in just shutting things down for a time—for the body, mind, and soul—and just getting quiet.

So, how do you feel? If you feel great, then great!

If not, I would encourage you to come to our FREE Wellness Dinner Seminar. We’ll eat a good meal together, and we will give you a ton of great information about how you can get quiet and take that next step to getting healthy and staying that way!

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