Introduction & Insights from a Discussion with Dr. Frank Tortorice, MD - show #2675
There is said to be one hundred million people in America that don't know they are pre-diabetic. 84% of them have no idea that they're on the road to becoming diabetic in five to10 years. That’s a third of the population. So to say this is an epidemic is probably an understatement.
Many people with type two diabetes could reverse it if they understood how, especially early on. Before a formal diagnosis of diabetes type 2, the odds are very good. If they’ve had type 2 diabetes for less than a few years, (depending on whether or not they have co-morbidities) the odds are reasonably good. If they've had it for a number of years, it may be a little bit more challenging, but not unreasonable.
We are talking about major lifestyle changes and using medicines in a supportive way. There are people who were on high doses of insulin multiple times a day, who were able to get completely off of insulin in less than three months, some in six weeks. That being said, if you're on insulin, don't go do this on your own, only under the care of a practicing endocrinologist or medical doctor.
Many people that have been on medication come seeking a different way. We approach this in a healthy manner. We don't pull them off all of their meds, rather we wean them off medications gradually, as their sugars allow. We sort through their lifestyles to make sure that what we're doing is a good fit for them. It's done in a collaborative and personalized manner. When the blood sugar is high, it's a very inflammatory process to the body.
A lot of people think that their blood glucose is a major determinant of inflammatory risk, but it's actually the insulin. Cellular senescence is brought
on by a lot of different actions that happen in the body. We try to keep the blood sugar as stable as possible because when the blood sugars go up and down, the body gets overwhelmed, and it causes a stress response. We want small amounts of stress, but we don't want excessive prolonged stress.
In my functional medicine practice, we're looking at root cause resolution and root cause analysis. Many times we do extensive comprehensive labs. Maybe on page one, there's an A1C that looks really good but then I'll go to the insulin, and it’s high. The A1C is the last thing to get high so if you're already having high A1C, you have already missed the boat. So we check our patients’ insulin. At times where it makes sense, we'll do an oral glucose tolerance challenge. We'll check blood sugar, but at the same time, we'll check fasting insulin - one, two and three hour insulin levels because we want to see the response...
Learn more: SHR show # 2675
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