Reversing Diabetes - 059

SPEAKER A The following program presents principles designed to promote good health and is not intended to take the place of personalized, professional care. The opinions and ideas expressed are those of the speakers. Viewers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions about the information presented. SPEAKER B Welcome to healthy living. I'm your host, Margot Marshall. According to the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, there are two factors that determine how long men live. They say that genes account for 25%, but the other 75% has to do with modifiable risk factors, the things that each man can do something about. And today, I'll be talking to a man who did do something about his modifiable risk factors and reversed his diabetes. Stay tuned. SPEAKER C Healthy Living is a production of 3ABN Australia television, focusing on the health of the whole person, body, mind, and spirit. You'll learn natural lifestyle principles with practical health solutions for overall good. SPEAKER B Healthy diabetes is recognized as the world's fastest growing chronic condition. It caused 1.5 million deaths globally in 2013. Half of the people who have diabetes don't realize they have it. And did you know the risk of a heart attack for people with diabetes is the same as someone who's already had a heart attack? Accompanying our guest today who has reversed his diabetes is his general practitioner, Dr. Coralia Jigau. Welcome to both of you. Dr. Jigau, lovely to have you with us. And, Alain, thank you for coming and sharing your story and how it is that you've been able to reverse your diabetes. With those modifiable risk factors. You can be able to tell us what they are and how well that worked for you. SPEAKER D Well, it's a work in progress. SPEAKER B Okay. SPEAKER D I don't know whether I'm fully yet reversed completely, but it's an ongoing work in progress. But certainly I was diagnosed with diabetes 19 years ago. SPEAKER B Wow. SPEAKER D And as a nurse, as a registered nurse at that point, I felt my whole world was closing in. Suddenly, I was anticipating the worst, and I was looking at amputations, and I was thinking of heart problems, and I was thinking of visions and all kind of the complication that can come up with diabetes. I was thinking of the worst, and I was very, very worried about it and very concerned. And I thought, that's the end of me for the rest of my life. Now I'm going to be on medications and eventually insulin, and that will be it, because my understanding and our generally understanding at that time, diabetes is a disease for life. You've got it, and that's it. There's nothing we can do about it. But today we know better. Fortunately, we know that it is reversible, it is manageable, and can be controlled very well with a good lifestyle. And as you mentioned, the gene factor, my dad had diabetes, and I thought, there's nothing I can do about it. It's my gene, so I inherited it, and that's it. I have to live with it and I will not be on medication and eventually we'll be on insulin. But fortunately with our health message and we know that we can do something about it. SPEAKER B Tell us this health message you refer to a health message. What does that entail? SPEAKER D Well, at first I started was first introduced with Chip program. SPEAKER B And what does that stand for? SPEAKER D Chip is not the hot potato chip. SPEAKER B The complete health yeah, the complete health. SPEAKER D Improvement program I was introduced to and that gave me a lot of information and knowledge, empowered me to do something about it. But unfortunately, it was quite a few years down the track after I had been on medication for quite a while. And two years after my diagnosis of diabetes, I had my first tent put in. So the damage is done, even what now we call pre diabetic syndrome. The preclinical syndrome there where no test will identify you've got diabetes or confirm diabetes yet. But it's there and the damage is being done in your body and it's. SPEAKER E Happening now before the people are diagnosed with diabetes. It's taking up to five years to progress to diabetes. And when they have glucose intolerance, they already have 10% they already have damage to their retina and 50% damage to their kidney. So diabetes is a long progressing disease. So before you diagnose it is a lot of damage done. SPEAKER D That's right. Now these sort of lights, these knowledge are there which 2030 years ago we didn't know. And I personally thought there was nothing I could do about it. SPEAKER E You told me about your lifestyle, about how you used to have your tea. Because lifestyle is one contributor. Diabetes is most of diabetes is due to the lifestyle, type two diabetes I'm talking about. And lifestyle will do it, lifestyle will reverse it. SPEAKER D Exactly. SPEAKER E You told me about your yeah, I'm. SPEAKER D Originally from Mauritius and that's a beautiful place. SPEAKER B I stayed at Mauritius, Britain. SPEAKER D Thank you. I think so. SPEAKER B Beautiful. What are those lilies? Beautiful flowers. Anyway? Acres of them. Acres. And my dad actually brought some back home and one of them was the size of a dinner plate. SPEAKER D One of our for a long time was sugar. Sugar cane was the main production and so we mauritian love our sugar. And my mum used to make the tea for everybody in a big pot. And the sugar, the milk and everything is put in there for everyone. So there's no such thing as how many sugar do you want or do you have one or two sugar for you? So when I left and went to do my studies in England, I had no idea how much sugar I needed in a cup of tea to make it to my liking. And I discovered that to make it to my taste, I needed to put six teaspoonful of sugar. SPEAKER B My sister had a saying when we were young. SPEAKER E She'd say, sugar is to sweeten sorty with your colleagues. SPEAKER B Well, she said, sugar is to sweeten, not to thicken. SPEAKER D That's it. My first time I was in the ward and that morning on duty, I remember the night staff has made the tray of tea for everyone and was going around say, tea for you. Yes. Sugar, yes, white, whatever. And come my turn, she asked me, how do you like your sugar, your tea? And I say six, please. And the whole choir of the staff there in unison, six. They went in and I was so embarrassed, I didn't know where to hide. So that peer pressure immediately reduced my intake of sugar. SPEAKER B Wow. SPEAKER D I dropped from six to three. Three was the sort of wouldn't raise too much of an eyebrow, so people would accept that, tolerate that. So I was okay with three. So I adapted to three. SPEAKER E Until you met your wife. SPEAKER D Until I met my wife. My wife said, no, three is too much. And she dropped me down to two or one. When she makes my cup of tea, it was one tea sugar, one teaspoonful. But later when I'm making it, I'll put two. But the moment I was diagnosed immediately, the very same day, I cut out sugar. SPEAKER B Okay to zero. Isn't it interesting that it has to take a wake up call? SPEAKER D Exactly. SPEAKER B For us to do something? And it's a shame. It is unfortunate because like doctor was saying, the damage is taking place over years and the damage is done by the time we get that diet. So I'm just hoping that people tuning in don't find it too challenging or too hard to make some of the changes that you're hearing about on these programs. Because the silent damage is happening. And I find the food beautiful. I'm very much loving the beautiful fruits and veggies. SPEAKER D That's right. And we don't need to have that amount of sugar in our diet. SPEAKER E But the sugar in fruit is completely different. SPEAKER B That's right. SPEAKER E You can have as much sugar because that sugar is bound with fiber and do amazing plants, polyphenols, which keep it in control. It's not just rising up stride when you eat it. Comparing with a sugar cane. Sugar cane. It's not supposed to be consumed. SPEAKER B Well, it wouldn't matter if you did because you'd have to eat a meter of it to get two teaspoons. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER B You'd have a lot of refined sugar. SPEAKER D We're talking about that refined, processed sugar. SPEAKER E And so many years since his childhood, he was having challenges. His blood sugar level was high and I was high. Have you noticed something special about Alain? He is not obese. SPEAKER B Right. SPEAKER E Most of the people which have diabetes, they are overweight or obese. He is not. But do you know he have his family history, father with the diabetes and this epigenetic changes with constant blood sugar. High blood sugar level. High blood sugar level is toxic. It's toxic to the pancreas. We know it's one of the causing which the pancreas cells are dying as well as high fat, high saturated fat level. It's another causing of dying of the. So as you reverse this, your body stop for a while and it starts repairing your pancreas. SPEAKER B That's fantastic. Isn't that an amazing thing? This disease reversal starts with the organs and the cells of the body. They're being renewed, and they're being renewed by the food that we eat. You hear the saying, we are what we eat. SPEAKER E We are. SPEAKER B We literally are. Because as we sit here, our body cells are being replaced by what we had for our last meal and the ones before. So think about that. What was that? SPEAKER D Let thy food be thy medicine. Thy medicine be thy food. And we are what we eat. And our health and our lifestyle will determine our health. SPEAKER E Actually, there have been some study where they've taken biopsy from your fat, and they will tell you what type of fat you have eaten. It is their fish or if it's. SPEAKER B Their fascinating animal, whatever animal or whatever it came from, it is just going okay. SPEAKER D And it's interesting, isn't it, when the Bible says, leave the fat out, don't eat. SPEAKER E Fascinating. We do have a Bible test which is telling us clearly we should not eat fat. Leviticus. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER E I think leave fat alone, said, do not eat fat of ox and blood and do not eat blood. SPEAKER B And yet all meat has blood, and. SPEAKER E We do not consider kosher eating fat. I mean, when you eat meat, you have fat as well. SPEAKER B That's right. SPEAKER E Blood. SPEAKER B Because it's all through it. It's not just the external, but no, that advice that the good Lord gave to our first parents of standing in very, very good stead. Basically, right at the beginning, he told us what to eat, and it was all of those beautiful plant foods that he'd created in abundance. And now the World Health Organization has seen the light on that. And I was looking at their website and came across their healthy diet fact sheet numbers three, nine, four, if anyone wants to look that up. And it lists them there. There we go. Fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and whole unprocessed grains. And there it is from the World Health Organization. So it's very up to date, but it's ancient. It was there from the beginning. And when people eat like that, they get all the beautiful benefits. And when they don't eat like that, but they begin to, they can get some recovery. And I'm glad that you've been able to do that. SPEAKER D Looks like we've gone full circle. We've come back to where we started from, Eden. We thought development and everything. We had all this processed food and will make life easier, will make life more comfortable for us. And we find that they are not. They are making our life more complicated and bring us more complication disease and all kind of things. And now we're going back to full cycle and saying back to Eden. Like diet, that plant is the way to go. A plant based diet is the healthy one. SPEAKER B Most of the foods in the supermarket weren't there a few decades ago. They're making more and more and more and they're not brand new kinds of fruit or vegetable. They're just things that they've done more and more things to. They've taken out a lot of the good stuff. They've added a lot of things in with numbers on them that we don't know too much about, usually. And it's not at all helpful. And actually the foods that have been interfered with in this way and I'm not just talking genetically engineered, I'm talking about the highly processed where they've been stripped of their goodness and added things in that are not so good usually fat, sugar and salt plus others. That's what's really doing most of the damage. And certainly the animal products are not good either. SPEAKER E And it is just a lack of plants polyphenols because we've been designed to eat them. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER E And we just discover now thousands of substance in the leaf of spinach which we don't know how they are working. No, we do not know. But they are needed for our body. And the latest research in gut it's showing we have in our intestine gut, recept in gut, we have receptors for plants, polyphenols. We discover, until now, 28 receptors from plants which are there in the gut. We have in our gut receptors from bitterness. 26 of them. We don't know what they are doing there, but there are 26 type of receptors for bitterness in our gut without knowing what they are doing there. So the science is progressing. So we're starting discovering it's like opening your eyes. Wow. What is this doing there? Definitely that bitter receptors. They are doing something. We do have receptors from sweet not only in our mouth as we expected it. Yeah. What was the most fascinating is we have receptor from smell of Thalmic receptor. We have it in our gut. What are they doing? We don't know. The following science will find out. So it's fascinating. When we eat on God's formula, that's what my patient asks, why do you change? And said this is God's formula and God's formula is the best formula which you ever have. SPEAKER B Yes. And those thousands of phytochemicals that are in every single plant food has phytochemicals, every single plant food and there's thousands of them and they work like an orchestra. And if we want them to play beautiful music, we need to have all of the members of the orchestra there not stripped out and look for the magic bullet because they just work together in ways that we don't understand. I'll just tell you this, if I may, because it's a good illustration. Some years ago I went to hear the Messiah at a church in a country town and they had a small choir and you know they only had four instruments. Oh my goodness. I was wishing I wasn't there because it had a harpsichord and a violin and a trumpet, and I just can't remember what the other one was. You cannot play an orchestral piece with those few instruments. And not only that, but sometimes a couple of them weren't needed. It was just not a nice experience. But this is a little illustration of what it's like. The phytochemicals, the thousands of them that they've discovered, they work together in ways that we don't know and probably never will, but they do it all by themselves. And so Whole Foods holistic approach, whole. SPEAKER D Foods are really, really and I think this is also the problem. When we get sick, we get diabetes. We say, okay, it's a blood sugar issue. And we try to address just the blood issue, blood sugar level, but we're neglecting other areas, which is a whole. SPEAKER E Complication there we are looking so simplistically to this. And I remember it was about twelve years ago when I went to a medical conference and they were talking about the implication of kidney and diabetes. I said what I thought diabetes has to do with the blood sugar and with the liver, with the muscle and with the pancreas. No, when you have diabetes, actually, your kidney, instead of excreting enough, it is keeping much more glucose inside your body. You don't need this. You have already too much. So kidney is damaged, your intestine is damaged, some hormones there which are supposed to keep the blood sugar in control. Your brain is not working up in the liver. The main player in the pancreas is the liver. And it's a fatty liver. When you have a fatty liver, that liver cannot work properly and it is destroying the pancreas. And so most of the people will have diabetes. They have fatty liver, liver stereotypis. And when as you fix the problem, your diabetes will fix. And how do you fix a fatty liver? With the diet and with exercise. But what was interesting with you, it was because you had in 2004, your first stand, and you did not at that stage was not fully aware of the dangers or fully aware you have to do something you can control. It's not happening again. And it happened the second time in 2008, when you have your second stand, when your eyes was open. And after that you came and saw me, right? SPEAKER D That's correct. Yeah. And it shows that even as a health practitioner, our knowledge was so limited. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I cut out the sugar and I thought, that will do it, cut out the sugar. But now we understand it's not just the sugar, carbohydrate and fat, exercise, the fiber needed. SPEAKER B Yeah. When you talk about the carbohydrates, you're talking about the refined ones, not the whole grains. SPEAKER D That's right, the refined carb, the white stuff and the rice and the pasta and things like that. SPEAKER E What did you find recently? You told me you have seen somebody regarding micronutrients. Because we know in diabetes there is a big deficient of micronutrients, especially chromium, vanadium and manganese. And what you have done about this. SPEAKER D The magnesium, you told me? Yeah, well, I found that we eat a lot of stuff that are deficient. Like Dr. Coralia was talking about, she now has the ability to check in blood tests and find the deficiencies in various different areas in our vitamins and micronutrients deficiency and able to adjust these. Is that what you're talking about? Is that what you said? SPEAKER E Yeah. You start taking micronutrients from your USANA and you find out you are getting better. SPEAKER D I started using and when I was looking at this, I started reading a lot more about micronutrients, how it impacts with our blood sugar. And I discovered chromium, for example, was one very important ingredient was missing in our diet and we don't have it enough in our diet. And that interferes with the blood sugar, metabolism of blood sugar. SPEAKER E Yeah. But God did not design us to take tablets and micron. He designed to eat our greens. These are micronutrients with our entire amount in our food, in our greens. So again, we go to the design. If we eat accordingly to the design, our body will heal, will have the substrate to be able to the healing to happen. SPEAKER D And these micronutrients are available freely to us. That's right, they're available freely. If only we tap into them and absorb them. Let our body do the job, do the processing of it. SPEAKER B Yeah. So you've been enjoying your whole food plant based diet, Alain? SPEAKER D Very much so. When I was introduced to the Chip program a few years back and embraced that more holistically, because I was not on plant based as such at all until recently only. And then I have felt the difference. And the difference has been enormous in my health and my blood sugar and my whole health approach. It's not just one specific area only. And I think some of our previous friends have been sharing how we can see a whole changes in many different facets of our life when our health is addressed properly. SPEAKER B That's right. And we've been noticing as we've talked to the different patients that you've brought with you for this little series, Dr. Jigau, that what works for you with your diabetes and your heart is working for someone else with their kidneys and with their liver. And it's one size fits all. Basically, that diet that the good Lord gave to our first parents works for our whole body, our mind, because, did. SPEAKER E You know, you said our body is 25 our genes and 75 the environment. And what is actually the environment? It's the food which you eat. It's your water which you eat if you see your sun, if you drink, if you stay in the sun or not if you exercise or not, the amount of stress which you have. So all of these are lifestyle? SPEAKER B That's right. SPEAKER E All of these we have a power to address. So we cannot address. If you have a gene which is making you a predisposition from a disease, it's not a death sentence. No, because that gene can stay there without being activated. But if you'll work and if you'll have the same lifestyle like your parents, they have, definitely that gene will be activated and it will cause the same problem which you have. While if you change the lifestyle properly, that will not be expressed in your system. SPEAKER B And that's an important thing, isn't it? Because we talk about the genetics, but it's like little switches and they can be switched on and switched off, that's it. By what we eat. So it's just amazing. SPEAKER D I think it was Dr Dill who said the gene is like a loaded gun, somebody helps you pull the trigger. SPEAKER B Lifestyle pulls the trigger. That's right, yes, that was what he said. I remember that. And it's true. SPEAKER E You know how the food is working now, these micronutrients which we need to have, they are acting on the nucleus and our nucleus is doing a certain protein which is called NRF two. And this, it's triggering 400 genes of repair. Or you can do in the same way, another substances which will create, which will trigger on nucleus, 400 genes of causing inflammation in your body. So it is working not as a simplistic in one line, it's working as a whole. SPEAKER B Yeah, genes of repair. That's a lovely thing to know about, isn't it? SPEAKER E Food is medicine, exercise is medicine. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER E Sunlight is definitely medicine. Water is medicine. Because water activated genes. If you eat too much salt, in the case of high blood pressure, there are a lot of genes which are activating, but excess salt, as you stop your excess salt, that genes will be turned off again, they will be dormant, so it will not cause. So everything in the body is acting. SPEAKER B On genes and it's influenced by how we live. I remember the US Surgeon General, he talked about lifestyle as what we eat and drink, whether we smoke and exercise. And the last one actually, I was surprised, actually, the last one was how we love. Yeah, very interesting. And our relationships are very important too. And if I may say this, and I say it genuinely, I've heard from one of your patients that your manner and your caring concern and your compassion has been a big part in helping them on their journey to change their lifestyle, which is a big thing to do. And so I think that that's a beautiful thing to find in any medical practitioner, someone who you can tell genuinely cares about you and is there to support you through this change and cares about your outcome. SPEAKER E Love is a healer. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER E And if we go deep, we understand exactly how. Because if you don't have love, you have anxiety and fear, which is triggering all the cortisol problems in the body and is doing anxiety and fear and stress. And every cell in your body will feel when your cortisol level is high, when the love, when you have it there is settling. Everything is settling. The body the body is supposed to work properly. It's actually stress management. SPEAKER B Yeah. And God is love. That's his definition. He is love. And also I read somewhere it was beautiful. The creative energy that brought the worlds into existence is in his word, in the Bible. And when we read it, his very life becomes part of us. That essence of love. So it's a beautiful thing. And I would really encourage you, if you haven't added this to your list of lifestyle things, to actually connect with the one who created you. It's an incredibly health giving thing and it even says I am the Lord who heals you. So it's a very important element to actually include our Creator as part of our lives, as part of our thinking and gratitude to Him because that plays a huge role in the healing. SPEAKER E Yeah. You have somebody to trust. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER E You don't have to rely on yourself. You have somebody who know is in absolute control of everything. What happened instead of stressing, what will be tomorrow? You leave your burden there. SPEAKER B That's right. Beautiful thing. Yeah. SPEAKER D It's a three dimensional our health is the physical, the emotional and the spiritual. It's all formed together. SPEAKER B There's been more than 1200 studies in the last hundred years on the relationship between spirituality and health and one person who yeah, just an amazing thing. But we need to actually close here now. And I just want to close by saying that health is very precious. And so I would really encourage you to think of one thing that you can do today to help you to live life to the full and be sure to tune into our future programs to discover how to prevent and reverse other diseases. You can watch our programs on demand at 3abnaustralia.org.au Just click on the watch button and may God bless you and bless your efforts. SPEAKER C You’ve been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia Television.