Eye on A Natural Approach to Blood Sugar Control

Introduction to Type 2 Diabetes Reversal 0:00

If you have type 2 diabetes or if you are susceptible to it, this is a lifetime condition. The levels of your blood sugar, though, can return to the healthy range if you could put together the five things that are essential for having good blood sugar control that thankfully are all in the realm of lifestyle, things you have some hope of having some control over. Now, having said that, type 2 diabetes is reversible. Let me talk about the numbers again because I want to be clear what we're talking about.

Type 2 diabetes defines an A1C of 6.5 or higher. If you have started out, let's say, with an A1C of 8.3, and you're able to get it down, let's say, to an A1C of 6.1, in that range now, that is considered the pre-diabetes range. If you were already diagnosed with type 2, and you get your A1C under 6.5, but it still isn't under 5.7, then that's considered remission. This is Doctor Talks, real talk from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most. This episode was recorded during the Eye Health Summit, where the world's leading experts shared breakthrough insights in vision and holistic eye care.

Today, I am delighted to host Dr. Beverly Yates, a naturopathic doctor and a leading expert in natural strategies for managing type 2 diabetes. Dr. Yates is known for her unique approach to empowering patients with lifestyle and dietary solutions. Dr. Yates has helped thousands of people regain control over their blood sugar levels through her programs, and she's also been featured in summits and conferences worldwide. So we are so honored to have you with us today, Dr. Yates. Hi, Dr. Banach. Thank you so much for the invitation.

I'm delighted to be here with you and eager to speak to the audience about this topic because it is so central to enjoying vision throughout your life. Absolutely. We know that so many systemic conditions can affect our vision, but I would say diabetes is perhaps the leading systemic condition that can have, unfortunately, a very negative impact on someone's vision and their quality of life. So let's just dive right into this. For some of our listeners who may not be familiar with diabetes and its different types, can you just very quickly go through what is, first of all, what is diabetes and what are the different types or categories of diabetes?

Sure, I'm happy to give people an overview of this. So diabetes in general is talking about blood sugar regulation and the ability to have healthy levels of blood sugar or unhealthy levels. Technically, type 2 diabetes is defined and distinct from pre-diabetes. And I will talk about type 1. So let's start with type 1, which used to be the most common kind of diabetes, frankly, by a lot. Type 1 diabetes is where your pancreas no longer makes a hormone called insulin. Now, the pancreas has very special cells in the islets of Longahans that make insulin, but for reasons that are still not always clear for an onset,

Understanding Diabetes Types and A1C 2:53

the system, the body's immune system can go on the attack and destroy the pancreas's ability to make insulin. And as such, it is an autoimmune disease. In other words, the body attacks itself. It's unfortunate in type 1 diabetes has been around for a very long time, literally for thousands of years. Many of the old medical texts of various traditions talk about this. The thing that's interesting about type one is in today's world, there's so much more support and help available, whether it's various kinds of insulin medications, insulin pumps, continuous glucose monitors, all the tech gizmos are so helpful so that people are much more aware of what the heck is happening with their blood sugar so they can stay out of danger.

Type 1 diabetes can be immediately life-threatening and absolutely has all the other things that are in common with blood sugar issues. So you really want to be supportive if someone has type 1 diabetes. Now type 2 diabetes is, it used to be classically and what we learned in medical school right back in the day was that for type 2, it was usually something that happened later in people's lives. Maybe they're 60s, 70s and 80s. A lot of us as we age, we lose good blood sugar control. In today's world, it is by far and away the more common kind of diabetes.

Type 2 has completely swapped type 1. Type 1 used to be only juvenile onset with an autoimmune disease that attacked the ability of the body to make insulin. And now type 1 shows up in adults, sometimes in their 40s and 50s, which I find shocking. And type 2 now can be in kids as young as eight years old. This is absolutely sustainable. So that's part of it. Now, let's give people a little bit of numbers so they know what we're talking about. A lot of us, if we see any kind of advertising, and you see a lot of people yapping about an A1C.

That is one, not the only one measure of blood sugar. That is an average measure, particularly over a 90-day window, so say a quarter of the year. of the average level of blood sugar that a person's body, specifically their red blood cells, have been exposed to. This level matters. So pre-diabetes is going to be an A1C of 5.7 to 6.4. As soon as A1C number is 6.5 or higher, it goes to 7, 8, 9, heaven forbid, 10, 11, 12. That's a much higher level of blood sugar on average, and that is the definition of type 2 diabetes, along with fasting blood sugar numbers.

If your fasting blood sugar number is 125 or higher, that also could put you in a type 2 diabetes category. Pre-diabetes would be a fasting blood sugar number of around 100. to 120, 324. So those two numbers together give you a really good picture as long as you aren't a really well-conditioned, well-muscled athlete. We'll talk about them later. They have a different situation. Thank you for that incredible insight and overview of diabetes was it's so helpful for people to understand there are different types And it depends on whether your pancreas is working properly and producing enough insulin.

And the second type too, is more so that the body's not responding to insulin correctly. Now, is that fair to say that Dr. Yeats, the body- That's fair to say that. This is about insulin sensitivity and insulin resistance. Yes, insulin resistance is sometimes synonymously used with type 2 diabetes. Now, we oftentimes think of, in the medical field, we think of diabetes type 2 as a lifestyle-driven disease, that there are factors within our choices that may be contributing to type 2 diabetes. So what are some of the most common factors that you've seen contribute to type 2 diabetes?

Or I guess a different way to say it would be, what are some of the root causes of type 2 diabetes? Dr. Banik, I'm so glad you asked me that question. It's one of the reasons why I've written my book and it's one of the reasons why I do the work I do. The things I observed from, say, the early days of my career in the 1990s to now, I've seen a huge shift in who it is has type 2 diabetes. or for that matter, pre-diabetes. I've seen a big expansion of people struggling with their blood sugar. Historically, classically, many of us in our training, what we learned was that type 2 diabetes is basically the patient's fault, that it is 100% in the wheelhouse of their own choices.

They just made better choices. If they exercised more and ate less, then they'd be fine if they took better care of themselves. That's part of the mindset or chatter, and it's old school, old style, and doesn't serve people in today's busy, stressed out world. Many of us live in a cortisol nation. A lot of people are working two, three jobs. Some people are bookended in the sense that they are caring for perhaps themselves, their children. If they have children, they might be caring for ailing parents, ailing siblings, whatever their household situation may be.

Root Causes of Type 2 Diabetes 7:28

And there's just not enough of them to go around. I want people to understand that sometimes type 2 diabetes happens independent of healthy lifestyle choices. I have plenty of diabetic patients who eat well, who exercise regularly, and they still have the problem. So I would love people to get rid of, let go of the need to blame shame and judge and to understand that it's more complex than that. Type 2 diabetes can come on in terms of root causes from viral illness, from way too much unmitigated stress, from really bad sleep.

There's a big overlap between type two diabetes, for instance, and sleep apnea and other kinds of breathing and sleeping disorders, people who've been in traumatic situations and had the opportunity to heal, etc. Plus, there's the environmental component, right? Toxic air and water. which contributes directly, and we know this in the scientific literature as well as our clinical experience, to insulin resistance. So there's a lot of different ways to get into the diving pool these days of type 2 diabetes.

Then there's the crap, I don't know what other word to use, that's in the foods with these bizarre additives, things that are meant to stimulate appetite that light up our brains with our reward centers. We're at a casino in Las Vegas. and people feel compelled to overeat often or their portions don't make sense. Sometimes they've got cravings from the chronic poor sleep or the chronic high levels of stress, all of which messes up blood sugar. There's so many ways to get to the type 2 diabetes diagnosis.

There's also the genetic component. This can actually run in families. I've seen that. My father's side of my family, my dad was one of 13 siblings, all of whom had some kind of diabetes. I asked you, when do you hear of 100% prevalence of a disease in a family? That's pretty rare, right? Yep, absolutely. There's a few of us who are not in that bin yet, myself included, and we're working hard to avoid it. Because now we know more than they did back in the day. But I just want people to understand it's not a one-size-fits-all phenomenon.

If it were, the numbers for diabetes would be going down. If judging, blaming, killing were effective healing tools, nobody'd have the problem. No, thank you so much for putting it in that way because I know a lot of people, they feel like it's their fault, right? That they develop diabetes because of something they did. But what I'm hearing from you is that there are so many contributing factors from genetics to environment to, yes, there's diet and there's other things and stress, which is a big topic that a lot of people or a lot of providers don't necessarily focus on when it comes to diabetes and managing it.

I wanted to ask you, Dr. Yates, so when it comes to diabetes affecting the eye, we've covered this on previous episodes, there are so many ways it can affect the eyes. It can cause diabetic retinopathy, it can cause diabetic papillitis, diabetic cranial nerve palsies that can lead to double vision. But in terms of organ damage from diabetes, other organs can be involved as well. What are some of the other organ systems you've seen most commonly involved in your clients and patients? And why is it that these organs get involved from diabetes?

Give us an overview. Sure. This is a great question. So as you've already covered, I'm sure when it comes to high levels of blood sugar, the vasculature, the blood flow in the eye is compromised just like it is everywhere in the body. And diabetes is the number one reason, all kinds of diabetes is the number one reason why people experience vision loss and go blind. So with that, in terms of root causes, we think where else might high blood sugar mess up the function of the body from a physiological point of view and then turn into something abnormal called a pathology.

So when we think about that, other organs that are severely affected by this directly are your kidneys, Diabetes is now the number one reason why people need dialysis and are under the care of constantly needing to filter their blood via a dialysis machine. The brain is affected. And we often call cognitive decline and Alzheimer's and dementia. Dementia is the bigger category. Alzheimer's is a kind of dementia as type 3 diabetes. That conversation is becoming more common here in the US. And internationally, it's more commonly called type 3 diabetes, not Alzheimer's, et cetera.

The heart is affected as well. So I'd like to have our audience think about this way. Your blood flow is supposed to get your nutrients to your cells and take the waste products out, right? So in that exchange, if you have high levels of blood sugar, think of it as things that are gumming up the blood, if you will, and making it not flow as easily, just to keep this simple. And so as such, I'm likening it to being little balls of Velcro in the bloodstream. And as such, when you get into the smallest blood vessels, like in the eye and the kidneys, where the most amazing exchanges are going on, this is where the compromise might be more obvious than in other parts of the body.

And it'll show up there first. It doesn't mean that the whole body isn't being affected. Are your other organs, like say your intestines or your lungs or your hypothalamus gland or your thyroid gland, are they being affected? Heck yeah. The body is all one unit, right? But some places may struggle in a more obvious way sooner. because the tiny blood vessels, the microvasculature, the capillaries is where the deed goes down, so to speak, and where the gumminess of the blood as

How Diabetes Affects the Eyes and Organs 12:40

your A1C goes up, as your fasting blood sugar numbers goes up, this is where things start to break down more obviously and more quickly. And that is really the root of the problem. Yeah, I love that analogy. I've never heard that before, actually. So I'm going to definitely borrow that from you, Dr. Yates, about diabetes, elevated blood sugar causing like a Velcro like effect. And actually, when it comes to the eye, because it affects those tiny little retinal capillaries, it causes the blood vessels to start to leak.

And so these blood vessels leak blood and fluid and proteins and lipids into the retina that are not supposed to these products are not supposed to be there. So I call diabetic retinopathy a leaky eye syndrome. Similar to many of us have probably heard of leaky gut, leaky brain, leaky heart, leaky skin. There is this condition or diabetes is one of the conditions that is like a leaky eye syndrome secondary to all of this. Almost the blood is very thick, very viscous and it just doesn't allow proper blood flow and it starts to leak out into areas where it shouldn't be.

So I thought I would just add that little tidbit there. So Dr. Yates, I wanted to come back to diabetes type 2. Now, a lot of people have this belief that diabetes type 2 is once you have it for life, it is irreversible. Is that true or is that a falsehood? So let's be clear what we're talking about here because I don't want anyone to be misled. If you have type 2 diabetes or if you are susceptible to it, this is a lifetime condition. The levels of your blood sugar, though, can return to the healthy range.

If you could put together the five things that are essential for having good blood sugar control that thankfully are all in the realm of lifestyle things, you have some hope of having some control over. Now, having said that type two diabetes is reversible. Let me talk about the numbers again, because I want to be clear. We're talking about. Type 2 diabetes defines an A1C of 6.5 or higher. If you have started out, let's say, with an A1C of 8.3 and you're able to get it down, let's say, to an A1C of 6.1, in that range now, that is considered the pre-diabetes range.

If you were already diagnosed with type 2 and you get your A1C under 6.5, but it still isn't under 5.7, then that's considered remission. Once you get your A1C below 5.7, so let's say you got an A1C of 5.6, in fact, I think you have a specific patient right now who's done it, great job to her, A1C of 5, A1C of 4.8, that would be considered reversal. So as soon as your A1C, after being diagnosed at 6.5 or higher, gets to 5.6 or lower, Now you've achieved reversal of your diabetes. You still are at risk.

So if whatever it was, the provocation, whatever the root cause or causes were for you to become a type two diabetic, you still need to be vigilant and diligent and protect your health as best you can. So yes, it is reversible. It is not curable. As far as I understand that word cure would mean once you've got it reversed, you don't have to think about it. And life is just awesome. And what's in the rear view mirror. Not that simple. But can you reverse it? Sure. Can you heal from it and improve your health?

Absolutely. It's never too late. I love that. I love that positive outlook because I think some patients, once they hear, oh, I have diabetes, it's like a burden that they're expecting to carry indefinitely. But what I'm hearing from you is that it is possible to lighten that burden. And maybe it's never completely gone. It should always be in the back of one's mind, even if one's in remission. You can go ahead and lead a very healthy life and enjoy life and not have any disability from diabetes.

It is possible to do that. This has been so far. We're chatting with Dr. Beverly Yates, the naturopathic leading physician for diabetes control or sugar, blood sugar control, I should say. We are going to take a very short break from one of our sponsors and we'll be right back. Are you suffering from migraine symptoms like debilitating headaches, light sensitivity, dizziness, or brain fog? Do you want to avoid medications or over-the-counter drugs that all too often cause unwanted side effects? If so, you may want to consider the migraine bundle designed by America's integrative neuro-ophthalmologist, Dr.

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Type 2 Diabetes Remission vs Reversal 17:28

Order now and take control of your migraine, naturally. Now, Dr. Yates, I wanted to now ask you, some of our listeners may be diabetic or pre-diabetic, or perhaps it runs in their family, so they know that they are at risk. What are some three of your top actionable strategies that you would recommend for better blood sugar control? Give us some three tips that anyone can institute starting today. Yeah, yeah, let me frame that in terms of a story of a patient that I've worked with who is just such a joy and such an inspiration.

I hope her story touches everyone's hearts. This is a person who has had type 2 diabetes for over 25 years. When I first started working with Pam, she was deeply fatigued and tired. Diabetes is one of those illnesses that has fatigue as a central feature. People literally don't want to get up off of the couch and they're often depressed or anxious, more commonly depressed. And that lack of energy makes it really hard to do the basic things of life, whether it's self-care, whether it's being animated and passionate about things that are going on, et cetera.

So it's a central issue. And so her journey started with where we identified some supplements that would support her mitochondrial recovery to her energy. I felt in doing the intake with her, the thing that was most missing was her energy levels. She was already on a strong diabetic drug. And she was getting some of the benefits from that. Her A1C had gone from being in the eights to the sevens, but she really wanted to be able to reverse it. And she was finding that the rest of the picture just wasn't helping.

She was on the prescription meds. So 25 years on the journey on the meds for diabetes, not getting the lifestyle support to be clear about what would matter. So here's the three tips. One is determining whether or not there are specific supplements that might really help you get that boost. so that if you are the person who can't get off the couch, who's just exhausted by just getting to the gym, never mind actually working out, you're saying no to social invitations because you don't have the energy to be around other people.

Consider supplements might really help you in a targeted specific way, boost your energy levels in a sustainable way. The other things we worked on with her in her specific case was finding out with her nutrition what foods really were slamming her blood sugar and putting her on the blood sugar roller coaster and which ones were fine for her that maybe she had taken out of her diet, having been told perhaps in a broad brush manner, oh, this food is bad for diabetics. But she didn't really know. She was actually quite stubborn initially.

She didn't want to use a CGM. And I'm always a fan of using a continuous glucose monitor. I love data. It's not just because I'm an MIT-trained engineer. It's because numbers let us be precise about our choices. So in her case, I was able to eventually get her to use a CGM. I planted the seeds. She eventually did that. That was after we were doing our primary work together. But good on her. But she began to realize that some foods were slamming her blood sugar and some weren't. And we should focus on eating nourishing amounts, good portions of the ones that were life-sustaining and not the ones that were the problem.

People have their own bioindividual responses to blood sugar. So to say to someone, oh, you should eat a quinoa salad with roasted cauliflower. What if quinoa and or cauliflower are a problem for their blood sugar? Sometimes people have unhealthy blood sugar reactions to otherwise healthy foods. This is why I much prefer a CGM over a glucometer. Many people, especially if they're long on a journey with diabetes, they're used to using a glucometer. Get that drop of blood, put it on a test strip, put the strip inside the glucometer, get the number and your reading, and you're good to go.

Sponsor Break 21:00

It's too imprecise and there's too much variability. Plus, come on, let's be real. This hurts. It's painful. And how many times can you do it a day, right? With the CGM, you can get continuous monitoring. But how many times are you willing to prick yourself to get that number? That pain, right? So people go, oh yeah, I checked my blood sugar. They ain't very willing to ask them. It's like once every day, once a week, once every four days, it's not enough. With a 24-7 readout of what your blood sugar is doing, especially when you're asleep, now you really know with precision.

What's working? What's not working? The next thing I would say is do all you can to manage what I call the trend gremlins of leptin and ghrelin and let me explain stress and sleep are intertwined. If you have a lot of stress, it is likely that you're going to be vulnerable that it will corrupt your sleep. If you have poor sleep, this means your body has lost that beautiful healing opportunity every night when you go to sleep to reset. And if your blood sugar doesn't reset overnight when you are naturally in a fasted state because you aren't eating, you aren't drinking, you're asleep, right?

Your blood sugar, whatever number was out when you had to bed, it should come back to a healthy number. Yes. Yeah. There's something wrong.

Three Practical Blood Sugar Strategies 22:18

And you need to know that. Again, having that CGM, the continuous glucose monitor, and thank goodness they're flying over the counter here in the US, this makes a huge difference. It's a game changer. Because now you're getting direct feedback about what's working and not working for you. And so in the case of this particular person, those three problems, nutrition, the stress sleep duo, really, along with her supplements was what made the most difference. For some people, it could be strength training, not necessarily just aerobic exercise, because frankly, some people work a little too hard.

It's strength training, building your muscles, because those are active blood sugars. Let me say that correctly. Active working muscles are blood sugar sponges. It just makes a tremendous difference when you put those together along with meal timing, eating your food at consistent times of the day. And if you're doing intermittent fasting, please follow whatever protocol is applying to intermittent fasting. You can absolutely get a hold of your blood sugar, but you need to know which of the lifestyle parameters are the most sensitive for you.

Wow, that is incredible. Some of these strategies most of us don't think about related to our blood sugar. I wanted just to ask you or highlight a couple of things you mentioned, Dr. Yates, the supplements. Now you said that for your particular patient, Pam, you realized she had some mitochondrial issues, so you put her on something for her mitochondria. The supplements you recommend, are they individualized or should people with diabetes basically take the same types of supplements to manage their blood sugar?

In the case of the work that I've done with people, it's individualized. Some people need more support. Some people need less. Some people have other confounding factors like, say, cardiovascular disease. The cardiac tissue along with your brain requires the most mitochondrial support because that's where the highest density is of mitochondrial. It's interesting, right? The mitochondria live inside the cells. They're an organelle, so they're a piece inside of a cell, and they're the powerhouse of the cell.

They are the energy factories of the cell. And if they are corrupted for whatever reason, we have to fix that. That's a central issue in healing, particularly with diabetes, particularly with cardiovascular illnesses, muscular issues. And I would argue anything where energy is fundamental underpinning, perhaps fatigue, et cetera. I've seen such tremendous improvement in people's care when we get that piece straightened out, if it's part of the puzzle. I'll just share a patient anecdote related to this.

I have a patient with diabetes who previously was not very well controlled. I think her hemoglobin A1c was 8.7 or so. She had that fatigue, obviously, but she also had a lot of cramps. She had a lot of muscle cramps. specifically in the lower extremities. And when I was treating her for something else, but I said, oh, why don't you try some supplements to help with the cramping, et cetera. And when she did take some of those supplements, again, they were personalized to her. She realized she had more energy, but also her cramping went away.

So patients may experience other symptoms. They may not necessarily directly link to mitochondrial dysfunction or perhaps blood sugar control, but it's important to speak with your provider about what may be best for you. The second thing I wanted to touch upon was the continuous glucose monitor. So I'll just share another anecdote with you, a personal anecdote. Before these monitors were only available through a prescription for people who had the diagnosis of diabetes, but now they are commercially available.

You can order one for yourself and I decided to do it just as an experiment because diabetes runs in my family and slowly my hemoglobin A1C numbers have been creeping up a little bit over the years. I said, let me just see what's going on. I had some incredible insights. I did it for two weeks. And they were foods that I never, ever would have thought would spike my blood sugar. And they were causing these huge fluctuations. Foods that I was eating regularly were causing these spikes. And I also realized something.

When I didn't sleep well, the next day, my blood sugars were all over the place, all over the map. So I definitely saw that for myself with sleep and specific foods. So it's important to get those metrics and really know how your body is responding. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm so glad you did that. I feel like that's part of self-care. And as we get the word out, more and more people are understanding how to use these tools. If you think you have a fever, if you're not feeling well, you use a thermometer, right?

What if you're trying to make sure your metabolic health is in a good place? What if you have a family history of diabetes? What if you're just curious? What if you're a woman who's going through menopause or a man who's going through andropause? It's a good idea to check your blood sugar so you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what it is responding to. You might be fine and worrying for no reason, and you might not be fine and unaware that you have a problem. Yeah. It's always good to have data, as you said.

I'm very data-driven as well. Dr. Yeas, we talked about a lot of different things that may affect blood sugar, whether it's from a big diet, sleep, stress, mitochondrial dysfunction. Now, what are some strategies based in stress reduction that you typically discuss with your clients and patients? Have specific things worked better than others for stress management for your patients? Yeah, I always encourage people to look at what is joyful in their life and what's a problem. What are the things that they embrace and get fun from and look forward to and what are the things they avoid or people for that matter and situations

Personalizing Supplements and CGM Insights 27:38

and do what they can. to mitigate against problems. Sometimes we can't avoid the difficult people in our lives, for instance, but you might notice that maybe your heart rate increases, right? Your pulse goes up, perhaps your blood pressure goes up, your blood sugar goes up. Any number of things might be in response to the situation we have at home or at work or in our community. In terms of daily practices, I really encourage people to have quiet time, whatever that may be. That could be prayer, that could be meditation, it could be yoga, It could be walks of nature.

There's lots of ways to fulfill that, but something that is of value to them. And I'll share a simple example from my own life. Quite a number of years ago, when I realized that my mother was so very ill, we came to understand that she had a diagnosis of lung cancer stage four. And that was an awful year in many ways. The blessing in the year was the fact that we had a heads up that something was wrong. And so I got to be really focused in loving my mother and appreciating her before she left this fleshly plane.

And in that moment, I was also running a clinic. I'm also married. I also was raising my children. They were in their younger years. There was a lot on my shoulders. There just really was a real thing. And there were literally days where I had no more than three minutes. That's right. 180 seconds, three minutes to myself. But during that time, I was intentional. And so I would do deep breathing exercises or take a walk up and down the street, whatever it was, but it wasn't intentional to just coalesce and bring my own energy in because I was well aware with the work that I do, how much energy was flying out.

And so I would share with anyone, if you find yourself in overwhelming situations, pick one thing, not 17 things, please. one thing you're going to do for yourself. It really grounded me. It helped me stay anchored and literally put one foot in front of the other when sometimes frankly it didn't feel possible. Dr. Yeas, that was so beautiful sharing your story. I'm sure it was a difficult time for you, but you found ways to manage and mitigate your own stress, which I think we all have to deal with stress in our own ways.

I always tell my patients, whatever it is you really love, whether it's reading, whether it's listening to music, whether it's dancing, cooking, whatever activity that you love, try to incorporate that as a daily habit, and that will help you mitigate periods of high stress. Is there any fun or surprising tidbit about diabetes or blood sugar control that you'd like to share with the audience? I think one of the most surprising things people find is that there's usually one thing out of the five elements that make the difference in the age protocol that they really are the most sensitive to.

For some people, it might well be nutrition. It could be portions, it could be cravings, or it could just be the kinds of things they're eating. Most people know to stay away from highly processed foods, like people aren't stupid. On the other side of that, though, now what? You still have a big umbrella. In that, I invite people to explore with tastes and flavors and cuisines that are different than what they're used to.

Stress Reduction and Daily Habits 30:38

Sometimes there's so much yummy food that is healthy for us that our body has a great response to, not because a chart somewhere said it was healthy, but because your body is telling you it's healthy. Your energy is up. Your mood is up. Your digestion is fine. Those foods are the ones that are saying yes to healthy blood sugar levels. The ones that leave you feeling bored, tired, that leave you feeling achy, that leave you feeling like your brain has fogged and left the building, things like that.

Those are the ones we really should look at. And a lot of people find that food sensitivities have a strong correlation with that whipsaw effect they might see on a CGM. A quick excursion up, a quick excursion back down, and back to baseline is OK. It's when you get off the big rolling waves, like you're out of the ocean or on a roller coaster. That area under the curve, to use a math term, the camel's hump, that's a problem because that's when your blood sugar levels have been exposed for a much longer time and a much higher level.

So look for that, friends. That's the ones you want to avoid. So I think for the people that I've worked with, their fun has been seeing that, oh, now I know this is why an hour after I have that for lunch, I want to take a nap. For two hours after I have that for lunch, I feel great. And as they start to understand what their body is telling them, then they can be a better detective on what will work for them. And they find a lot of times that they don't have to cut out all of their favorite things completely.

One of my patients, she discovered smaller amounts of something she loved was fine. It was the larger amount. So in her case, she loves rice, all kinds of rice. Many cultures focus on rice. If she could have now, A cup of rice, that's cool. What you can't have is three cups of rice. It was too much at one meal. Sometimes it requires being a detective and keeping a really detailed diet diary to see what are your responses? How do you feel after you eat this? Not immediately, not in the moment, because it may be something very tasty.

Think about how you feel an hour or two or even four hours after you eat that thing and just keep track of it. Thank you again, Dr. Yates, so much for this really eye-opening conversation. I learned so much. We learned about the differences between type 1 and type 2 diabetes and now type 3 diabetes that's being talked about a lot more. We learned about different root causes of type 2 diabetes and some really great practical tips on how to manage it using the Yates Protocol.

The Yates Protocol and Where to Find Dr. Yates 33:08

Tell us a little bit more about the Yates Protocol, your book that's coming out, and also if people wanted to reach out to you and learn more, how can they find you? Sure. I'm happy to share that. So the Yates protocol is a system that I've developed over the years of my clinical practice, and it involves the five steps of the Yates protocol. That's going to be nutrition, meal timing, managing stress, along with getting great sleep, and then exercise slash strength training with an emphasis on strength training.

Because as we build up our musculature, Then now we have a way to absorb blood sugar. So the second you put the demand on the body, your insulin sensitivity increases, insulin resistance is going down, right? So just to put you in a healthier place. The upcoming book will be released in January of 2026, and that's called The Yates Protocol, Five Simple Steps to Fix Your Blood Sugar and Reverse Type 2 Diabetes. The subline is make peace with food and never feel deprived again. Oh, I love it. I'm so looking forward to your book.

I can't wait to read it. I can't wait to share it with family and friends. You are a wealth of information. All right, friends. So if you would like to connect, you can find me on social media. You can go to my YouTube channel, which is at Dr. Beverly Yates, my name. You can also go to my website drbeverlyyates.com and naturalhealthcare.com, where I have programs and other ways to assist you if this is a part of your journey. Thank you so much for being a wonderful audience and attentive. Please watch and listen to everything Dr.

Banik is sharing with you. She's a wonderful expert. She cares deeply about people's eye health, and she's got the goods. So make sure you tune in to all the episodes in this seminar. And I also love how you put complicated, how you make complex ideas, make them simple and accessible. So thank you so much, Dr. Yeats for joining us. Thank you for tuning into Dr. Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your wellbeing.

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