Introduction --- But she feared that I might in the future go too low. So she insisted on stopping the farxiga, and I really didn't want to have any part of that. I debated that with her in that doctor's office visit. I'm gonna say for over 30 minutes, and certainly she did not meet her quota of patients that morning. But anyway, that was now a day short of three weeks ago. And what you're hearing in the background is me eating my words. 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. Thanks for joining me here for another episode. I'd like to ask you a favor before we get started. I ask this favor every week. I. But it's important to me. If you would please share this podcast with someone that you care about, someone that you have concern for, maybe it's someone with type two diabetes if you could share this podcast, that would do me a tremendous favor and I would really appreciate it. My Week in Review --- So, I hope you're having a very good week. I know for me, I had, a lot of fun this past week. We spent a four day weekend up in the Pocono Mountain area of Pennsylvania, Northeastern Pennsylvania. My, family at large, my wife's family especially has a, family cabin up there in the woods, and it is not rustic. It has all the modern amenities. hot and cold running water, indoor bathroom, electricity. So it has just about everything you would need. It does not have any cell signal in that area, so that's a little bit difficult. we tend to live our lives online, at least part of our lives. Each day we spend online. You're listening, to this podcast using some type of computer device that required you to at least some point have an internet connection, but we don't have any of that up there at the cabin in the Poconos. It's right near Cresco, C R E S C O, Cresco, Pennsylvania. But we don't have a signal up there. We have to actually either walk about a half mile or drive about a half a mile and, and, we can get a, a little bit of signal. But I was there with three of my daughters, a son-in-law, my wife, two grandkids. So we had, a full house, for three bedrooms there, and it was a lot of fun. We got outdoors, did some walking, got in some craft time, but just really a lot of fun watching old movies. We don't have any cable or. Satellite or any television like that. So we put in old VHS or D V D movies and watched those and played a lot of games. So it was a really good time. we enjoyed our time up there. Came home yesterday and yeah, that's pretty much my week. My Numbers --- Take a look at my numbers. And I did manage to close my rings five outta the past seven days, which is about average for me. I'll be going out on a nice long walk on my local trail here as soon as I'm done recording my seven day average glucose was 1 0 8, which is very good. I'm very happy with that. We're gonna talk a little bit about that later, as part of the main topic for today, because if you remember, I have had a medication change here a few weeks ago, so we're gonna be talking about that. My body fat percentage is right at 21.0%, and my macros for this week have averaged 78 grams of carbohydrates each day and 140 grams of protein each day. So I'm happy with all of that. Mounjaro Update --- For my Mounjaro update, well, quite frankly, it's not much of an update. I'm pretty much on cruise control with my Mounjaro. it's working very well, and again, we're gonna talk about that in a little bit, but I'm still in the seven and a half milligram dose and I imagine I'll be there, for a while. So everything's going well with Mounjaro, so that's nice. Challenge and Win --- For my challenge and win this week. Like I say, we were up at the cabin, with a large group of family and that was a challenge because for some reason, there's always a lot of sweets, uh, the cabin. But this time especially, we were celebrating two birthdays. Two birthdays of our, grandchildren and, lots of cake. I think there were three separate cakes. Lots of ice cream. All kinds of snacks, chips, pretzels, cookies, crackers, all that kind of stuff. And I did manage to stay away from that. I had a fork of each of the two birthday cakes. And then the other cake, I sort of left go, but I had two forks, of cake. Over the weekend. So that's usually how I do it. I don't wanna say no, I don't want any, I don't wanna seem like I'm not part of the festivities, but I'll just grab a fork and usually take a fork full outta my wife's cake or someone else's cake. I think this weekend I took one fork full outta my wife's cake and then she didn't know it, but she's learning it here cuz she does listen to the podcast. I did take a fork full out of another daughter's cake, so one wife. One daughter piece, and that was my cake filling, for the weekend. so, you know, it's a challenge to, not fully, indulge in all those sweets and treats, but, you know, I gotta pick and choose. What I do, so with some proper packing, ahead of time, I brought protein bars, I brought protein shakes. I had my heavy cream for my coffee. made sure there was good meats and cheeses to eat. I brought my wraps, so some proper packing and proper shopping ahead of time allowed me to call that challenge a win. News --- Let's take a look at the news. this first article is food related. It's entitled Four Tips for Making Latin Food. Type two diabetes friendly. So I'm not gonna read all the, recipes they have here, but they go on to say how, you know, starchy foods are often taking center stage in Latin Fair, but what they like to stress is that if you make sure you're getting, a lot of beans, Some good meat and not too much rice or pasta, that you can still, have good, enjoyable meals that are Latin based and not dramatically impact your type two diabetes. You know, they have suggestions here, like skipping the salt, seasoning your food with herbs and spices. Now, personally, I don't find any issues with salt, but you know, they listed here, they also say choose leaner cuts of meat, such as chicken instead of red meat. Again, I don't see any problem with that, but it is a, tip that they give here in this article. The third thing though, I do fully agree with, and that is to go for high. Fiber unprocessed, carbohydrates instead of highly processed carbohydrates. They say things like, use whole weed pasta instead of regular pasta. Use brown rice instead of white rice. Now, personally, what I find is I just have a smaller portion, and that seems to do me pretty well, but that's for me. You guys have to make your own decisions on that. And finally they say, set aside time to actually cook the healthy dishes rather than relying on takeout or fast food, for your meals, which, you know, all in all, I think those are very good, tips. Certainly, you know, nothing wrong with that. The next article here says, keep the weight off and diabetes stays away as new study shows benefits of slimming. So they looked at a cohort of people here and it was in the, diabetes remission clinical trial, known as direct, and they're saying that 23% of the people were able to maintain remission of their diabetes symptoms. In other words, they did not have high blood sugar anymore after five years. Since they lost weight in this study, and they were involved in a 12 week low calorie diet, but they did get support to gradually reintroduce healthy foods and maintain the weight loss. And they said that the people that were able to maintain the weight loss were able to maintain the low blood sugar. So what they're saying here is that by losing that weight, It makes it much easier to maintain your blood sugar. And as you know, over the past year I have, dropped significant amounts of body fat and, I think it does really help me. The third article here is called Doctor Says Healthy and Healthy is in quotes, healthy drinks could be causing a rapid increase in blood sugar. Now, what in the world does that mean? Well, what they're talking about are drinks that people think are healthy. Turns out if you have Type two diabetes, they're really not healthy at all. So a common one here is sugary coffee drinks. You know, if you go to some of these big coffee chains and they're all pretty similar, but I'll use Starbucks as an example, or maybe Dunkin Donuts, you know, you can order these fancy frappe, laa kappa Chapa, whatever drinks. And I sort of made that up, but you know what I mean, you can order these things that maybe have some coffee, but they're mostly, you know, whipping cream or syrups or sugars, or, oh, here's my favorite agave nectar. Well, you know, that's all sugar. So obviously by, by having a glass of sugar, some water, and a little bit of coffee. Is not gonna help you maintain your blood, sugar. So that's one of their examples. The other example here is teas. You know, people have sweet tea. Well, obviously, you know, sweet tea is not the same thing as. Plain tea with regards to the impact in your blood sugar. I think we talked about that in an early article maybe a couple of months ago, how people get tea and they think it's, you know, all healthy and good, but being sweet tea is actually doing them a tremendous disservice. And the last example they give here are fruit juices. So taking a perfectly good orange or a perfectly good apple, just squeezing all the juice out of it and you know you're gonna have to squeeze the juice outta five or six of those pieces of fruit to make a glass. Getting rid of all the fiber, getting rid of all the good, healthy stuff that's in that fruit. And you're just left with sugar water. And the issue is all that fructose that's, you know, naturally found in fruits. That's. Processed by your liver. So if you get way, way too much of it, the easiest thing your liver can do is store it as fat right in your liver. And that's one of the things that can lead to fatty liver disease. So they're warning that these quote unquote healthy drinks are really not healthy at all for folks with either type two diabetes, pre-diabetes, that type of thing. This final article is entitled, Best continuous glucose monitor for Apple devices. So this is specifically for things like the iPhone, the iWatch, or I guess it's called Apple Watch. But basically it compares two monitors. It compares the, freestyle Libre three, which I'm using, and it also, compares the Dexcom G seven. And as far as accuracy and the readings, they say they're very, very similar. You know, one day this one might be a couple of points higher. The other next day, the other one might be a couple of points higher. But basically, the price and the, you know, accuracy are very, very, very similar between the Dexcom G seven and the Freestyle Libre three. What they are saying is that the app. And the software are. Different. So it talks about the app that runs on your iPhone and how maybe one app gives more data. And honestly they're saying the G seven app is much better, from what this reviewer thought. And they talk about why, you know, you can adjust some settings, you can get different views, you have. More options as far as the example, and also one thing the Dexcom G seven does that the Freestyle Libre three does not do it, has a complication for your Apple watch. In other words, without even looking at your. iPhone. You can look at your watch and you can see what your current blood sugar is and also what the trend is, and then you tap on that and you can even get more data. So it integrates with the Apple watch. It also, and the, again, this is only the G seven model, it also integrates directly with Apple Health. So if you have an iPhone, chances are you store a lot of your health data, maybe blood pressure readings, maybe lab results, things like that, right in the Apple Health app. And these readings from the Dexcom G seven show up directly in the Apple Health app. If you allow for that integration, you know, it's a setting. You have the the choice, but the Libre Freestyle three does not. Now, interestingly enough, when I was getting the, original Libre 14 day monitor, from a third party, you know, telemedicine place, they had their own app. They did not use the Libre app, they had their own app, and that did connect to Apple Health. So, you know, the Libre three app. That comes with the monitor, does not, and I have noticed this, I think when I talked in depth about my cgm, how the app was not as good as the third party app I had been using previously. The problem is that third party app does not work with this new Libre three sensor. So I'm hoping at some point in time, you know, Abbott will, improve their app, maybe add a watch complications. Certainly please integrate it with Apple Health. But until then, the G seven app, according to the reviewer in this article is much better. Effects I'm Seeing after topping the Farxiga Medication --- So let's get into this topic, the main topic for today, and that's, like I told you last week, I wanna talk about what are the effects that I'm noticing from stopping the Farxiga medication now. Two weeks ago, two episodes ago, I ranted and raved about what happened to my doctor's office, and based on a single A1C that was 5.0, she in insisted on stopping the Farxiga. Now 5.0 in itself is not too low, not dangerous, not unhealthful in any regards. If you're a typical healthy person with no blood sugar issues, you could easily have an A1C of 5.0, and that's what I had. But she feared that I might in the future go too low. So she insisted on stopping the farxiga, and I really didn't want to have any part of that. I debated that with her in that doctor's office visit. I'm gonna say for over 30 minutes, and certainly she did not meet her quota of patients that morning. But anyway, that was now a day short of three weeks ago. And what you're hearing in the background is me eating my words. So prior to that last doctor visit three weeks ago, my 30 day. Average glucose reading was 1 0 8, right, which is very good. 1 0 8 is far below the pre type two diabetes level, and, very happy with a 1 0 8 and that's the average 24 7 over 30 days. Well, it's been three weeks now and my 24 7 average blood sugar reading is one 18. Over the past three weeks, it's one 18 and the 30 days before that it was 1 0 8, that three weeks of one 18 average included nine days in Disney World. So, and I know I was a little bit loose in Disney World, not terribly loose obviously, but I gotta say it is not nearly as high as I feared it might go. Now, you know, 1 25, an average blood glucose reading of 1 25 across, you know, a period of time that's right where pre-diabetes starts. So I am slightly below the pre-diabetes range, which is, you know, totally acceptable. It's not 1 0 8, but it's only one 18. So I quite frankly am surprised. But right now it's very apparent. That the Mounjaro all by itself, the 7.5 milligram dose of Mounjaro is a once weekly injection. You may have seen commercials on it. Now for tv, they're starting to have more and more commercials. But anyway, you know, I've been taking this now for six months and this Mounjaro is managing along with what I'm eating and how I'm moving, you know, my lifestyle, stress, things like that. It's managing it. Without any other medication for my type two diabetes. So, you know, about four months ago, maybe five, we stopped the Metformin because it was apparent I didn't need that anymore. And then for five months I was taking Mounjaro and Farxiga together. I had been taking Farxiga now for a couple years and against my will, we stopped the Farxiga three weeks ago. I. My blood sugar is still fine, not quite as low as it has been, but if I stay below 1 25 as a, you know, seven day average, I honestly have to be happy with that. I cannot, just demand that it be in the rock bottom. Now I am still only eating about 80 grams of carbohydrates a day. I probably could go up to a hundred carbohydrates a day, a hundred grams of carbohydrates a day, and still stay below that pre-diabetes level. so, you know, that's me saying I was wrong. That's me eating my words, but I'm gonna tell it to my doctor too. The next visit, she's checking my A1C again in September, and I'm gonna tell her, Hey. I was wrong. I still don't agree that we should have made the change on one single A1C reading, but it turns out there was no bad effects. Questions --- Okay, so your questions, this is the time when we answer the questions. Now, I have not received any questions this week. If you would like to ask a question for the show, there's two ways to contact me. You can send me an email. My email address is, Tom at solving type two diabetes.com or go to the website solving type two diabetes.com and click on feedback there. You will, be able to send in your question a comment, a topic for a upcoming episode that you would like to suggest, and then just send that right into me and I will get that and be happy to cover that on the next episode. Another thing I'd like to mention, and I'm not sure if you've seen this yet in the show notes, but there is a link in the show notes each week. to join the Facebook group. We have a private solving type two diabetes Facebook group that, you know, no one can see who's in it. No one can see what you post. Just request to join that. There's no fee at all. It's totally free. And I created that as a place for, you know, topics, to discuss people, you know, providing feedback, helping each other. Right now I have about 30 people who are part of that free Facebook community on Facebook, and just click on that link and you can join as well. I would encourage you to do that. So I'm gonna ask you again to please share this podcast episode. Share it with someone that you know might have type two diabetes or is interested in the topic, or maybe they're taking care of someone with type two diabetes. What's Next? --- So what's next? Next week I'd like to talk about why I don't worry about fat. When I'm solving my type two diabetes, you know, each week I report out my average carbohydrate intake, my average protein intake. I never report on the fat, and I certainly eat a lot of fat. In fact, most of my calories each day come from fat. But why don't I worry about fat? I'd like to talk about that with you next week. 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.