[00:00:00] Introduction --- One of the big takeaways here is that participants who reported high levels of stress during the previous five years were 150 to 200% more likely to develop type two diabetes. In other words, twice as likely to develop type two diabetes. If they said they had high levels of stress sometime during the previous five years. Hi, and welcome to the solving type two diabetes podcast. I'm Tom. And I'll be your host as I share what I'm doing in my daily life to solve my type two diabetes. Listen in, as I share the food, movement, and tools that I'm using each day. This podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only. For a full transcript or to follow the solving type two diabetes podcast on social media. Please head over to SolvingType2Diabetes.com for all those links and more now onto the show. [00:01:04] My Week in Review --- I hope you've had a great week this week. I know for me it's been a little bit of traveling and it's been a fun week. I had a few relaxing days, but first part of the week I finished up my trip to Arkansas, Northwest Arkansas near Bentonville, and if you listen to last week, you'll know that I was out there visiting my oldest. And two grandkids. And, it was a fun time. I try and get out there every few months and it, is always fun seeing everybody and it's very enjoyable, for me. I got in a few good walks, some walks with the kiddos and some walks on my own. . I also ended up doing a yoga session, back in the hotel, I think just about every night. I was out there for five nights and, so I closed my rings all those days out there, which was great. We tried some, new recipes, new recipes for them. They're some of my favorites, but we made a couple of really good dinners out there. We had the Mississippi Pot roast and we had the, white chicken chili, and. My oldest daughter made some great, salmon filets. she made them in her air fryer and it was just delicious. So good times, good visiting, good eating, good movement, really enjoyed myself out there in Arkansas. And then I flew home. I had a few days at home, three days actually, and, I did manage to get out on the Lebanon Valley rails to trails, the rail trail out there, I get on it, near Colebrook, if you're familiar with, central Pennsylvania. and one day I walked south another day I walked north and south and just switched it up a little bit. They were doing some, tree work out there and they're really keeping the trail looking nice. It's an all volunteer, trail maintenance crew on the Lebanon Valley Rail Trail, and I certainly do appreciate all of their work. But now, I'm back on Enchantment of the Seas with my. I'm not in a little interior cabin, this cruise, my wife, likes a bathtub and only the suites have bathtubs. So we are in a junior suite. It's, if you will, I'll use air quotes here, but it's the cheapest, suite that they have. And, has a nice balcony. It's a little bit larger room than a regular balcony, and it does have the full bath, which, she really enjoys. So I. For another 12 nighter with my wife, and we are going down to the Southern Caribbean. So both today's episode and also next week's episode, I'll be recording on board. and this first day or so, it's been a little bumpy. The same thing happened, during my cruise last month, and it seems like going through the North Atlantic until we get down past the Carolinas. And really start going into the, Caribbean a little bit. It is bumpy here during the wintertime in the North Atlantic. we have, I don't know, I'm gonna guess maybe 10 foot, 12 foot seas. It is very windy, about 35 knots of wind, and that's without the movement adding in of the ship. That is simply the, uh, wind itself and also it's, pouring down raining. So it's an indoor day for sure, but the captain says that by lunchtime tomorrow, which will be our second full day at sea, it will be calming down quite a bit. And by then we should be down in the Georgia, Florida latitude. So we'll be heading three days at sea until we get to the Southern Caribbean. And then we have about five islands to stop. I'm sure I'll talk about those next episode and 12 nights in all, so it should be really great. [00:04:50] My Numbers --- for my numbers this week. I was able to close my rings seven out of seven days, and you know whether I close them 5, 6, 7 days, that's all the same to me. I try not to be perfect, just consistent. So this week was seven outta seven and I'll take that. I appreciate the chance to be able to get that movement in and get my standing in. Burn my calories and do my exercise. So that's great. For workouts this week, as usual, it has been primarily walking, although I did get a chance to throw in yoga and a couple of strength sessions, on my Apple Fitness Plus that I would like to use, I can use that almost anywhere. I just, sometimes if I'm home, I'll throw it to the tv. Otherwise I just use my watch and my phone and get in my Apple Fitness plus workouts. No plug for. I have no sponsors. , I'm just, mentioning it cuz I use it for my seven day average glucose. it has been really nice. I've averaged 85 over the last seven days. That's 24 7 as measured by my continuous glucose monitor that I wear. and that, seven day average of 85, if that were maintained, that would be an A1C of 4.6 that is down in what they call the optimal range. You might not know if you haven't listened to the first few episodes, from this past year, but my A1C was routinely clocking in around. I think once I even had an A1C reading of 14, that's dangerously high, but, now with what I'm doing, it is down in the optimal level, well down below, even pre-diabetes. So I'm happy with that. When I was home, I did step on the scale. My body fat percentage was down a hair down to 24.0%. And if you remember, you know, my goal is to get down to at least 17%. so no more than 17%. Body fat is where I'd like to be, where that eventually settles out at, I don't know, 17, 16, 15. I don't know, but certainly I know I still need to lose body fat if it's above 17 and right now it's 24. That also has gone down a lot. just a couple years ago. I measured that at 36%. So it's slowly but steadily, a few tenths of a percent per week. And I will take that. my macros for the week, my seven day, macro count. And I use, the app MyFitness pal to measure that. But the seven day macro reading for me, I've averaged 51 51 grams of carbs. Each day, and I've managed to average 127 grams of protein each day. Now I like to keep my protein up on the high side. That might be more protein than you need to get in. But I, one of the things I really am concerned about is I don't wanna lose any muscle mass. And, as I'm losing weight, losing fat, some of what I lose is muscle mass. So I'm trying to dramatically limit. The amount of muscle mass I lose. And also if I can avoid losing any, that's where I really want to go. Eventually, I think when I'm finished with this body fat loss phase, I will, increase my strength training even more and attempt to maybe gain a couple of pounds of muscle mass. Now it's. Easier to lose fat than it is to gain muscle. for me anyway, I'm turning 60 this year and, maybe if you're in your twenties or even thirties, gaining muscle would be, much easier. And it is a byproduct of how much strength training you actually do. So I'm not saying it's impossible for someone who's older, but you know, you have to work at it. you have to work at it. So that is something that I'm very mindful of, and that is one reason I keep my protein up, where it. [00:08:48] Mounjaro Update --- for my Mounjaro update. I think this is a popular piece of the podcast now. folks seem to be very interested in a Mounjaro and I can certainly understand why. So this week I took my first injection at the 7.5 milligram dose, and the way it typically works is you get your body used to it. the first four weeks at. Are at the 2.5 milligram dose, then at least the next four weeks are at the five milligram dose. So I've completed that, completed eight full weeks. And so now just a couple days ago, I took my first dose at the 7.5 milligram level, and I have a feeling. . Yeah, at least for now anyway, I think I'm gonna cap out maybe at 10 milligrams. You can go higher, you can go to 12.5, you can go to 15. But honestly, my results are so great now. I don't think, I mean, I could stay at 7.5 I guess, but I've seen the studies and, the really dramatic great results, start seems, to me like around the 10 milligram dose. So once I get there, I'm gonna have to have a very good reason to go any higher. And, I'll be there. Three weeks. So I am having very good a1c blood glucose control. Even if I have, let's say last night for example, I had a dinner roll with my dinner, good dinner last night. I had New York strip steak, some broccoli and carrots, but I did have a dinner roll with that, and I just saw the slightest little blip of, blood. With my cgm, but it was right back down then, an hour or so later, right back down into the eighties. even with some carbs that I would call refined carbohydrates, with the dinner roll, it, is very good A1C control. Now, for those of you who are interested in this, my weight, and I call this a side. Because it's not my primary goal. My, my weight is down 12 pounds in the past eight weeks, so you know, a pound and a half a week. And quite frankly, I might only have at most, , 15, maybe 20 pounds more body fat I'm trying to lose. So it's not gonna go down too much further. for the last eight weeks it is down 12 pounds. And I really do attribute that to the Mounjaro because it's certainly, almost eliminates my hunger. absolutely reduces it dramatically. and I would say the first, I don't know. Five days after each injection, it almost completely eliminates my hunger. I could take or leave eating, but I know I have to eat. I wanna stay healthy. I don't wanna, I'm not doing this for the weight loss, so I just wanna eat properly and, use this as a very helpful tool. Now I did interestingly enough, get an alert today from the Apple Health. . So I looked at that and I thought, oh, why is Apple Health alerting me? And it said that there has been a change in my average blood glucose readings. I knew that, but this alert really brought it, dramatically right in front of my eyes for the 19 weeks prior to the last six weeks. In other words, it looked at half a year. It looked at the last six. . So for 19 weeks, my blood sugar had averaged 1 31. Now again, I've been wearing the CGM this whole time, so that's an average 24 7 reading, 1 31. That's just into the pre-diabetes range. Still well below where my doctor I ever expected my blood sugar to get back down to. But interestingly enough, for the past six weeks, I've averaged 83 for a 24 7 glucose reading. over the course of six months for the first 19 weeks. 1 31 for the past six weeks, 83. Now, what's changed? really the only thing that's changed is the Mounjaro and the fact that it is dramatically reducing my appetite. I don't, binge eat. I don't go for the cookies and treats and stuff like that anymore, and I'm also eating less. , all of that together along with the things it does for insulin and the things it does, for your body chemistry and helping with your liver and whatnot. I went from a 19 week average of 1 31 down to a six week average of 83, so this started just about a week after I started the Mounjaro. So it's amazing. it's really good. [00:13:17] Challenge & Win --- For my challenge in win this week, I had reported on previous cruises of not being able to get in enough protein, so I was a little proactive for this cruise. And I finally brought along protein shakes and some of my Quest protein bars. So these are, I'm gonna call compact and dense sources of protein. The shakes have 30 grams of protein, a few grams of fat, a couple grams of. , the Quest protein bars have about 21 grams of protein, just a couple grams of carbs, couple grams of fat. So they're both really dense protein sources. And even when you eat, ground hamburger or steak or whatever, or bacon or eggs, that's still 50% fat, 50% protein. So you know, the calories add up when you're trying to get your protein in that way. And I found that on the cruise ship. I just simply was not able to eat. Meat and eggs and things like that to get enough protein. So I have, supplemented now, and yesterday was my first full day on board, but my protein was spot on and I did have a protein shake, so I brought enough so I can have a protein shake each day. And if I want, I could also have a protein bar. So I think my protein will be just fine for this cruise. So I'm gonna call that a win. [00:14:37] News --- All right, let's take a look at the news. this first article is entitled How Long You Need To Walk After Meals to Stabilize Your Blood Sugar. Now, we had talked about walking after meals before, and we talked about the fact that, walking immediately after food can help eliminate a blood sugar. now it does not, keep the sugar from going into your bloodstream and eventually, getting into your system. But it does eliminate or reduce, let's say that, blood sugar spike. So I think before we talked about, you know what, it's gotta be at least five or 10 minutes. But this article, and of course the link to all these articles will be in the show notes that you can find over at the website SolvingType2Diabetes.com or on your podcast player. You should be able to see the show notes right there as well, and they're all clickable links. But this article is recommending a. about 30 minutes after a large meal, just at a moderate pace, doesn't have to be sprinting. it should be probably a little bit more than strolling, but it's talking about how 30 minutes maybe after your largest meal of the day, is enough to, really eliminate that spike. Now, your blood sugar will normally and naturally still rise, but it might not have a spike straight up and. tank get, low blood sugar, which some people get after a spike. interesting article. Check that out. How long you need to walk after meals to stabilize your blood sugar. The next article has a famous actor in it. You might know him from, Blackish or some of the other shows he's been on, but he, his name is Anthony and. and he has been diagnosed now with type two diabetes for about 20 years. And his message here that he has in this article is that type two diabetes is not a death sentence. It's I'm gonna say a life sentence, but, cuz you can't get rid of it, right? Once you have type, once you've damaged your system to the point of having type two. , you can always go back to those high blood sugar readings if you don't, handle your medications and your movement and your food, properly. But his message here is that, type two diabetes is absolutely, if you're effective in what you do, it's absolutely something you can live with. Now he says he has to pay attention. He has to, deal with it every day, make decisions every day that's going to help him with his diabetes. But what he was most concerned about was heart disease. And we know that high blood sugar levels can damage your blood vessels, your arteries, your heart muscle itself, the nerves of your heart that can all be damaged by high blood sugars over. So he's concerned about that and that's why he wanted to, control his type two diabetes. Now he does use, medication and food and movement like we do here, and, he's saying that he is able to, control it. and, live with it, successfully. So congratulations to him. So famous people, not just us, but famous people also, can get type two diabetes. So that's a fun little article. It's, maybe inspiring, or interesting to see what he does. So check that one out. The next article here that I'd like to share with you is called Artificial Sweeteners and Type two Diabetes. , this could very well be one of the most controversial subjects there are. with regards to type two diabetes or just general health artificial sweeteners. Now, let me say that I use what they call artificial sweeteners. the one I use the most is, the yellow packets, and that is the s. I believe it's the SP Splenda Anyway, it's the yellow packets for sure. I always go for the yellow packets and that is, SLOs. So that's my choice. Now, you might not want to use artificial sweeteners and that's fine. You certainly don't have to. I like it in my coffee, when I have, diet soda. I pick the ones that have that Splenda. I don't seem to have, at least from what I can tell, I don't seem to have any adverse side effects. So I use it, not abundantly, a few servings a day. And, pretty much every day, I would say certainly every morning in my coffee. Now the article here tries to talk about the effect of artificial sweeteners on insulin, the, effect. artificial sweeteners on glucose control and things like that, and it's an interesting little article here. It links to a few studies, but having read this article, what I'm coming away with is that for every study that you see, where it says an artificial sweetener, Is bad for you, you're bad for your insulin levels, bad for your blood sugar control. There's just as many studies that say they have no effect whatsoever. So I don't know. It almost can go either way. Most of the studies are undetermined. In other words, they really can't see any statistical. Uh, between an artificial sweetener or not. Now, what is very clear is that sugar in processed foods, table sugar, even the quote unquote healthy sweeteners like agave, which is mostly fructose, which goes directly to your liver, those do have an adverse effect on your insulin and your blood sugar controls. so if anything, if you wanna stay away from anything, make sure you're staying away from excess processed foods, which contain a lot of sugars. adding table sugar, adding things with high fructose corn syrup, all those things. those are what absolutely, without a doubt, adversely affect people, especially when they're taken in excess who have type two diabetes. So for. And I can't tell you what to do because I'm not a doctor, not a nutritionist, not a dietician. But for me, I know to stay away from those real sugars. And those worry me much, much more than my few packets of Splenda do, each day. All of these artificial sweeteners in this article they list have been approved and considered safe by the fda, and, none of them have FDA precautions or limitations. I think if you were to eat, buckets and buckets, anything is gonna be bad for you, even an artificial sweetener. But, within reason, a few servings a day. I personally don't worry about them at all, but check out that article and you can figure out, what you think about those. This final one here, and this is something we did last week and I'm wanna do it again, it's type two diabetes friendly soups and stews. So I think, yeah, for most of us it's still wintertime and it's still cold. So this last article here links to eight different recipes that I thought you might enjoy. I'm just gonna read the names of the recipes here and then you can check out the article and make some of these up. And if you do make some up, please let me know. Please, send me a note. you can go over to the website, click on feedback, or you can send me an e email directly. tom@SolvingType2Diabetes.com but anyway, these recipes are spiced Turkey chili with spaghetti squash, gingery chicken soup with zucchini noodles, cauliflower soup with hazelnut and bacon. Three ingredient tomato. . Instant pot braised lamb with white beans and spinach, black bean soup with roasted poblano chilies, and finally, cream of asparagus soup. So I can tell you here in this article, All these pictures look good. And, they are all low calorie. They're all, vegetable intenses, and they look very yummy. None of them have any added sugar, so enjoy those soups. And that's the news for today. [00:23:11] The impact of stress on Type 2 Diabetes --- Our main topic today, and this was a listener question that was sent. A few weeks ago, and, the listener wanted to know about what impact stress has on Type two diabetes. So I am linking to a, research article here. It's entitled, does Emotional Stress Cause Type two Diabetes Melitis, a Review from the European Depression and Diabetes Research Consortium. . you can read the entire study. It is very long. I'm going to, quote a few little passages here and, I think we'll see that the answer to does stress impact type two diabetes? I think the answer is yes. So let's look at this article. The, research study here, first of all quotes, the World Health Organization who said in 2009, more than 220 million people had type two diabetes. That is expected to rise to 366 million by 2030, just a few years from now. So that, by the way, is increasing faster than the rural population rate is increasing. So the percentage of. is going up who have type two. . Now, this is, primarily recorded here, these studies from self-reported levels of stress. one of the big takeaways here is that participants who reported high levels of stress during the previous five years were 150 to 200% more likely to develop type two diabetes. In other words, twice as likely to develop type two diabetes. If they said they had high levels of stress sometime during the previous five. years So what is stress? Stress is defined as the non-specific response of the body to any. . So usually it comes in three stages, and you might be familiar with these, the, alarm phase, which is, fight or flight. Then the resistance phase. In other words, you build up a resistance to the stress. And then finally the exhaustion phase. and that can be, entered into when the stress is significantly long. And that is, the exhaustion phase is also sometimes called the general adaptation syndrome. And that's when your body starts to shift. Its, set point, it's homeostatic set point, through change and you can. You see a change in blood pressure, increase, you can, have a change in kidney function. it's like a domino effect. Once your body starts to adre, adjust to this stress, many things can change and something that often changes are behavioral, symptoms of stress. And it goes on here to say that can be eating too much, not eating enough, sleeping too much, or not. withdrawing socially procrastination or neglect of responsibilities. Here's something increased alcohol, nicotine, or drug consumption. These are all things that you do in reaction to stress and that those changes, those behavioral changes can start to, result in body system dysfunction or shutdown. Now that can come on as like metabolic. increased fat, increased cholesterol, increased blood pressure increased blood sugars. Those can all result from chronic emotional stress. And once you start to change these set points, once your body tries to start dealing with this excess stress, that's when things can go bad very quickly. eating too. not getting out, outside, not getting out socially, just vegetating at home. those are all things that can certainly in affect our weight, that can affect our, body fat, our blood sugar. Those are the things that all can cause type two diabetes. So what this. Shows here, really dramatically, and it, I'm just giving you the highlights. This is a very long article and, it highlights very, very many studies. it's very interesting if you want to read the medical, research itself. It's all linked here and I'll link to this as well in the show notes, but it clearly shows how stress can go to behavioral change. , changes in what you do and then those behavioral changes can lead to body system changes. if you start eating a whole lot because you're stressed, you can gain weight, your blood sugar be, could become a problem. And if then that all leads to type two diabetes. So there is a fairly clear indication here and they don't come in right out and say that stress causes type two diabetes. But it does seem to start off a chain of events and changes to your body systems and your behaviors that can certainly lead to type two diabetes. So I don't think it's a coincidence that these folks who have reported these high level and long-term stress events, have a. twice the chance of then developing type two diabetes, as do people who do not report these stress events. if you can nip this off in the bud, if you can, better control your stress levels and better, alleviate those situations that cause you stress or find ways, maybe mindfulness, meditation, exercise that helps alleviate some of these stress. changes, then you might have a better chance of avoiding the type two diabetes or if you have it, of turning that around. [00:28:49] Queestions --- So for your questions for this week, we did not get any questions in. It's funny, isn't it? How I say we, when it's really me. I, but I'm using the, I guess the royal we, if you will. anyway, we did not get any questions in this week, but if you would like to send in a question, let me know if you tried one of those recipe. Or give me any other type of feedback. There's two ways to do it. You can go to the website SolvingType2Diabetes.com you can click on feedback and just type in there, whatever you'd like. Or you can just send me an email directly tom@SolvingType2Diabetes.com and I'll be happy to answer your question. And if it's okay with you, I'll share that on the. . [00:29:35] What's Next? --- So what's next? What are we doing next week? What are we talking about? something that I've been thinking about here for a little while now is do I really need to be wearing a continuous glucose monitor now, it is a tool that I rely on. I've been wearing one now for about, 20, 21 months. But it is this something really that I need to wear because, they're not cheap. maybe are there other alternatives. So let's talk about that next week, on the next episode. [00:30:11] Thanks --- Well, that wraps up another episode of the solving type two diabetes podcast. I hope you found it valuable. Please follow and leave a five star review, as it helps other people find the podcast. By subscribing you ensure you won't miss the next episode. You can always get a full transcript of the episode at SolvingType2Diabetes.com there you also find the links to leave feedback and links to follow on social media. I'm very interested in hearing from you with comments and suggestions. Thanks very much for listening. Please remember that everything I share is just from my own personal experience and should not be taken as medical or health advice. Please consult your own medical professionals. This podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only.