Reversing Type II Diabetes: Rational Wellness Podcast 174
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Dr. Candice Hall speaks about Preventing and Reversing Type II Diabetes with Dr. Ben Weitz.
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Podcast Highlights
2:32 Dr. Hall defines type II diabetes as a condition when people cannot get glucose into their cells, so glucose backs up into the blood. So much glucose leads to a lot of circulating insulin, which leads to the cells resisting any more insulin entering. It will eventually damage the blood vessels and the ability to get oxygen and nutrients to the organs, eventually leading to organ failure. There are a lot of factors that can contribute to causing diabetes, including sugar and anything else that causes inflammation in the body.
3:45 Dr. Hall describes the process of type II diabetes as there being in each of us “a doorway for insulin and the insulin has to open the door, and that’s what lets the glucose in. Well, sometimes there’s so much circulating insulin, it’s kind of like a key when you wear out a lock by using a key over and over and over again, the key doesn’t work anymore. And so, essentially, that’s what’s happening to the cells with insulin is you just … The insulin can’t open the door because the key doesn’t work anymore. And so, the body is then having to produce more and more insulin.”
5:25 The most commonly prescribed drug for diabetes is metformin, which is touted as increasing the cell sensitivity to insulin, but Dr. Hall says that it is not really clear how metformin works and she believes that it damages the mitochondria, which are the energy producing parts of our cells.
7:11 Diabetes is quite prevalent in the US and is increasing. The standard American diet plays a role, including the amount of sugar intake. Air pollution can play a role, as can mold illness, biotoxins, and genetic factors that affect the ability to detoxify. Obesity can lead to diabetes, as can anything that increases inflammation in the body.
8:18 During the consultation with a patient with diabetes, Dr. Hall will look for root causes for their condition. She will explore their environment through their history. Are they a truck driver sitting in smog every day or commuting a long way on the 405 Freeway? Is it likely that they have been getting exposed to toxins? Where did they grow up? Did they take a lot of antibiotics growing up? If they have a thyroid problem, this can lead to diabetes and vica versa. Dr. Hall said that it’s rare to meet a diabetic patient who’s really eating a good diet, but she noted that she does “But I do meet diabetics that have really cut their calories or tried intermittent fasting and it’s not working for them. And those are the patients that you have to dig deeper on.”
Dr. Candice Hall is Doctor of Chiropractic and a leading Functional Medicine practitioner in Orange County, California. She is the founder of Next Advanced Medicine and Natrueal Products and she has written 2 books, The True Diabetes Solution and The True Thyroid Solution. Her website is NextAdvancedMedicine.com.
Dr. Ben Weitz is available for nutrition consultations, including remote consults via video or phone, specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also specializing in Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure and also weight loss, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111 or go to www.drweitz.com. Phone or video consulting with Dr. Weitz is available.
Podcast Transcript
Dr. Weitz: Hey, this is Dr. Ben Weitz, host of the Rational Wellness Podcast. I talk to the leading health and nutrition experts and researchers in the field to bring you the latest and cutting-edge health information. Subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast for weekly updates. And to learn more, check out my website, drweitz.com. Thanks for joining me, and let’s jump into the podcast. Hello, Rational Wellness Podcasters, thank you so much for joining me again today. For those of you who enjoy the podcast, please give us ratings and review on Apple Podcast. If you’d like to see a video version, go to my YouTube page. And if you go to my website, you can see detailed show notes and a complete transcript. That’s drweitz.com.
Today, our topic is how to prevent and reverse type 2 diabetes with Dr. Candice Hall. Diabetes and pre-diabetes are epidemic and increasing in the United States and around the world. According to the CDC 2020 statistics, 34.2 million Americans or 10.5% of US population are diabetic and 88 million folks have pre-diabetes or 34.5% of the population, which means that 45% of Americans have either diabetes or pre-diabetes. And I suspect with the coronavirus pandemic that this rate is increasing. I heard the CEO of Kellogg’s on CNBC at the end of April bragging about how increasing numbers of Americans are eating cereals like Frosted Flakes and Fruit Loops for dinner as well as breakfast. Isn’t that great? Diabetes is associated with serious complications including heart disease, stroke, blindness, kidney failure and lower leg amputations. Diabetes is now the seventh leading cause of death in the United States.
Dr. Candice Hall is a leading functional medicine practitioner in Orange County, California. She’s a founder of Next Advanced Medicine and Natrueal Products. She’s written two books, The True Diabetes Solution and The True Thyroid Solution. Thank you so much for joining me, Dr. Hall.
Dr. Hall: Thanks for having me, Dr. Weitz. I’m really impressed with what you’re doing. So, I feel privileged to be here.
Dr. Weitz: Very good. Why don’t you explain what is type 2 diabetes?
Dr. Hall: Type 2 diabetes essentially is when people cannot get glucose into their cells. And so as a result, the glucose backs up into the blood … its like glass on the blood vessels and eventually destroys them and destroys the ability for oxygen and nutrients to get to the organs. And so, organs slowly fail. It’s just not a good way to die.
Dr. Weitz: Now, a lot of people define diabetes as a state of insulin resistance. Is that how you see it?
Dr. Hall: No.
Dr. Weitz: No?
Dr. Hall: A resistant to insulin for sure, but their answer and I shouldn’t say no. Certainly, the cells are resistant to insulin. So an insulin, for those of your listeners who don’t quite understand, I know that you have a large functional medicine population-
Dr. Weitz: Perhaps you could explain the process by which somebody ends up with type 2 diabetes.
Dr. Hall: I think they might find interesting is there’s quite a lot of different things that lead to type 2 diabetes, but essentially, think of yourselves as having a doorway for insulin and the insulin has to open the door, and that’s what lets the glucose in. Well, sometimes there’s so much circulating insulin, it’s kind of like a key when you wear out a lock by using a key over and over and over again, the key doesn’t work anymore. And so, essentially, that’s what’s happening to the cells with insulin is you just … The insulin can’t open the door because the key doesn’t work anymore. And so, the body is then having to produce more and more insulin-
Dr. Weitz: Well, isn’t that what’s commonly meant by insulin resistance?
Dr. Hall: Yes. When I hear people understand that my patients say things like, “Well, my doctor says I don’t make enough insulin.” The lay person commonly hears insulin resistance in the same manner that they hear, “I don’t make enough insulin,” which those are very different things.
Dr. Weitz: “I don’t make enough insulin” is late stage, after years of having too much insulin circulating around?
Dr. Hall: Yes. So what most type 2 diabetics don’t realize is they’re making so much more insulin than someone like you or I who does not have that problem. So much insulin that eventually, they can actually wear out their pancreas and even become a type 1 although that’s not common. The other thing that happens is by the time they start injecting insulin, as you know when you put hormones into the body and then your body can stop producing its own and that can be problematic as well.
Dr. Weitz: Of course, that’s why the most common drug for type 2 diabetes is metformin, because it’s a drug that increases the cell sensitivity to insulin.
Dr. Hall: Supposedly.
Dr. Weitz: Supposedly? You don’t think it does that?
Dr. Hall: Well, there’s a lot of studies out about insulin and the consensus seems to be they don’t really know how metformin really works, which is a little disturbing.
Dr. Weitz: That it’s touted as an anti-aging drug too as well as the most popular medication for diabetes.
Dr. Hall: It is. But there is also research that it damages the mitochondria, because I have patients who are not diabetic and want to take it as anti-aging and they asked me if I give them that. I do not. I like mitochondria.
Dr. Weitz: Personally, I take Berberine, which is this sort of natural form of metformin for anti-aging purposes.
Dr. Hall: Very much so.
Dr. Weitz: So what is pre-diabetes?
Dr. Hall: Pre-diabetes is essentially the same thing. The numbers are not just as high. There’s really not much difference between pre-diabetes and diabetes. What that means is that you’ve turned on the problem. I mean oftentimes, if they really put in some habit-changing, change the way they’re eating, they can get those numbers down. What we seem to see is once you turn on that disease, there are deeper things at play than just diet. It’s always diet-exercise, diet-exercise, but we’ve had patients, hundreds of them, who’ve dieted, exercised, lost a 100 pounds and the A1c goes up two points. It’s a very frustrating disease. There’s a lot more underneath diabetes than just diet and exercise.
Dr. Weitz: Why is diabetes so prevalent today? Why is it increasing?
Dr. Hall: Well-
Dr. Weitz: Especially in the US.
Dr. Hall: A loaded question. So certainly the standard of American diet, what we call the SAD diet plays a role. There’s a lot of sugar and so, too much sugar in the body can create insulin resistance. But there’s lots of studies showing that air pollution is very connected with type 2 diabetes. Mold illness, biotoxin illness, there are genetic factors when someone cannot detoxify the body well that lead to diabetes. So there’s a lot of different reasons why the numbers are going up.
Dr. Weitz: Does obesity lead to diabetes?
Dr. Hall: It certainly can, yes.
Dr. Weitz: Do you think saturated fat plays a role in diabetes?
Dr. Hall: I think anything that creates inflammation that … Remember diabetes happens at the cellular level. If your cells are inflamed, then the receptors on them don’t work very well.
Dr. Weitz: When you get a patient who comes into your office with pre-diabetes or diabetes, what are you thinking about as you’re doing the consultation with them, what their root causes of their diabetes might be?
Dr. Hall: Well, I start by just asking them when did they get it. I do like to see if there’s a family history of the disease, but that’s not nearly as important to me as their environment and their habits. Are they a truck driver? Are they sitting in smog every day? Are they commuting on the 405 or the 5 Freeway? Are they working in a carpet factory? What is their environment and what kind of toxins are they around? That’s one of my first questions. I always like to see where they grew up, if they grew up somewhere on a farm where there was a lot of pesticides. Did they have a lot of antibiotic use? Those are areas where I start. I like to see if they have a thyroid problem. Thyroid problems can lead to diabetes and vice versa. So those are the types of questions I like to start with.
Dr. Weitz: As well as their history, you’ll look at what their eating and their lifestyle, their exercise?
Dr. Hall: Yeah. But we always assumed that the diet has to be improved. It’s rare that I’ll meet a diabetic who’s really eating a good diet. But I do meet diabetics that have really cut their calories or tried intermittent fasting and it’s not working for them. And those are the patients that you have to dig deeper on.
Dr. Weitz: What is a good diet for a diabetic? Is there a good diet?
Dr. Hall: It’s funny that you ask me that because you see-
Dr. Weitz: Does it depend on a person?
Dr. Hall: It does actually depend on the person. We got to take out inflammatory foods like sugar, dairy. We’ll look at taking out those types of foods, grains, if needed but we always test the patient because there’s a lot of research around the fact that when you eat certain foods that your immune system doesn’t like that you make antibodies, blood sugars will go up anywhere from three days to 12 weeks from one exposure to that food. The immune system plays a large role in the elevation of blood sugar as well.
Dr. Weitz: It sounds like you’re placing an equal importance on toxins as you do for blood sugar?
Dr. Hall: Well, when you’re looking at the-
Dr. Weitz: Most people when they talk about diet for diabetes are saying, they’re advocating a ketogenic diet or super low carb diet or some specific diet that it has a direct effect on glucose regulation or insulin sensitivity.
Dr. Hall: That’s a good comment. What I would say is there are patients who do really well on a ketogenic diet and there are patients that don’t do well at all. If I have a biotoxin patient, meaning they have been exposed to a toxin and they carry a particular gene where they can’t rid the body of the toxin. Now, these are living toxins, things like mold, Lyme, certain types of bacteria. Then I put that patient on a keto diet. They’re already not processing their fats correctly. And so, the cholesterol just goes up and the blood sugar does not come down. It depends on the patient. There’s not a single one of our patients who’s on the same diet. I have to look deeper at the patient and find out which diet we’re going to put them on.
Dr. Weitz: What’s your workup? Somebody comes in your office with diabetes or pre-diabetes, how do you decide what tests you’re going to run?
Dr. Hall: Let’s say, obviously, you’re not diabetic. You look very healthy. But let’s say you were diabetic and you come in. I get your history and based on that history, I would determine which tests to do. So let’s pretend that you’re someone who’s … Well, give me a scenario. That’d be a fun way to play it. Give me a hint of diabetic.
Dr. Weitz: I’m a 50-year-old guy who’s been eating standard American diet, really haven’t had a lot of time for exercise. I was exercising a little bit but I stopped during the pandemic. I work in the tech industry, but yet I’m having rising hemoglobin A1c and my doctor wants to put me on hemoglobin. He wants to put me on metformin and my blood sugar is like 98, my fasting blood sugar. What would you do?
Dr. Hall: You mean like 198? That person’s blood sugar is at least 198 if they’ve been eating through COVID especially Frosted Flakes. Well, that’s an easy workup. That’s really easy. And then when you say you work in the tech industry, are you in front of a computer all day?
Dr. Weitz: Yeah.
Dr. Hall: And then I’d be asking you how do you sleep? Do you sleep well at night?
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, I get a full four hours.
Dr. Hall: Four hours. So do you wake up in the middle of the night or you only sleep four hours every night and then you get up and go to work?
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. But I don’t have time for any more sleep.
Dr. Hall: Okay, so you’ve been sleeping four hours. There’s no helping you and I would just stop.
Dr. Weitz: We’ve had a lobotomy.
Dr. Hall: So certainly it’d be very difficult. People who work nights have a massively increased risk for diabetes because how it switches their hormones, the hormones that regulate Circadian rhythm play a huge role in regulating blood sugar. If someone is only sleeping four hours a night, I’m going to go in on that first. And then I’m going to look at their hormones especially even though you’re male, you make estrogen. We’d look at testosterone levels. We’d look at all these-
Dr. Weitz: Let’s say my testosterone is low, my estrogen is high, my sex hormone binding globulin is elevated.
Dr. Hall: Then I would you know you’re a diabetic. Yeah, male diabetics, they can be very estrogen-dominant which is what increases their risk for prostate and colon cancer. So when a male diabetic’s sugars are high, they’re literally converting their testosterone into estrogen. And we have to look at that pattern. It’s also what causes the erectile dysfunction that most male diabetics end up going through. But we’re looking more at cause at this point. So we’re looking at the hormone-
Dr. Weitz: At that point, do you try to fix the hormones or do you try to fix the sugar?
Dr. Hall: Well, the hormones are part of what’s dysregulating the sugar. So we have to hit it from all angles. So I’m going to test this patient’s hormones. I’m going to test their stool. I’m going to test their blood. I’m going to-
Dr. Weitz: Tell me what tests you’re going to run. How are you going to test my hormones? You’re going to do serum hormone testing?
Dr. Hall: I do serum and I do saliva because you’re only sleeping four hours a night. So it would depend on your symptoms. I do serum and saliva.
Dr. Weitz: You’re going to do saliva testing? What, you’re talking about for cortisol?
Dr. Hall: I want to do cortisol and also it’s a good way to look at the free fraction. It’s a good way for us to kind of see … It gives us two different windows. Some people prefer saliva and some people prefer blood but it really kind of depends on what I’m looking at. But I do like to look at cortisol through saliva. And then sometimes too we’ll do, depending on the patient, we’ll do four times a day-
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, that’s pretty much the standard or now, it’s six times a day with the first morning, the cortisol … What’s it called the cortisol … The first [crosstalk 00:16:32] which one?
Dr. Hall: The cortisol rhythm?
Dr. Weitz: No. You take the first test before they get out of bed. I forgot what it’s called. It’s six. You do one before they get out of bed. Then you do one 30 minutes out of bed. Then you do one morning, hit noon, afternoon, and evening.
Dr. Hall: I’m not sure what word you mean-
Dr. Weitz: Anyway. Well, let’s-
Dr. Hall: The DUTCH test, it’s a urine test but it’s a really good way to look at cortisol. And then we see [crosstalk 00:17:07]. Cortisol plays a large role in regulating blood sugar as well. We’ll do those tests and then we’ll do the blood test. We’re looking at about 60 different markers.
Dr. Weitz: So are you using a specific lab you can talk about or have you just set up your own panel?
Dr. Hall: No, I don’t use my own lab. I used LabCorp most of the time for blood. I used Doctor’s Data for stool at times and then I also use the [inaudible 00:17:38] out of-
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, diagnostic solutions.
Dr. Hall: … diagnostics, yeah, diagnostic solutions. And then I’ll use for the stool tests, again, it depends on symptoms which company I’m going to use. For saliva, I use Diagnostics and I use Lorisian for the food intolerance testing. That’s a company out of UK that I really like the way that they perform their test.
Dr. Weitz: I’ve really been enjoying this discussion, but now, I’d like to pause to tell you about the sponsor for this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast. This episode is sponsored by Pure Encapsulations, which is one of the few lines of professional nutritional supplements that I use in my office. Pure Encapsulations manufactures a complete line of hypoallergenic research-based dietary supplements. Pure products are meticulously formulated using pure scientifically-tested and validated ingredients. They are free from magnesium stearate, gluten, GMOs, hydrogenated fats, artificial colors, sweeteners and preservatives.
Among other things, one of the great things about Pure Encapsulations is not just the quality products but the fact that they often provide a range of different dosages and sizes, which makes it easy to find the right product for the right patient, especially since we do a lot of testing and we figure out exactly what the patients need. For example, with DHEA, they offer five, 10 and 25-milligram dosages in both 60 and 180 capsules per bottle size, which is extremely convenient.
Now, back to our discussion.
Dr. Weitz: On a blood sugar on a serum testing, what are the key factors you look at?
Dr. Hall: Well, certainly A1c and fasting blood sugar but we want to look at … Like a lot of our patients, the ones on insulin anyway, we’re always going to look at the antibodies to the pancreas. A lot of patients are what we call a 1.5 diabetic. They’re not even a type 2. They’ve been misdiagnosed. And so they’re being treated as a type 2 and as a result, they’re getting worse. I have patients who make antibodies to insulin that are taking insulin and that’s obviously very bad for them. So we’re trying to … Those patients, we want to get off the insulin right away. Those blood markers, looking to see if they’re making antibodies to their own insulin, to the islet cells, to the pancreas itself. We want to see their C-peptide, how much are they actually able to produce. We’re looking at homocysteine because obviously, diabetes can inflame the brain and cause problems with the heart. We’re looking at C-reactive protein. We’re doing a CBC to see if there’s an underlying infection, if the eosinophils are elevated. And commonly the gut infections are part of what’s driving the inflammation created by the immune system that’s been causing problem with the cells. You can see it’s quite a bit deeper than just putting them on a diet. The diet makes up about 30% of reversing a patient. What we’re doing is getting in and saying, “What is really driving all of these?” Think of how many people are obese and eat a terrible diet but are not diabetic? Looking deeper and finding out what’s driving it is really the goal.
Dr. Weitz: And then you mentioned toxins. How do you screen for toxins?
Dr. Hall: Well, biotoxin illness is really one of the … When a patient is getting stuck, let’s say you have a patient that you do the normal stuff and their numbers aren’t with me or you plateau. Often, underneath that is something called biotoxin illness.
Dr. Weitz: Which is mold, right?
Dr. Hall: Which is what?
Dr. Weitz: Mold.
Dr. Hall: It can be … So if the patient is what we call a multi-susceptible, sometimes it’s not mold at all. But mold would be a common cause of biotoxin illness. But we have Lyme patients. We have patients who have what’s called resistant MARCoNS. So then we’ll look for those toxins. Also, we have people who are … No, I had one patient, her job was to count the amount of product in someone’s truck. So they back up the truck, keep the truck on and then she’d go look and see what was in the truck and she did that all day.
Dr. Weitz: Breathing in all that diesel?
Dr. Hall: Yeah, she was one of the sickest patient. Through Great Plains Laboratory, they have some really good test for environmental toxins, the GPL-TOX is good. We’ll do a MycoTOX on patients with biotoxin illness. But it’s amazing how many patients have that as their underlying driver and they just can’t get it all out. Their environment has gotten so much worse.
Dr. Weitz: Your testing is going to be pretty extensive and pretty expensive too, huh?
Dr. Hall: I mean, we get discounts on certain labs. I get a $1,700 blood test for $149 because we order so many of them. LabCorp gives me a great reduction. Certainly the testing, understand that when I’m seeing a patient, it is their history that determines the testing. And so I have a patient who spent $300 in testing. I have a patient who’s spending $900 in testing.
Dr. Weitz: Let’s say, you got a patient. This patient is pre-diabetic, and they have some evidence of biotoxins. What’s your next step? Are you putting them on a diet and working on the biotoxins? Do you try to clear out the biotoxins first? What’s your procedure?
Dr. Hall: Good question. We’ll start with the VCS test to see if their brain is actually inflamed because that will determine how we’re going to treat them.
Dr. Weitz: Maybe you could explain what that is real quick.
Dr. Hall: Sure. A VCS test is the visual contrast study. So when someone has biotoxin illness, the posterior portion of the eye can begin to swell. And if it does, then the person will lose the ability to see lines as they get closer together, they’ll lose that contrast, not that they can’t see the difference between gray and white but these lines as they get smaller, they’ll have trouble distinguishing them. That along with certain symptoms indicate about with 98% accuracy whether the person has biotoxin illness or not.
So let’s say that’s what’s happening. Then we’ll go through to do the genetic testing to see what specific toxins they are unable to detoxify. One of my patients for instance, he can detoxify mold but he cannot detoxify Lyme. So then we did the co-infections for Lyme and Lyme, and he does have Lyme disease. So, we have to start treating that. We’ll also determine what diet he should be on or do …
We can help determine that through the blood test. What do the inflammatory markers of like? What does the cholesterol look like? We’ll fractionate out the lipids, see what that looks like. And then put them on a customized diet. And then we will start working with their habits.
Dr. Weitz: As far as diet, is pretty much everybody on some version of a lower carb diet or some people on a high carb diet?
Dr. Hall: I would say all of our patients are not eating grains. They’re not eating grain. They’re not eating sugar. As we get into patients who have autoimmunity and things, we’re taking out inflammatory foods. So, it is definitely not a high carb diet. Yeah, we have certain patients that can tolerate specific grains. So when we test them of their specific grains and we let them know how much they can have. But for the most part, I think patients do better off of grains.
Dr. Weitz: So, as far as grains, you’re talking about food sensitivity testing? Is that what you’re talking about?
Dr. Hall: We do food sensitivity testing. I had one patient, she had an A1c when she started at 7.4. When we got her by month four of her program, she was down to a 5.4. She was off all six of her medications. Her blood sugars have been under 100 for three weeks. She was doing really well, off all her meds. On Sunday night, her blood sugars spiked to 196. So, there’s two things that will do that. Either she has an infection or she ate something she makes an antibody to. Those are the two things.
So, we start digging in and find out her husband had marinated her steak in vinegar and oil dressing, which is fine. She can have vinegar and oil dressing but the one he used was full of soybean oil and she makes antibodies to soy. So now, we have to work with her immune system or we’re not going to get her blood sugars down. So, she did not have any sugar at all, and that’s what happened.
So, the antibody testing I think makes a really big difference in how it is that we customize someone’s diet.
Dr. Weitz: Another thing I found is stress. They can get a spike in cortisol. And by the way, the test I was trying to think of is a cortisol awakening response, the CAR.
Dr. Hall: Oh, okay.
Dr. Weitz: Let’s say somebody has Lyme. How are you going to deal with that? You’re going to use the herbal botanical protocols?
Dr. Hall: We use a lot of ozone in our practice. If it’s in the beginning, we are going to have the doctor prescribed antibiotics obviously or a good defense in the very beginning if they have the bull’s-eye rash.
Dr. Weitz: But that’s pretty rare that you see him at that phase?
Dr. Hall: It’s funny to say this because I just had a patient two days ago. Friday, sorry, it was Friday. She had the bull’s-eye rash and everything. I’m like, “Perfect, this is so much easier.” And I have to tell you, so I am actually a Lyme expert but one of the doctors in my clinic is very good at it. So we just refer them to that doctor.
Dr. Weitz: We just had Darin Ingels at the meeting speak on the last podcast about Lyme.
Dr. Hall: Yeah, I tuned into that. That was pretty cool.
Dr. Weitz: He gave a great presentation. So, Lyme could take a long time, it seems, to treat. He said three months to a year.
Dr. Hall: Yeah. And if it’s intracellular, man, those patients can really struggle.
Dr. Weitz: I want to ask you a few more questions about diet. Is it better for patients to have a small meal? And this is in general, is it better for patients to have a small meal every three hours to keep their blood sugar even which by the way we preach for years because I’ve been doing this for 32 years. I’m older than I look, and so when I first started, the big thing about why everybody was overweight was because everybody skipped breakfast and then they ended up eating too much at dinner and that’s why everybody was fat. They went too long without eating so then they would have this blood sugar spike. It would drop and then they would eat too many carbs.
So the answer was that they had to eat within an hour of waking up. You have to eat every two to three hours with a small meal or snack to keep your blood sugar stable and that’s going to be the key to losing weight. And of course now, the most popular trend is to skip breakfast and do intermittent fasting. Anyway, so from your perspective for diet, is it better to have small snacks or is it better to have gaps in eating throughout the day?
Dr. Hall: I feel bad. I feel like every time I answer you, I’m not giving you a direct answer because I know that’s what your listeners want to hear.
Dr. Weitz: No, if it depends on the person, that’s a completely valid answer.
Dr. Hall: Yeah, it does depend on the person. So let’s say for instance that … Let’s say you’re somebody who’s having high blood sugar and low blood sugar. So, when someone is diabetic, there’s a couple of things that can happen. When someone starts getting low blood sugar, that can be a sign that diabetes is coming later because they’re having trouble regulating hormones that regulate their blood sugar.
Most of the time when people get diabetes, they just have high blood sugar. They don’t get lows because if they’re getting lows, they’re getting sicker. If somebody is getting highs and lows, we are going to feed them more often because the lows are really very bad for the body. It’s bad for the heart. It’s bad for the brain. So, we don’t them having low, so we’ll feed them more often and smaller meals.
With our patients, we don’t really regulate how much they eat typically. We just tell them as long as their plate is about … We really want them moving towards about a good 60% to 70% of their plate is vegetables. We’ll push them, depending on the patient, even up to 80% vegetables. But typically, it’s a 70-30 split between protein and vegetables on their plate. And then we determine the amount of fat depending on the labs.
But for those patients, we won’t really limit how much they eat.
Dr. Weitz: How do labs determine how much fat they should have?
Dr. Hall: I don’t want to be misleading. If the cholesterol is high, we only absorb about 6% to 8% of the cholesterol we eat. But if you’ve got somebody who’s really inflamed, cholesterol obviously is still an inflammatory marker as well. But if they’re not processing their fats well which you can see on just by looking at just even the LDL and cholesterol, and again with the diabetic, if they can’t get glucose into the cell, then part of what happens is they’re converting it into cholesterol. And so, you have to take that into account too. But when the lipids are high like that, we generally will not put them on keto.
Dr. Weitz: And is that because saturated fat causes heart disease?
Dr. Hall: No. But that’s what they want us to believe. No, it’s because when the people are ingesting fat-
Dr. Weitz: They’re not processing it.
Dr. Hall: … those lipids correctly. And so it’s creating more problems. So we don’t put them on a high fat diet.
Dr. Weitz: Right. So, you mentioned snacking or eating certain foods to maintain the blood sugar. One of the issues for diabetics can be that their blood sugar can drop at night and that can create a real problem. Have you had patients like that? And do you have a strategy for something they can eat at night?
Dr. Hall: I do. So, it’s interesting, when the blood sugar is dropping … I mean everyone’s blood sugar drops when we sleep but we don’t drop to 40 and think we’re going to die. But by the time that’s actually … So when someone is waking up in the middle of the night, even somebody who is not a diabetic, it is generally most often a blood sugar problem. So, what’s happening is they’re not making … Let’s say you’re somebody who is just really stressed, or you’re diabetic that’s really stressed … That’s even worse … and you’re just pumping out cortisol all day to try to regulate your blood sugar and your stress.
Then come nighttime, cortisol was the hormone that regulates your blood sugar when you sleep. But if you’re just kind of maxed out and you can’t make anymore, then what will happen is the person will just, come 2:00, 3:00 a.m. depending on when they ate dinner, boing, they’ll just wake up and they can’t go back to sleep. Well, that’s because the body is now secreting adrenalin because you don’t have enough cortisol to bring your blood sugar up.
So, when that’s happening, that is very damaging to the brain. So, it’s one of the precursors to Alzheimer’s, so we want to get that person sleeping through the night. What we’ll do, let’s say they’re waking up at 3:00 a.m. As crazy as it sounds, we’ll have them set an alarm for 2:30 and eat four grapes. Just get up, eat something with a little bit of sugar in it and go right back to sleep. And as we do that, as we start eventually within a short period of time, they stop waking up at night. But that’s only because during the day, we’re also regulating the blood sugar.
Dr. Weitz: What about intermittent fasting?
Dr. Hall: I love it. It just, again, depends on the patient. Some patients do better with intermittent fasting at night, dropping out that six o’clock meal. Most patients prefer to skip breakfast but that’s not always the best meal to skip. And if patients are on insulin, intermittent fasting can be great but it can also be dangerous. So you’ve really got to watch them. With the patient on insulin, we’ll usually do a smaller window, for sure.
Dr. Weitz: What about fiber?
Dr. Hall: Fiber is great for the gut as long as you don’t have SIBO.
Dr. Weitz: What about fiber for blood sugar regulation?
Dr. Hall: I think it’s great. I think the more fiber there is, the better your blood sugar is going to do.
Dr. Weitz: Let’s see. I think we pretty much covered diet. Perhaps you can talk about supplements for diabetes.
Dr. Hall: Well, you mentioned one, berberine. Apex makes a product I like a lot called Glysen. And then Biogenetix makes one called Glucostatic Balance. And that has a really nice mixture of supplements that are helpful for blood sugar. When we’re using supplements … Every patient is on different supplements, again based [inaudible 00:36:46]. In our practice, every single patient we accept is going to be put through about a four-week de-inflammatory cycle. It’s all really focused on giving them things to open up their methyl pathways to dump as much inflammation as possible. And then we’ll start customizing what supplements they’re going to be on.
Dr. Weitz: You’re kind of doing sort of a detox. Is that …?
Dr. Hall: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dr. Weitz: And what does that consist of?
Dr. Hall: I use a lot of Apex, and I use a lot of Biogenetix. So, Biogenetix has a product called … Isn’t it funny you use something so much?
Dr. Weitz: I know.
Dr. Hall: So, they have a detox, it’s pretty great.
Dr. Weitz: Like a powder?
Dr. Hall: It’s a powder, and then there’s supplements that go with it. The ClearVite through Apex is very similar and coming with that is like a BileMin. We’ll use that to help clear the toxins from the lymph to the gallbladder. We’ll use Adaptocrine to help the adrenal glands. We use Methyl-SP to help open up the methyl pathways and then we use the ClearVite shake to start really pushing the toxins out and the inflammation. And the hormones, my goodness, a female with diabetes has so many excess hormones.
Dr. Weitz: And so, how many times a day will you have them use the ClearVite or other detox shakes?
Dr. Hall: We have them start with one time a day, then we’ll go up to two times a day, then we’ll go to three times a day and then we start backing down from there.
Dr. Weitz: And this is over a four-week period?
Dr. Hall: Yeah.
Dr. Weitz: Basically, you start everybody on essentially 28-day detox?
Dr. Hall: Yes.
Dr. Weitz: And that’s a way to start to clear out toxins?
Dr. Hall: Yes. And then the next thing we’ll do is we really prioritize based on the labs. What are we going to go after first? Is the gut the major problem, or toxin is the major problem? Is the hormones the major problem? We’ll prioritize from there and we’ll manage it [inaudible 00:38:54]. If the hormones seem to be the biggest problem, we’ll try and manage those first. If it’s gut, then we’ll manage that.
Dr. Weitz: So, you see a patient. You put them on this one-month detox. You haven’t got labs. It come back in a month and then you start basing your protocols on their history and labs at that point?
Dr. Hall: Yes. That’s exactly right.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. Let’s say they have some other sort of … Let’s say they have mycotoxins. How do you deal with that?
Dr. Hall: Well, we have them take an ERMI test and see where the mold is coming from. It’s really hard to get the patient well if-
Dr. Weitz: He’s got mold in their residence-
Dr. Hall: The first thing we’ll do is test their genetics and see what they cannot detoxify. We suspect the molds, certainly we want to rule that out. Once we’ve ruled out mold, then we’ll dig deeper and see what other toxins are sitting in there or whatever.
Dr. Weitz: Is that part of your screen, heavy metals?
Dr. Hall: If they are biotoxin, yes, then we will. Or if they’re showing signs of cognitive decline, we will certainly test metals.
Dr. Weitz: How do you test for metals, with serum?
Dr. Hall: I like Quicksilver because it’s doing three. So it’s doing serum, hair and blood.
Dr. Weitz: You mean for the tri mercury one?
Dr. Hall: Well, yes and also when you’re looking at how much … It gives us an idea of how much the person is actually able to get rid of in the urine. So, a lot of people don’t do that test. They just look and see how loaded they are. But what we found is that it doesn’t … Unless we’re doing like a glutathione challenge or something, it could be so stuck in there that you’re not really seeing a real picture of how much is in there and how much they’re able to shed.
Dr. Weitz: Right. You’re talking about doing a glutathione challenge before you do a urine test for metals?
Dr. Hall: Before we do any of the testing for metals, we’ll do a glutathione challenge first to really try and push it out and see what we’re dealing with.
Dr. Weitz: And then you’ll do a Quicksilver, a Doctor’s Data or something?
Dr. Hall: I like Quicksilver. I like them best.
Dr. Weitz: We got Chris Shade speaking at our meeting this month. We’re going to talk about heavy metals.
Dr. Hall: Chris is brilliant. He’s really brilliant.
Dr. Weitz: He is. He really is, absolutely. Okay, great, I think I’m pretty much done with the questions I had. Is there any other topics or things you’d like to tell our audience?
Dr. Hall: I would say from years-
Dr. Weitz: How about this, what do you think a lot of practitioners often miss when they’re dealing with patients with diabetes?
Dr. Hall: I think they missed the underlying causes. I think they assumed it’s diet and don’t go digging deeper to find out what’s really wrong with the cells.
Dr. Weitz: They go straight to low carb diet and that’s the end of it?
Dr. Hall: Because it typically works, but I mean these patients when they eat any carbs, their blood sugar still just go up. So they’re still not really managing their blood sugar great. But what I would say after, I’ve been doing this a really long time and I got into functional medicine because I became very, very ill at one point in my life and functional medicine is how I found my way out of it.
Dr. Weitz: What were you ill with?
Dr. Hall: First, I had what I thought was a bladder infection which went on for about three years. I was a competitive swimmer in college and I just thought it was from being in the pool all the time. And then I ended up … I had an autoimmune disease called interstitial cystitis and I had done a tremendous amount of antibiotic use at my doctor’s orders. At that time I was young. I was just in college and then, you know how that messes the immune system.
And then shortly after, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s and then shortly after that, diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. So, functional medicine, it’s a long story but I believe I had mold illness way back then. It’s really what helped me find my way out and I know a lot of people suffer with that disease and don’t find their way out. So, I feel very fortunate there.
But after years of working with patients, I would say one of the things that patients should do … People in general should be doing regularly, is some level of a binder. Chris Shade makes a great one called Ultra-Binder. And there are good ones out there but with the amount of toxins that are in our environment now, I mean 50 years ago, we were not dealing with anything like this. I mean it is really causing some serious health problems.
So, being on a binder regularly and making sure you’re not getting constipated from the binder, like making sure you’re getting enough magnesium, et cetera, to keep your bowel movement, I think that would be … That’s something I think every doctors should be looking at with their patients. And most people don’t know. You can’t have a binder like charcoal or something like that around your food or your supplements. So, I’ll meet people, “Oh, yeah, I do that all the time with breakfast.” I’m like, “That’s not good. Don’t you [inaudible 00:44:28] breakfast.”
Dr. Weitz: By the way, charcoal now is being found increasingly in foods, in toothpaste, in consumer products.
Dr. Hall: Yeah. It’s funny you said that, I just brushed my teeth with charcoal before I did this.
Dr. Weitz: There you go.
Dr. Hall: Hey, thanks for having me on, Dr. Weitz. This is really fun.
Dr. Weitz: Absolutely. So, how can folks get a hold of you if they want to get in touch with you and work with you?
Dr. Hall: They can either just go to nextadvancedmedicine.com, or they can just call our office. Our number is 949-786-5050.
Dr. Weitz: Sounds great, Dr. Hall. Thanks for joining me.
