The Surprising Connection Between Blood Sugar Levels and HPV Risk

What if sugar and imbalanced blood sugar levels could be impacting your health and increasing your risk of high risk HPV virus and the associated cancers? I find that this is an underlying cause that's often getting missed in my patients and program participants. And so I want to cover it in detail in this episode today. I'm Dr. Donny and welcome to How Humans Heal. So have you been having sugar cravings? Do you find that partway through the day or in the evening you start looking for something sweet to eat or drink? Have you noticed in your blood work that your maybe your fasting glucose is higher than it used to be? Perhaps you checked also your cholesterol, hemoglobin, A1C and liver enzymes, and maybe they're all a little bit higher than they used to be, especially if you're in perimenopause or post menopause. Because what happens is when women go through menopause and the ovary function decreases, insulin function decreases also. And when insulin decreases, blood sugar levels increase. You see, the job of insulin is a hormone that helps bring the glucose or blood sugar into our cells. So if our insulin is less functional, then more glucose is left in our bloodstre, which is why we call it high blood sugar levels. And so if you have not been testing for your blood sugar levels, then I encourage you to make sure to have that tested on your next blood work. And if you are noticing that your diet is getting higher and higher in sugar and you're having more and more sugar cravings, this is definitely the time to put yourself back into the decision making driver's seat and decide, hey, I, I'm the one who's deciding what's going to happen in my body, not the sugar, right? Because what happens is when we eat sugar, it creates a dopamine response that feels good at first. It puts our blood sugar up, it causes our insulin to chase after it, to bring it back down again. We feel good sometimes we feel energized at first, and then when the blood sugar comes back down, we start to feel tired and irritable and brain fog. And so then we crave more sugar again. And so sugar can create this roller coaster of up and down of our blood sugar and it affects our energy, mood, focus and sleep as well as our immune system. It turns out, in fact, there's a study from 2022, and I'll put the reference for you, showing that in fact, when women have higher blood sugar levels, not even to the point of diabetes necessarily, just higher in the reference range, or in some cases, if women are having hypoglycemia. So the time in the roller coaster when we bottom out on our blood sugar, if we're seeing highs and lows or simply higher blood sugar levels, then there's an increased likelihood of HPV testing positive. So this is absolutely something we're seeing in the research and absolutely see something I see in clinical practice. That's why I want you to know about it and start paying attention to it for yourself. So the first thing I recommend when you test positive for HPV is to start thinking about your sugar intake and your blood sugar levels and start taking steps to address it, because this is something you can address from home, even with dietary changes, lifestyle changes. So the first thing is to just start paying attention to the sugar intake in your diet. Simply start looking on the labels of any beverages, any products that you take out of a package, look on the label and look at how many grams of sugar that it has in it. You can also look at the ingredients and see if it lists sugar. Now, the thing is that sugar goes by many names. Yes, it might be called sugar, or it might be called cane sugar. It might also be called sugar, coconut sugar, beet sugar, brown sugar, even agave and honey really are different forms of sugars. Those are fructose, but they also add up to sugar. It could also be called dextrose, maltose, glucose, fructose. It could even be called sucrose. So if you see anything with O S e at the end of it, it's likely a sugar or sugar alcohol. Now, sugar alcohols like erythritol and mannitol, these are sugar alcohols which do not affect the blood sugar as much as the OSE like sucrose, O S E. So if you see erythritol, it's going to have less of an effect on your blood sugar levels. But if, then if you see sucrose, fructose, those OSes, either way, I think you're going to want to avoid all of the above. If you're really trying to get your blood sugar levels back to imbalance and fend off HPV virus, what they find in the research is that the virus requires blood sugar, it requires sugar to, to survive. So of course the virus is going to send signals to cause you to crave sugar and cause you to raise your blood sugar levels to feed it. Same thing happens with bacteria and yeast. We know from studies that the bacteria in our gut, they actually send signals to our brain, so does the yeast. To cause us to crave sugar. So when you crave sugar, it's likely not you craving the sugar. It's these microbes in the body that are surviving off of sugar and they cause you to want more of it. So when you crave sugar, stop and think for a minute, hey, is this really that I need sugar or is it there's microbes that are overgrowing in my body that are craving it and I don't really want to feed them. Right. So then you can make a different choice. And the thing is that sometimes in the moment it can feel really difficult to make a different choice. That's why it's so important to be informed and prepared. One of the best way to be prepared is to have food available that doesn't have sugar in it. So when you go to the grocery store or you order your food, wherever you get it, or you make your food, be more aware. Look at the labels. Purchase items that do not contain sugar, that do not contain these other sweeteners. And this way what you have available to eat doesn't have sugar in it. Right? If we buy cookies and they're in the cabinet, or if we buy ice cream that has sugar in it and it's in the freezer, we're likely to eat it when we get that sugar craving. But if instead you have your refrigerator filled with items that have protein, like either animal protein, poultry, fish, beef, any other protein sources, or plant based protein sources, a protein shake, pea protein shake is one of my favorites. So you have protein available. So even if you when you're hungry and certainly when you're craving sugar, my rule for myself is eat protein first. I know how scary it can be. When you get a pap smear result that shows positive for HPV and potentially abnormal cells, it's hard to know who to trust and where to get information to help you solve it. That's exactly why I decided to do something about it. I'm Dr. Donnie and after helping thousands of women over the past two decades to clear HPV 10 negative and keep it negative, I decided to create the HPV Kickstart program. This step by step online program is designed to teach you the essential knowledge you need for your body to heal itself. You'll get access to a comprehensive series of videos that will help guide you through the diet changes. You can make the supplements to take, as well as ways to address the underlying causes of the virus. Virus. You can clear the HPV virus just go to drdonnie.com kickstart or use the link Below to get started. I'll see you there. Even though we're taught, oh, if your blood sugar is low, you should eat sugar, no, I, I don't believe that that's the case. I do not follow that rule when I believe that when your blood sugar is low, you need protein first, because protein is what helps stabilize your blood sugar levels. If you have low blood sugar and you eat carbs and say you go eat a banana even, or you have some candy, you're going to shoot your blood sugar way up high and then it's going to dive right back down again a couple hours later. So you're never getting off of this roller coaster ride. But if you instead aim for protein first, go have some, a couple pieces of turkey or a protein shake that doesn't have sugar in it. Make sure your protein shake doesn't have sugar. And then what happens is your blood sugar comes up gradually to optimal, plus you get protein that sustains you. So your blood sugar is not going to drop so quickly. Also, healthy fats help with this. So you're also going to get healthy fats. When you choose animal protein or if you have a protein shake, I like to add some healthy fats to the protein shake. You could add flaxseed oil, you can add coconut oil, MCT oil, Different oils you can add to the shake that also help stabilize your blood sugar levels. When you choose protein and fat, it stabilizes your blood sugar. And even if you then have a little bit of carbs, you want to be choosing what we call low glycemic carbs, carbs that are less likely to raise your blood sugar or higher fiber carbs. So they, because when you have some fiber, it slows down the rise in blood sugar. So that could mean having, you know, choosing different vegetables and fruits that are higher in fiber and lower in the glycemic index. Like, I like to choose berries, frozen blueberries, raspberries, strawberries. They, yes, they have fructose, but they are less likely to raise your blood sugar and you could combine it with a source of protein. So I want to point out some of the hidden places. So if you start to think about this and you go, okay, I'm going to go look at my refrigerator, I'm going to go look in my cabinet and see where all the sugar is hiding out. Look at things like, even salad dressing sometimes has sugar or condiments, mustard, ketchup. We would need to get types of condiment that don't have sugar in them. There's no need for it there look in any kinds of yogurt. Sometimes there's sugar in yogurt or fruit juices. Also any kinds of soup or packaged, even spices sometimes have sugar. So look at the ingredients. And that's one of the easiest place to start, is to eliminate the sugar in the places you don't even, you didn't even realize it was there in the first place. And it's not going to change the taste of that food item. So go through and replace the items in your pantry and your refrigerator and your freezer to make sure you're getting forms that don't have sugar. It's not necessary. And then the next thing is to look at your diet overall and notice if there's times when you keep reaching for sugar. Maybe there's sugar you're adding to your coffee or your tea. Well, we could replace that, eliminate it completely. Or you could replace it with stevia. Stevia S T E E V I A is a plant that grows outside. It's got green leaves and it's a beautiful plant and it has sweet leaves and it does not raise your blood sugar levels. So you can get stevia in a powdered form or liquid form and you can put that in your coffee or tea instead to get some sweetness without the sugar or the blood sugar rise. Now some people prefer to take out the sweetness in their diet altogether, which is great. The more we can get used to other flavors like bitter and sour and savory. These are all amazing different tastes. We get so used to eating things that are sweet, we forget that there's other tastes that we can experience as humans. Maybe you've been adding sugar in other ways just as either a dessert or item or a beverage. So definitely, if you're getting a, drinking a beverage even at a, at a store that you purchase, then make sure that you're getting a form that doesn't have sugar added. Sugar also comes in the form of syrups. And in sometime if you add a syrup or flavoring to your drink that may have more sugar or fructose in it, or high fructose corn syrup. These are all things that when you take them out of your diet, you're going to feel so much better. At first it seems impossible. It's like, how could I possibly do this? And yet if you just put your mindset around it, and a lot of times if you really put your. This is one thing when you're testing positive or HPV and you're like, I need this HPV to go away, then it's a lot easier to make a decision like this and say, okay, the HPV is, getting rid of HPV is more important to me than keeping all the sugar in my diet. So I'm going to focus on getting the sugar gone and balancing my blood sugar levels because then HPV is going to drop and go to negative and stay negative. And not only that, but when you get your blood sugar levels to optimal, you're preventing diabetes, you're preventing dementia, which is associated with high blood sugar levels, you're preventing cancers of all types which are associated with blood sugar, high blood sugar levels. You're also preventing heart disease risk because what happens is when our blood sugar is high, it, the liver converts it, the liver converts it into body weight, into fat. So storage usually around our waist and our belly, it deliver can convert it into cholesterol, which raises your cholesterol and it can convert it into fatty liver. So if you've been diagnosed with fatty liver or high cholesterol, then I would suspect that you're, you have higher blood sugar levels that we need to address for those reasons as well. And as we bring your blood sugar down, then your heart disease risk goes down not only because your cholesterol is going down, because your inflammation is going down. When blood sugar levels are high, it increases inflammation in the body which then affects all over our digestion, our nervous system. We're more likely to experience anxiety, depression, sleep issues.

And dementia or brain fog. So simply by paying attention to the sugars in your diet and reducing them and replacing with healthy, higher, higher, better forms of carbohydrates so you can choose healthy, healthy amounts of fruits, vegetables and other types of carbs, let's say like sweet potatoes and so on, and then healthy amount of protein and healthy fats, then you're going to be preventing so many health issues. And this is something that I teach in detail in a bunch of my different programs. The Stress Remedy program, the Stress Warrior program, and absolutely in the say Goodbye to HP program. So if this is something that you are struggling with and you'd like more help, then I encourage you to please reach out or follow the link down below where you can find out more about the programs that I offer that are online, programs that you can do on your own or programs where you can work with me directly and I can guide you every step of the way to get your diet back on track and your blood sugars levels back to optimal so that you can be preventing all these different health issues and including getting HPV to negative and keep it negative. So thank you so much again for joining me today here at How Humans Heal. Please subscribe so you don't miss the next episode and I look forward to seeing you then.

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