Ep. 174 - Using diet & fasting to reverse or prevent blood sugar issues & lower HbA1c & still enjoy carbs | Diabetes remission and getting off insulin with a low carb diet | How fear of regain can undermine your progress | Free Intermittent Fasting Plan

Uncategorized Apr 25, 2023

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In today’s episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy discuss the role of intermittent fasting in the treatment of diabetes, the connection between remission and the speed of weight loss, lower carbohydrate diet with weight loss.

 

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Reference Links to Articles:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33531076/

https://nutrition.bmj.com/content/early/2023/02/20/bmjnph-2022-000544#DC1

https://nutrition.bmj.com/content/bmjnph/suppl/2023/01/02/bmjnph-2022-000544.DC1/bmjnph-2022-000544supp001_data_supplement.pdf

 

Fasting For Life Ep. 174 Transcript

 

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Hello. I’m Dr. Scott Watier.

[Tommy Welling]
And I'm Tommy Welling. And you're listening to the Fasting for Life podcast.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
This podcast is about using fasting as a tool to regain your health, achieve ultimate wellness, and live the life.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You truly deserve.

[Tommy Welling]
Each episode is a short conversation on a single topic with immediate, actionable steps. We cover everything from fat loss and health and wellness to the science of lifestyle design.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
We started fasting for life because of how fasting has.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Transformed our lives and we hope to share the tools that we have learned along the way. Hey everyone, welcome to the Fasting for Life podcast. My name is Dr. Scott Water and I'm here as always on my good friend and colleague, Tom Welling. Good afternoon to you, sir. Hey, Scott, how are you doing? Fantastic, my friend. Today's conversation.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I am pumped about him. I love all our episodes or you wouldn't be hearing them right now if we didn't love it. We wouldn't. We wouldn't release it. Even the one that was released during a three day power outage when Houston got ice and snow a couple of years back, it was released from a hotspot.

[Tommy Welling]
And.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, plugged into my pickup truck in the garage in the middle of the night. Even that one, we love it. But today, today might be one of those where it becomes one of the more impactful conversations that you and I can have. Yeah, there you go. I like that ESPN instant Classic if you're a sports fan. So we're going to dive into what predicts drug free type two diabetes remission.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And if you don't have diabetes, don't worry. We've got a bunch of stuff for you, too. So before we dive into that, I want to welcome everybody in. If you're a new listener. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for giving us a shot and adding us into your fasting journey. If you want to hear more about our story and how we ended up here, hundreds of episodes in years later, coaching on a day to day basis now in terms of blood sugar, health, weight loss and lifestyle adaptation, then head back to episode one.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Give it, give it a listen with a little bit of grace, if we could ask, because yeah, we just decided to share our story. We didn't know what we're doing back then. It's been an incredible journey. So if you're an OG, been with us for a while, been on the fasting journey, maybe you were on for a while and then fell off, but you've been consistently working on this fasting concept as a health and weight loss strategy as well as a lifestyle.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Then thank you for continuing to listen in and we really appreciate all of the reviews. The best thing you can do for us to tell the podcast gods that we're doing something of impact, that what we're delivering on a weekly basis is a value in matters as give us a review. We prefer the five star kind. Of course, those are our favorites and luckily that's what we get most of.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So we're just going to keep delivering new content each and every week.

[Tommy Welling]
So yes.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Tommy, big picture here, when it comes to health and the correlation with weight, we want to look at this kind of from a future pacing perspective of what are the stats? So what does the research say about what we have going on here in the States and across the world when it comes to overall health? The reality is staggering that the statistics specifically around lifestyle induced conditions and the unhealthy nature of us as a species, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, as humans when it comes to our lifestyle induced disease processes. So things like diabetes, which we're going to specifically talk about blood sugar and insulin today, but also heart diseases, cancers, PCOS, COPD, Alzheimer's, cholesterol issues, a stroke, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, obesity, all of these things that have been identified as a lifestyle type condition. The good news is, is that that means you have a choice.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And that's what we really want to highlight today, is that if you are one of the 80 million Americans, like I was like you were either on the path or already a pre-diabetic and not knowing it, then this message is for you. If you are a short term recently diagnosed six years or less, type two diabetic, or maybe you've had the disease for years, this message is for you.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And if you're someone that wants to get the weight off, never have to worry about becoming a pre-diabetic diagnosed or undiagnosed or a full blown diabetic, which then leads to all of the other cardiometabolic lifestyle diseases. Then this message is for you. We're going to have a clear call to action here at the end and we want to deliver you a resource.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
The blueprint to fasting for fat loss that's going to help you sift through the unlimited information. Most of it we don't agree with in terms of how to lose weight, get healthy and prevent disease long term.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, a lot of confusing stuff out there from a lot of sources that don't necessarily have the track record of of watching the process or watching the process reverse. If we're talking about type two diabetes or blood sugar related issues. So I feel like understanding that you have a choice is incredibly empowering, but also just the fact that I hear a lot of people talk about their weight in terms of I'd like to be healthy but don't necessarily want to focus on losing the weight, you know, But there's there's kind of there's kind of a hidden connection or not so hidden connection, but there's also a little cognitive dissonance that can kind of come in

[Tommy Welling]
there, too, where I'd really like to be healthy, but I don't want to just feel like it's about the superficial, almost like I'm I'm thinking about the weight in just a superficial way. So I'm going to encourage everyone that it's not superficial to think about needing to lose the weight. You're onto something. You're onto the fact that I probably I feel like I don't need it.

[Tommy Welling]
I feel like it's kind of quote unquote, weighing me down, you know, or it's it's funny. It's kind of. Yeah, right. It's kind of it's like it's it's a drag. It's literally like a drag, but it's also doing the same thing on so many so many body systems, so many physiological systems that things start to make sense in a study like this that we're going to go through where it starts to connect the pieces that aren't just necessarily intuitively connected.

[Tommy Welling]
Right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So this article clearly connects those pieces.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
In a way that we haven't seen some statements being made and we're like, whoa, That's why the excitement around breaking this down as well as some supplemental materials that come with it. And another study in the clinical Diabetes Journal, Journal of Clinical Diabetes and Endocrinology as well. So let's hop into it. This comes out of the BMJ Nutrition Prevention and Health Journal.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So nutrition dot, BMJ dot com. And the study is what predicts drug free type two diabetes remission insights from an eight year general practice service evaluation of a lower carbohydrate diet with weight loss. Big picture. The results are incredible. First and foremost, not unlike what we see day in and day out, right? True. Yeah. My dad was one of the first guinea pigs of the program of how to adapt fasting and how to reverse your diabetes and how to come off medications.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And he's an old dog, doesn't like to learn new tricks. He's been diagnosed with diabetes for a while, on insulin for a while, and he was able to do it. So if it can undo years of disease process, what we're going to unpack today, then it can also be your solution for prevention, your end all be all solution.

[Tommy Welling]
You don't have to have the label first, right? Yeah. You don't have to be deep down the rabbit hole with all the trouble in order to do the things that would reverse it. You can use those same tools to prevent it, right? That's right.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Love that. So we have a lot of questions that come in. What's the right fasting schedule? Do I have to eat low carb? Because most people go in today's world like, oh, I got to cut out the carbs. You've heard us talk about this. We've done episodes on this. It's not the carbohydrate necessarily. It's the refined, processed crap that's in that's at at our fingertips.

[Dr. Scott Watier]

[Tommy Welling]
Next cardio session.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. Next. Yeah. Isn't working. We wouldn't have the exponential or the the the speedy increase that we're seeing and these 80 million Americans. And then another 27 to 30 that are full blown diabetics that's 100 and I'm not good at math on the fly, 120 hundred and 1010 million Americans. I don't know what the population in the US right now is, but I'm guessing that's close to a third.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, probably staggering either way.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So let's dive into it because you're going to be surprised and we are not by now. Tommy, correct me if I'm wrong. We are not by now surprised when we look at a fasting study and we have a fasting study we're going to talk about here too. And they're looking at time restricted eating or they're looking at weight loss studies.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And the low carb group is like not low carb to us by definition. Yeah, right. It's it's shocking when it's like, oh, the low carb control group was 45 50% carbohydrate.

[Tommy Welling]
Mm.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Huh. Okay.

[Tommy Welling]
And it wasn't very effective, huh?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. Huh. Weird. Right. So let's unpack the study. The background type two diabetes is often regarded as a progressive lifelong disease requiring an increasing number of drugs. It's always about maintenance or maintaining or it's not normally about reversal.

[Tommy Welling]
It's about managing.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Managing. That's that's what you can see. I was struggling for word there. Yeah.

[Tommy Welling]
Keep it, keep it steady, keep it nice.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And even so, this study was advice on a lower carb diet and weight loss was offered routinely to people with type two diabetes. I love this from 2013 to 2021. In a suburban practice with 9800 patients, conventional 1 to 1 general practitioner, consultations were used supplemented by group consultations and personal phone calls as necessary. So there's a big support piece here.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
That we talk a lot about as well. So the results in themselves were pretty staggering and there's a couple of big takeaways, Tommy, but there's one that's not really like a big aha, but it should offer hope.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, I think the fact that they went through this for 33 months on average and yeah, on average, about 33 months. And then during this low carbohydrate approach, weight fell from on average 97 to 86 kilograms. So everybody lost on average about £20 going through this protocol, huge reduction in HBA one C, incredible, incredible reduction. And then remission achieved in 77% who had diabetes less than one year.

[Tommy Welling]
Like incredible like the the the core message there being that the shorter they had full blown diabetes, the more clear of a path it was to actually get it into remission. I'm going to want to talk more about that later on in the discussion. But for now, in this study, I think that's a huge point.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So if you're more recently diagnosed, I remember the intro here a few minutes ago, 77%, right. If you were diagnosed in the most recent.

[Tommy Welling]
Year, that's what you're.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Saying there, right? Yeah. If you had it for more than 15 years, it was still 20% achieve remission. Second half of today's conversation is going to be about the intermittent fasting piece where we can accelerate that. My dad had it, He reversed it. He threw gas on the fire because he added the fasting piece where we're just talking about the food management support piece.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
When someone makes a decision, they want to go low carb and try to reverse their diabetes and come off their medications. Yeah, overall remission was 51%. LDL lows, decreased triglycerides, decreased, blood pressure decreased. Never mind the medication savings. Anybody looked at the prices of insulin lately. Holy moly. So let's talk about the percentage of carbohydrate intake because it was like, wow, that's actually higher than I was expecting it to be, but a lot lower than what a lot of the other studies we've talked about in the past on this podcast.

[Tommy Welling]
Those really can vary from study to study. But when when we're looking at it like here. So the way that they actually advise the patients in this population was they were giving them guidelines like what? What to restrict what was okay, what about alcohol, what about breads, what about cheeses, things like that. Like they weren't dictating every single plate, which I thought was pretty interesting, too, because sometimes in studies that we see where they actually do that, then it can kind of be like hard to sustain, hard to see myself sustaining that over long periods of time when it's very much like a prescribed plate.

[Tommy Welling]
So that was part of the cool thing to hear, which is I think contributed to some of the groundbreaking results in this study, which were like with the support piece and the general guidelines, almost teaching, teaching them how to eat in a in a proportion that was going to be serving their long term health goals rather than a prescription, which then becomes like the next diet and then almost like the on off, if I fall off, right.

[Tommy Welling]
Like, do you see that too?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, it's very rare that like after a medication is introduced that somebody makes the necessary lifestyle changes to get off of it. It's very rare. I mean, just think about your friends and family and loved ones and it's rare. My dad came off 15. Now he's only got two left and I'm just like, Dad, I mean, come on, let's do this right.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
He's happy, right? Retirement, living the dream. So one of the things that we noticed is there needs to be an understanding of physiologically what's going on as the patient or as as the client. But then you also need to know that you have the ability to change it. So these food guidelines aren't overly crazy in terms of just cut out the excess sugar and crap.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Not the stuff that's in the fruit. Okay, Not the berries. It's fine.

[Tommy Welling]
Don't get out of the vegetables just because they have some carbs.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And reduce the starchy carbs. A lot like the whites cereals, the stuff that comes in the boxes, the stuff that's prepackaged, right? All the green veggies and stuff is is allowed. Focus on protein, healthy fats. Beware of low fat foods. You know, avoid snacking. Well done. We're going to talk about fasting and reducing insulin, reversing diabetes, of course, they say watch alcohol because that just boom, automatically shuts down.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Fat burning full of carbs, stock silver with fat. What about artificial sweeteners? But I love where they talked about the actual like steps where there is a shared goal between the doctor and the patient. How many times a week, Tommy, do we hear from folks? Well, my doctor's putting me on this or my doctor said, I need to go on this medication.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
What the hell do you think? What do you want? Is that what you want? I mean, I've done thousands of consults over the years. I don't ever remember someone saying, Yeah, I really want to be on this medication.

[Tommy Welling]
Sure.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
There's a shared goal here, and then you explore the relevant resources like you need some understanding in the patient, the client, or the patient's decision to want to make a change. And then you agree on the increments or the necessary steps to get there. And then you have conversations and support over the time over this over this process to make sure that you're continually working towards your goals.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
It's not rocket science, but it's so difficult because this isn't a normal operating procedure for most health care providers.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, and we haven't even said the word fasting yet in that part of the conversation either.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
We haven't even gotten there yet.

[Tommy Welling]
Do you think a lot of times the providers might just be so used to so many patients not being willing to to make the change or them not knowing what change should?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I think it's both. It's probably most of the secondary there.

[Tommy Welling]
Of the latter.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. I mean, Dr. Fong even said it. He didn't realize it until years into his practice.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, right. Yeah. Because when we go into the nutrition recommendations here, basically they, they drew the line in the sand at about 130 grams of carbs per day.

[Dr. Scott Watier]

[Tommy Welling]
I mean that's, that's very doable. You guys.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Out there doing low carb or keto guarantee you're aiming for like.

[Tommy Welling]
Exploded.

[Dr. Scott Watier]

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Some of y'all are like 20 carbs or less.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. We see some people report back with like five or nine grams and they're like, Oh man, I didn't quite get it to zero.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Okay, listen, listen, I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to these results happened in this study. And folks that shouldn't be eating a lot of carbohydrates because that is the biggest insulin promoter, insulin driver in the body. And they were at 20 to 23% of their daily caloric intake coming from carbohydrates. That's going to be a disconnect for a lot of you out there.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
The folks that are in here are metabolically unhealthy. They have broken physiological pathways. Right?

[Tommy Welling]
That's unhealthy. Yeah. Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You have the increased liver fat, you have the insulin resistance, you have the excess weight, you have the fat in the pancreas, you have the visceral adiposity around your waist, your body can't process energy properly. Your kidneys are screaming for help. You're retaining water, right? Because insulin causes your body to retain because of aldosterone. So your blood pressure's going up, your legs are swollen, you're fat, you're tired, you're sick and tired of being sick and tired.

[Tommy Welling]
Cravings are through the roof.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. You're on the vicious cycle of just eat tired, stressed, hungry, eat tired, stressed, hungry. Eat all that.

[Tommy Welling]
Stuff. Body thinks it's starving.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But if we said to you as a 15 year diabetic to my dad, I didn't tell him, Do the folks in our coaching group? I didn't tell him. Don't look at a carbohydrate ever again. I said, What can you do? What are you comfortable with doing right now? Instead of three rolls at dinner, could you have one? Let's not just cut out the roles altogether.

[Tommy Welling]
Make you not look forward to dinner.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Anymore, right? Oh, great. I'm going to eat a giant. I mean, eat like a rabbit. Well, that's not sustainable. So if you want the quickest path to reversal, then, yeah, cut your carbs. Prioritize protein, healthy fats. This is without fasting. We. We talked about that.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, but thinking long term sustainability, though, this is pretty good. It's a pretty good line in the sand.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
The 130 carbs, right?

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Because even if you even if you said like, okay, around 100 but don't don't get myself lashings if it's not perfection. Right. Like progress over perfection maybe most days my shoot for about 100 it's 100 to 120. Okay cool. Like it's a win. It's a check. Like, yeah, I did it and and at the same time. Okay, so what did I do with those, those calories or that part of my plate or that bit of satiation that I might be losing out on at this point?

[Tommy Welling]
Well, start off with a little bit more veggies, a little bit more protein, like have a half serving more of meat. When I remove that rule and like I have, I have good nutritious food coming in and then it's not it's not keeping me in that kind of like a bad target range for blood sugar as much of the time.

[Tommy Welling]
Spikes not going as high spikes coming down bit faster. It's not lasting as long and that's where my agency starts to come down, too.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So you mentioned a C and I want to make sure we unpack that. It was interesting because this wasn't like the Whoa aha. Right like crazy. The higher A-1 C group in the study versus the lower A1 C group, the more recently diagnosed group. Right. But before we do that, I just want to forget 130 grams of carbohydrates.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You guys want to do low carb and you want to restrict and omit and torture yourselves into a corner of just eating salad and foods you don't like. Let's zoom out. Take the pressure off a little bit more severely diabetic blood sugar numbers are all over the place. Yeah. Reduce the carbs as low as you can and not feeling like you're going to binge yourself into, you know, a three day blood sugar spike or an insulin coma.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Okay. Most of us 250 grams of potato is a lot of potato. That's 50 grams of carbs. A prepackaged packet of rice is 61 grams of carbs. Three slices of white bread is three slices. A wonder bread is 55 grams of carbs.

[Tommy Welling]
Oh, nice. So you can have six slices if that was your.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
No, stop. Don't blow up my point here. Okay. Two large apples, 55 one and a half chocolate donuts is 50. 170 grams of pasta is 53. A medium sweet potato. So when people ask us, What should I eat? We say, Well, what do you like? Why should you quit? Or low carb? What? What works for you? And then we've always said, and interestingly enough, this study used 23%, Right.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Tell me if I'm right.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Right around there.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
On a 2000 calorie based diet, 2000 calorie diet. I don't like that word 2000 calorie day intake. We say 40, 40, 20, 40 protein or higher, maybe 51 day, maybe 60, but 40, 40, 20. And this study backs that up, which is incredible.

[Tommy Welling]
So percent of calories coming from from carbohydrates. It's a good long term doable balance for most for most people. We found it and accelerates the fat loss process. But it's also a good way to maintain that control long term because there's nothing worse than doing it, getting there and then giving it back like, oh, so frustrating, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So let's go over the A1.

[Tommy Welling]
C point A1 C is is an interesting thing because one of the the perplexing questions that we get sometimes is like.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Hey, everything's everything's.

[Tommy Welling]
Good, everything's normal, A1 C's normal, but don't necessarily have like day to day or hour by hour blood sugar to kind of go along with it or fast insulin. Yeah, right. Yeah. And so it can be one of those things where sometimes it's showing that there is an issue before other things, but oftentimes it still looks good. But you kind of know that there's an issue or like you're trying to figure that out.

[Tommy Welling]
Why can't I get the weight off or why does it why does it feel like it's harder than it used to be or I'm not feeling great after I eat, you know, all these kind of things that are like screaming some sort of metabolic inflexibility or some sort of metabolic issue. Right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
A1 C has its place right in the big picture of are we making some long term changes here? But let's take a patient that has been told they need to get on insulin, their fasting insulin is elevated. Let's say it's astronomically high. We just heard this number recently. It's in the two hundreds. The normal range is six, four or five or 6 to 20 2 to 25, depending on the lab we like to see under six.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So you're at 200 blood sugars arranging 152 to 50. Your solution is insulin. Here's your insulin injections. Yeah, right. Because all you're doing is proliferating the insulin resistance in itself that you're fasted insulin is in the two hundreds. So the A1 c.

[Tommy Welling]
In the goalposts.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You keep it in the goalposts. I would rather see management with less medication and slightly elevated numbers that we're actively trying to lower than not actively trying to lower and undermining our progress by using things like medications that promote the disease process.

[Tommy Welling]
Sure.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Does that make sense?

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, it absolutely does, because if the body was able to push out that much more insulin that you're being told to supplement with or bring in exogenous lee, then it already would have been doing that. So which would be proliferating the problem. But that's the reason why these kind of things build up over so many years, because the pancreas can do a lot more than it's normally asked to do when we're at a a a healthy weight younger in life, you know, all those kind of things.

[Tommy Welling]
But then we can bring in more insulin that just because it works to keep the blood sugar a bit lower, at least for a while, doesn't mean it's it's a good solution.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So what we want. Right, right, right. And that's why to your question earlier, what do you think would be the solution? You know, where do you think the problems coming from in terms of low carb recommendations or dietary changes? I think it's a lack of knowing what to recommend, a lot of it anyway, because the system is designed here's okay, here's your number, here's your here's your symptom, here's your health history, here's your here's your pill or medication or procedure.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So remission is defined as less than 48 millimeters for international folks or less than 5.7.

[Tommy Welling]
Okay. For agency.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
For agency. And greater than three months in the absence of diabetes medication. So we're not talking about just people lowering their numbers. They're talking about getting off the medication, maintaining it for three months. The A1 c takeaway from here was that the better clinical outcomes were in irrespective unrelated to remission, the better clinical outcomes were in the higher A1 C group, but more remission took place in the lower A1 C group.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Duh. So instead of three months, why don't we go 66 or or we add in some fasting protocols, you.

[Tommy Welling]
Little superpower but turbo boost?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
That's foreshadowing because there's a couple of other things that came out of this first study that we found really impactful other than the weight loss and all the metrics, blood metrics coming down and the insane, incredible actions are insane because we see it incredible remission protocol. And I remember in the beginning, I said, if it is the solution to the problem that you've had for 15 or 20 years, it can also be the prevention.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, it's like learning that standing on the shoulders of giants. That's that's learning from people who've been, you know, farther along the timeline, even if it's a timeline that you don't want to be on or you want to get off of, we can still look ahead. We can we can zoom in fast forward and then go, wait a minute, I don't want that.

[Tommy Welling]
I want to take a different turn before I get to that point. So let me do something differently. So I get to learn from it. Like, that's that's a beautiful thing. In this study, we also saw that a lot of that success over those 33 months and other timelines was the support component of it, the conversational points, the points of like, okay, I'm doing it on my own, it's working the scales, not going back.

[Tommy Welling]
Because we know we've talked about fear of regain like that can be a big, like a big confidence killer in maintaining progress. Fear of regain. It can it can make us hesitate from doing the things that we know we should be doing or that even have worked in the past. It can be like, Yeah, but I still think it's going to come back, you know, just that little like the little devil on your shoulder, you know.

[Tommy Welling]
And I remember hearing hearing that in my head for a while. So the support component where you kind of where you like, you check in and you have a conversation, it's these little things over over time that that kind of keep you on the right path and that that might be what you're doing right now, like listening to this episode, that that might be part of it.

[Tommy Welling]
Or it's like, do I really need to.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Hear this.

[Tommy Welling]
Again? I've heard some of these things like, right, that that can reverse or prevent type two diabetes. Yeah, but hearing it again a couple of months from now might be very, very helpful as a yeah, just a little checkbox, a little reminder, a little insulator, you know.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
March on me. I might do something that I don't know if we plan on doing or not.

[Tommy Welling]
So that means we didn't have.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You know, me. So one of the cool things about the takeaways before I get to that is the these outcomes are very different in this study from those reported in many low carbohydrate diet studies and many studies that we've talked about. And the reasons must be considered. The striking observation is substantial fall in weight not always seen in studies of this dietary approach.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Remember we talked about those carbohydrate numbers. Yeah. And there are, of course, dozens of factors. Why one side would work versus why one would. No, I'm not a research scientist, so I'm not going to speak about my pay grade or just going to interpret what we see. So one of the things that they say here is that getting the increase in remission or increase in success was directly tied to the speed of the weight coming off.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
The faster you got the weight off, the better the outcome. Wow. So don't lose weight too fast that yeah, you got to maintain your lean muscle. But I'd also rather be a non diabetics and a diabetic so if I lose a pound or two are muscle in the process but I lose ten to 12 to 15 to 20 to £30 of fat, I'll take just lightly.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, I'll take it, I'll figure it out when I'm over there. Like a non diabetic, a non free diabetic, a prevent a diabetic, a prevented heart patient, a prevented cardio metabolic risk, a prevented insert the dozens of things that are related to insulin resistance and poor health outcomes.

[Tommy Welling]
Former future diabetics. Right. A former generational curse.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And you may never even get you may not get to the metabolic state of diabetes because we know it goes insulin can be elevated for years before it shows up. But things like creeping of the A1 see up from three month to three month test is a reflection of carb creep.

[Tommy Welling]
Where.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
What the patient or the client was doing earlier, they're not doing anymore and they recognize that. So the on going support is essential and preventing a return to the old habits. This is something that we preach and that we've done in our own lives and now thousands of others, through the challenges and hundreds of others through the coaching.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And never mind, we talk about the processed foods that are harder to give up because of those air quotes, addictive qualities. Bless points, the satiation, the mouthfeel, all that stuff.

[Tommy Welling]
Those are tough.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So it's diet focused, but it's support focused. And that's why we love this study so much because the offer of hope, while encouraging folks to consider different approaches to type two diabetes, remission, management and or prevention. So this Norwood Surgery Center that the study came out of has improved. The type two diabetes remission rate has improved every single year since 2007.

[Tommy Welling]
Wow.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Clear messages coupled with hope delivered by supportive peers and professionals. And that weight loss key is so important. We need to get the weight off. You're not going to die in the process, I promise you. You're going to be given your life back.

[Tommy Welling]
Quite the opposite.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right? So when we talk about the physiological stuff, it's getting the weight off reveals the physiological changes during remission. So reduction in liver fat. We did a whole episode on nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. It's rapidly increasing in this country. Liver fat decreased right from 16 to 3% and that then completely reverses the liver insulin resistance, which then causes fasting high blood sugar or hyperglycemia, sharp reductions in triglycerides.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
They peak quickly and then they eventually decline. When you start adopting a fasting lifestyle and it's safe and effective, your pancreas has decreased fat, which takes the metabolic stress off of the system and allows those beta cells and your insulin in your in your in your kidneys, fat in your pancreas to function better.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, that's something I don't hear talked about very often. But the the stress that's happening inside of your pancreas to actually be able to deliver the insulin that you need comes from what what we always talk about visceral fat, right. Like more fat in and around the pancreas is like it's literally just jamming up the system. Like we need to get it the heck out of there, right?

[Tommy Welling]
Without putting ourselves into a corner of like, Yeah, but I heard too fast. This is is a problem. I heard. I heard all these things. You know, if we get.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
A 24 hour, 24 hour fast, should I do the five two, should I do the alternate day, Should I do I don't know. Go get the blueprint, go to the shownotes, click the link, the blueprint to fasting for fat loss. There's fasting schedules in there. Just like the second article that came out of the clinical the journal of Clinical Diabetes and Endocrinology in February of 2021.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I love that this stuff is now showing up in the research. Then intermittent fasting. Is there a role in the treatment of diabetes? A review of the Literature and Guide for Primary Care Physicians? These two studies that we were talking about, this Norwood study and this study, the incredible part is that someone finally put some of the they've had a research center or a clinical setting where they could put, well, the Norwood study, yes, they have a center where they do this.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And this study is a review of the literature and the guide for primary care physicians. And there's so much overlap between the two. So they talk about type two diabetes. They talk about insulin resistance in the liver, skeletal muscle and fat tissue. Right. Those are the three things. Those are the three main players and insulin resistance, which then drives blood sugar and diabetes and all the other stuff we talked about in the beginning.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But they also talk about the hormonal mechanisms. So they went in and they searched PubMed, Ovid, Medline and Google Scholar and they found case studies excuse me, clinical trials, review articles in case years related to type two diabetes and resistance and intermittent fasting. The majority of the available research demonstrates that intermittent fasting is effective at reducing body weight, decreasing fasting glucose, decreasing fasting insulin, reducing insulin resistance, decreasing levels of leptin, your satiety hormone that acts an opposite of ghrelin, gremlins, the hunger hormone.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
When you start fasting in your stomach, empty your ghrelin growl. That's how I remembered it. How ghrelin. Right, right. Like the hunger pangs, your stomach scrolling, so decreasing leptin first all leptin did not working properly, but we want to eventually see that balance out and increasing levels are predicted. Some studies found that patients were able to reverse their need for insulin therapy during therapeutic intermittent fasting protocols.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Well, so you got fasting over here, you got low carb diabetes over here, but low carb, not really low carb. 20% low carb. Yeah. Now we're talking quite yeah, moderate carb with support and encouragement and hope. Now we're talking about real life change, prevention and or if you want, if you're on the spectrum of diabetes that's been going on for 30 years.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And you want to reverse it and come off your insulin bone if you want to prevent it, never get it. You just carry an extra 20, £30 around and you're annoyed by it, right? Not the superficial. I just got to lose weight, but I just know I can feel better and have a better quality of life. And in like overall just know, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Combine the two. And I didn't know we were going to end up here today, Tommy, but this is, this is what we do.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, that's why we do it too. It's so I didn't realize it.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Like, that's why I said I was going to say something that we've never said before. So we get a lot of questions about coaching, like, what do you do? And I'm like, Well, we have a we have a VIP coaching experience. We don't call it a a group coaching, we call it a coaching experience or a VIP experience.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And the only way you could ever get in was through challenges. You come through one of our seven day lifestyle fasting challenges. We just did one incredible results, incredible group.

[Tommy Welling]
Loved it.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right? But we're getting more and more like, Hey, what do I do? How do I do this? Because the tactical matters, but it's only which is why I love this first article from the Norwood Surgery Center. It's only a small component. It's the back and forth, the support. They even said in this study, Zoom meetings are a huge proponent of success.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
We know because it's that touch point, which is what we do.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. The reason we've been doing Zoom meetings for support for three years.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I still hit the wrong buttons, though. Yeah, well, so.

[Tommy Welling]
What are you going to do?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Fasting as a solution. It gets to the root cause. It decreases insulin, real life, low carbohydrate, diabetes, remission, proof. Well, how do we get you there? We got to take an action. First of all, you got to decide, right? Then you've got to take an action. That's why we created the blueprint of fasting for fat loss. It's 20 pages.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
It's yours. Go to the show notes, click the link. We'll zoom it into your inbox. You can have it. If you're looking for additional support. Send us an email info at the fasting for life dot com and we'll start a conversation and see what we can do to help. Tommy, final thoughts as we wrap up today.

[Tommy Welling]
Final thoughts is that there was so much hope and perspective in between both of these. I just I loved it. I love the fact that it's bringing some of the pieces together that are like so disconnected, you know out there. And one thing that I did notice that we forgot to mention is just the fact that the range of patients that came through this, that saw the hope, that saw the remission, that saw the reversing and the sustaining of control over their previous diabetes, they had patients with 9.5 plus a one C's.

[Tommy Welling]
They had patients who had had this for years been struggling with it. So the hope is absolutely out there. So if you find yourself going, yeah, but it might not be me, I might be too far, or I may have been dealing with this for for too long, or it's just it's, it's going to be tough. No, it absolutely can be you for sure.

[Tommy Welling]

[Dr. Scott Watier]
We always like to say peek behind the curtain, too. You guys heard our journey, our story, full transparency. We tell stories, our fasting wins and losses and struggles. Right? So you're going to the Mexican restaurant every Friday? Oh, man. Yeah. And saying no, nobody caring until the one time I said, now no one's ever asked me. Yeah. And then the next week it was like, Hey, are you eating?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I'm like, No, I'm actually good. I don't feel good when I eat Mexican food. Oh, you're. And then they just forgot and we went on, right? Yeah. So this study, these two studies, there's so much overlap of things that we're doing as part of our experience with helping others in our own journey of pre and post labs and DEXA scans and all the stuff.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right? The research stuff. But there's stuff that we're going to borrow from these studies because they've connected the abstract, the application and the clinical recommendations. So I'm excited to like unpack this more as we've already started to because we've had this article, these articles for a while, putting some of these pieces in, just like, Yeah, you need to increase your sodium levels, your salt, your healthy therapeutic mineral based salts in the beginning because you're crushing your electrolyte in your your water imbalance.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
When you start the low carb or fasting.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, you need that.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Well, that's in here. They're literally telling the providers increase your salt. How many of you going to your doctor the doctors are. Yeah. You got to reduce your salt intake. That blood pressure roof.

[Tommy Welling]
Woof, woof.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. I guess. I guess it's salt, right. So just the fact that the carbohydrate number we recommend 40, 40, 20 boom, they use 23 to get these results. So I'm just pumped to continue to level up and continue to dive in and continue to build a way of getting results. That's that's unlike any other. So that's why I was like at the beginning of this, I was kind of like wading into the excitement.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But I've been I'm like, fired up. Like at the beginning I was like, Let's go, let's go. I'm ready. So if you're listening, going, okay, that was a lot cooler. You can go back and listen. I'm not a big deal. Head to the show notes, though. Grabbed the blueprint, the fasting for fat loss. It's a quick read. It's got tons of visuals.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
It'll connect some of the dots that we talked about today. Yeah. If you're looking for more support info at the fasting for life dot com the fasting for livestock info at the fasting for life economy, you can just go to the website the fasting for life. Click the contact us button and it'll get you directly into my inbox.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Okay.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I'm Scott, by the way. It's audio medium, so that's true. As we wrap up today, hope, encouragement, you have a choice. We want you to take that next step. We appreciate all of you listening. Tommy, as always, thank you for a great conversation. We'll talk soon.

[Tommy Welling]
Thank you. Bye.

[Tommy Welling]
So you've heard today's episode and you may be wondering, where do I start? Head on over to the fasting for life icon and sign up for our newsletter where you'll receive.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
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[Tommy Welling]
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[Dr. Scott Watier]
While you're there, download your Free Fast Start guide to get started Today. Don't forget to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to leave us a five star review and we'll be back next week with another episode of Fasting for Life and.

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