Your Guide To Diabetes Remission Without Meds

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

Welcome to another episode of Reversing Type 2 Diabetes Summit 2.0. This is your host co-host Dr. William Hsu. And today I had the pleasure of interviewing registered dietitian Ashley Bizzell to to this program. So, Ashley, how are you? Hi, I'm doing well. Dr. Hsu, thank you for hosting me today. Oh, it's fantastic to to have a time to go over one of the I think one of the most interesting programs that we see in terms of reversing type 2 diabetes. Now. You're involved with a company called L-Nutra.

And tell us a little bit about about your background and then we can go into the program and the company and the program. Sure. Yes. So I'm a dietician and I have been for, gosh, almost 20 years, which is hard to believe. And I I've worked in lots of different realms of nutrition initially and then internal medicine practice and had the opportunity to work with patients with diabetes and, you know, glucose monitoring and things. And then I transitioned into the hospital where I spent, I would say, the bulk of my career and a lot of time in the critical care setting.

And so I got the opportunity to work with all different types of patients. But 2020 really drove me back home as everybody was kind of changing gears a little bit. Then I had children at home and I took a telehealth job doing more of your kind of back to the basics, just preventative nutrition. And I think that's something I really miss that interaction with patients long term, watching them make progress and meet their goals. And when I started with L-Nutra, it just seemed like the perfect fit.

It's this great nutrition technology to really help people

L-Nutra Health and Diabetes Remission Program 2:06

reverse what's going on and get back into a healthy place, instill healthy habits so that they can be successful and prevent disease. So speaking of the of the pandemic, it seems so long ago now where but while we were in the midst of it, many people may not realize this, but a lot of people gain weight. Their glucose control got worse and many people develop diabetes. And this is kind of the the epidemic after the pandemic. Right. And and this is now people are beginning to recognize it's a major problem. So.

So actually, it's really fantastic to have you on the show here. So tell us a little bit about about the program you mentioned, L-Nutra Health as a program. Yes. Yes. The diabetes. And so what is the program about? Sure. So L-Nutra Health The main concept of this program with diabetes is that we incorporate the five day fasting mimicking diet into your monthly routine. And so within those five days, we have very specific it's precision nutrition to help you reverse or go into remission with diabetes.

And in those off weeks in between, we work on improving your diet and setting smart goals together. So this, you know, the five day fasting mimicking diet has been shown within six consecutive months of use, just these five days in six months to show reversal in your insulin resistance, like a 60% reversal, two thirds of the members that were studied have been able to come off of some of their medication, some altogether. There's about 22 pounds weight loss and about 1.4 average A1C reduction, which is really impressive.

There's not anything else out there like it. So so you said lots of information there. So let's digest it for the listeners here. So you talked about diabetes remission. So it's a concept that's not very well known, right? Although the the title of our summit is called Reversing Type 2 Diabetes Summit. But a lot of our listeners may not have heard from their dietician or their physicians about diabetes, diabetes being able to be reversed or go into remission. Can you define what what diabetes remission means for our listeners?

Sure. You know, diabetes remission is really just being able to improve your insulin resistance. I think today we're so focused on just taking medication after medication. And as soon as that one stops working, we add on others

Defining Diabetes Remission 4:54

and it just doesn't feel like we're really getting better. But with this, we can really see improvement in your overall health and reduce those things so that we can prevent a lot of those long term complications that can occur and prevent having to add on extra medications that, you know, they are the potential to have negative side effects, too. So so it's really just ongoing definition. You you seem to be suggesting instead of adding more medications, we're actually taking off medications, right?

Yes. And instilling good eating habits and just overall improving your health, just giving you the opportunity to feel better and just live longer, be healthier. It'll I read an article about two years ago. It was written by the American Diabetes Association, the Endocrine Society, and many other international organizations that defined diabetes remission as getting your A1C down to less than six and a half or three months. And the most important thing is without the help of a medicine. And so your doctors, your your your family physicians are endocrinologists may maybe focused on getting glucose under control.

But now these international experts now are pointing to a new angle, and that is getting you to reduce your medication, even to stop your life. The reliance on medicine and that's defined as diabetes remission. And so it's really an exciting new end right after. Absolutely. Discovery of insulin for over 100 years right now, there are more than 12 different categories of diabetes medicine. Finally, we're looking towards a new goal where we could actually help people to get off their medicine and restore their true metabolic health and to really tackle the root cause of Type 2 diabetes.

Now, Ashley, earlier you also mentioned to do diabetes remission. It's kind of hard to use another medicine to get rid of another medicine. So you're proposing that through all new trials for diabetes program that you're reversing type 2 diabetes with natural means. And you mention something called the fasting mimicking diet. Can you tell us a little bit more about them? What does it come from and what does it involve? Sure. So the five day fasting mimicking diet was, you know, made or, you know, research.

I've studied with Dr.

How the Five-Day Fasting Mimicking Diet Works 7:30

Valter Longo and a group at the University of Southern California, and they have come up with this precision nutrition. It's very simple to follow. There's five days and each day is specifically geared for you to put you into its fasting state, something that would be really hard to do on your own. And so you get some nutrition each day and your body is kind of tricked into thinking it's facts fasting, but you're still getting some food, so you eliminate some of the obstacles of like dehydration and hunger, headaches, things like that that you might would face if you were doing it on your own.

So it allows you to have five days to kind of ignore that state of, you know, easing in to fasting and that fat burning a little bit of ketosis and then into autophagy where you see some of that cellular cleanup, that's really what autophagy is. It's kind of self eating so our cells can clean and rejuvenate. So that you can improve your overall health. And there's just five days. And how many in the program, how often do you repeat this fasting, mimicking diet? Sure. I mean, we know life happens, but we encourage you to try to do six consecutive cycles.

So each month, five days. And then after that, you know, we kind of look and see where you are. We work with your health care provider. We look at labs and then you can, you know, transition into a maintenance phase where every three months or so that we kind of take another one. So just to see so initially and there's been a bit shown with even just three consecutive months, but we do encourage at least six consecutive months to get those benefits. That was sharing earlier with that study with the 1.4 A1C reduction.

Right. So you're saying just five days of effort per month to get you the diabetes remission results? Wow. This sounds absolutely it sounds like a great deal, although fasting mimicking that also sounds challenging. Is it challenging for the members? It can be, you know, fasting in an ancient process that's been around or practice forever. But it's intimidating sounding. And I think even when sometimes our members get these practices, it's a little intimidating. And let's face it can be hard. You have to self cut yourself and that's what our dietitians are here for, to help motivate you and coach you along the way.

You know, we spend time giving you some kind of tips and tricks on things to expect in and how to get through things. So it's definitely doable. I find that my members share with me. With each cycle, it gets easier and easier that first time it's new, so everything's going to be a little bit you might have a little bit of anxiousness around that, but we help coach you through it and and it's very doable. So so it's actually not just for drinking water. So let's see why not. So let's say in the fasting mimicking diet, what's your what's in the product and the package.

Yes. So it's all plant based, gluten free, dairy free, and it's very simple. So when you open up, you'll get a large box and inside or each of your days and everything that you need to eat is within that box. So you've got soups in there that you add water to. And they can be, you know, they vary. There's vegetable. We have minestrone, there's a black bean and mushroom, there's crackers, there's olives, we've got little what we call h bars that have nuts. A lot of our food has a lot of nuts and a lot of healthy fats.

And that's part of kind of the composition makeup of each day and helping you get into that fasting state. But we have t we have an L drink, which is very specific to this fast to help preserve your lean body mass, which is something a lot of weight loss programs out there don't talk about. You lose this weight, but a lot of times you lose that really good metabolic tissue that we need to help support our metabolic health. So this l drink, which the dietitian share with our members, you don't consume it on the first day,

Medication Management and Clinical Oversight 11:30

but it's in days two through five helps your body to preserve that lean body mass while you're losing this weight during that week. So each day is very specific and we have little bars like the Coco Crisp bars that all of my members share with me are their favorite. They would love to consume those outside of the fast, but it just makes it very simple to follow each day. Wow. So you're talking about giving nutrition that gives you the benefits of of a prolonged fast. And you have some autonomy with that, too, with each day.

You know, you don't have to. We give suggestions on how you should consume it, but you can alter that so that it fits your needs and your schedule. We have some members that maybe they already practice the little time restricted eating, and you can fall within those windows of time to just make it as easy as possible for you. So some of our listeners are taking medications for that for their diabetes. In fact, on average, a person with diabetes takes six different medicine, right? So now, Ashley, since you mentioned that this fasting mimicking diet does work, who's going to manage the medications during this period of time?

Sure. We have members that come from different, different referrals. We have our experts are medical doctors that sent members to us and we work with their physicians on their medication. You know, if patients seem like they're doing really well and their labs are improving, we work with them to see, can we come up, come off of some of these medications. We also work with the telehealth provider. Love that life and with their members, too. And so we have this nice open communication so that we can have this kind of team effort to help improve the member's health.

I see. So either the physicians can you can work with with with the interest that individuals, physicians or that you have your own telehealth physicians that that could could kind of manage the reduction of medications. Is that right? Exactly. Yes, that's exactly right. So let's let's hope you a little bit more on your specific role right. As a dietitian. The dietitian coach is a is a critical role in this remission journey.

Support During the Off-Weeks 13:42

So so you explain how you support the members during the first five days that during that fasting mimicking diet, that fasting period. What about for the rest 25 days? What do the members do? You help the members? Yes. Yeah, that's a great question. You know, usually when we first meet with our members, their most they have most questions geared around the FMD and we talk about that, but we really approach them like we would, you know, any anybody, you know, we want to get to know them. You know what is.

Tell me a little bit about your background. Tell me about your weight history, your health history. We review their medications and we talk about things they've done, things that have worked for them in the past. And we talk about what motivates them, which is a really important tool to help them and those other weeks to to kind of figure out how to motivate them. We provide education, you know, those off weeks. We really try to encourage a mediterranean diet and we use a lot of Dr. Longo's longevity principles within that to help them achieve results.

But we support them with education. We have a web portal that we use to communicate with our members. They have access to us to ask questions and we can get them quick answers. They can text us emails and we have a lot of great resources that we can send to them to help provide them with maybe tools that they need, such as personalized meal plans, recipes I'll have members share with me like I don't have a lot of time to cook. I don't even feel like I'm very good at it. Where should I start? And so we kind of talk about some of the basics and just really meet them where they are and help them set goals to get to where they want to go.

So and we have lots of other tools too, that we use besides just the web portal. We send our members Dr. Longo's book, but we also send them a Bluetooth scale so that they can really track their progress from month to month to see body composition changes. Many of our members do have CGM or they have Glucometer, and so we can use those as tools to to see in the off weeks or during the FDA testing of what's going on with your blood sugar. And why did that happen? What can we do to improve those numbers?

And so there are great ways that we get to interact with our members so that so that they're empowered and feel more in control of their health. Yeah, actually what I had heard was that there was this high tech components of the fast American diet that was developed over at the U.S. University of Southern California. And then there is this high touch service that you and other dietitians are providing to the member. That sounds like a great combination of. You Also mentioned the the term longevity diet.

Right. The book that that Dr. Valter was were a vulture long ago was what had come up with. Can you tell us a little bit about this longevity, nutrition, What is that? What are some of the key principles that you would coach your patients for the rest of the 25 days while they're not fasting with their family? Sure. So Dr. Longo and his book, which is a great book, by the way, for anybody to read

Longevity Diet Principles 17:00

and great principles for not just people with diabetes to incorporate in their diet, prefer you and I as well. You know, he talks a lot about time restricted eating. And a lot of times we start with kind of a 12 and 12, 12 hours without eating and then 12 hours that you do eat. So like maybe an 8 to 8 window, eight and 8 p.m., you choose to eat then and then the other hours you don't. And we can narrow that window down to sometimes the 1410 works best for people as well. But we really encourage much less processed foods, Whole Foods eventually.

Not everybody's ready to do this right away, and that's okay. We start with small steps, then build. But I'm incorporating more non-starchy vegetables into your diet less red meat, less chicken, more fatty fish, just more plant based protein foods. There's so much protein and and other foods that I think a lot of times we forget about or maybe people don't realize, but a lot of our beans, lentils, seeds, a lot of our vegetables contain a lot of protein, too. So we just encourage a more balanced diet.

But with Whole Foods and we talk about kind of cooking methods and the importance of hydration and activity. Hmm. I think one of the biggest challenges that people have is when they go out, right. Well, at home, they can they can get to prepare things when they go out for holidays, for weekends, for different special occasions. What are some of the tips that you would provide to your members? Sure. And we're right in the middle of the holiday season, so there's lots of temptations to eat out and eat with family and friends.

You know, we encourage members to really take this mindset of when you're in a restaurant, not to be intimidated. You can still go and eat. I know it can be stressful when you have diabetes, like, gosh, what kind of have that's not going to affect my blood sugar, but, you know, serving the menu, see what's there. Not being afraid to ask questions like, can I have what non what vegetables do you have? Asking maybe for things on the side, sauces on the side looking for things that are grilled or roast or baked.

You know, those are the types of things we want to have. And think about, you know, the plate method. And if you're not familiar with that, that's

Eating Out and Holiday Strategies 19:30

where at least half your plate is non-starchy vegetables and then a quarter of your plate, your protein, a quarter of that, your starch. And so thinking about when you're putting together what you're going to eat, thinking that way, and also just some strategies like to help with overeating, you know, maybe getting a to-go box at the beginning and going ahead and putting aside half of what you or it's on your plate so that you don't overeat or maybe sharing an entree with a friend just so that, you know, you just aren't tempted to have too much.

Actually, you introduce many interesting concept in this interview, right? You introduce the concept of remission, how diabetes can be reversed. Right. So that's number one. Number two, you introduced to us the concept of a need precision and nutrition that gives you the benefits of a five day fast. And you've introduced to us this diabetes remission and program that that's intended with physician oversight. RDL reside that support and then a technology that's centered around this five day fast.

Well, what a fascinating a program that you have brought to us of if we have a listener who is struggling or is is even aspiring to get off their medicine, what what advice do you have for them at this moment? Yes, I would encourage them to reach out to us. You know, we're here and and are wanting to help. You know, anybody that's interested. We've seen the results, fantastic results from people that are newly diagnosed with pre-diabetes to those that have had maybe type 2, Type 2 diabetes 30 years or so.

Everybody's receiving results. And so I encourage you to go on to our website. It's www.l-nutrahealth.com and reach out to us.

Final Advice and Call to Action 21:30

We are happy to answer questions and talk you through it a little bit and just try it. Why not? If there's the opportunity to drive your diabetes into remission and to be able to come off of some of your medications, improve your health and promote longevity, why not reach out and try something? We're about to enter a new year. So it's a great opportunity to get in control of your health. Well, thank you. I think for those of you who is just tired of taking so many different medicine and thinking about how do I restore my true health with with with natural means, you can you might be interested to check out l-nutrahealth.com So that's actually on actually screen there that's and so fantastic Ashley, thank you so much for this time but I think our listeners can benefit a lot from just maybe listening to it one more time.

The content of this of this show. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for your time too, Dr. Hsu.