Yes, today, 14 November, is World Diabetes Day.
Why do we need a World Diabetes Day?
One in ten Americans is suffering from Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) right now. The rest of the world is not far behind. China has the same stats as the USA. That is enough reason to pause and think.
In cabinets and governments around the world, the prevalence is much higher, possibly topping 9 in 10 politicians. “Bloated cabinet” is getting a completely new meaning.
How come T2D was virtually unheard of a century ago and suddenly about half a billion people globally are affected?
No wonder we need a World Diabetes Day. Something’s gone dreadfully wrong.
What is more, in the next thirty years, that ratio is expected to rise to one in three Americans (and, presumably, the rest of the world).
That would be 3 billion people.
Diabetes is not just a disease. It is one of the leading killers in the world. Right now, it is the sixth leading cause of death globally and it is implicated the top three causes of death globally.
Never before in the history of humanity has one disease rocketed up the charts so quickly, nor affected so many humans. The sheer scale of this (real) pandemic is mind-boggling.
You’re probably sitting there, thinking: If our diabetic treatments are so good, why are the numbers so bad?
Great question!
It’s been almost a century since insulin was first used as a medicine to treat Type 1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is a disease of too little insulin. These people do well on insulin. Take insulin away from them, and they die in a short while.
What most people mean when they use the word “diabetes” is not Type 1 diabetes, but Type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is a complete misnomer. It should have been called anti-diabetes. It is caused by too much insulin in the blood. This was common knowledge until about the mid-1990s. Then a weird shift in medicine began to take root. Doctors were told to reduce blood glucose at all cost. Glucose was Public Enemy #1.
Treating Type 2 diabetes with insulin is a bit like using gasoline to douse a fire. You’re going to have a World Fire Day on your hands in no time flat.
Ka-BOOOM!
“Big Pharma at your service. Just take the blue pill and nobody will get hurt. Cross our (non-existent) hearts and hope to die.”
If you or a loved one is suffering from T2D, or pre-diabetes, or obesity that will not shift no matter what you do, please read on.
Of course, it’s not just insulin. Billions of research dollars have been pumped into the creation of new drugs for T2D. Every iteration is more cunningly designed to lower blood glucose while messing up other things deep inside the body. The latest craze about The O-Drug is merely one example. If you take this drug for some time, you impair your body’s ability to stabilise blood glucose and insulin levels for months, even years after stopping the drug. Hardly anyone is talking about this.
The main thing to understand about diabetes, whether Type 1 or Type 2, is that it is about insulin. The fact that both diseases manifest high blood glucose levels is somewhat confusing, but it shouldn’t be.
In T1D, glucose is high because there is not enough insulin to direct the glucose into the cells.
In T2D, glucose is high because the insulin push is being rejected by the cells.
This latter situation is called “insulin resistance”. Solve this, and you solve T2D for good.
Insulin resistance is the reason why blood glucose is high in T2D. Insulin resistance is also the reason why T2D patients are overweight or obese. It is also the reason why they have an increased risk for heart attacks or strokes or cancer. Lower insulin and you lower the risk for any of these conditions (and many more).
In 2020, Doc Frank and Doc Stef began an online course to help people reverse T2D and obesity. They’ve managed to help over a 1,000 people to do just that. In fact, these people did not just free themselves from disease, but also from drugs and despair.
Diabetes need not be a life sentence. You can get a “Get out of jail” card.
Here are some things that have helped people regain their sugar freedom:
1. Stop Eating Sugar
It seems obvious, but doctors don’t tell this to their diabetic patients. If you have too much glucose in your arteries, don’t put more sugar into your mouth.
Sugar whacks the body with a triple whammy:
- Increased glucose intake => Increased blood glucose levels
- Increased fructose intake => Increased liver fat
- Glyphosate in sugar => Death of beneficial gut microbes
Combining these three, sugar in the diet is the #1 problem to deal with.
2. Cut out starches
While starches do not harm the body in the same way as sugar, they still cause an insulin spike. It is the insulin spikes that help trigger insulin resistance. Cutting out potatoes, rice and pastas will help the body heal faster.
The formal term for a diet low in all carbohydrates is “ketogenic diet”. You may have encountered it under the term “Banting diet” or “Atkins diet”. A more extreme form of this is the carnivore diet (since animal products contain almost no carbs).
3. Fasting
The human body does not do well on three square meals a day. Maybe on big meal and two small meals would have been better for all of us. If our ancestors could survive on one meal a day (or less), so can we. Our bodies are well adapted to fasting.
You already fast every night (hopefully). Between super and breakfast is typically 12 hours.
There are many variations of fasting, like
- Skipping one meal (intermittent fasting)
- Skipping two consecutive meals (OMAD / one meal a day)
- Skipping three or four consecutive meals (ADF / alternate day fasting)
- Skipping more than six consecutive meals (prolonged fasting)
Generally speaking, the longer the fasting window, the quicker you will achieve your health goals, but it also gets progressively harder. Choose an option that works best for you. If you’re taking prescription medication, first consult with the prescribing doctor (or issuing pharmacist) before attempting fasting.
Fasting is the secret key to beating T2D. Get this right and you’re out of the woods in a couple of months.
4. Exercise
You probably think “Exercise” is a double four-letter word. You’ve been told the wrong thing about exercise all along. What you need to do, is to exercise in fat-burning mode, which means light to moderate exercise. Increasing your heart rate above ~100 bpm means you’re entering glucose burning mode, which defeats your fat burning goals.
Going for a daily, casual walk of 20-30 minutes is all you need. At no point should you be so out of breath that you cannot talk anymore. Then you’re “in the zone”. Do this 5-6 times a week and you will completely change your health.
If even this is too much to ask, start low and increase gradually.
5. Sleep
Poor sleep is a major risk factor for developing T2D. Practice good sleep hygiene (google it) and work on a regular bedtime that will enable 7 hours of sleep.
6. Medications
Many medications increase the risk of developing T2D. Few doctors know that statin drugs (used to treat high cholesterol) increase the risk of developing T2D by about 12% (link).
The list is long. You may want to google the names of the drugs you are taking to see which ones are a problem. Then ask your doctor to prescribe equivalents that are not diabeto-genic.
7. Supplements
A number of key nutrients lower the risk of developing T2D.
Chief among these is Vitamin D3, followed shortly after by magnesium. Neither is easy to get in sufficient amounts from food and thus are best supplemented.
For people with a confirmed T2D diagnosis, a daily Vitamin D3 dosage of 15,000 IU is needed (or ~100,000 IU / week). Daily elemental magnesium intake in the order of 500 mg is also needed.
Other nutrients, like chromium, Vitamin B1 & B5, vitamin C and more can also help reduce the risk and damage of T2D.
Among the herbs, the Cancer Bush (Sutherlandia) helps a lot to reduce blood glucose levels (by increasing sex hormone production).
If you would like to know even more, feel free to join the FIRE for Life online programme, run by Doc Frank and Doc Stef.
“FIRE” stands for Fix Insulin Resistance Easily.
Make it your mission to reverse your own T2D or that of a loved one in the next year. When World Diabetes Day 2026 rolls around, may you be one of the lucky few to have escaped The Diabetes Matrix.
To your (sweet) health!
The Team at Integrow Health
