#358 How to Fix Your Blood Sugar for a Healthier and Longer Life - Dr James DiNicolantonio

Siim Land (0:00)

Welcome to the Siim Land Podcast. I'm your host, Siim Land. And today, our guest is Dr. James DiNicolantonio. Dr. James and I released our new book called The Blood Sugar Fix, How to Achieve Optimal Blood Sugar Levels and Insulin Sensitivity for a Healthier and Longer Life. You can get the book from Amazon.

Wait, what number is this now? It's like a sixth book or something like that.

James DiNicolantonio (0:22)

Yeah.

Siim Land (0:22)

Yeah, and yeah, and this one, this time, it's kind of a continuation in a lot of ways to the obesity fix, because it kind of covers something very similar, like in terms of metabolic dysfunction, and like obesity and diabetes and blood sugar dysregulation and insulin resistance, they're very like closely connected to each other. So yeah, maybe we can start with, you know, what is some of the things that people need to look out for when it comes to, let's say, glucose intolerance and what are like, how do they actually know if they have some problems related to that?

James DiNicolantonio (1:00)

Yeah, it's a great question. So I mean, I think a lot of people like inherently know sugar sweetened beverages are bad for you, for your blood sugar. And so a lot of people will kind of cut that out and think that's enough. And this book really sort of takes many different things into account. And that if you hit each checkbox, it's definitely going to improve your blood sugar levels. So whether that's being under-muscled and not having the muscle to soak up the glucose and to handle a combination of carbs and fat, which we talk about like the Randall cycle and how when you combine two macronutrients, unless you're kind of highly active or you have a good amount of muscle, your body has a hard time metabolizing both carbs and fats at the same time, which can eventually elevate blood sugar levels.

A lot of people too, I think, in the real world are eating a lot of whole grains, thinking it's healthy, but that's contributing to a lot of elevation in blood sugar levels.

We know, and we discuss this in the book too, that refined sugars are actually more harmful than refined carbohydrates, and they're hidden in everything. 75% of the packaged foods in the United States contain hidden added sugars, which is a problem. And then one thing that we touch on as well, that really hasn't been covered in other books is numerous nutrient deficiencies can lead to not just elevations in blood sugar, but have literally been shown to cause pre-diabetes and diabetes, and we can cover that as well. But that's sort of like an overall umbrella of what the Blood Sugar Effects book is.

Siim Land (2:31)

Yeah, so obviously it's not only about diabetes, although it can help the pathology and symptoms of diabetes.

It's more about the main messages like prevention, how do you make sure that you don't develop this poor glucose tolerance, and what are the things to do to just overall improve your incidence sensitivity? Because I mean, it's just healthier to have better glucose metabolism and incidence sensitivity, which then determines your other disease risk as well. Because if you have diabetes, then your risk of cardiovascular disease doubles, at least, and the risk of dying prematurely also increases quite significantly, because diabetics, they do have like a five to ten year shorter life expectancy just from diabetes alone. And if you get like cardiovascular disease as well from that, then that can be like 20 years shorter life expectancy quite easily. Right.

James DiNicolantonio (3:33)

Yeah, and that brings up a good point too, a lot of heart attacks are actually caused by pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes, but really aren't labeled as such, right? Like most people don't view it as you had a heart attack because you've had elevated insulin and glucose for 20 years. Most people just kind of blame it on red meat or eggs or salt or saturated fat and say that's why you had a heart attack.

And the thing is too, is we don't really diagnose type 2 diabetes until someone's had the disease for at least a decade, and they've lost like 50% of their beta cells. So it's really a disease of metabolism. Like you are, your actual machinery, your engine isn't fully able to kind of get substrates through the full process of the Krebs cycle and give you the full ATP output. It's like things are sort of backing up. You're going into actual harmful pathways. You're forming more advanced glycation end products.

So it's really like a disease of metabolism causing enhanced oxidative stress. And elevated glucose and insulin are like a symptom of basically the clogged up machinery.