Do you or a family member have diabetes? Is this a new diagnosis
and you are feeling lost in knowing what changes you need to make to your life. Or are you just
sick of taking medications and want to know what you can do to try and get off of them.
If so, then this video is for you. Keep watching because we are going to go over the
most important steps that you need to start doing today to beat this deadly disease.
Hi, I m Dr. Erik Richardson a board certified Family Practice physician.
I d like to welcome you to FamilyMed, a channel that focuses giving you practical and accurate
medical information to help you and your family. If you think this would be something that is
helpful to you make sure you subscribe, hit that notification button and follow along with us.
This is the third video in our series on diabetes. In our last video we discussed all the reasons
that you need to be to take diabetes serious and how it can impact your health and life. In today
s video though we are going to start talking about the ways that you can take charge of this disease
and not allow it to control you and avoid all those complications that we discussed before.
We are principally going to be focusing our discussion for those who have type 2 diabetes.
Certainly the principles that we will discuss apply to those with type 1, but its always good
to review any changes to your treatment with your own doctor. When we talk about how to
treat type 2 diabetes, it s important to remember and review what is happening in this disease. The
main problem that happens in type 2 diabetes is that your body becomes resistant to insulin.
Insulin is the hormone that is produced by your pancreas that helps bring glucose from the blood
into the different cells in the body to use it as fuel. In a normal body, you eat a carbohydrate,
your body digests it and turns it into glucose, which is then absorbed into the blood stream.
Your body then senses that blood sugars elevate and releases insulin to bring that down. That
same process is happening in diabetes however, your body has become resistant to the effects
of insulin. You are still producing it, but it just doesn t work as well. Our treatments then,
are going to center around overcoming this insulin resistance. We have a lot of tools that we use to
treat diabetes, and oftentimes medication is one of those tools however in this video we
are not going to focus on that because we want you to start focusing on the things that you can
change that are going to make the biggest long term difference. Medication is often necessary
but most people if they would just take serious the things that were going to talk about today
can either avoid or minimize how much they would need to take. So let s talk about how you can
start doing that. The first thing that you need to start to incorporate in your life is exercise.
Exercise has been shown to play a significant role in being able to help control diabetes.
It does this for a few reasons. The most important of which are it is of course helpful in losing
weight. Fat cells play an important role in contributing to you being insulin resistant so
the more we can work on decreasing our weight we are going to see improvement. Exercise itself also
has a significant impact on how your body is able to utilize insulin. The mere act of exercising can
decrease your bodies insulin resistance and that effect can last most of the day. Most studies have
shown that exercising about 150 min a week or 30 minutes a day at least 5 days a week and play a
huge role in being able to control your diabetes. And it doesn t have to be an extremely vigorous
routine either. A good brisk walk for many can be sufficient. So get out and get started
on a good walk every day and see what kind of difference it can make. I will warn you though,
if you have not been very active, before you do more than a walk for exercise, it s always good to
visit with your doctor and get a good physical before undertaking anything more strenuous.
So the next step that you need to start focusing on is your diet. This is probably the hardest one
because it is going to require changing habits that you have been living with probably most of
your life. This is going to be the most important thing you can do though, because for most,
this is probably one of the main reasons that you ve developed diabetes. But the good news is, that
by taking this part serious and making some good changes you can oftentimes avoid having to take
a lot of medications or maybe none at all. When we talk about what to eat, we need to remember one
of the big reasons we are in this mess and that s the insulin resistance that you have. As we pick
our foods we need to avoid those things that are going to cause a rapid rise in your blood sugar.
The most obvious culprits with this are going to be your foods, drinks and deserts that are
full of sugar. This is white sugar, brown sugar, corn sugar, syrups and on and on.
These types of sweeteners take little to no time for your body to digest
and are quickly converted to glucose raising your blood sugars. They are probably the worst for you,
but also the most obvious so hopefully you ve already started to think about getting rid of.
After reviewing this, one of the most common questions I get is whether they can have
artificial sweetners like Saccharin and Aspartame? The short answer to this is no, they really aren
t ok. This is a longer discussion that we won t get into today, but your artificial sugars through
other means will still raise your blood sugar and have been shown to contribute to weight gain.
So if you are going to reach for a sweetner, focusing on sweetners such as Stevia, Monk fruit,
coconut palm sugar, date sugar and sugar alcohols such as erythritol or xylitol tend to be a better
option. So the next tier of foods that you need to start to avoid are the refined carbohydrates.
These are foods that are principally made up of white flour or white rice.
These are going to be your breads, your pasta s and other baked goods and cereals that are
a common part of our western diet. The reason why white flour or rice are a problem is because
strip the fiber and other nutrients from the kernels just leaving the white pulp. This is pure
carbohydrate that is digested and absorbed just like as if it were a sugar. It causes a rapid rise
in your blood sugar and makes it difficult for your body to deal with it. So foods you want to
stay away from are going to be your white breads, bagels, muffins, pastas, tortillas, cereals,
white rice, pretzels and crackers. Anything with white flour or added sugars you need to avid.
Instead reach for whole grain versions of these things. But even with whole grains,
you still need to keep your portions lower because they will affect your sugars.
Other foods that can cause you problems are things like potatoes, corn, sweetened yogurt and beer.
Now what about fruit? Fruit in an of itself is very healthy but you do need to be cautious
because it still can increase your sugars. If you are going to have some, keep it in moderation,
make sure you eat the whole fruit and not juice. Out of all of them Berries tend to be the types
of fruit that will affect your sugars the least. Remember keep things in moderation and monitor how
it affects your blood sugar. In the end though, I would still rather you reach for an apple to
satisfy that sweet tooth than a candy bar. Now we ve gone over a lot of the foods that you
shouldn t be eating but It s important to know that there are a lot of good foods that you are
going to be able to eat and a lot of fantastic recipes out there that you are going to love.
When you go looking for what is good for you to have, focus on recipes that are full of
vegetables, legumes such as beans and peas, whole grains, nuts, healthy lean sources of
protein like fish, chicken and lean cuts of meat. Reach for good sources of fat like avocados,
canola and olive oils. With all of these foods you can really make some delicious meals.
A good easy approach is to use, is what we call the plate method. The American Diabetic
Association recommends filling half of your plate with nonstarchy vegetables such as spinach,
carrots, broccoli or tomatoes. A quarter of your plate should have proteins like tuna,
lean pork or chicken and the last quarter unless you are really trying to go very low carb,
you can fill with a whole grain item such as brown rice or a starchy vegetable like green peas.
Throwing in good fats like your nuts and avocados as part of that can also make for
a delicious meal. It s important, that as you decide on what you will be eating in the day,
to monitor how many carbohydrates you are eating. There are varying recommendations
out there for how many carbohydrates you should be eating as a diabetic. A good goal, if you are
really trying to control this and minimize how many medications you would need to take,
is to keep your diet to under 100g of carbohydrates a day. If you want to have
a bigger impact the try to reach for around 50 a day. That isn t very many. Studies have shown that
keeping your carb intake to at least under 20% of your diet has been linked to better weight loss,
fewer medications and ultimately better control of your diabetes. I would suggest visiting with
your doctor or nutritionist on what they recommend for you. We ve focused most of our time so far
on diet because that s frankly the most important part of all of this. Beyond that though, there are
some other important things that you should focus on. One that we don t think about as much, but is
really important, is managing your stress. One of the bodies reactions to stress is to tell
your liver to release more sugar. So focusing on ways to eliminate stress from your life
and finding appropriate ways to relax are going to be really important in treating this.
The final recommendation is quite obvious but if you smoke, it s time to stop. Adding smoking
to diabetes is going to dramatically increase your risk for developing all the complications
that come with diabetes. Now is the time to make the commitment to get away from them. If you are
struggling to do so then talk with your doctor on options that they can help you with. It may
feel overwhealming thinking of all the things that you need to change to take charge of your health
again. And to be fair, it is. You need to sit back though and take a deep breath and realize that you
don t need to do this alone. Work with your doctor, a good nutritionist, your family,
friends or even online support groups. There is a lot of support and help out there. There are
a lot of medications out there that we can and may have to use along the way but frankly most of them
are expensive. The more that you can do in implementing these changes in your life and making
them permanent, the better off you are going to do. You are going to feel better, look better
and you will gain a new confidence that you can take charge of your health and beat this disease
that is working really hard in beating you. I know you can do it, so don t give up! Ok, so that s a
brief overview of the changes that you need to focus on to control this. Hopefully you ve been
learning a lot through this series on diabetes. In upcoming videos we are going to be discussing
some of the other important things that you need to be doing with your doctor to prevent or catch
early any complications that can come because of your diabetes, as well as, what are some of the
common medications that can be used when you need that extra help. So you don t miss out on these,
make sure you hit that subscribe and notification buttons right now. When I get them done, I ll put
links to these to the side so you can learn more about beating this disease. Well, that s all we
have today, thanks so much for joining us here at FamilyMed and we ll see you in the next video.