You May Never Eat Sugar Again! – How To Reverse Diabetes & Prevent Early Death | Dr. David Unwin

1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

   David, welcome to the podcast.

2. DUDr. David Unwin0:01

   Rangan, thank you.

3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:03

   I have been so looking forward to this for a number of years. In fact, I can't believe we're only doing it now-

4. DUDr. David Unwin0:08

   [laughs]

5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:08

   ... because I think we share quite a similar philosophy-

6. DUDr. David Unwin0:10

   We do. We do

7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:11

   ... about health and maybe life in general.

8. DUDr. David Unwin0:14

   Yeah.

9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:16

   To start, I wanted to talk about the continuum of health. You're someone who has helped over 150 people in your practice put their type 2 diabetes into remission, which is amazing, and we're gonna-

10. DUDr. David Unwin0:33

    Yeah

11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:33

    ... talk about how you've done that. But at the same time, I don't think there's an awareness out there that type 2 diabetes is the end process. Things have been going wrong with your-

12. DUDr. David Unwin0:47

    Yeah

13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:47

    ... metabolic health for a number of years.

14. DUDr. David Unwin0:49

    Yeah.

15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:49

    So what would you say are some of the signs that we can look for in ourselves that might indicate our metabolic health is a little bit off, and maybe we're on the road to getting type 2 diabetes?

16. DUDr. David Unwin1:03

    That's a fabulous question. You're right, it starts years before, uh, you actually have type 2 diabetes. And the things I would say, or the things I noticed in myself actually, because I have type 2 diabetes, so I know a bit about this. The first thing is I used to find myself tired, particularly after meals. So I remember after lunch, even in the practice, I'd have to have a little nap on my own doctor's couch. Isn't that terrible? And I was only 55. I... And I thought that was aging. So the first thing is tiredness, particularly after meals, and also the... I was always ready to lie down in the evening. I was always thinking I'd put my feet up instead of doing anything. That's one thing. Um, another one is, is your belly size, and I, I think loads of us have noticed that. That you, you... We, we, we call that just middle-age spread, but I think that is... That's a euphemism really, because if your belly is more than half your height, you may have a problem. So all you have to do actually is get a piece of string as long as you are tall, cut it in half, and will it reach round the biggest bit of your belly? And in my case, it wouldn't have done. So belly size is another early, uh, thing that people might notice. What else might they notice?

17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:36

    Cognition.

18. DUDr. David Unwin2:38

    That certainly happened to me. Yeah. They call it brain fog, don't they?

19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:42

    Mm.

20. DUDr. David Unwin2:43

    Again, I thought this was normal ageing, so I was 55, which s- I'm now 67, so it's kind of crazy. I just noticed that the younger partners in the practice seemed to have s- intellectually more horsepower, and that was another thing for me, sort of fogginess. Um, but then another odd thing, I remember a thing at Christmas. I got sleepier and sleepier through Christmas and, and slightly depressed. And again, all of that turned out to be reversible, and all of it turned out to be those early signs that I was becoming insulin resistant.

21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:26

    Yeah.

22. DUDr. David Unwin3:26

    And my insulin wasn't working properly. I mean, and then you have the, the various biochemical tests that doctors might do. So, uh, any sign of fatty liver, but maybe we'll come onto that. A third of everybody in the world now has fatty liver.

23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:44

    Mm-hmm.

24. DUDr. David Unwin3:45

    So I had that as well.

25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:46

    Wow.

26. DUDr. David Unwin3:46

    Um, and then in blood tests, uh, a high triglyceride, uh, is a thing that people may have and not know why, why they've got that. So that's on the lipid, fasting lipid panel-

27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:00

    Yeah

28. DUDr. David Unwin4:00

    ... if you do a triglyceride, and it might be high. One final thing with me, I became fretty. So I would sort of chew on stuff for days and sort of circular thinking. It was funny 'cause when I improved my diet, all of those things went away, and my confidence increased. So that's my personal experience, actually.

29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:24

    Yeah. It's really interesting. You're talking about what on the surface seems to be quite a variety of different symptoms.

30. DUDr. David Unwin4:32

    Yeah.

Episode duration: 2:15:46