How Pam Transitioned: From Cravings To Healthy Choices

Introduction and Summit Welcome 0:00

Welcome to another episode of Reversing Type 2 Diabetes Summit 2.0. I'm your co-host, Dr. Will Hsu. Today I have the distinct pleasure of inviting my co-host for the Summit here, Dr. Beverly Yates here. Dr. Yates, welcome. Hey, thank you so much for being a co-host and, you know, interviewing me. I'm loving the fact we have so much synergy in our work and in the people we serve. And frankly, the point of view that we come to this with. You know, you're no stranger to this. I think, you know, you know, our audience and our our listeners very well.

They are motivated folks who want to take control of their own diabetes. So being on the co host means that you are an expert in this subject matter. You have would love to know a little bit of your background because you're always hosting and so we always see you introducing other people. Tell us about your journey to to to this current state of practice. Yeah sure. I'm happy to do it. So I'm an experienced licensed Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine, 30 plus years clinical experience. Part of my journey started out with my scientific training AM90 electrical engineering degree, worked in Silicon Valley, still loved technology and science, and now with a approach that's focused on what can natural medicine do safely and repeatedly, you know, it can't help but notice how much it shines when it comes to the area of chronic illnesses in diabetes.

Is so lifestyle sensitive right? So part of my journey is the fact that my parents when I was a little girl, I was about a year old baby, Right? They divorced. So I did not grow up with my biological father in my life on a regular basis. What I did find, though, when I reclaimed that relationship as an adult was that he was one of 13 siblings.

Dr. Yates' Background and Diabetes Motivation 1:58

So all 13 of them, if you can believe this, Will, they all had type 2 diabetes or some other kind of diabetes, Type one diabetes pre-diabetes. I mean, whose family has 100% prevalence of an illness. So then that gave me the wakeup call. Yeah. This is personal to you. It's personal to me. The other thing that I noticed from the 90's to the 2000s was seeing a lot more people come in my clinic who had blood sugar problems, and that was part of that rising tide we've seen. It's an international phenomenon.

There's so many more people now with type 2 diabetes, there's over 500 million people with type 2 diabetes. It's shocking to me these numbers so that with the personal interest professional, Will, here we are. You know, as amazing that number is there are a few other numbers that that that I think is quite astounding here in the United States over the over 200 million people have some sort of pre-diabetes. I mean, think about that, right? So they are on their way to diabetes. Another number that I've I've seen around being published is that right around the turn of 2000 was when there are more people affected globally by overnutrition and then under nutrition and power and nutrition, I don't mean optimal nutrition.

I mean like just write bad but too much, right? Yeah. And so this is astounding. And so tell us a little bit about about your practice. We would love to to learn. But in addition to the personal passion, the people you take care of, what's your clinic? What do you take care of? Yeah, the people that I serve now are people primarily who have diabetes of some kind, blood sugar issues, lack of glycemia control, hypoglycemia. There's just this regulation for their blood sugar, whether it's too high or it's too low or it just, you know, ping pong between those points, along with people who have heart disease or sleep apnea, stress related issues that often lead to diabetes.

Right. There's this this perception I know you've seen it clinically in your work. There's an assumption that there's a very judgmental streak when it comes to type 2 diabetes. People assume that folks have party their way to it, that they had a great time and in fact, that they wake up every morning with the thought, What can I do today to screw up my health? I've never met anyone like that, but I have found those that there's a really hardworking people whose health has crashed, whether they are first responders, members of the military, single parents, people who are really stretched too thin, caregivers. Right.

And as a result of other things going on in their life, maybe they're working two or three jobs. They might wind up with this illness. And then there are people who do neglect their health. They don't do any self-care. They may not know what are the people, what are the pieces, rather, that are really sensitive for their own self care. It's part of why I developed my protocol, because that's the motivation is to make this understandable and doable. This is amazing way to think about as many people are affected by this metabolic condition.

It is said that the most common symptom of somebody with type two diabetes, a lot of people will fill in the blank, but the studies actually show is actually nothing right as they go about their days. There is such a high end diagnosis rate. And I'm hoping by by the fact that our listeners listening to this specific podcast, maybe they already know that they have diabetes, but about 20, 25% of the people actually want to walk around not knowing they have diabetes. So that's a that's a big one. So certainly like Dr. Yates and your family, you have strong family history.

We would also ask our listeners right to to make sure to tell their families and friends that have high family history to to check it out. It's very simple to learn about that. Now, I know that both of you and I subscribe to the holistic approach to to health and where we don't just give one medicine or suggest one one intervention, but we believe in this holistic approach to health. And and I you have a set of principles you mentioned earlier,

The Yates Protocol Overview 6:02

love to love to hear hear about them. Absolutely. So over the years on, working with the people that I've served, I've developed what I call The Yates Protocol. And in fact, I'll be working on a book this year and writing the manuscript for that. And in The Yates Protocol, there are five steps that are before. You go into that Protocol, Can you can you share a little bit about what's the title of the book going to be or that's a secret? Well, right now, our working title is The Yates Protocol five No Shame Steps to Fix Your Blood Sugar and Eat the Food You Love.

Wow. It can be done. I'm going to be the first one to buy the book. Great. Great. So in putting this together and packaging it up, it's forced me to use that engineering background for systems, Right. And to think about what are the systems that are at play in the body and then what are the systems and how we behave in our social lives and putting those together so people can succeed rather than struggle. So the five steps, the five no shame steps revolve around nutrition. Nutrition has got to be the bullseye, the target.

I think we all know that meal timing, sometimes people make mistakes about meals and you know, if they don't understand what's sensitive about meal timing for them, they won't have success with good blood sugar. Right. The next pieces will be stress. Stress, absolutely. Hijacks blood sugar. And many people are really are not taught about that factor, whether it's stress that we understand as stress, it could be that they've been they're divorced, they've got a new job, they've moved, they've had a catastrophe unfurl.

They were in an accident, they had a surgery. Any number of things could be stressful. Make that difference in your blood sugar. And if you have a chronic history of trauma, that's a factor, too, right? We talk about sleep. Sleep disorders are famous, particularly sleep apnea, for being a reason why someone winds up a type 2 diabetic. That metabolic mayhem that can go on with, say, a sleep disorder can completely cross over and cause a problem with blood sugar control. And then, of course, exercise.

And let me say this caveat you cannot out exercise a bad diet. In other words, exercise is great. It is a necessary part of the puzzle. If you're in a lot of pain with my protocol, you don't necessarily have to exercise. You can have success. So if you are immobilized, if you've been injured, if you're in pain, please don't give up hope. I got you. We figured this one out. If you can exercise, you want to build your muscles. So I would say strength training, more so than just generic exercise building that muscle mass is essential for success.

Now, I like the phrase you can. What did you say about exercise? You cannot out exercise at that time. But you can exercise your bad diet. And also I would use that, I would say you can always, you know, I'll eat your prescriptions right. So so let's come back to I mean, there was such a good point about the exercise part and why why do you think now everybody hear this right? You got to exercise. Got to exercise. But it's also I mean, there's certain people that they love to do it and there are certain people it's such a barrier.

And how do you get your your patients, your clients to to just take a step forward? You know, that's a great question. Let's talk about that. We need to unpack it.

Nutrition and Meal Timing Strategies 9:26

Right, because I do think this is where a lot of people fall off the cliff. They have the best of intentions, but their willingness to actually do it, for those of us who aren't athletic, like I'm an athlete, I played every sport I had access to. I'm a Title nine baby here in the U.S. The laws changed. Girls had much more access to sports, and I absolutely went through that door. But that's not everybody's jam, right? They might not really like the sweat. So I tell people to think of it like you did as a kid for chores.

Your parents told you probably that you didn't need to like it. You just needed to do it. And so exercise needs to be in that category. It's like bathing your body, washing your hands, or you eat. It's an essential, life affirming activity and if you want to be alive and well, you got to exercise. And, you know, strength training is the cheat code because those active working muscles are blood sugar sponges. So it just makes it possible for you to be successful. So that mindset change is actually really critical, right?

You think about exercise not as in the luxury, but as everyday things that you need to do, like brushing teeth or flossing or things like that. I mean, no, I don't know. I mean, nobody goes out of their way to enjoy doing that. But but we do it because it's a necessity. Exactly. Absolutely. You know, we if we want to have ourselves to live long well and have a quality of life, to be active for ourselves, perhaps for children or grandchildren, nieces and nephews, you know, whatever is important to you and your social world, then we have to put that investment in.

So you're going to invest in your musculature. Are you going to invest in nutrition? You're going to invest in your sleep. You're going to invest in your stress responses. Right? And you're going to invest in understanding how sensitive meal timing is for good blood sugar control. And with those investments, it'll pay you back that way. Your health span, the amount of your time you're on this earth, that you're healthy equals your life span. Otherwise you run the risk of. So many people have shared with me that they really wish that they'd understood that they might live a long time, because if they'd known they were going to live that long, like into their seventies, eighties and nineties, they would have taken better care of themselves when they were much younger.

I mean, there was a saying that you got to think about your body as if this is your only car that you'll ever have this life like, Wouldn't you want to take care of that car right? Absolutely. People would, right? They'd get. That. But because the body has such an amazing ability to regenerate and to repair it, sometimes we just leave it and not take care of it. So let's go to number two. Right. Dr. Yates, a protocol on nutrition. There has been such a huge debate in the in the metabolic community about, well, what's a good diet and love to hear Dr.

Yates protocol of nutrition. Yeah. So my protocol on nutrition, what I've seen the most successful for people consistently is to dial in on your bio individual response to your blood sugar. Right. You need to find out what's working for you. Some people can focus in on a visual strategy where, like, say, half their plate is leafy green vegetables, other kinds of vegetables, but focusing in on the higher fiber vegetables because those are the ones will be the most blood sugar friendly. You know, that fiber is like your muscle is the blood sugar sponge.

Right. And then a quarter of the plate be a protein and then a quarter of the plate can be complex resistant, slow burning starch, you know, beans, peas, legumes, things like that. Other people can juggle this a little bit more. Some people can have more in the way of lean protein, healthy proteins, and absolutely the same amount of the vegetables being at least half of the plate and a smaller amount of carbs. Some people can eat more in the way of healthy, nutritious, fully vitamin mineralized, you know, actual food, carbohydrates and be okay, you know, particularly like chickpeas, lentils.

They're just so blood sugar friendly. They have plenty of protein in them. They've got the healthy carbs, they've got the fiber. They're beautifully packaged. I mean, it's like a major nutritional nugget, you know, And I think they taste good. I found that those combinations work really well and people can add in healthy fats. So they need to be mindful of how much fat they're consuming and whether or not it's a poor quality or a healthy one. Well, that's that's good. And I bet in your practice, you help the individuals to to figure out what type of what their body type and what their responses are and kind of the dietary regimen.

That's fantastic. We hope that you will share some of that secret in your book. Gladly. Gladly. I want people to be able to still eat their cultural foods, because as you probably noticed this with health professionals, we often as a group will prescribe stuff to eat that it doesn't taste good. People can't succeed more than two weeks on it because it's nasty. They don't want it. Very true. Now let's go to number three. It's the meal timing now. Now, you're very progressive on this because most of the people's debate is what you eat, but you're talking about when you eat also matters.

Let's go there. Yeah. So in meal timing and I have one story of a woman I worked with. She's here in the San Francisco Bay area. She has a Italian restaurant. And this lady was, you know, short, petite woman. It was almost as wide as she was tall. She had sleep apnea. She had type two diabetes, high blood pressure, an unfriendly cholesterol profile. She also had heartburn and VRD, Gerd Gastroesophageal reflux disease. She had some other illnesses, but I'd say those were the top five. And in her case, no one had talked to her about meal timing.

So she would have this amazing but really heavy, very calorie and dense Italian meal from her restaurant around 1130 at night and then go to bed at midnight. Now, her husband was super lean. It worked for him. So supposedly, and I'm going to say worked in quotes because I didn't he wasn't my patients. I'm not sure it worked for him because we can't look at someone to know if they're healthy. But for her, clearly this was a disaster. And so I was like, you know, look, you're eating so late in the day, it's wrecking your blood sugar.

It's probably exacerbating whatever was going on with your sleep disorder. And on top of that, I'll bet your heartburn and gastroesophageal reflux disease are because you're eating this meal, you're going from vertical gravity is helping your stomach. Now you're horizontal. A half hour later, all that food is sitting there in your stomach pushing right against reports, I guess here comes all that stomach acid. Of course you have heartbreak. So I made a believer out here. I said, give me a week. I want you to move your meal up to 6 p.m..

Just move it up. You're in a restaurant, you're in charge, It's your show. And she did. And she was like, Wow, I feel so much better. I was like, See? And so we found, you know, of the five things in my protocol, I find two or three are essential for blood sugar control. And if we get a handle on it, two or three, everything else comes, comes along with it. Meal timing was key for her progress. Yeah. And we're seeing a lot of literature coming out on time, restricting eating, especially those who eat outside of those physiologic window.

When you restrict that time of food consumption, especially, give yourselves a few hours before you go to bed to be too free. It just does wonders, right? There is weight loss, there is visceral fat loss. There is blood glucose control that that improves. So and it's not even about eating less. It's just simply the timing of this right there. Absolutely. Yeah. If got a chance to rest when it's supposed to be resting, you know, if you put a big meal in right before you go to sleep, this is when your digestive organs are looking to do their own repair and restoration and refresh.

They don't want to do heavy lifting while you're asleep. So they're not getting the rest of the repair they say they generally need to go through. Well, very, very insightful. I mean, some people call intermittent fasting, some people call it. Right. A specific time restricted eating. But the meal timing.

Stress, Sleep, and Exercise for Blood Sugar Control 17:10

Right. Easy to understand. This is very, very helpful. Let's go to the fourth one. Right. This is what I think all of us experience, especially come out of the pandemic, the stress and the trauma and and all this. But the question is, what do you do about them? Will you go to the doctor? Yes. Protocol. Do you how do you advise our listeners to de-stress? Do you have what are your insights on that. Though? Some of my experiences with folks, you know, it's really been a wonderful journey and I thank all the people that I've ever worked with.

I've learned so much, and in that I've learned that what is stressful to one person might not be stressful to another, right? Someone who is a mediator, somebody who is able to help people untangle conflicts is fine with conflict. It doesn't stress them. Other people have thought of a conflict and they're out the door. You know, they don't want anything to do with it. Right. So the person who is comfortable conflict is not stress. Their blood sugar is not going to spike in that situation. Someone else who is not comfortable with conflict, their blood sugar is going to spike in that situation.

And so sensitive that's true is to help people identify what are your triggers? What do you find to be stressful? You know, do you find the news informative or does it stress you, for instance? Well, that's really so I get I guess all the old philosophers say that. Know thyself, right? That this is kind of you kind of really learn as we as we age. Hopefully we get to learn about what our triggers are and how do we address those. The last one. But nonetheless, sleep. Sleep is something we suffer as a society and we all have, you know, mobile devices that we kind of carries with us everywhere we go.

And a lot of times intrudes into our sleep cycles. And and not only are is that so prevalent in our population, but teenagers especially, I don't know if you agree with that, that that's a major challenge to to their their health. Absolutely. It's a huge challenge to our kids. You know, my children are in their early 20 now. They're young adults. You know, one just graduated from college, Another one is well on her way in in having gone through this moment with the advent of smartphones and having them both as devices for connection as well as safety, you know, like we are you do I need to pick you up from different spot when they were in school things like that social media and the craziness that goes on with that.

You know we are in quite a moment right now. And I think that for all of us, whatever age we might be, we need to protect our sleep. Certainly for our youngest folks in our teens, teens are like toddlers. In my observation. They need a lot of sleep, 10 to 12 hours of sleep a day, right As they start, as they form their adult self, their reproductive window opens, their social world changes, they're separating from their parents. These are all normal developmental milestones. But in that moment, there's nothing about that that, you know, our physiology was expected.

They handle the moment of a smartphone. So we all have to be smarter about it and, you know, turn the notifications off like I do whenever I get on something, because invariably we probably all notice this. The second you're trying to focus, your phone goes nuts. You know, I set it up so my notifications are off at night and only a handful of people like my children and my husband, if they needed something they can make, they are in emergency listed so they can burst through and nobody else gets through.

I protect my sleep. I will do what I say. Wow, this is so, so helpful. Hints here. I think that the guardrail right to protect you, your house and your family. So so we go through nutrition, we go through meal, timing, stress, sleep, exercise. That sounds like that sounds like a full time job. Dr. Yates, all of our listeners are going to say, we've got time to pay attention to this. Yeah. That's a great question. You're right. I'm sure some people are thinking that's over. Those of you thinking that here's the deal.

There's a few things you should keep in mind, if that's your thought. One is, do you really want to spend your rest of your years where most of your time is spent with medical and health professionals? Or would you rather have that freedom to live your life the way you want to have time and the energy and health to go for walks, hikes to go fishing, to go camping, to read books, to hang out with your friends, go to restaurants and parties like would you like to have a robust life, however it is that comes up for you, right?

The other thought that comes to mind is no matter what we do or don't do, we're investing in something. We've been investing in health or in not being well. And if we're investing and not being well, we'll have so much less energy, less mental clarity or moods. People probably may not want to necessarily be around us because we're miserable. There's just a hole downward spiral. They can go with this. So I say, wherever you are, that's okay. Embrace it and understand that if you take consistent small steps, that's the way we make progress.

It's not going to be one big heroic sprint that only works in the Olympics. And the people in the Olympics who run the sprint are in marvelous shape and they've worked on that for years, if not decades. Right. For the rest of us, small incremental improvements aren't going to make the distance the difference, rather for the long term. You mentioned the two terms I up with. I like to end with this concept here. There is life span and there is health span and you're a big proponent of health spend.

Educate us a little bit about the difference. Yeah. So I think for a lot of us, you know,

Healthspan, Resources, and Closing Remarks 22:48

if we particularly if we are in tune with our biological families and if you're adopted and can get that history, at least find out what the health history was for your family, genetically that's useful. So if you have a sense of how long people live in your community or in your family, that gives you a sense, Right. And if you know that they've had various health problems along the way, whether it's asthma or osteoporosis or if it's various kinds of diabetes, if it's heart disease, if it's cancer, whatever it may be, it gives you a sense of where the vulnerabilities might be in your genetic tree.

But the thing about genes is that they're very sensitive and they respond incredibly well to lifestyle. And so if your lifestyle and your environment are healthy, you are much more likely to enjoy your health for the entirety of your life. Many people find out that they're healthy part of their life. Their health span runs out long before their life. Their life ends, the lifespan, right? So I think it's time to start talking to the public and to have some thought leadership around the idea of a health span equaling a life span.

So if you live to be 89 years old, you're healthy the whole way. If you are so blessed to live, let's say to 97, you know who wants to be 97 and sick? Wouldn't you rather be 97 healthy and vibrant and one day you just don't wake up? Like for me, you know, who wants to die in a hospital? If you can avoid that just one day, you're just done. No drama, no a whole lot of expense and history and all the rest of that. You're just done. You had a great life and you're done like that. I think that's a reasonable goal.

That's a blessed life there. I think many of us with a desire to very much for that, Dr. Yates some of our listeners are going to say, well, this this doctor describes my kind of my direction is it's in sync with my philosophy. They want to find out more about your practice where where to find you and where to follow you on social media if there is. Tell us about that. Sure. Sure. So you can go to my website which is naturalhealthcare.com. Again, I'll say one more time natural spelled N A T U R A L and then health care just like it sounds H E A L T H C A R E naturalhealthcare.com.

And you can find me on youtube and Instagram at literally at sign @drbeverlyyates. @drbeverlyyates. I'm available. They're also on Facebook. But those are my primary accounts. Dr. Yates this has been such a pleasure not only to interview you and to get your take on this diabetes epidemic, but also just to be a co-host with you on this Reversing Type 2 Diabetes Summit. What an honor. What a pleasure. Thank you. You're very welcome. Thank you, Will, for being a partner with me. I really have enjoyed this and looking forward to helping more people reclaim their health.