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Transcript
- 03:13 About Dr. Brian Mowll
- 09:03 Prevalence of Diabetes
- 10:10 Major Underlying Cause of Diabetes
- 11:54 The Importance of Checking your Blood Sugar
- 16:31 Complications of Diabetes
- 22:51 The Issues with Diabetes Medication
- 26:06 Statins: Diabetes-Causing Drugs
- 28:06 Supplements for Diabetes
- 33:09 Getting Off Medications
- 36:32 Issues with Diabetes Testing
- 42:58 The Diabetes Summit
- 46:09 Diabetes Coaching Program
Wendy Myers: Hello! Welcome to the Live to 110 podcast. My name is Wendy Myers, and you can find me on myersdetox.com. Only go there if you plan on living a really long, healthy life. And you can find this video podcast on my YouTube channel, WendyLiveTo110.
Today, we are having Dr. Brian Mowll on the podcast. He’s going to be talking about how to reverse diabetes. This is very close to my heart because my own father died of the complications of diabetes following a surgery to remove a cancer tumor, and he was not able to heal. And this is a very common complication of diabetes.
Diabetes affects so many people and it’s projected to affect one in two people. So you have to educate yourself about diabetes. And you can do that in the upcoming Diabetes Summit that’s hosted by Dr. Brian Mowll.
I was very honored to be asked to be a presenter. Of course, I talked about mineral deficiencies and heavy metal toxicities do contribute and can play a large role in causing diabetes.
Please keep in mind that this program is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition, and is not a substitute for professional, medical advice. Please consult your health care practitioner before engaging in any treatment today that we suggest on the show.
And fittingly, for a diabetes podcast, I wanted to talk about a couple of supplements that I recommend the clients who are having blood sugar issues or insulin resistance. One of my favorite ones is called Support Glucose by BioMatrix. It’s a wonderful product. It’s got Chromium in it, which is essential to help pancreatic function, Gymnema, this is a fantastic supplement that reduces sugar cravings, and also aids in improving blood sugar levels as well.
The catch 22s of having diabetes is because the sugar isn’t getting into your cells, you crave sugar. And this is one problem that I personally was having for a little while, and I was taking Gymnema to help to reduce my sugar cravings, and it works beautifully. It’s unbelievable how this ayurvedic herb helps to abolish sugar cravings.
It’s unbelievable. I personally take the standard process Gymnema. When I was taking it, I took a standard process Gymnema. But it’s good to take supplements in a formula, like Support Glucose, where you get several products, several ingredients that help to control blood sugar levels and diabetic issues.
Some other things in it are cinnamon. Of course, that’s well-known to help control blood sugar levels. Alpha-Lipoic acid is very protective of your brain. And bitter melon, again, one of those foods that’s known to help to control diabetes. So, I highly recommend it.
Our guest today is Dr. Brian Mowll. Dr. Brian Mowll is the founder and medical director of SweetLife Diabetes Health Centers and serves his clients worldwide as “The Diabetes Coach”. He is a certified diabetes educator and was one of the very first doctors to be certified to practice functional medicine by the Institute for Functional Medicine that was created by Dr. Mark Hyman.
Since 1998, Dr. Mowll has been helping people with all forms of diabetes properly manage the complex health conditions. Additionally, with type 2 diabetes, pre-diabetes and metabolic syndrome, his goal is to not just manage but to reverse these conditions using a natural, personalized lifestyle approach.
Dr. Mowll has spent over 20 years studying and applying clinical nutrition, physical activity, lifestyle management, functional medicine and diabetes self-management education. He is the host of popular “Diabetes World Summary.” There was one last year and there’s a second one this year. And he’s also a prolific writer, blogger and speaker.
In addition, he has written hundreds of articles about diabetes and natural health, and has been a featured speaker and contributor on diabetes around the world. Dr. Mowll treats his clients locally in the greater Philadelphia area, and nationally, through his acclaimed Diabetes Coach program.
Dr. Mowll, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Brian Mowll: Absolutely, Wendy. I’m happy to be here. I’m excited.
Wendy Myers: Why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about you and how you became a diabetes coach.
Brian Mowll: Right. So interesting story, I guess. Not much of a personal story for me. I never had diabetes. Although I did struggle at one point with a little bit of high blood sugar, ironically, after I was already helping people with diabetes, which I’ll tell you about it in a second. But I think for me it’s more of a professional passion. It’s something that I stumbled into. I had many patients coming in, in practice, with diabetes. And they were just very frustrated with the current medical approach, with the standard of care they were getting, which is mainly just drugs with very little advice. The advice that they were getting from their dieticians and diabetes educators at the time was just the standard stuff from the ADA, which is a high carbohydrate diet. It doesn’t really make any difference. The quality of food, sugar is sugar, that type of thing.
And I just knew that that was wrong. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t working for them.
So I did a lot of research at that time. We’re going back 15 years but did a lot of research at that time, trying to really figure out. I just knew that there was a better way. So I tried to figure out what can we do to help these people more, thinking that it was going to be all about diet and exercise, which is a large part of it but it was Pandora’s box. Just so much information about what causes blood sugar to go up and how to really handle it.
I just became really interested in it. And then I think the ultimate is when you get results. When you’re working with somebody and they actually get better and they’re able to get off of medications and many of them reverse their condition. The thank yous, the excitement, the joy, seeing the blood sugar changes, that just becomes very, almost addictive and exciting.
It was more of a professional passion that originally led me into working with people with diabetes.
Just to finish the story that I mentioned a second ago. Years later, I had gone through a business transition, broke up a partnership, was under a lot of stress, working too many hours, took a lot of burden onto myself, and really let my health slip. I gained 30 pounds or more, I think at that time, and started having night sweats. Eventually, I took out my blood pressure cuff and checked my blood pressure, and my blood pressure was 170-something over 94, really high. I was pre-diabetic. My blood sugar was over 110, fasting. I sort of had a wake-up call at that time.
That’s about my only personal experience. Fortunately, I was able to turn things around and get healthy again.
Wendy Myers: What did you do to turn it around?
Brian Mowll: Followed my own advice. I just went back to eating well, exercising, taking care of myself, sleeping better, got rid of the stress, realize that I’m not going to get everything done in the timeframe that I want to. I just followed my own advice, cleaned up my life and fortunately, I was able to lose whatever that 30 pounds that I gained.
It’s a reminder that’s always in the back of my head. Nobody’s perfect. This kind of thing can happen to anybody, and when you fall off track, you just got to wake up and get back on.
Wendy Myers: I think it’s a big challenge for health professionals like myself and yourself because there are so many things you want to do and you want to help so many people, and we ourselves get very stressed out and our health can decline just like anyone else when you’re too stressed and overworked, et cetera, not sleeping enough.
Brian Mowll: Yes, absolutely. We’re all certainly at right for these types of things. It becomes incredibly frustrating when you’re trying to teach people something and you’re not living it. So fortunately, that was only a few months for me, maybe a six-month period of time, and I was able to right the ship.
Some people, we have doctors that I know who live that way. They’re 100 pounds overweight and they’re counseling patients on diabetes care. It’s amazing.
Wendy Myers: Well, let’s talk about diabetes. What is the prevalence of diabetes and what are the projected statistics on diabetes?
Brian Mowll: It’s crazy. Right now, 26 million, I think, 90% with type 2. That’s in the US alone. And it’s supposed to triple by 2050, which is hard to imagine. I think the average that is spent per year on someone with diabetes is close to $14,000. So if that triples, if diabetes triples, our economy is going to completely collapse. It’s amazing. It’s not just a US phenomenon. This is now a global thing. It’s growing faster in China and India than it is here in the United States.
And then you look at this whole cascade of impact that insulin resistance, obesity and diabetes has with heart disease rates, kidney failure, Alzheimer’s disease and inflammation-driven conditions, it’s just staggering, really.
Wendy Myers: It is frightening. What do you think is one of the major underlying cause of this epidemic?
Brian Mowll: Well, I think, mainly, it’s a deviation from our ancestral way of living, in a broad sense. I think our genes are not programmed for the lifestyles that we lead today. Again, high stress, not getting quality sleep, the diets that we eat are very rich in processed foods, high calorie many times but low quality. So we’re getting just bad foods in our diet. We’re leading sedentary lifestyles.
Even if you exercise, even if people get up and go for a 40-minute walk every day, that’s still nowhere near what our bodies evolved to do. We were meant to be moving all the time and be active. So I think it’s all those things plus you can add into that gut dysfunction, immune system dysfunction. There are probably dozens of other things that we could throw onto the fire that lead to this metabolic pile of dysfunctions.
And I think diabetes sits on the top of that. It’s the pinnacle of metabolic disease, of metabolic dysfunction.
11:54 The Importance of Checking Your Blood Sugar
Wendy Myers: I really urge people to get a glucometer and check your blood sugar, the morning before you eat, and whatnot, and make sure it’s between 80 and 90 every day because you can’t be healthy unless your blood sugar is at that very, very stable level.
So what is your blood sugar have to be to get a diagnosis of diabetes?
Brian Mowll: Good question and great advice by the way, I think it’s such an easy thing. We have patients that come in with thyroid issues and hormonal issues. And I said, “Wouldn’t it be great to be able to stick your finger and know what your T4, T3 level is right away on a daily basis or a minute-by-minute basis?”
It’s such great feedback and people, for some reason, sometimes get resistant to checking their blood sugar, especially if they’re not diabetic. I think it’s such a great tool that we can all use, even if you don’t really have any blood sugar dysregulation. Check your blood sugar before and after you eat certain foods, before and after certain types of exercise. It’s a great feedback mechanism to know how that is affecting your body.
Wendy Myers: Yes because why wait until you present with symptoms to go to your doctor and you’ve had yours of damage to your body from high blood sugar?
Brian Mowll: Absolutely. And you learn a lot too. It’s Tim Ferriss, who wrote the 4-Hour Body, talked about wearing a CGM, a continuous glucose monitor, around for days and weeks, and seeing how all his different activities and things affected. I think that’s great. I wish we could all do that because it’s fascinating how poor sleep will affect it, or if you get a little cold, how it raises your blood sugar. It’s amazing the different things that affect it.
The next best thing is obviously pricking your finger and checking your blood sugar on the spot basis.
Sorry, to answer your question earlier, I think, you would ask about, what was it again?
Wendy Myers: What is your blood sugar have to be to get a diagnosis?
Brian Mowll: Right. Diagnosis. It’s an interesting question. I think pre-diabetes is diagnosed at a hundred. That’s fasting blood glucose through, by the way, a serum lab test. So not a finger prick. But a hundred is diagnostic of pre-diabetes, and the once it goes over 126, that’s where diabetes is diagnosed. It used to be 140. They had adjusted that a bit. It’s an arbitrary number. I can’t imagine a blood sugar of 120 is any different than 130, really.
So to me, it’s pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes are really the same thing. It’s just a matter of the degree. Certainly, if your blood sugar is anywhere over hundred on a regular basis, fasting, then you’ve got some blood sugar dysregulation issues.
Wendy Myers: Yes, and I think a lot of people, unless they get that diabetes diagnosis, they don’t take it seriously with the diet and lifestyle changes. I’ve noticed that a lot in friends and clients what not. “Oh, I’m pre-diabetic.” They don’t take it seriously and making the change they need to make it to reverse that trend.
Brian Mowll: I know. Absolutely. And I think doctors are to blame for that too. This isn’t universal. Some will really say you got to do something about this now. I hear it often that their doctor told them years ago they were pre-diabetic. And I said, “What did you do about it?” And they said, “Nothing. Just said to watch it.”
That to me is horrible advice. That’s waiting. It’s having a small skin cancer growth and because it’s small, they say, “We’ll just keep an eye on it and see what happens.”
To me you need to do something about that before it becomes a malignancy or something that is very, very difficult to handle and treat because the truth is, while type 2 diabetes can be reversed, it’s not easy. Once it gets to that point, you’ve broken your blood sugar system. It’s permanently damaged. So at that point, you’re setting yourself up for a really hard road back versus if you catch it earlier, when it’s hovering around a hundred or so, or slightly elevated, then you can really make long-term wholesale changes that can prevent you from really ever getting into the diabetes range.
16:31 Complications of Diabetes
Wendy Myers: And diabetes, I think people don’t take it seriously enough. It is life-threatening. My own father, he passed away from the complications of diabetes. He had cancer and had surgery, and because of his high blood sugar, he wasn’t able to heal from the surgery. And his sutures broke, and he bled out, and he died. And that was from diabetes.
A lot of people don’t realize that diabetes can lead to cancer. What are some other complications of diabetes that people can expect?
Brian Mowll: You’re right. And the cancer connection is one that’s not talked about often but it is. Certainly, it can speed the growth of cancer. Cancer cells feed on sugar and they’re not insulin-resistant, whereas when you’re diabetic, type 2 diabetic, most of your other cells are. What happens is you make insulin to put sugar into the cells but because the liver cells and the muscle cells and the fat cells are resistant to insulin, you don’t get that sugar in the cells. Your blood sugar rises. Cancer cells because they’re new and they’re growing rapidly. They are not resistant to insulin. So that insulin just opens up the sugar channels. The sugar rushes into the cancer cells and feeds them like hungry Pac-Man and they just grow and proliferates.
Having diabetes is definitely a risk factor, maybe not for the formation of cancer but certainly for the spread of cancer, which is scary. But diabetes in general is the leading cause of adult blindness. It’s the leading cause of adult kidney failure and kidney disease. Certainly, sexual dysfunction in men. It can cause hormone imbalance. It can lead to peripheral neuropathy, which is basically a numbness, tingling or pain. It typically affects the toes or feet. As you mentioned, it can affect wound-healing and circulation. So people with diabetes traditionally are slow healers. So a small cut on the foot can get infected and next thing you know, you’re in the hospital, it’s becoming gangrenes and you’re getting it chopped off.
So these are scary, scary things.
Heart disease and stroke are probably the two biggest consequences of diabetes. Alzheimer’s disease is another consequence of diabetes.
There are things that are very real and actually most people with diabetes, the way it’s treated to day, will develop one or more of these complications.
It’s tough. You’re right. It’s a silent killer. And diabetes isn’t the killer, it’s the complications the diabetes, as you mention. People don’t know they have high blood sugar and sometimes because you don’t feel it unless it gets really high, people don’t take it seriously. But those complications will be forming in the background and you don’t want that heart attack or stroke or kidney disease, or as you mentioned, a wound that doesn’t heal and turns septic, to be the very first symptom that you have.
Wendy Myers: My grandfather died of renal failure from diabetes complications as well. He was 88. Luckily, he lived a long life. But my father was 68. He wasn’t so lucky.
So we’ve talked about some of the complications of diabetes. I think a lot of people are in denial about the fact that they could suffer from these complications. They just think it’s not going to happen to them. Can you talk a little bit about that and how you can’t just take your medication and feel you’re okay, or that you’re not going to have other problems. So what is that fallacy in that belief that the medication is going to solve all your problems with diabetes?
Brian Mowll: I think it’s wishful thinking. And again, this isn’t all on the patient. A lot of times, this is propagated by the standard medical system too, unfortunately, that it’s just all about lowering blood sugar.
Diabetes is not the same as hyperglycemia. Hyperglycemia is the medical term for high blood sugar. And they are different conditions. Diabetes is much more complex. There are lots of reasons why the blood sugar can be elevated. Hyperglycemia is a symptom of diabetes but it’s not the only thing and it’s not the problem. The problem is this metabolic dysfunction that causes the blood sugar to come up. It’s not the blood sugar itself but traditional, convention medicine typically is only treating that one symptom. So they’re lowering the blood sugar and not really addressing the underlying root cause of why it went high in the first place, the dysfunction that underlies it.
And I think that leads to this fallacy of safety. People feel like, “Oh, my blood sugar is okay. So I must be fine now. No worries about complication.”
The research doesn’t prove that out. There is a landmark study in 2008 called the Accord Trial that looked at intensive blood sugar lowering through medications and the people who had their blood sugar lowered the most with medications actually had the worst outcomes. They had higher mortality rate than the group that had it lowered moderately.
So it’s not just lowering blood sugar, it’s about addressing the root causes of diabetes, which again, is insulin-resistant. It’s inflammation, it’s extra weight, particular visceral fat, that deep abdominal fat that is inflammatory and hormonal, in a way. It’s hormone dysregulation, it’s cleaning up the diet, it’s getting out and exercising and improving your fitness and your activity levels. So all these things, your sleep, your stress, your immune health, gut health, all these things play into why your blood sugar may have gone up in the first place. And just taking a drug to lower it is not necessarily going to protect you from diabetes complications.
Wendy Myers: And I know my father, he took his medications as prescribed and they didn’t control his blood sugar. They did for a while, and I think a lot of people don’t realize is after a while, for some people, it stops working, for whatever reason.
My father had blood sugar in the 500s at some point. He was taking enough insulin to kill a horse. He’s a big guy.
So talk a little bit about how the medications may not work for some people.
Brian Mowll: This is another kind of fallacy or myth that you can just cover a poor diet with medications. I see this with both type 1 and type 2. People get tired of watching what they eat, they get tired of working on their condition, especially. This happens a lot with type 1 because they may have gotten diagnosed at three years old and have been dealing with it for 50 years or 30 years. They feel that it’s unfair many times. They feel they didn’t cause this, they didn’t sign up for this. Many times, there’s depression associated with type 1 diabetes. There is this fatigue that comes with taking care of your diabetes.
So people often times, plus there a pressure from the ADA and from the conventional side of diabetes care that just says eat what you want and just practice good medication management and you’ll be fine.
What happens is people eventually loosen the range. They start eating desserts again and sweets and bread and all these things. And then they just take more insulin.
You mentioned your dad was taking enough insulin to kill a horse. I’ve seen people who are on over 200 units of insulin a day. It’s insane. And that amount of insulin is driving massive inflammation in the body. It’s a stress hormone. It’s a growth hormone. Usually, they’re going to end up gaining weight and it’s the wrong kind of weight. It’s the visceral fat. Whereas if you really control your diet well and practice good exercise and sleep hygiene and all these other things that we’ve mentioned briefly, then you can really minimize your insulin use as a type 1 diabetic. A person with type 1 diabetes or if you’re a type 2 and you’re not using insulin, then you can limit your need for oral medications and maybe even get off of a lot of them.
You’re right that they can become less effective over time too. Many people will start on Metformin and it works for a while. But then it seems to become less effective. Same thing with all the other medications.
I find this particularly true with the gut drugs like the DPP 4 Inhibitors like Januvia or they’re called GLP-1 Agonist, the [inaudible 00:25:18] drugs. Those can be effective for a while but they seem to burn out very quickly.
And then there are other medications like the older medications. They’re called Sulfonylurea drugs which really bet up the pancreas. They forced the pancreas to release extra insulin and at some point, they can actually burn out the pancreas so it just can’t produce insulin anymore.
Those drugs really have no effect.
Wendy Myers: And what about drugs that cause diabetes? There are a lot of research and new studies showing that Statins, a cholesterol-lowering medications, contribute to diabetes. And I personally feel that my father’s tenure Statin use was partially responsible for promoting his diabetes.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
Brian Mowll: I’m glad you brought that one up. That’s probably the biggest on in use today. We know it causes elevated blood sugar, hyperglycemia, but it’s also associated with diabetes risk, especially in women. And interestingly, it’s standard care to prescribe that to anybody with diabetes. So it’s this catch 22.
I think what happens is it depletes Coenzyme Q10 production in the body because it blocks the pathway that your liver uses to make CoQ10. And CoQ10 is necessary for proper mitochondrial functions. So if you’re not able to get that glucose into the mitochondria and produce energy and you have mitochondrial dysfunction, it can lead to muscle wasting. It can lead to heart problems. It can lead to diabetes and other metabolic issues.
So some of these things can be improved maybe by supplementing, supplementing some CoQ10, if you have a take a Statin or you’re set on it. But if you can avoid Statin use which I think many, many people can by checking their [inaudible 00:27:17] for cardiovascular disease, doing an advanced lipid panel, for example, to find out if you have the type of lipid particles that really contribute to cardiovascular wrist rather than just doing a standard LDL/HDL, total cholesterol panel, doing some other testing like coronary calcium scores to see if you actually are a platform or not.
Because Statin may be of no use whatsoever, and again, they’re not without risks. So if you don’t need it and there are risks involved including the development of diabetes. Do you really want to be taking it?
Wendy Myers: Can you talk a little bit about supplementation and how certain supplements can help to reverse diabetes and help people get off their medications by getting their body working better.
Brian Mowll: Absolutely. I wouldn’t say that a supplement can reverse diabetes. I don’t think there are any magic pills. Supplements are supplemental. But certainly, it can help improve insulin sensitivity. There’s actually a lot of evidence.
Many of my patients’ regular standard physicians will reject supplements because they don’t think there’s any science behind them. And really, if you dig through the research, there’s a ton of science behind many supplements. One challenge is that if you just poke around the internet, there’s a lot of formulas promising the world but if you really read the ingredients, it’s hard to tell how much of something is in them, what form. If anything, this proprietary blend of stuff, I tell patients not to use it if it won’t tell you how much of each ingredient is in there.
And then a lot of times you’ll see all the right ingredients but not in the right doses or not in the right forms.
So you have to look at the research. Chromium has a lot of data behind it. It’s known as glucose tolerance factor. It’s a really good nutrient at helping your cells to respond to insulin and open up those glucose channels, taking glucose.
There’s Biotin, which is a part of the B complex vitamin, and it helps to work with Chromium in the same way.
There’s Vanadium, which is a metal salt that has insulin-like actions, and we usually rotate people on and off Vanadium because it can be hepatotoxic to the liver when taking in large doses for long periods of time.
Same thing with cinnamon, by the way. A lot of people don’t realize that but there are a few, the risk is probably tiny but there’s a few studies that show if you’re taking a couple of teaspoons of cinnamon every day that it could have some liver toxicity effects.
You want to read the data or work with a doctor who has, a practitioner, [inaudible 00:30:16] practitioner who is willing to do that.
But these supplements can be very, very helpful. And I just mentioned cinnamon. If we compare to the risk profile of even something like Metformin, which is considered a very, very safe medication, there’s no comparison. Cinnamon is world safer. There have probably been two cases reported of issues.
Most of these supplements are extremely safe and there is a lot of data behind them. They’re just not FDA-approved, and one of the reasons they’re not FDA-approved is because the FDA doesn’t have authority to approve them. They’re not even FDA-evaluated.
A lot of doctors don’t want to recommend them because they don’t have FDA approval but the drugs that do have the FDA approval are far more dangerous in many cases.
It’s an interesting point but fiber is another one that can be really helpful for kidney protection as well as blood sugar regulation. There are various fibers like Glucomannan. There’s Inulin. There is Psyllium Husk, which is a Metamucil fiber.
And of course, we can get fiber through whole foods as well. Some others, Alpha-Lipoic acid is a great supplement. It’s neuro-protective. It helps the blood vessels and the nerves, protects them against glycation, which is damaged from elevated blood sugar. And also helps to improve insulin sensitivity.
There are herbs like bitter melon and Gymnema, which is an ayurvedic herb that’s been used for thousands and thousands of years to improve blood sugar regulation.
There are lots more. Berberine is an alkaloid compound that has Metformin-like effects. It actually works on the same mechanism as Metformin in the cell to improve blood sugar response. And there has been studies actually looking at it side by side with Metformin. It’s equally as effective, and interestingly, in the same dosage like 500 mg of Berberine compares with 500 mg of Metformin. So that’s an interesting thing.
There are many others. If you [inaudible 00:32:38] through the research, it’s staggering how many natural substances can help improve and regulate blood sugar.
Wendy Myers: Let’s talk a little bit about how people can get off their medications. I’m a big supporter of healing your body in using natural means to reverse disease so the people can get off their medications, but if someone isn’t willing to do the work, if they’re not willing to change their diet and change their lifestyle, they have to be on medications to save their lives.
Brian Mowll: Quick disclaimer, I’d say slowly, carefully and with your doctor’s help because you don’t want to just bury your head in the sand and say, “I don’t want to take drugs” or “I’m not going to.” And then your blood sugar goes up over 200 and you’re killing yourself much faster with elevated blood sugar than medication might.
In the same vein, I do think there’s a natural way to do things and I think for somebody who is really committed to doing that it may very well be possible, and I think there’s a way to do it.
I always like to, and this is becoming a very certified diabetes educator. This is part of the training that we go through, this motivational interviewing and really hitting people’s goals and finding out what they really want because that’s something I didn’t use to do very well. And I learned a lot by going through that because everybody has different goals. And I’m sure you see this as well with your clients. Some people may want to get off medications and reverse their diabetes. Others really just want to prevent complications, live a moderate, healthy lifestyle and feel good. It depends on what your goals are.
What I look for is if somebody comes in and says, “Look, I want to get off drugs. I want to reverse my diabetes.” But then they’re not willing to give up some of their favorite foods that are contributing to their condition, that’s where we have a disconnect and so we have to give a little tough love there.
Most people, if you just meet them where their goals are, they can accomplish a lot. And not everybody wants to put the work in to reverse diabetes.
Wendy Myers: It’s a tremendous amount of work, I know. My healing program called Mineral Power, I’ve had people reverse their diabetes and they put the work in. They took their supplements and they did all the detox protocols and they ate the right diet and started sleeping more and reduce their stress. But it’s a complete 180. You have to completely turn everything you’re doing on its head and completely change your life.
Brian Mowll: And sometimes, it comes in waves too. So somebody may come in for a while and do part of the program and have some success with it, and then disappear for a while and then come back and have a little bit more of a commitment and want to go further.
I think you have to be ready to make some of those changes. But I do want to encourage people. If that’s you and you are feeling strongly, passionately that that’s what you want to do, it is possible. And it’s just a matter of customizing. I know you do some specific tests, which I think can be very helpful and we do some other types of lab testing that guides a good, you want it to be a good fit. You want it to be personalized. And the more personalized it can be, the more detailed your plan can be, and then the better you follow it, obviously, the better outcomes you’re going to get.
Wendy Myers: Let’s talk about the testing that you do because I know there is some testing for diabetes that’s maybe not as accurate as other types. Can you talk a little bit about what kind of testing and treatments that you do with your patients as a diabetes coach?
Brian Mowll: That’s a great a question, and a lot of this comes from functional medicine training. Functional medicine is about playing medical detective, finding the root cause, personalizing the approach to the individual rather than the disease. So instead of saying, “Oh, you have diabetes. Let’s run this standard set of tests.”
We do those but we want to go well beyond that to say, “I wonder if there’s any thyroid involvement.” “I wonder if the adrenal glands are dysregulated. Maybe you’re making too much Corisol. Or maybe you’re in adrenal fatigue or haven’t been able to regulate your blood sugar well for years. Maybe there’s some gut dysfunction.”
There are tons of research pouring out now about the gut microbiome, the bacterial colonization of the gut and how that can cause inflammation and insulin resistance. And then leaky gut or intestinal permeability where the gut barrier, the lining on the gut is not intact, per say, and how that can lead to food allergy, which can drive stress, which can drive blood sugar up, can drive inflammation.
There’s a lot to look at. And so it’s about, first of all, doing a really good consultation, or we caught an interview with a new client to find out what their history is, what their personal history is or social history, their medical history, and get some clues on where there might be some dysfunction.
And then customizing those tests to that individual person.
If it seems there are some inflammatory factors like the gut might be an issue, we might want to go in and do some intestinal barrier testing, intestinal permeability or looking at the microbiome, looking for parasitic infections and others through some stool analysis. If it seems there’s hormonal dysregulation, we can run some adrenal testing. I like the adrenal salivary testing because you can look at various hormones and check cortisol throughout the day, and even at night, if there are signs of thyroid dysfunction. Low T3 is often times associated with diabetes. Actually, doing a full thyroid panel. Sometimes there are autoimmune components so we can do antibody test to find out.
Those are all advanced tests. There is neurotransmitter test, there’s micronutrient test, where we look at blood cell levels of chromium and biotin and zinc and alpha-lipoic acid and carnitine and CoQ10, and so forth. But I think even on a more basic level, just looking at some things like insulin, insulin is the hormone responsible for putting sugar into the cells taking out the blood. Nobody ever has that tested. Conventional doctors don’t do it and to me, it’s such a simple no-brainer test because if your insulin levels are high, then we know you’re insulin-resistant and that can contribute to weight gain and make it very difficult to lose weight and it makes it very hard to regulate blood sugar.
Advanced lipid tests, which I mentioned earlier, most people with diabetes are just automatically put on a Statin drug but we don’t really know from looking at the total cholesterol if they need that or not.
So investigate a little bit further, find out if that’s going to be really beneficial. In some cases, it might be but in many cases, it’s not and there are risk factors.
Inflammatory test, like high sensitivity, c reactive protein is a simple one you can do.
And many times, insurance covers these tests anyway. It’s just a matter of ordering and knowing how to analyze them. Vitamin and mineral tests. Vitamin D is a must. Deficiency in Vitamin D, I should have mentioned that with supplements but deficiency in Vitamin D is strongly associated with development of type 2 diabetes. So if your Vitamin D level is anywhere under 40 really, on a serum blood test, then you don’t have enough Vitamin D and that can affect your ability to regular blood sugar and use insulin properly as well as other hormones.
I think these tests are important. They do need to be customized but at the same time, don’t expect your doctor to do them because they’re just not taught to do them. So you have to be willing to go outside the box a little bit.
Wendy Myers: It’s hard to believe that a standard test that’s run, they don’t run the insulin test. It’s hard to believe that.
Brian Mowll: And a lot of people think they’ve had it done. “Oh, I think I’ve had that done,” they’ll say. But then you look and they haven’t and you say, “No, you’ve had blood sugar” or “You’ve had hemoglobin and A1C.”
Don’t get me wrong. Those are important too. The hemoglobin and A1C is one of the most vital tests. I call it a quality of life marker, and not just for people with diabetes. I think everyone should be having that done because it’s actually a measurement of the amount of glycation or damage done to cells, in this case, the hemoglobin on the red blood cell. And you can extrapolate that.
If it’s anywhere really above five-and-a-half for sure, then you know that you’re having advanced damage done to your cardiovascular, your cells, your vascular linings called the endothelium, your brain cells, your kidney cells, the microvascular, the small blood vessels around the eyes and the feet.
That’s a very, very important test and everybody should have that done. Blood sugar, blood count and so forth, metabolic panel.
But those are basics. And many people stop there. Many doctors stop there. Like you said, something as simple as a fasting insulin test is just not done, unfortunately, very often.
Wendy Myers: And so, obviously, you’re an expert on diabetes, very fittingly, you host the Diabetes Summit. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about that? I was very honored to participate, to be allowed to participate in it. Why don’t you talk about the summit and all the amazing presenters and what people can expect to learn?
Brian Mowll: I’m really excited for it. This year, it kicks off March 23rd, which is just now a short time away. And it’s eight days. We have 40 presentations. There are videos just like this with some slides interlaced to highlight some key topics. I was blessed to have some amazing people, you included, Wendy, to volunteer their time to come on and share just a wide range of topics related to diabetes.
We have Dr. David Perlmutter, talking about diabetes in the brain; Tom O’Bryan, talking about the gut and gluten in diabetes; Dr. Amy Myers, talking about autoimmune connections.
We have some people specific to type 1. People in the type 1 community would know Gary Scheiner. He’s a diabetes educator, and Kerri Sparling.
There’s Dr. Jody Stanislaw, who is a naturopath, who has type 1 diabetes herself and talks about how she manages her own condition naturally; Michael Murray, who is another naturopath, who has written several books about diabetes.
We even have Joel Fuhrman on. He didn’t like when I called him a vegan advocate but he says he’s just an evidence-based advocate for diabetes care. But he does encourage more of a plant-based diet. But I learned a lot from Joel also. Great guy and very passionate about his approach to diabetes care.
I tried to present a well-rounded approach. We have many, many others. Mark Sisson, from Mark’s Daily Apple fame and the low carb dietician, Franziska Spritzler, my good friend, Cassie Bjork, who is Dietician Cassie, Christa Orecchio, Diane Sanfilippo, a nutrionist. We have a couple of pharmacists on, Suzy Cohen and Izabella Wentz.
Just a very wide range of speakers with all different expertise on hormones, diet, lifestyle. We have a couple of fitness experts on. I think you’ll learn a lot for sure, It’s free, which is great. You can spend eight days just learning all about blood sugar health, diabetes and how to reverse it naturally.
Wendy Myers: And I think it’s really important for anyone, if they have diabetes, pre-diabetes or even are experiencing mild health symptoms. It’s a good idea to engage in the summit because the chances are, its one and two that you can get diabetes in the future, the very, very near future. That’s what it’s projected to be.
So I encourage everyone to go to the Diabetes Summit. What’s the website?
Brian Mowll: It’s theDiabetesSummit.com, and I know you’ve been posting some things, sending some e-mails out. I have a link there so probably just click on your link. That’s probably the easiest way to get there. Again, it’s free to register. You get some nice bonus gifts when you register. That way we’ll stay in touch and you won’t miss any of the sessions.
Wendy Myers: Why don’t you talk a little bit about your diabetes coaching program?
Brian Mowll: Sure. We do still work with [inaudible 00:46:11] people remotely. I do basically 6- and 12-month programs depending on the situation. Everything is very customized to the individual. We’ll run specific lab tests, typically, to start, take a look at what you’ve already done. We start with an interview that we do, typically, over Skype. We’ll put a plan together for people. It’s largely lifestyle dietary-based. Again, very customized to the individual person. And I work with all types of diabetes. I don’t take clients out of the country with type 1 because it’s a little bit hairy but anybody in the US, I’m happy to work with. I do specialize more in type 2 than type 1 but we work with people with all conditions.
And mainly though, it’s people who are looking for more of a natural approach. I’m a certified diabetes educator so I can help people with making sure that their medications are aligned properly and they’re following their doctor’s advice in the right way, and that they’re getting all the right tests done and they understand proper foot care and eye care and all these other important things with diabetes. But mainly, it’s people coming to me who are looking for more of a natural holistic approach, who really want to address the root cause, who want to use diet and lifestyle rather than just depending on drugs and medications.
Wendy Myers: And it’s a very, very good idea. So this probably goes without saying but I have a question I like to ask all of my guests.
Brian Mowll: Sure.
Wendy Myers: What do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?
Brian Mowll: I would even go beyond diabetes and I just think it’s long-term chronic disease due to metabolic disaster that has befallen us due to, as we started our conversation, living a life that’s removed from the ancestral way of living. Too sedentary, diets that are too high in processed foods, we’re not eating real whole foods, stress, poor sleep habits, gut issues, inflammation, all the things that we’ve talked about today, and led to this, again, this metabolic disaster is what I call it. And what stems from that is diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and many, many other conditions that are just linked to this chronic inflammation and metabolic disease.
That to me, is the core issue, and it’s more than an individual problem. It’s a social problem and we really need to find big ways to address it. School programs for kids, getting the junk out of our own homes so that we’re raising the next generation in a way that is more aware of the foods that they’re putting in the body and how they affect us. The global think, so to speak, I think needs to shift and change.
Wendy Myers: Dr. Mowll, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I so appreciate it. And why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit more about where they can find you?
Brian Mowll: Sure. My website is easy. It’s DrMowll.com. And really, there is a lot there, blogs, access to video blogs that I shoot every week, lots of information and the DiabetesSummit.com is probably the hottest thing right now. That’s where you’re going to get a lot of free information. You get to tune in to Wendy’s Talk as well which is awesome, and we’ll stay connected that way also.
Wendy Myers: What are some of your favorite presentations at the summit? Besides mine, of course.
Brian Mowll: They’re all so great and I’ve done them over several months. I love talking to Dr. Perlmutter. I feel honored if I can get on the phone with him for an hour. I’d pay tons of money for that. That was valuable for me.
I interviewed several people which I really had to work to get. Roy Taylor is one of them. He’s a medical physician over in the UK, and he’s more of a scientist. He’s published a lot of data on reversing type 2 diabetes with diet alone, and very well-known, very well-respected scientist. But you don’t see him a lot in the blog and internet world.
Dr. Jason Fung, who is making a name for himself. He’s a nephrologist, a kidney specialist, but really focusing on diabetes and obesity through fasting and other means.
So I think those are probably some of my favorite. I love talking to my nutritionist friends, all of them. Christa Orecchio is one of my favorites and Cassie Bjork and Franziska Spritzler, Diane Sanfilippo, and you, of course, as well.
Wendy Myers: Well, thank you so much. Again, thanks for coming on the show. Everyone, tune in to the Diabetes Summit. It’s going to be awesome. March 23rd or the 30th, and we’ll see you there, Brian.
Brian Mowll: Thanks, Wendy. I appreciate having me on.
Wendy Myers: And stay tune. Everyone, thank you so much for listening to the Live to 110 podcast. You can find me on myersdetox.com, and my healing detox program called, MineralPower.com, and my new online health program, a guided 30-day health program called, BodyBioRehab.com. Go check that out. And again, thank you for listening to the Liveto110 podcast.
