Improved Blood Sugar with the Paleo Diet and by Treating a Virus

Today we spoke with David, who was suffering from progressively increasing blood sugar even though he was eating “healthy” and exercising. Even though he was on medication, his blood sugar was still high in the 200s. We made a few dietary modifications and used some herbal medicines that can improve blood sugar. David’s blood sugar became normal and stayed normal even after coming off of his blood sugar meds.

Improved Blood Sugar with the Paleo Diet and by Treating a Virus

Dr. Michael Ruscio: Hi, this is Dr. Ruscio. I’m here with Dave. And Dave had a really interesting case. And I wanted to share some of the piece parts. Dave came in with blood sugar that kept going up, up, up, up, up and up and up. And you were exercising. Dave is at a healthy weight.

So he had all these signs of someone who shouldn’t be a type 2 diabetic. And even though he was doing everything to counteract the diabetes, he was still getting worse. And sometimes what this can be is autoimmunity against the pancreas, which is known as type 1.5 diabetes, where it’s an adult onset autoimmunity against the pancreas.

And when you see a skinny diabetic and a diabetic that’s doing all the right stuff or some of the right stuff but they’re still getting worse, you may think the reason why they’re getting worse is because their pancreas is just getting damaged. So no matter what they do, they don’t get any better.

And that’s how Dave came in. And so we’ve gone through the initial part of our process, which has been changing the diet. And that’s gone really well so far, right?

Dave: Yep, paleo diet—

DrMR: Which you’re loving.

Dave: Has been pretty easy to do. I eat out almost every day for lunch at my office. And salads with steak or salmon or fish or chicken. And just eating better, you feel better. I even have a hamburger with a lettuce wrap with bacon on it.

DrMR: Yeah, sure, sure, sure.

Dave: And it tastes great.

DrMR: That’s one of my favorites.

Dave: There’s no problem with it at all. And you don’t feel stuffed after it. And I feel like I’m not ready for a nap afterwards.

DrMR: Yeah, that’s always nice.

Dave: Yeah.

DrMR: And your blood sugar, you’ve come off all of your medications.

Dave: Yeah.

DrMR: And your blood sugar has gotten better than it was before, significantly better than it was before.

Dave: Right. And you told me that when I would change the diet and the do the protein, vitamins, and stuff that we’re doing—you said, “Oh, it’s going to go down. You’re going to have to come off medication.”

And I didn’t believe you at first. And I was like, “Well, I didn’t know what he was talking about.” But then all of a sudden, my blood sugar started dropping. And I stopped taking the medication, because then it was really making it worse.

And now, my average—I come home in the middle of the day. I’m at 104 or 114. And I used to be, when they first discovered this, I was 347. So it was pretty serious.

DrMR: Yeah, you were high.

Dave: And then I was holding in the 200s—220s, 210 for a really long time. And the diabetes center that my regular doctor sent me to told me that I can still have 60 to 70 carbs per meal.

DrMR: Per meal! Per meal.

Dave: It was crazy. You’re the first one that said, “That’s nuts!” And so when we started with the paleo, everything shot back down. It was just amazing. And now you’re telling me about what we discovered today.

DrMR: Yeah, so far, he’s done amazingly with just some basic, common sense stuff. Curtail your carb intake, and that can have a major impact on blood sugar regulation.

The other thing that he had remarked was he would notice when he drank wine his blood sugar would get better.

Dave: Good red wine.

DrMR: A good red wine, not the boxed wines.

Dave: Cabernet.

DrMR: Now, we just found Epstein-Barr virus reactivation with David, which is known to fuel many forms of autoimmunity. Now, here’s how this all connects, and here’s what’s really interesting about this whole thing. One of the ways that Epstein-Barr virus can invade the immune system is by essentially blunting vitamin D. It can block vitamin D. Specifically, it can blunt the vitamin D receptor.

So to invade your immune system, Epstein-Barr virus shuts down vitamin D. Resveratrol, which is found as an antioxidant found in wine, has been shown to stop that from happening. So it can actually help the body overcome the virus by not allowing the virus to shut down vitamin D.

So now that we see Epstein-Barr virus, it connects all the dots, meaning that the wine was giving you that punch of resveratrol. That resveratrol, we can speculate—again, we don’t know for sure—was not allowing the Epstein-Barr virus to shut down vitamin D. And therefore, your immune system was stronger, stopped the pancreatic inflammation, and allowed your blood sugar to normalize.

Dave: Right, to come way down.

DrMR: So really, really cool finding. A little bit of speculation factored in there because we can’t say any of things for absolute sure. But gosh! All the writing is on the wall there. And all the piece parts fit.

So far, you’ve done great. We’re starting in on the program now to do some natural anti-virals. And maybe we’ll shoot another video if anything huge or significant happens. But the discussion we just had was, I don’t think there’s going to be a whole lot more blood sugar dropping in the future, because I think we’ve already got the blood sugar significantly lower than it was before.

But what treating the virus will do will help to stop any further damage to the pancreas going forward.

So thank you so much for talking with us.

Dave: Yeah, thank you.

DrMR: And a really, really cool case where all these things—the resveratrol, the Epstein-Barr virus, and the vitamin D all came together.

Dave: This means I can’t get a prescription for Silver Oak anymore.

DrMR: [laughing] We could try. We could give it a shot. All right, guys. We’ll see you next time. Thanks!

What do you think? I would like to hear your thoughts or experience with this.

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