This Disease Occurs at Epidemic Levels - and It’s Completely Reversible!

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And.

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Welcome to the Virgin Diet lifestyle show with your host, celebrity nutrition and fitness expert and New York Times best selling author, JJ Virgin.

Diabetes and prediabetes are at epidemic levels in our country. And really now it's starting to move all around the world. And it's not just adults. And this is what's so upsetting. This is happening now with our kids, our teenagers. And the deal is when you get better blood sugar control, it changes everything. Now, diabetes is a lifestyle disease and that's good news because that means that you can use lifestyle strategies to change this and to change it quickly. So I'm going to give you an integrated approach to how you can improve your insulin sensitivity. That means your body can actually hear insulin and how you can lower your blood sugar response and keep your blood sugar more balanced so that you won't end up having to be another one of those statistics and you'll have great energy and be lean. Alrighty. Sound good? So the first one is vitamin D. Vitamin D is actually not a vitamin at all. It's a pro hormone and it helps your body be insulin sensitive. What's so critical here is that you need to have the right levels of it. And I got to tell you, I look at a lot of vitamin D testing and it is rare for me to see someone with good levels who is not supplementing. In fact, I can't even think of anybody I've ever seen with with good levels who wasn't supplementing. Because we're spending less time in the sun than ever, we really should have 20 minutes of sunshine every single day without sunscreen. And when we are out in the sun, we are slathered with sunscreen. So here's what you want to look for with vitamin D. You want to take a 25 hydroxy vitamin D test and you want to optimize your levels for between 50 and 80 Ngs per ML. Now what that generally means is you'll have to take anywhere from 5 to 10,000 IUs of vitamin D for a couple months retest, and then you'll probably end up somewhere at 2 to 5000ius. Now critical with vitamin D is you also want to make sure that you take its partner vitamin K with it. Look for a synergistic formula of that. And then also if you're in a place where you do spend more time in the sun during the sunshiny days times, or that, that you're in a place like maybe Minnesota or New York, where you are inside during the winter, that you modify your vitamin D levels based on that. Okay, next one. Fiber. My gosh, this is like that secret weapon that we never use. And it's crazy because fiber can slow down your blood sugar response to a meal. It is really the partner to carbohydrates. Biggest thing you can do with fiber is make sure that you're choosing what I call low sugar impact carbs like quinoa, squashes, lentils, things that are loaded with fiber. But also you're probably going to want to supplement with fiber now. Great high fiber foods. Berries, nuts and seeds, legumes, squash, avocados. But I also use extra fiber. I actually call it extra fiber. That's my product that I throw into my shakes and I add. And a thing that you can do if you're hungry is before a meal, you can throw extra fiber or chia seeds in some water about 30 minutes before a meal. And that's going to really help lower your appetite, but also balance your blood sugar response to the meal. Here's another key one. And if I had to pick one thing, actually, if I had to pick one thing overall for people to focus on as their number one thing that they could do to change their health, you're probably going to think that I'm going to say lower your sugar impact or get the gluten out. But actually that's not it. It's to sleep. And to sleep well. Turns out that even one poor night of sleep, that means failing to get the seven to nine hours of sleep that you need. And we all have our little sweet SP in there. Mine's eight in a little bit. Failure to get that totally changes your hormones. You become more insulin and leptin resistant, which means you're hungrier and better at storing fat. Nothing we want to be good at. Your cortisol's higher and your ghrelin is higher too. You're hungrier, you're crabbier, your energy's down, you're craving sugar, your gut's more permeable. It's a recipe for disaster. So if you wanna fix that, you've gotta start focusing on your sleep. And I found with so many people, they actually Just don't even make time for sleep. They don't make it a priority because they don't realize that it has the biggest impact. It's so hard to make good, healthy choices when you're tired. I mean, let's face it, you're exhausted in the morning. Do you really wanna have a piece of salmon or are you looking for a muffin and a latte? Right. So focus on your sleep. And one little key I do, and I got this from Dr. Michael Bruce, is to do this power down hour, an hour before sleep, where you really prepare yourself for slee into a habit. I have my same routine no matter where I am traveling or at home where I take a hot bath, I cool down, I have all of my little things that I do. And then I get in bed and I read a good but not a great book for about 15 minutes and go to sleep. Okay, next one that really helps restore insulin sensitivity fast. Because one of the first places you can restore insulin sensitivity, which means your body hears insulin better in response to carbohydrates and doesn't have to push it up as high, is through weight training, resistance training. And when you do resistance training, I want you to do this in this specific way. Now, we're not bolted to the floor, so I'm not a big fan of machines. I like you to do as many full body exercises and body weight exercises as possible. Push ups, pull ups, squats, pull downs, three sets, two to three sets of eight to 12 repetitions, because that's really the hypertrophy range for weight training. But again, as you do that weight training, you, you help restore insulin sensitivity. And you can do this at any age. By the way, when I was in graduate school, actually doctoral school, I was working in this aging program, and they had 70 to 100-year-old people coming in and doing resistance training with dramatic results. So it's never too old, you're never too old, it's never too late. Next one to add in there is burst training and why burst training is so cool. I like to say burst blast fat is it actually burns off your fat, storing enzymes, but it also helps your body handle stress better. And I'm going to explain a little bit why stress so devastating to diabetes. So burst training trains your sympathetic nervous system to be able to handle stress better. And the cool thing about burst training is you can do it anywhere at any level. So whatever level you're at, you can do this. For someone starting out, burst training could be as simple as walking up a flight of Stairs or getting up and down out of a chair 10 times. It's something that you can do using your full body for 30 to 60 seconds all out. Don't pace yourself. And then you recover actively twice as long as you. So that could be going up the stairs for 30 seconds and then walking back down them for a minute and then doing it again. And the reason that you actively recover for twice as long is that you're actually buffering the lactic acid that you built during the burst training and you're helping your body recover and it helps your body recover faster by doing it that way. Now, I mentioned stress and why stress is so devastating is that stress actually can keep your blood sugar elevated. And if your blood sugar's up, then your insulin's up and you're pushing on your pancreas and you can burn it out, then you're becoming an insulin dependent diabetic. So stress is critical things that can help you handle stress, really. Stress management is so individual for me. People talk about doing yoga for stress. That stresses me out. Even thinking I have to go to yoga stresses me out. I keep thinking I want to do this. I get there and then I'm stressed. So for me, a hot bath is a great way to relieve stress. Hanging out, playing with my dog is a great way to relieve stress. Going out with my kids for dinner is usually, usually a great way to relieve stress. But we all have our thing that works for us. Find that thing. And one of the things that can work well for stress is vitamin C. Vitamin C is amazing for lowering stress. Now I'm going to talk about a couple supplements that are big. I talked about vitamin D with K. Fish oil is another one. Obviously, I want you to eat good fish. Eat good fish. Clean, lean fish or not lean, I'm sorry, clean fish. Wild and sustainable things like halibut, scallops, salmon, fantastic. But you're probably going to need to supplement too. In fact, I find most people do better with 2 to 5 grams of fish oil a day. High quality fish oil, because it actually helps restore insulin sensitivity. So fish oil is key. It also reduces inflammation. You know, one of the big things that we can do is make an oil change and eat more omega 3 fats. That helps reduce inflammation. And there's some amazing nutrients along with fish oil and vitamin D, magnesium, chromium, vanadium and zinc. I want you to think of those as the four horsemen for blood sugar balance so big. And then lipoic acid. Oh, my gosh. First of all, it's great for the liver, but it acts to help balance blood sugar as well. And curcumin can lower inflammation, so those are some nutrients that can work well. As you can tell, I just gave you an entire integrated approach. 2. Helping you combat diabetes if you're already there or pre diabetes or hopefully never even getting there because diabetes you don't wake up one night diabetic or one morning you don't wake up one morning pre diabetic. This happens over time, but you can change it very quickly purely by putting these techniques in.

It's scary, but true. Sugar is hiding everywhere in diet foods, packaged foods, dressings and even sugar substitutes. It's not about cutting out all sugar, it's knowing which sugars to choose and which to lose. What if you could drop seven hidden sugars lose up to ten pounds in just two weeks? JJ Virgin will show you how with a simple four step plan to cut cravings and rev up your metabolism to lose fat fast and forever. Visit jjvirgin.com books and order the Sugar Impact Diet. You can shed up to ten pounds in two weeks. Visit jjvirgin.com books the holidays mean more.

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This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next reading. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read. With a whole list of new books and authors to try so join us each Tuesday for what should I Read next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website, whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.