#308 Your Genes Are Not Your Fate: How Optimal Blood Sugar Levels can Improve Longevity with Dr. Ritamarie Loscalzo

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions.

Dr. Donni Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body, but with focused determination, she healed herself. And in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donni Stress Recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists, and experts, along with Dr. Donni, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is How Humans Heal.

Hi, and welcome to How Humans Heal. I'm Dr. Donni Wilson. And in this episode, I'm going to be interviewing Dr. Rita Marie Loscalzo, and we're going to be talking about the importance of diet and food as medicine, especially when it comes to understanding your genetics, that it's not just about knowing your genetics. It's about knowing how to feed your body based on your genetics. And this is something that Dr. Rita Marie specializes in. As a chiropractic doctor, she also has certifications in acupuncture, nutrition, herbal medicine, and the HeartMath Method. And she's been training practitioners as well as laypeople for a number of years. Oh my gosh, Rita Marie, it's been a while.

It's been a while. Since about 2012, I think I started training practitioners. So yeah, that's about 14 years.

Amazing. So you've been an amazing resource and really a changemaker in terms of what healthcare looks like. And you're continuing, you're not slowing down, you're continuing to create change in our healthcare system. And I, you, it gives me goosebumps because you are such a powerful force in terms of educating and showing up and saying, hey, there's a possibility of healing here. And if only everybody had the information they need, they could do it themselves. And I know that you've been inspired by your own health and your family's health. Maybe tell us just a little bit about, like, what is that fire in you that keeps you going? Just your passion to teach all of us.

Yeah, what a great question. And, you know, it started out with my own health, and I just was the typical kid. I was the oldest of 9 children. And so, you know, we just ate like the normal sad American diet and, you know, lots of Kool-Aid and cookies and pasta and things like that. And my health fell apart when I was in my 20s and I didn't know any better. And I just went to doctors and they kept giving me medications or doing procedures on my sinuses for all the sinus issues. And I'm like, nothing's working. Why is this not working? And then I started looking on my own. I asked a question after the ulcer test came back negative and I didn't have an ulcer and they wanted me on ulcer medication anyway. And my very scientific, you know, left brain type of brain said, well, that doesn't make sense. So I started pursuing it on my own and I found that, yeah, nutrition does make a difference and your diet and your attitudes and all the things you teach about and you incorporate into your programs, right? We all know that there's, You know, health is multifaceted, right? It's all these different pieces. So I started to do that and I learned about fasting and detox and, you know, clean diets and all. And I started to change and my symptoms went away. And that was when I was like 26. I, yeah, I was probably 25, 26 at the time. And it's never come back. I mean, that those problems have never come back. I mean, I've been healthy ever since. And then I said, Oh, I'm a computer science kind of person. I'm gonna leave my job and I'm gonna go back to school and become a doctor of some sort. I don't know why. And then I went through all that and I went back and I decided to do chiropractic 'cause it was most aligned with more of a natural thinking. And I did that and I got graduated. And then I did my master's in nutrition and I did herbal medicine. And I did, what else did I do? Acupuncture. So I just kind of combined all of that, a naturopathic type of a thing.

You need all these tools. Yeah.

Right. Right. Yeah. And so that's when I started back in, I don't know, 19— when did I leave? I think I started my practice in 1992. I graduated in 1991, got licensed and started working with people in '92 and been doing it ever since. And I'm passionate. But, but during that time, while I was still in school, my mom died suddenly of a heart attack. She was 56.

Oh gosh.

Like she should not have. She's way young. And so I was like even more dedicated. 2 years later, my dad, the same thing. And I decided then that the system needs to change. It's not just what each individual does, that the system needs to change and doctors need to know about how to actually help people get well and how to read the signs because they're not reading the signs. They didn't read any of the signs for my mother and she had them. But they weren't the classic heart attack signs. They were autoimmune and skin cancer and, you know, gallbladder stuff and all these other things. And they didn't connect it that she needed to do something different until it was too late. We didn't save her. So that's what my passion drives from. So I really— I hear and see all the time, and I'm sure you see this all the time, like people getting bad advice from their doctors because they're told, just live with it, or, oh, it's no big deal, or whatever, whatever, until it is a big deal. And then it's too late. So that's why I'm so passionate. I want to help people to avoid these dreadful losses.

And that's why you wrote your book, Unstoppable Health.

Unstoppable Health. I like the idea of being unstoppable. Like, I don't want my health to hold me back. And that's why I wrote the book. It's like, I don't want to have to say, oh, I'm too tired. I can't do that. Oh, I, you know, my joints are acting up again. I can't do that. No, I just want to keep going and going and going. You know, well into my 80s and 90s.

So, oh my gosh, you would love then to hear. I'll have to send it to you. Just yesterday I performed a dance solo to the song Unstoppable.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, yeah, love it. So amazing because I just went through the process over the past 3 months of recovering from a foot fracture and getting back to dance, and it was like the perfect song to say like Hey, even if something happens with our health and our body, we don't have to allow that to take us down or prevent us from doing what we love. In most cases, we can find a way to recover or get through it and beyond. And I've seen so many stories since then, since I've been going through that process, I keep seeing different stories of people who, you know, get a diagnosis and they, they choose not to just be like, okay, that's it, it's over. They're like, I'm gonna find a way to still live my life passionately. And, and so I'm curious, what are your thoughts on that? Is that what you mean? Like, to be able to have— it's part of it is a mindset, right?

Yeah, it's a big, a big part of it is a mindset and have the resilience. So you have to have the physiologic resilience as well to be able to come through a foot fracture and, you know, not go into the despair and the loss of hope and, oh, poor me, and all that, and to keep your spirits up about it, but also to have that body resilience so that your body does what it takes to get its health back, right? So on a daily basis, I just wanna be full of energy and just not be, not be stoppable. I just wanna be able to do what I want to do, need to do at any point in time. And that's what I want for other people is to like, don't let your health get in the way of your life, you know, and of your joy.

Absolutely. I love that. And I agree with you, as you can tell. And the, uh, so I think it's really interesting because I, you and I have this in common that we, we're both like, hey, let me, let me be a detective. Let me look at the science. Let me figure this out, this figure-out-able thing. And so look, once we started to get, like over a decade ago, started to get information about genetics, right? This was the thing for a long time, but like, only if only we knew our genetics, we could solve everything, right? That's what I learned too, because I've been in practice for 26 years. And so in that same kind of timeframe, it was always like, oh, we're going to wait to know our genetics. And then what happened is, when we started to, when the Human Genome Project revealed the information, we then kind of realized, or maybe we realized before that, but it became more awareness that even once you know your genetics, the genetics don't determine everything. In fact, the genetics determine, I think it's known to be less than 20% of our health issues, right? We would think even less than that for most people.

No, no, no, no. It determines your risk factors. And this is the thing people need to know. It determines how much at risk you are of heart disease, cancer, kidney problems, skin, whatever, whatever, on and on. But the lifestyle is what really determines where you're going to go. There are a handful, a very small handful of genes that they determine. Cystic fibrosis is one I can think of. If you have it, you're going to get the disease. Very few genes like that, right? So when people say, oh, and they learn early on in life, Oh, I have a gene that's going to predispose me to a higher risk of Alzheimer's. They're just doomed to have Alzheimer's? No, there's a ton of things that you can do in your life to prevent going down that Alzheimer's path. And when you know it, and when you know it early on, you go, oh, I'm at risk for this or that or the other thing. What are some of the diet, lifestyle, stress management, all of those things, environmental of protection? What do I have to do to prevent myself from going down that pathway? And what I find is that when people learn that, they're much more willing and motivated to make the changes that you or I would sit down with them and come up with a plan. And some of them do it and some of them don't. Right. That's been my experience in 34 years of practice.

Yeah.

But But with this, they go, oh, I better do that because if I don't, this is where I'm going to be heading. And so I really enjoy that part.

Yeah. So then this way, when you like with your family where there was a heart disease risk, when you find out like, okay, this is the risk in the heredity that's in my family and that's important to know and recognize. But the what you take from that is not Oh, this is going to happen to me too. What you take from that is I want to take every step I can in order to prevent that thing that I'm inherited from my genetics. And so, and so we can go into great detail with that to maybe share a little bit more of how you use genetics in your work and both when you, when you're training practitioners and when you're working with non-practitioners.

Yeah, absolutely. And we do it across the board. You know, I have training programs for practitioners in nutrigenomics and genetics, and in clients, it's usually incorporating that knowledge into the plan. And the way I do that is, so say I go through a history. Sometimes people are not wanting to get their genetics tested. Just, just aside, I don't want to do that. Somebody's going to use it against me or whatever. I don't want to know what I'm fated to. I just want to, you know, live my life. And I explained to them that no, no, no, it doesn't mean you're fated to it, right? It means that you need to be more careful in that area and make better choices. Like, if you continue to smoke cigarettes, you know, drink wine to excess, and, you know, eat crap food, eat the ultra-processed food, you're most likely going to go down that path. Right? But if they learn that, oh, I have this higher tendency towards Alzheimer's, for example, people are all afraid of Alzheimer's, right? Almost more so than the big C. So they're afraid of Alzheimer's and go, I don't want to go down that path. And they learn, oh, blood sugar has a big, big component when it comes to brain health and Alzheimer's. Maybe I need to get my blood sugar under control. Maybe I need to do some extra testing to to determine what's going on. Maybe I need to wear a CGM, a continuous glucose meter, to determine how am I responding to my food and my environment and my stress and prevent that. They learn that toxins have a huge role in the development. So they go, oh, maybe I need to get air filters. Maybe I need to avoid those toxic air sprays that I use or those things that hang from the car. That, you know, are full of toxins and the chemicals that you put on your face. So they learn and go, I'm motivated at this point. Just tell me what I need to do so I don't go down the Alzheimer's path. So that's one way to do it. And as a practitioner, it's really knowing and kind of knowing your person's Achilles heel, right? The things that they really don't want to do, but also the things they're most scared of. And you go, look, if you continue to do this, that gene can play out for you. And is that the life you want for yourself? So that's how I use it. And I also use it to help me determine what lab tests I may wanna do, right? Because if somebody's at a high risk for me, heart disease, well, I'm running massive heart panels for myself. Like not just the average, well, I think the average cholesterol, triglycerides, you know, HDL.

Not helpful anyway.

Not helpful anyway. But I'll be more like, oh, lipoprotein(a), it's an important gene and a genetic factor. Did my parents have that? Is that why they died suddenly at young ages? Well, sure enough, I test that and mine is elevated, right? I have the genetic tendency. So what am I going to do? Not a lot to do to specifically control Lp(a), but everything else around it. What do I do to keep my lining of my vessels? What do I do to prevent the buildup of plaque? What do I do to help with vasodilation, meaning that the blood flows freely? So I learn things that I know what to do based on my genetic tendencies. And I'm not going to stray and say, nah, I think I'm going to just go, you know, do the McDonald's route because it's much easier. I'm like, no, is it worth it? You know, and getting people to understand Is your indulgence worth the risk of a sudden death from heart attack or cancer or Alzheimer's? So that's how I like to use it.

I love that. And it's the things where if it happens every so often, it probably doesn't add up to be a big enough of an issue, but if it becomes an everyday thing, now it's a constant exposure. And what you're talking about is genetic exposure what we refer to as genetic expression, right? And what practitioners refer to as nutrigenomics, which is really how, like you said, our lifestyle, our diet, our even our supplements we take, how much sleep we get, how much stress recovery we do, the, the, what our toxin exposure, how all of these things influence the, the expression of our genes. So you can have a gene variation or gene risk sitting there, but it only becomes activated or expressing in your body and your health when you're exposed to factors that I usually— I end up referring to stress of various types, right? Because it can be psychological stress, it could be physical stress, it could be toxic stress, right? It could be whatever these things are that stress our system ends up turning on our genetic risk. And so And the other cool thing that, because I do a lot of work in this area too, Rita-Marie, so I love that we're getting to talk about this. And I think it's, it's something that I talk about in my book as well, the Master Your Stress, Reset Your Health book. So I love that. And I love that we get to, I see how much of an impact it can make because it, people then can really see, wow, actually my genetics, my genetic results can give so much of a pivot point to say, "Hey, this is a reason to change my health." It's not just something that we do for a little bit and then forget about. It's something that we say, "Hey, this is something I'm really committed to because I can see my genetics and I can see what happened to my family members and I can, and I can know that I want to make a difference in my health." And so it can be such a motivating factor.

Absolutely, absolutely. Totally agree with that. And one of the things that, you know, I've learned over the years, you know, you may be talking to somebody about their gluten sensitivity and they don't have celiac disease and they don't get diarrhea every time they eat bread. But you see it, you see the autoimmune, you see the inflammation, and they go, no, no, no, I don't have a problem with that. I don't have a problem with that. And then they see it in their genes and they go, oh, I am going to have a problem with that if I keep doing the exposure piece. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And it can make such a difference, such a huge difference. And it's, as you're saying, what's also so cool, I think, is that there's this overlap that, and we can come back to the blood sugar example, because when we see that someone, let's say, has maybe genetic risks or family history risks of any one of these conditions, whether it's dementia, heart disease, you know, cancer, and then we look at their blood work and we see how it correlates, right? We have to— that's how we know if the gene is expressing, expressing, is we look at blood work and other testing to say, okay, you might have a genetic predisposition, but let's look at the lab work and see, is it actually occurring? If it's, if it's working just fine, we know the gene isn't expressing and we can just do prevention. But if it starts to show up in your symptoms, your diagnoses, your blood work, your if we're measuring other tests, then we know, okay, now we really got to start working because we can actually turn off the gene expression when we start taking action. Why wouldn't we?

Exactly. And, you know, it's interesting because when I actually finally got my genes tested in the— whenever it was, probably early 2000, maybe 2010 or '12. Um, before that, you couldn't get it tested and you couldn't get them. Now everybody and their brother can tested.

So many tests out there.

But when I looked, and I had made a decision, I made a decision when I was in my 20s that I probably have bad genes. I didn't know anything about, you know, the nitrogen. We, we didn't even have that ability. And I said, I probably have bad genes because there's no old people in my family, right? I don't even know what diseases they might, you know, they've died of heart disease. We've had diabetes in the family. But other than that, I don't— do my people get dementia? Nobody got old enough to even know, right? So I made that decision. I said, I'm going to do everything in my power, everything I can do to live as clean a life as possible, to reduce all the risks. And I made that decision when I was in my late 20s. When I finally got my genes tested, I think it might have been 2003. 13 or something. And I get this— is that right? Yeah. So I get it back and I'm like, oh my God, I'm so grateful that I've done all this the last few years. I could be obese, dead, on dialysis, on insulin, all these things if I hadn't taken care. And when you look at your family, you know, family's a great thing to correlate, and we have a large one, so it's easy to look. And I was like, oh, They're on blood pressure medication. They're on— what else were they on? Some of them statins and anti-anxiety medication. I'm looking at my genes going, oh yeah, I can see why my family members are on anti— but I have been taking steps with meditation, with stress reduction in other ways, with my diet, keeping it clean, that, oh, I would have had all those things. And I'm the oldest, by the way. It's not like I'm the youngest and they all got it before me. I'm the oldest.

Wow.

Right? So I look at that and it makes a difference.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's amazing. That's so cool. And then you were able to validate. You were able to go, "Okay, this correlates." And to be able to then say, "Okay, say the hemoglobin A1C," which you mentioned before, "is showing elevated, then we know the insulin's struggling." And I know this is an area, in particular, that you really have so much expertise in, is helping people when that's happening, when their hemoglobin A1C is up and the insulin function is down. And that's so common, especially after menopause for women, but, you know, as— would you say for both men and women as we age? And some people it's happening even younger.

Oh, it's happening way younger. And, actually, If we wait to test the— well, first of all, the standard, the standard of care is wait for the fasting blood sugar to go above 120, and then you think about putting them on some kind of protocol. Then the next best— it's too late by then because you'll look at the A1C by then, and most people, if their blood sugar— it's way up and it's been there for a long time. And you could have caught that a lot sooner because fasting blood sugar is the last one to change. So the A1C, but the one that changes earliest is insulin, and insulin levels go way up. Okay. And you said insulin function down. Yeah, insulin function is down, but people are struggling with insulin resistance. They have high levels of insulin, which causes stiffening of the arteries and elevated blood pressure and depleted levels of magnesium and chromium and Omega-3 fats, and there's so many things that it does before it becomes noticeable. And no doctors are testing it. Not no, but very few conventionally trained doctors are testing insulin. No, no, no, you're not diabetic. Why would I test insulin?

They don't test it. And right now you can't— they won't even— the insurance doesn't cover a continuous glucose monitor until you are diagnosed with diabetes.

A-up and uncontrolled. The last I looked, right? And a continuous glucose monitor will tell you all the time, and you can actually correlate what you're eating, how stressed you are, how much you're sleeping, how much you exercise. You can correlate all that to your blood glucose, and then you get control to change things before you become diabetic. It's so, so critical and so, so important.

So let's describe a little more for anyone who's listening and hasn't heard of a continuous glucose monitor before, what that is, because you can pay for them out of pocket and get them for a couple hundred dollars. So you can still do this even if it's not under your insurance.

Exactly, exactly. And so it's basically a little sensor, very small, depending on which one you get, either dime size or a quarter size, that you put on your arm. And what happens is it's continuously monitoring what's your sugar. Now, it's monitoring it in what's called the interstitial space, so not technically in the blood. It's been correlated to be the same. There's about a 15-minute lag, so it's the same thing. And so you're able to say, oh, I just ate, you know, an ice cream cone, and then 15 minutes later, the thing's going, and your sugar is going high, right? And so, um, I just had a bad night's sleep, and I I didn't sleep all night or whatever. And then you look and you go, why is my blood sugar high today? I, all I had was avocado and cucumber, right? Why is my blood sugar high? Oh, because your blood sugar is out of control when you don't sleep enough. So it allows you to take charge of your health. It allows you to look at what are the factors that are negatively impacting my body? What are the things that positively impact. They may go, oh, look, I just sat down and meditated and my blood sugar went down to normal. And it gives you power. And that's what I believe we all need as consumers of health, as people who own this body that we need to get under control. We need, we need the ability to know what to do. Like right now, because of the internet and social media and all that, people get a lot of health information, way more than they did back when we were first starting practice, right? We had to get—

So much more.

Right. And but the problem is it's confusing and it's conflicting.

And there's so many different opinions. And it's even within the health space, some practitioners are saying different things. So, yeah, you're like, what am I supposed to listen to?

Exactly. Exactly. And it's a lot of generic, a lot of one-size-fits-all. Here's the protocol for this disease or this condition. And I believe there aren't protocols for conditions. There are frameworks that you follow to determine a customized plan for an individual.

I've done a lot of detoxes over the years, and many of them made me feel a lot worse. Not only that, but I've had a lot of patients come in and tell me how after doing a detox, they have a stomachache and headache and they can't sleep and they're feeling anxious. And I'm like, I can't just recommend that my patients do a program that's going to make them feel worse. So I finally decided to design my own detox program. It's a 14-day detox program that's not like other detox programs out there in several ways. One is that I'm I'm focused on helping you to get the toxins out in a safe and effective way using nutrients, antioxidants, and supporting our natural detoxification pathways in the body. Also, I'm helping you to decrease your exposure to toxins by learning the ways that you've been exposed to toxins and how to change your day-to-day lifestyle to, decrease your toxins over time. And I'm helping you to look not just at chemical environmental toxins, but also emotional and energetic toxicity. And yes, it's possible to accomplish all of this in 14 days. I have so many patients who have done the 14-day detox and report back to me how much better they feel. And I think it's also because I I help you to know what to eat. You are getting adequate food that tastes good, plus protein shakes that I developed that are good for your body, that your body knows how to use these nutrients and take them in and use them to help you safely detoxify without feeling worse. Also, I help you to balance your blood sugar levels, get sleep and introduce things like meditation, biofeedback, and other types of stress recovery into your day-to-day routine. So I just am so excited about it. I want to make sure you know about this 14-day detox. I'm going to put the link. You can find it at drdhani.com/detox-program, but I'll also put the link link below so you can find the 14-day detox program at drdhani.com. I look forward to guiding you through this detox so that you can actually feel better on your way to better health.

It's so important to individualize it because we're not all the same. We don't, we don't respond to stress the same way. We don't respond to toxins the same way. Like, it's— we have to know the individual and then like you're saying, have a, have a system that allows us to get the information about the individual so then we can implement for them.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. And it's confusing, right? People are like, oh, just go eat this particular food, the magic food that you can continue to eat your pizza as long as you eat this with it. There's no magic foods. There's no magic supplements. It's just good marketing. And it's confusing. And so what really has to happen to have good health, and you know this and you teach this, is that we have to do the work, right? Good health. I always say good health doesn't come in a bottle. You have to do the work, right? Whether that bottle is kombucha or vitamin C or, you know, this detox powder or whatever, it doesn't come there. You have to do the work. And a lot of people have been trained by Western medicine not to do the work, just to go to the doctor and get a pill to take or an injection or whatever. And that's not the way it works. That's not the way our bodies work.

So even if it's a natural thing, right? Like even if it's, oh, the latest trendy thing you can swallow or inject or is this— it's not going to be that.

Exactly. You're totally, totally on board. And that's exactly what I believe. And so whatever that bottle is, it ain't going to solve your problem unless you're willing to have that as a supplement to a healthy diet and lifestyle. And it's knowing that. And some people can sit down and eat a bowl of ice cream and look at their continuous glucose meter and not see much. Other people can eat a handful of blueberries and see their glucose go sky high. What's the difference? Well, the difference is what are they exposed to? What is their genetics? What was their early lifestyle? Now, me, I was born with genetics that predisposed me to diabetes, that insulin resistance and poor blood sugar handling. And had I grown up on the kind of diet I follow now, I probably would never have become a problem. But I grew up on M&M's, Wonder Bread, Kool-Aid, white pasta. I mean, this is what I grew up on.

Amazing, right? You're just like, how did that even happen?

Yeah. And it triggered this sensitivity. So I have to be careful with anything that I take in that's starchy or sugary, whether it's fruit and sweet potatoes or white bread and, you know, Skittles. It works like it's still a trigger in me, right? So, I have to be careful.

And I find what's so interesting with when patients use a CGM to monitor their glucose, it's so interesting to see that what their body reacts to is, you know, there's certain things that are obvious, like a spoonful of sugar, probably everybody's going to react to, but it's very interesting to see that they, when they do it, they each find a different food that they react to. Isn't even that's individualized.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. We do a program we call it the Sweet Spot Solution, and we help people to find what is their sweet spot of how much of these foods they can take in and what is their sweet spot of blood sugar where they feel the best. Some folks are saying, let's just, you know, do ketones and get it down and have your blood glucose in the 40s. And other people are like, oh, it's fine as long as it doesn't go above 100. Where do you feel best, right? I personally feel best when my blood sugar is in the 70s, even the 60s sometimes. But once it goes higher than that, I start to have food cravings. I want to eat like crazy when my blood sugar is high. Why? Because the sugar is high in the blood, but it's not getting into the cells.

And so your cells are starving.

And the cells are starving. Absolutely.

So then you're— it keeps wanting you to go like, where's— craving something sweet.

Exactly. Where's the food? Where's the food? And of course you're not going to be craving broccoli at that point. You're going to be craving something sweet to try to help your, your sugar get into the cells so that mitochondria can make energy. Yeah.

It's, it's such an important distinction, you know, to understand that it's, that it's, that, you you could be consuming. And it's— people always say, "Are you talking about fruit? Are you talking about sugar?" And I say, "Well, first, we're talking about straight sugar, white sugar, brown sugar, cane sugar," right? Because that's the thing that's going to be most direct route to the blood. And then if the insulin— so like you were describing before, when the cells— the job of the insulin is to have the cells accept the glucose in. But if the cells are not responding, we call that insulin resistance. And so now the glucose, the blood, the sugar is staying in the blood. Now, that sugar also could have come from, like you're saying, from rice or potatoes, or even could come from fruit. You know, at that point, it just looks like glucose in the blood. We don't— it could come from any source of glucose. And if the insulin is saying— is the cells are like, I'm not going to let any more in. No matter how much insulin's knocking on the door, then that glucose is just going through your bloodstream. And the way I describe it, and I'd love your input on this, Rita Marie, is that then the liver has to make a decision, right? The liver has to— because eventually that blood's going to circulate through the liver, and the liver has to decide, "What are we going to do with this extra sugar that didn't go into the cells, to the mitochondria, to make energy? It's just floating around. We can't just let it float around." So the liver is deciding, hey, okay, we've got a couple of options. We can, we can turn it into fat, like we can turn it into cholesterol or triglycerides. That's one way that liver can decide to do it, right? It can say, okay, we'll just make more cholesterol or make more triglycerides. And that's often what's— if you see high cholesterol, triglycerides, I, the first thing I go look for is, is there high blood sugar? Because a lot of times it's— we aren't— we a lot of times don't realize that our sugar can turn into cholesterol. Most cholesterol didn't come from cholesterol in the diet, it came from sugar in the diet. And then the liver, the other option the liver has is it could turn it into fat storage in the liver, which is what we call fatty liver, or it could turn it into fat storage around your waist or somewhere else in your body. So the liver only has those options. We really, we wanna, we don't want the liver to have to make those choices, right? We want the liver to be like happy and going along and never have to make the decision about what to do with extra sugar.

Absolutely. And you said something I want— I didn't want to gloss over. Yes, that you said that it's— we don't want to leave it circulating in the blood. And the reason is it's damn high levels of sugar are damaging. It's a process called glycation. And what happens is we get problems with the retina, the very small vessels and nerves in the eye. We have problems with the peripheral nerves like circulation, and people numbness and tingling. It's called peripheral neuropathy. We have problems that occur in the kidney that causes the little tubules in the kidneys to get stuck. And we have what's called retinopathy— that's in the eyes— nephropathy. Right. And then we also causes stiffening of the blood vessel linings and irritation and inflammation that can lead to cardiovascular disease.

So, yeah, we don't want to to Alzheimer's and dementia, all that cognitive decline, right? Because of sugars floating through our brain. And yes, I love this point. So it's like, that's why— that's what you're trying to avoid, is we don't— so it comes back, we have to back up, we almost have to reverse engineer and be like, okay, how do we avoid that? How do we avoid having too much sugar in the blood? So, and I know we're going to put a link to your, your sweet spot, um, training so that everybody can go learn more from you about this. But for now, what do you recommend? Where should people start if they're like, "Oh, now I get it. Now I see why." Maybe you already know your blood sugar's high in your blood, or maybe you know your hemoglobin A1C is high, or your insulin's high, or maybe you are starting to see some of these symptoms in your body. What do you— where do you recommend they start, Rita Marie, so they can go back, reverse engineer this, and say, "I'm going to help make sure that's not happening in my body?

Yeah, that's a great question. And where do you start? It depends on the person, actually, right? Because we want to get those sugars down, we want to get the insulin down, we want to get the sugar into the cells, but not too much. I would say we have to look at our diet realistically, right? How high is the sugar intake, the starch intake, and the processed food intake that's loaded with these oxidative byproducts that damage our vessel linings and damage our hormone producers, like in the pancreas. So we have to look at that. And, you know, if somebody says, well, I'm eating this perfect diet, I'm eating this, I'm eating that, I don't ever eat processed foods. And well, maybe it's not that. Maybe it's stress. And when we get stressed, the body produces a hormone called cortisol. And when cortisol goes up, it's like, oh, tiger's coming, tiger's coming. I need some energy to get away from this tiger. And so it actually goes and mobilizes stored sugars, whether it's in the muscles, because protein can be converted, in the liver, and in the fat. So how do I mobilize these sugars so I can actually have energy? And when that happens and the blood glucose glucose goes high, then we have that same reaction. We gotta produce insulin. And if the insulin is resistant, the cells are resistant, we don't have a good thing situation. So that's the second thing I would look at. How much sleep are you getting? There's studies after, lots of studies that have been done. I don't have actual study names memorized, but there's studies that have actually shown that one night, even one night of bad sleep, can cause a temporary insulin resistance in even a healthy person. But can you do that continuously? It's not so temporary anymore, right? So, how's the sleep? And the last thing I would look— well, 2 more things. I would look at how is your movement? Are you sitting at a desk all day or do you get up and jump around and move around and get what's called fitness snacks, right, throughout the day? And then I would look at timing of everything. We are conditioned as a society to eat in the evening while we're watching TV. I mean, it's just the way it goes, right? If anybody watches TV and they have the commercials and they're seeing people stuffing their faces, you want to go to the kitchen and stuff your face. And when we eat too close to bedtime, when we eat within 3 hours of bedtime, it interferes with the sleep. So we don't get as deep a sleep. But it also affects the production of a hormone called growth hormone that gets produced right at the beginning part of sleep. And then we end up with insulin in our system instead of, of the, the growth hormone. And that creates this problem and it creates a lot of problems, which I don't have time to go into today, but lots of problems. And then people are eating all day. Day long. So exercise snacks are good, food snacks are not, right? When we're eating and grazing throughout the day, we're keeping those levels of sugar up, we're keeping those levels of insulin up. And what we need is a break. We need to have a good 3 to 5, I say 4 to 6 hours in between our meals. Sometimes people have to transition. So it's really taking a good look at all those areas to see which one is the most telling. Obviously, you wanna get all of those balanced, and that's what we take people through in our Sweet Spot program. But you look at those at the start and you go, which ones can I fix and how do I fix it? And then the last one is nutrients, right? If you're eating a processed diet, if you're eating a lack of nutrient-dense food, you're not gonna have the nutrients your body needs to help that sugar get in the cells. Things like chromium and magnesium and omega-3 fats like DHA and lipoic acid and magne— I said magnesium, but there's a bunch of them, right? A bunch of different nutrients. So you have to look how nutrient dense is the diet. And that's where I might start.

Absolutely. It makes so much sense. It makes so much sense. It's so comprehensive. Thank you so much for sharing that. And definitely I'll have a link so that, so that you can you know, that people can join in and do the Sweet Spot program with you. And when, say, a practitioner is listening, where do you— I want to make sure I have a link for them as well, because I want you to just maybe just talk about how— what are you noticing as you've been training practitioners? You said something over 14 years. What do you— how— that's a lot of practitioners you've trained. First of all, do you know how many that is? Hundreds? Thousands?

Yeah. I mean, if you think about all the small courses and the certification courses and the webinars and things like that and the workshops. Yeah, probably, you know, definitely thousands, if not tens of thousands.

Oh, my gosh. Amazing. That's so beautiful. That must feel so beautiful to be able to know that you're, you're spreading all of this knowledge out because then they have patients they're helping and it's really creating a shift in our healthcare system or over time for practitioners to have this knowledge. Where do practitioners begin if they are like thinking, hey, I wanna learn more from Dr. Rita Marie, where do they go to start to learn more from you?

It's a great idea. It's a great question. Thank you for asking it. We have a website called inemethod.com. It's the Institute of Nutritional Endocrinology Method. We also have a, what we call a practice audit. And we'll help you identify the areas of strength and weakness in your current skills, in your current way you practice, and help you to see where you need the training. We have a 2-year certification program in nutritional endocrinology. We have a shorter course, like a 12-week course in nutrigenomics. We have blood sugar courses. We have gut health courses. We have blood chemistry, reading the blood labs. We have a lot of that, and that's all included in the full certification, but some people like to take them piecemeal.

Oh my gosh, it's amazing. And I can tell you that what you're teaching is what I see makes a huge difference in my practice as well. So any practitioners listening who you're like thinking, hey, I've been wondering about learning all of this and even like you said, implementing little by little, then it is so worth it because then you're going to be making such a big difference for your patients as well. And I wanted to come back to what we started to talk about earlier, which is that even— I love to start with blood sugar as well in my protocol, Dr. Annemarie, because when you start with this blood sugar balancing and optimizing insulin function, it has this ripple effect where it can have such an impact on so many health issues. So while we might be thinking, oh yes, that's— this is definitely going to help with preventing diabetes, but it's going to help with— I could name like most every health condition, including preventing cognitive decline and Alzheimer's and heart disease and cancer. And, and right, it's like, start here with what we've been talking about, and the ripple effect on your health is huge.

It's huge. And it's immune function, right? Which you, you do a lot of work with function, right? You know, being able to cope with viral exposure and fungal, all of that stuff. Everything relies on blood sugar being balanced.

Yeah, we do find that, that with high-risk HPV and women who are at risk of cervical cancer, that there's studies that show that when blood sugar is fluctuating, either high, too high, too low, and not necessarily all the way to diabetes, but even any fluctuation of blood sugar increases risk of having an abnormal pap smear. So it's— so that's exactly why it's like we have to start there, and then that creates a foundation to build on. Then it's— and plus, you start feeling better pretty quickly. Do you find that too, that once people like start to implement these suggestions you just gave, they start to feel better pretty quickly?

Yeah, we find out— we, we get people testing at the beginning. We say, don't change anything. Test. In the past, we used to tell people, okay, do this and do this and do this. And then by the time they got their meters or their CGMs or whatever, we started long before CGMs were in existence, but we'd have people testing and we'd find that, oh my goodness, they said, I don't have a problem anymore. Like, I tested myself here and I tell— no, but they'd already changed their diet. So what they've changed to and the habits we've instilled cause them to be much more stable. So I start with, let's get the first 2 weeks of the program be just don't change anything, you know, just go out there and let's measure and let's see how your, your current lifestyle and diet and exercise program, etc., are affecting you.

And that's so good because like we said, then you can individualize. Maybe the person, maybe they already have optimal blood sugar and insulin and now they can go to the the next step.

Exactly.

But, or maybe they've already optimized a little bit, but they want to get it to the next, not the next step.

Exactly. And they don't want to be in the gray zone, right? People in medicine, we wait for them to be diabetic and the stage before that, they call pre-diabetes or insulin resistance. And what I call the stage before that is pre-insulin resistance. You're heading there, you've got these fluctuations, Some of the markers are off and we need to get you solid before you progress because once you progress, a lot of that stuff becomes hard to reverse, right?

It's harder to reverse the further down the road it goes, but it's not impossible.

No, not impossible at all.

So it's like you might as well start because I've seen too, like, cases where it was like, you know, you know, severe, you know, maybe severe diabetes or not regulated at all and not getting any information on how to change things. And then, even then, it's amazing how— you used the word resilient early on in this conversation, right? It's amazing when you start to see, wow, my body is so resilient. If I change even little things in my day, how much your body can respond to that.

Yeah, yeah, it's totally doable. And we see We see things— going back to your question about how quickly we see things— I've had people who had resistant weight loss, like their belly keeps getting bigger, and within a couple of weeks they're like, oh my God, this is the first time in 10 years that I've actually started to release some of this extra weight, or, oh my God, my energy's back. I actually have the energy to do the things that are in this program. And small changes really make big differences.

No, I love that. Oh my Oh my gosh, thank you so much for coming today, Dr. Rita Marie. It's so wonderful to talk with you and connect with you. I really value your expertise and your knowledge and your wisdom and everything you've done. Is there any last thing you'd like to share before we go?

You know, the one last thing I love to finish talks with this is every choice you make matters, right? Don't feel like you're powerless. Every choice and throughout every day, you're, you're hitting these forks in the road all day long. And whichever choice you make is going to make a lot of difference in how you feel, how you look, and your long-term health.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

So, and each day is a new day. You can choose differently.

Exactly.

Exactly. Thank you so much for being here today. And I can't wait for everyone to be able to have access to all the resources resources you've created, including your book Unstoppable Health. And, um, thanks every— thank you, Rita Marie, for being here. Thank you everyone for joining in. And if you haven't already subscribed to How Humans Heal, I welcome you to join me and subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. And you can also subscribe to my newsletter. I'll put the link down below. And, um, thank you. Take care. I'll see you soon.

Thanks for listening to How Humans If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review. And for more resources, visit drdonni.com.