The blood glucose “No change rule” to accelerate weight loss and achieve other health benefits

Monitoring blood glucose, or blood sugar, can be a useful tool in achieving a number of important health effects. You can apply it to accelerate weight loss, for instance, or accelerate the reversal of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, triglyceride blood levels, fatty liver, slow many of the phenomena of aging, and other effects. And you can achieve this by following what I call the blood glucose “No change rule,” meaning allowing no change in blood sugar from just prior to a meal to 30-60 minutes after the start of the meal. 

This is, of course, completely contrary to conventional thinking on how to use blood glucose measurement, nearly always used to assess your response to drugs that reduce blood sugar. In other words, people are told by doctors that the usefulness of blood glucose monitoring is to assess whether the drugs you’ve been given to reduce blood glucose are doing the job and controlling blood sugar. But that is NOT what we are talking about here. We are talking about how to put blood glucose monitoring to use to achieve significant health benefits. 

Revolutionize your health journey as we cast light on the "blood glucose no change rule." Imagine maintaining a stable blood sugar level from just before your meal to thirty minutes after, and the enormous health benefits that could unlock. Experience accelerated weight loss, reversal of type 2 diabetes, and a decline in high blood pressure. We also unravel how a simple blood glucose monitor, a device often sidelined, can become your secret weapon towards achieving your health goals.

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*Dr. Davis and his organization are financially compensated for supporting these products. 

Transcript

William Davis, MD: 0:06

Monitoring blood glucose or blood sugar can be a useful tool in achieving a number of important health effects. You can apply it to accelerate weight loss, for instance, or accelerate the reversal of conditions such as high blood pressure, triglyceride blood levels, fatty liver, slow many of the phenomenon of aging and other effects. You can achieve this by following what I call the blood glucose no change rule, meaning allowing no change in blood sugar from just prior to a meal to 30 to 60 minutes after the start of a meal to approximate the peak of blood sugar. This is, of course, completely contrary to conventional thinking on how to use blood glucose measurement, nearly always used to assess your response to drugs that reduce blood sugar. In other words, people are told by doctors that the usefulness of blood glucose monitoring is to assess whether the drugs you've been given to reduce blood glucose are doing the job and controlling blood sugar. But that is not what we're talking about here. We are talking about how to put blood glucose monitoring to use to achieve significant health benefits. So let's discuss how to use this simple device and these simple measurements and put it to work for other health purposes to achieve genuine health, not just management of disease. Later in the podcast let's talk about, to find health's sponsors that include Paleov alley, who provides fermented grass-fed beef sticks, bone broth, protein rich in collagen, organic super greens and low carb super food bars and now 100% grass-fed and finished pastured meats. And our newest sponsor, BiotiQuest, who provides unique probiotics such as sugar shift to support healthy blood sugars and simple slumber to assist in obtaining healthy sleep, probiotics crafted with the unique property of combining synergistic microbes. You know, with a simple blood sugar monitoring device and some knowledge about how to put that information to use, you have a tool of huge advantage that can help you achieve such things as accelerating weight loss, undoing or reversing type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes, minimizing high blood pressure, reversing fatty liver, reducing blood triglycerides. Unfortunately, if you ask most doctors, they'll tell you this blood sugar monitor cannot be used for these purposes. They'll tell you that it's only useful to monitor blood glucose blood sugars in a person with diabetes, and they tell them such things as check a blood sugar prior to a meal and then check it two hours after the meal to see if the blood sugar has reverted back to its baseline on insulin and drugs. That is not, of course, what we're talking about. We're talking about using blood glucose observations to gain control over various metabolic phenomena. And the truth is, you have astounding power over these things when you apply the information provided by blood glucose monitor properly for these purposes, not for control of diabetes.

William Davis, MD: 3:09

Now, these devices are widely available. You can get them at major pharmacies like Walgreens or department stores like Target or Walmart or Meier For about $20, $30 in that range. You will need to buy the lancets, that is, the little finger prick devices, as well as the test strips. So there's a few dollars involved, but not much. You can often ask your doctor if he has any. He or she has any in stock because they often give them away without charge, because the companies who make them hope that you're gonna need a lot of test strips and that's how they make their money by you buying a lot of test strips, but the doctor would typically give it to you without cost. Or if you have a continuous glucose monitor inserted in your arm, that can also be used to do this to achieve these kinds of ends.

William Davis, MD: 3:51

Now, once you have your device, it will take about 15 minutes to get acquainted with your device. Instructions are included or, alternatively, someone in a doctor's office can show you how to do it, or if you have any diabetic friends that check their finger stick blood glucosees, they can also show you. It's very easy. Don't make this harder than it is. It's minimally painful. The landsets that get your blood are spring loaded. You can barely feel the pin prick. Make sure there's no cream or other cosmetics on your hands. So wash your hands with soap and water prior to, and don't milk your finger to make blood come out If you're having a hard time getting a bead of blood just bend over at the waist and that often uses gravity to make more blood come out at the finger stick site.

William Davis, MD: 4:32

So we apply something I call the blood glucose no change rule, and all that means is you get a baseline blood glucose just prior to a meal and then you go ahead and eat and obtain another finger stick blood glucose 30 to 60 minutes after the start of the meal. What we're trying to identify is the peak blood sugar, the highest value your blood sugar takes after a meal. If you were scientific, you would get a blood sugar every 15 minutes or so and then identify the peak. But you really don't have to do that. If you get around 30 to 60 minutes after the start of the meal, you get a pretty good approximation of the peak blood glucose. So let's say you start with a blood glucose of 100. Ideal, by the way, is 90 milligrams per deciliter, or less 70 to 90. 100 is actually a little bit high. Nonetheless, let's just pretend you start with a blood sugar of 100 milligrams per deciliter and you eat a bowl of oatmeal organic stone ground oatmeal in skim milk, no added sugar. Your blood sugar will likely be in a non-diabetic something like 155, 170. It goes way, high, way up high.

William Davis, MD: 5:36

Now, every time your blood glucose does that, it generates abnormal or adverse changes. That rise in blood glucose, for instance, is obliged to cause a rise in blood insulin, and repetitive rises in blood insulin lead you down the path of insulin resistance, the fundamental underlying process behind type two diabetes, coronary disease, risk for stroke, risk for breast cancer and other cancers, risk for cognitive decline and dementia. So the repetitive rises in blood glucose and thereby insulin that over time generates insulin resistance, is a very bad process provoked by these high blood glucose. High blood glucose also leads to the process called glycation and all that means is the glucose modification of the proteins in the body, and this is an irreversible process. If you glycate, for instance, the proteins in the lenses of your eyes, you get opacities that lead to cataracts. If you glycate skin, the collagen in your skin, it makes it brittle and it becomes chaotic and goes into disarray and you get skin thinning and accelerated skin aging as well as age so-called age spots. If you glycate the collagen in your joints, such as in your knee or hips, you accelerate the breakdown of that collagen and you get close and closer to arthritis and bone-on-bone pain. Many other organs, of course, are prone to glycation, but you get the idea Glucose modification of proteins in the various organs of your body. That is an irreversible process and essentially adds up to accelerated aging. So every time that blood glucose goes above 100, you are glycating at a faster and faster rate. So one way to not do that is to keep your blood glucose from ever going up, the so-called no change rule Now you may hear this from your doctor also that as long as your blood glucose does not go above 200 milligrams per deciliter during a meal or after a meal, you're fine.

William Davis, MD: 7:34

Is that true? It absolutely is not true, because blood glucose is of 150, 180, 190, do generate, as I mentioned, insulin resistance in all its associated problems, as well as protein glycation. So why would your doctor say something like that that a blood glucose of up to 200 milligrams per deciliter is allowable or is safe? What he or she is actually saying is that at that level you don't yet benefit from taking insulin or other diabetes drugs. So their definition of acceptable or a healthy range is not needing drugs, but it's not telling you that there aren't serious consequences of those blood glucose is below 200. That's why we're going to do the opposite. We're going to keep our blood glucose from ever rising above its starting range. This works if you start with a normal blood glucose of, say, 88 and you try to keep it from not changing. Or if you start with a high blood sugar, let's say, of 120 in the pre-diabetic range, the same rule applies we're going to keep it from changing. If we start at 120, we're going to try to keep it at 120.

William Davis, MD: 8:39

Now, before we go on to tell you about the effects you can expect by doing this, let me tell you something about Defiant Health's sponsors, Paleov alley and BiotiQuest. The Defiant Health podcast is sponsored by Paleov alley makers of delicious grass-fed beef steaks, healthy snack bars and other products. We are very picky around here and insist that any product we consider has no junk ingredients like carrageenan, carboxymethylsalos, sucralose and, of course, no added sugars. In all, Paleov alley products contain no gluten nor grains. In fact, I find Paleov alley products among cleanest in their category. One of the habits I urge everyone to get into is to include at least one, if not several, servings of fermented foods per day in their lifestyles. Unlike nearly all other beef steaks available, paleo Valley grass-fed beef steaks are all naturally fermented, meaning they contain probiotic bacterial species. And now Paleov alley is expanding their Wild Pastures program that provides 100% grass-fed, grass-finished pastured beef and pastured chicken and pork raised without herbicides or pesticides. And they just added wild-caught seafood caught from the waters of Bristol Bay, alaska. Among their other new products are pasture-raised fermented pork sticks, chocolate-flavored grass-fed bone broth protein and grass-fed organ complex in capsule form, and new essential electrolytes in powder form to add to potassium and magnesium intake, available in orange, lemon and melon flavors. Listeners to the Defiant Health podcast receive a 15% discount by going to paleo valley dot com.

William Davis, MD: 10:25

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William Davis, MD: 11:37

Now you need to bear in mind that these devices are not absolutely precise. They are precise to about plus or minus 10 milligrams. That is, if you get a value of 90, it's really 80 to 100. So bear that in mind when you look at the comparing the pre-meal to the 30 to 60 minutes into your meal. But if you start, say, 88 and then you get a 97, that's essentially no change, right? Because it's within 10 milligrams of a device's expected Accuracy. Now if you do get a rise in blood glucose, let's say you start at 90 and then you eat your meal and it goes to 140.

William Davis, MD: 12:12

Look back at that meal and look at the food that you think may have caused it. Of course it'll be a carbohydrate, more than likely, and so next time either cut back on the portion size or eliminate that food and replace with Something else that is non carbohydrate. So this gives you feedback on just how close your diet is in limiting carbohydrate. Now please don't hear no carbohydrates, right, because we are very mindful of getting this kinds of carbohydrates, that is, pre-biotic fibers, polysaccharides and other components of food that nourish the microbiome, the gastrointestinal microbiome and not nourishing gastrointestinal microbiome is very dangerous long-term. So we do include foods like Hiccoma and asparagus and leeks and dandelion greens and root vegetables and legumes, so that we are feeding the microbes. Those kinds of carbohydrates, though, typically are not very likely to raise blood glucose, but you can if you're worried about your portion size. You still can check it after those foods also.

William Davis, MD: 13:08

But the point here is, if you do get a rise in blood glucose of more than 10 millirems, look at the food, look at the meal, find the culprit and make a change in that meal next time you consume it. So what can you expect to happen when you do this over and over again, that you see no change in blood glucose pre and 30 to 60 minutes into a meal. Well, it will accelerate weight loss. You'll see weight dropping off faster. You'll also see phenomena associated with insulin resistance and blood glucose reversing faster. Phenomena such as high blood triglycerides Measures of fatty liver like high AST and ALT blood triglycerides will drop faster. The phenomena of insulin resistance will recede and with it, an acceleration of a loss of abdominal visceral fat, that's, the fat in your abdomen that is responsible for nearly all the problems associated with being overweight and obese. You'll be minimizing the phenomena of glycation and thereby slowing the process of aging that is due to that process of glycation.

William Davis, MD: 14:08

Glycation is a major player in many of the phenomena of aging, where you're going to slow it down To its bare minimum, so that even a blood glucose, say, of 85, which is perfect there's a little bit of glycation going on. But it's when you get to say 150 or 170 where you get a lot of glycation. By the way, another measure of glycation the rate at which you're glycating is another measure called hemoglobin a1c. It's meant to assess your blood glucose excursions or variations in the past 90 days, but you can also use it as an index of how much you're glycating, and an ideal Hemoglobin a1c that suggests you are minimally glycating is a level of 5.0% or less. The doctor often says 5.6 or 5.7% or less is okay. Is that true? No, absolutely not. Once again, if you're hemoglobin a1c is, say, 5.7%, they say why are you on the verge of pre diabetes? You are glycating at an accelerated rate and even the rate of cardiovascular death at that level is about 300% threefold higher than normal. So don't accept that a 5.6 or 5.7 hemoglobin a1c is acceptable. It is not. That means you're accelerating your aging process. So get it below 5.0%. By following the blood glucose no change rule, you are also dramatically reducing your risk for cardiovascular disease, far more than you achieve with silly things like reducing LDL cholesterol, the statin drug. So when you follow the no change rule, several things happen. Your liver is no longer producing very much very low density lipoproteins and triglycerides.

William Davis, MD: 15:38

VLDL particles are a major cause for cardiovascular disease, for coronary disease. They directly cause coronary disease and the coronary arteries. And VLDL particles also lead, via a series of reactions, to the formation of small LDL particles. Small LDL particles, because of their small size, are better able to penetrate into the arterial wall. They're also more adherent to structural tissues in the artery, they're more prone to oxidation and glycation and Once they enter the bloodstream they persist for five to seven days, so they stick around for a long time, compared to the 24 hours of a normal large LDL particle caused by fat consumption. So consumption of any food, carbohydrates and sugars that provokes formation of small LDL particles is a major Cardiovascular risk that lasts for many days, not just a few hours like large LDL.

William Davis, MD: 16:29

Well, by following the blood glucose no change rule, you're not glycating the small LDL particles, nor are you forming VLDL or small LDL particles. So following this rule is extremely effective way to reduce cardiovascular risk by reducing or minimizing VLDL particles and small LDL particles. And then, lastly, following the no change rule and blood glucose also helps you gain control over overgrowth of fungal populations such as candidate alpicans in the colon and in the small intestine. Fungi, like candidate, thrive on sugars and eerily they oddly send a signal to your brain to consume more sugars to satisfy their needs. So by not allowing blood glucose to rise, that is, by looking at your meal and avoiding foods that cause a rise in blood glucose, you're also not feeding via sugars, the fungi, the fungal populations in your gastrointestinal tract, and it's part of an effort to reduce fungal population. There's more you should do if you have fungal infestation or fungal overgrowth in the GI tract, but at least this helps. Or if you don't have it, this helps not getting fungal overgrowth in your GI tract.

William Davis, MD: 17:37

This redeployment of a conventional tool into the service of regaining health is a great illustration of how you can take conventional tools and, with a little bit of change in the rules that you apply to their use, apply them for health, for genuine health, not just for management of a disease like diabetes. So this application of a blood glucose meter and your blood glucose values before a meal and 30 to 60 minutes into a meal is an extremely powerful tool, especially at the start of a program where you're kind of uncertain about the diet, uncertain about carbs counts, net carb counts and those sorts of things. Now, if you've learned something from this episode of the Defiant Health podcast, I invite you to subscribe for your favorite podcast directory. Post a review, post a comment, tell your friends, help us build this movement of self empowerment and health that frees us as much as possible from the healthcare system. Thanks for listening. I'll see you in the next one.