Beverly Yates, ND
Hi. Let me share with you a story about Len, a client of mine who made wonderful progress in taking charge of his type 2 diabetes and working directly on reversing it. He was eager to be better, to have better health because he wanted to live a long, happy, healthy life and not have a whole lot of complications or consequences later. And in his own words, quote, I feel so much better now since working with you and knowing what to do and what not to do. End quote. So Len served in the military for over 30 years, a proud member of the military, and he put everyone else’s needs before his own right. He put their needs first. This is a common story when it comes to the development of type 2 diabetes and prediabetes. And in his case, whether at work or with his family, prioritizing other people’s needs meant that his particularly stressful work left him vulnerable. It left him with type 2 diabetes. So for years and years, he had to be ready to do his job at all hours of the day and night at a moment’s notice and was not able really to focus in a practical way consistently on his own self-care. This left him vulnerable in a way that I see is commonly a backstory for people who have type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes. They’re often looking out for the well-being of others at the expense of their own health. He’s been so busy over the years, in fact, doing things for others and not for himself. And he was coming to realize now, in this moment in his life that, hey, wait a minute, where did my own self-care go? Where am I on my own priority list, my own to-do list, right? He was eager to finally put his own needs first and to make his self-care his priority. So he wanted to avoid what happens if you don’t take care and take action with type 2 diabetes and make meaningful improvements right now. He enrolled in the 6-month Yates Protocol Health program for blood sugar control.
And he was realistic, he knew that he needed more time to put the pieces together for his own health puzzle with my guidance. Specifically, he knew that he could not do this on his own. After all, he’d been trying to do it by himself for years, or with the help of his doctor, nurse, and health team but it hadn’t worked. You know, sometimes you just have to face the fact that what you’re doing hasn’t been working. He was also using a CGM already, a continuous glucose monitor, which was really a helpful tool. That biosensor provides precious data and insights, right? Actionable insights. However, in his case, no one had explained how to make the blood sugar level health data that was coming from that CGM really make sense and tie it to his lifestyle, especially helping to untangle how nutrition, stress, and sleep were affecting his blood sugar levels. So we had all this data, all these numbers, but it didn’t really actually make sense to how he lived his life. That connection was yet to be made. He was pretty much left on his own, in fact, to make sense of these blood sugar numbers reported by the CGM, the continuous glucose monitor. And guess what? It was confusing. Of course. Right. Just numbers. The blood sugar numbers weren’t making it clear to him about what to do and what not to do. That was our key work together. He was so frustrated. Completely understandable. Right. So once he enrolled in the protocol program, his lab test results showed an altered stress response via his abnormal cortisol levels throughout the day and night. This helped reveal a key piece of the puzzle, his health puzzle as to why his blood sugar levels had remained high despite using prescription medications faithfully over the years. And following his doctor’s advice to the letter.
He began a specific set of supplements designed to address his adrenal stress response and his long-term blood sugar issues. This was intended to support shifting his eating away from highly processed foods, convenience foods, fast foods, and back towards healthy and nutrient-dense foods. So there are the five steps of the Yates protocol to establish and sustain healthy blood sugar levels and heal from the damage of type 2 diabetes and prediabetes. Those five steps are nutrition, meal timing, stress, sleep, and exercise strength training. In our work together we focused on three of these five steps in the Yates Protocol Health program for achieving these healthy blood sugar levels and we used the blood sugar levels reported by the CGM to help guide the way to shine a light on this, making it quicker for him to see results and easier to discover what to do and not to do. Test don’t guess, keep testing those blood sugar levels is going to give you wonderful information that is actionable insights with that CGM the quicker way to get it done. So the path toward a healthier, active lifestyle became clearer by applying the steps of the protocol to what his CGM was reporting as his blood sugar response to his actual lifestyle. The steps that were key in this case were nutrition, meal, timing, and sleep. So by emphasizing what he was eating and drinking and making good sleep habits a priority, it helped to reinforce the need for his own self-care. This became a very positive feedback loop.
He could see that the changes he was making were changing his blood sugar and it was moving in the right direction. There was some sliding in the wrong direction, some sliding in the right direction, the usual seesaw of life. But the trend overall was towards that healthy range. And over time he found that he stayed in range longer and longer and longer. In fact, he had the last time that we met a solid two weeks of range. And, you know, CGM lasts for 14 days. So the entire time for two weeks he’d been in range. It was just such a beautiful transformation to see. This is what happens when people can focus on something. Get that feedback from the data and the guidance to interpret it so they know how this affects how they live and the choices that they can make every day. You can only control the things you can control. Sometimes you can’t control the wild cards of life, but with the help of the program applied to using the numbers to work with you rather than as a tool to beat you up. Instead, it’s a tool to lift you up in the hands of a person who can actually guide you on that journey.
So his dedication to his health actually paid off. And by the time we finished his initial 6-month program, he had his nutrition dialed in. He was feeling very pleased with himself, well deserved, sir, well deserved, and proud of his accomplishment because it had really been a journey. Right now, he’s learning to cook for himself and how to create healthy meals at home that are simple, quick, and delicious. Additionally, he also knows how to navigate when he leaves the house, right? Those social moments when he’s eating out or he’s at a party so that he doesn’t get knocked off track by the options when he’s not at home. This is a common scenario for many people as they leave the house. It can be really challenging to stay on that healthy track, but there are ways to maneuver, manage, and plan ahead so that you can get what you need from it and still enjoy the company of other people. Right? This is always a good goal. So right now he’s on track for a healthy, active, energetic life and freedom from the long-term complications and serious consequences of type 2 diabetes. So I’m so glad that you specifically are here at the summit. Thank you for joining us. Kindly share it with anyone else you think could benefit from this information. I hope that you find encouragement, inspiration, and insights to help you on your health journey. I’ll see you later on after some of the episodes today. Take care.
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