Reversing Type 2 Diabetes: The Truth Your Doctor Isn't Telling You - Rita Brewer

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Jack Heald: Welcome, folks. My guest today is Rita Brewer. Might not be a name you know, but it is a name you should know. Rita, if you don't mind, give us a real quick introduction to your particular area of expertise. 

Rita Brewer: Sure. My area of expertise is Type 2 Diabetes Reversal. I have been a clinically practicing physician assistant, name has now changed to physician associate for those who didn't know. 

Jack Heald: Oh, I didn't know that. It's still a PA, but it's, but the A stands for something different. 

Rita Brewer: Associate instead of assistant, which is more appropriate for the role that we play. So I've been practicing many areas of medicine and surgery for the past 33 years and have loved it, but have been very disillusioned and frustrated by the fact that we don't focus on enough preventative health and wellness.

And type two diabetes has become a passion of mine because, I don't want to disturb your other questions that you were going to ask me, but you know, this is a condition that people don't realize is preventable, and in most cases reversible condition, and there are millions and millions of people all over the world who are suffering with this. So this is my passion now to really focus on this area to be able to help, to get the word out and let people know that we have much better solutions that are being offered in our conventional medical model. So I. Yeah, question 

Jack Heald: one is what's the issue you want to address? So I assume that's 

Rita Brewer: Type two diabetes. Absolutely. 

Jack Heald: So why did you get interested in this particular issue? Not just the disease, but the reversal and prevention. 

Rita Brewer: Mainly because, you know, my very first PA job when I first came out of school, I worked in a thoracic and vascular surgery practice. So in vascular surgery, we take care of the worst complications of diabetes when they get to the end stages.

People developing blindness, kidney failure, needing dialysis, gangrene of the legs, needing bypasses to help get blood circulation back to the legs to salvage their limbs. Cleaning out the plaque from carotid artery disease that leads to stroke. So this was just like my day-to-day, everyday life for the first five years of my career.

And I was just like, wow, this is a really horrible disease. It's too bad. You know, we can't do more for these people. And then it wasn't until years later where we started to see the obesity epidemic climbing and the rates of type two diabetes climbing. And then I ended up in the environment of working in a weight loss clinic.

And I saw that people when they were losing weight, they didn't only get their confidence back and feel good in their clothes, but their blood sugar got better, their cholesterol got better, their high blood pressure got better, their joint pain got better, their mental, emotional health got better. And I was like, Oh, my gosh. Why are we not doing this?

This should be primary care in every single office, you know, working on preventing these things from happening instead of working in crisis management, like we do in our medical model, just wait for things to happen, and then try to treat them instead of preventing them from happening in the first place.

So we're not doing enough of it, and that's why I'm passionate about it because I know there's something that we can do. 

Jack Heald: What's the big, what's the biggest popular misconception about type 2 diabetes? 

Rita Brewer: It's basically that people don't know that it's a reversible condition and preventable. And it's reversible in most situations. Because when you go to your doctor and you get a diagnosis of diabetes, they just say, okay this is what you're going to do to manage it. You're going to take this medication, you know, try to eat, try to exercise a little bit more and give them some just basic information, but not enough of the tools that they need.

So people don't know that this is something that can be reversed. And that's really sad. 

Jack Heald: Question four is always what's the truth. Obviously, you just answered the, at least at a headline level, the truth about type two diabetes is that it can be reversed in most cases, and it's it's very preventable. However, I'd like you to go, you know what? We'll get to that. We'll get to that. Let's just move to the next question.

If folks don't take action if they just continue down the road, what's the most likely outcome? So probably here is where we ask, what's the type of behavior that leads to type 2 diabetes?

Rita Brewer: It's unfortunate, but you know, type two diabetes is a progressive disease. It doesn't tend to just stay the same. It progresses over time and especially if you're not making any of the lifestyle changes to make it better, it will continue to get worse. And the worst part about it is that it affects every single organ system of your body, from your brain down to your toes. I can ramble them all off, but I think you know what I'm talking about. From cardiovascular disease to limb salvage issues, kidney failure, blindness heart disease, it affects every part of your body. So if we don't take care of it, all of these chronic conditions can happen.

Jack Heald: What's the action? What do you do? And let's go down two different paths here. You've been diagnosed as pre-diabetic or as diabetic. What do you do? And you don't want to go down that path. What actions do you take? What actions do you avoid? 

Rita Brewer: So they were already diabetic, you mean, and they want to start? 

Jack Heald: Let's start with you've got a diagnosis of pre-diabetic or diabetic. What do you do? 

Rita Brewer: That's when you need to start to find the resources or a health coach like myself or somebody who can help walk you down that path.

Of course, there are lots of online resources. You can work with a registered dietitian as well, but their teaching is very along the lines of the conventional medical model, which is more of maintaining diabetes than reversing.  

Jack Heald: We're going to assume that the people who are listening to this, they're asking now, Oh, crap, I've got a, I've got a diagnosis. What do I do to reverse this? What do I do to get out of this mess that I'm in? 

Rita Brewer: Yeah. So find resources, people who are professionals like myself, who you can talk to get answers about what to do. There's so many parts of this puzzle that we need to work on in order to reverse diabetes, but the first thing that I wanna mention is a lot of time, is you have to be very proactive in knowing your numbers because with the way our conventional model works is people may go for an annual blood test for their primary care visit, their usual annual checkup, they'll check a hemoglobin A1C, which is that long-acting blood sugar test. It gives us a three-month average of how your blood sugar has been. So they routinely will check that, but oftentimes it's if it's in the pre-diabetes range. Nothing is done.

They just say, okay, we're going to just keep an eye on it. We're just going to watch it and no intervention takes place until you have full-blown diabetes and then you're going to start on medication and then get a nutrition referral.

But one of my teachers explained it as, which I really like this analogy is, pre-diabetes or even insulin resistance, which can happen more than a decade before prediabetes even develops, there's a fire in the kitchen, but so we need to start working on it. Then we're not, we shouldn't be waiting until the house is fully engulfed in flames when diabetes takes place.

So know your numbers, ask for your numbers.

If even if your A1C is in the normal range, ask your doctor to do a fasting insulin level in your blood test. Because they don't routinely do that. But like I said, fasting insulin can start to become elevated more than a decade before even pre-diabetes shows up.

So this is a great learning tool to say, okay, things are starting to climb and go in the wrong direction. Let me start now to make changes before prediabetes comes into play. So you have to be proactive. You've got to ask for that from your doctor. You've got to get more information about, where you can go, but there are a lot of factors that come into play. It's not just the food that we eat and physical activity, which are very important, and most people know that. But people don't know that sleep quality is important, stress reduction is important, reducing toxins in our environment having emotional support and good community relationships. All these factors are very important lifestyle medicine components that we have to incorporate to help people reduce their diabetes risks.

Jack Heald: Continuous glucose monitors. Are those useful? 

Rita Brewer: Yeah, they're very useful. I love them a lot. But again, in our conventional medical model, the way they work is they're only covered by insurance if you already have a diagnosis of diabetes. But I love to use them with my clients who have prediabetes or maybe struggling with weight loss resistance.

So it's a great learning tool so they can see what is going on with their blood sugar, and how their body reacts when they eat or eats a certain meal, or when they exercise, or when they're under stress or don't get enough sleep because our blood sugar is affected by all of these things. So it's a wonderful learning tool and preventative tool. And people who are data-driven really thrive on using that because they can, you see it in real-time. It's okay, I just ate this meal and an hour later my blood sugar is over 200. So it teaches you to say, okay, this is not good. So what can we do to change that meal next time around so it doesn't cause that spike, but you could still enjoy delicious and nutritious food without the harmful effects. So I love a continuous glucose monitor. 

Jack Heald: One of the questions that I think folks are asking themselves is, I don't even know what numbers mean. So let's assume I've asked my doctor to do this. He's got my A1C, he's got my fasting glucose levels. If you have a doctor who's a response to a prediabetes diagnosis is to just sit and wait, then he's probably not going to offer a whole lot of help about what those numbers mean.

So give our listeners, what is it that? What numbers are that? What's, what are they looking at? What are the warning numbers? What are the things that even if the doctor doesn't go, Hey we're going to start watching this. You need to be aware and you need to take action. 

Rita Brewer: First of all, every lab value has different lab-specific, have different reference ranges. So you always want to look at the reference range for that particular laboratory so you know what's considered normal and what's not.

Jack Heald: So what the lab considerd normal? Okay. 

Rita Brewer: Exactly. But in general, most of the time, the A1C for pre-diabetes is 5.7-6.4 and then 6.5 and higher is considered the diabetic range.

Okay. So if you're if you hit that 5.7 number, or even if you're, if, even if you're not pre-diabetic, if you're 5.5 or 5.6, that tells me you're insulin resistant. So most doctors are not going to do anything about those numbers. Cause like I said it's normal, but normal ranges are not ideal ranges, right?

So the normal reference ranges for most laboratory values, even cholesterol numbers and everything, they're taking like statistical averages of the general population, and that's what, and then figuring out the norm in the middle, right? But if you remember when it comes to metabolic health about 93.3% of the population is unhealthy.

So we're comparing you and your numbers to 93% of the population who's unhealthy. So you're not getting optimal numbers. So ideal range for your A1C is going to be in the high 4s and low 5 range. So that's what I always shoot, you know, for with my clients. I tell them, yeah, 5.6 is not yet prediabetes, but if we don't make some changes, you're going down that path. So let's make those changes now. So you never have to see prediabetes again. 

Jack Heald: What about the fasting, would you say fasting insulin? 

Rita Brewer: The insulin? Yeah. Insulin, the ideal range is single digits, like 5, you know, but I mean, every day I see people in their teens and twenties and it has to be fasting, of course. But yeah, ideal, ideally we want to be in the low, a single, the single digits and most people are not. 

Jack Heald: All right. So it sounds actionable step is to start looking for specific information about how to reverse type 2 diabetes. There are lots of resources available for that. And it sounds like another specific step listeners, that you could take is to reject the belief that you're stuck with this for the rest of your life. Simply not factual.

Rita Brewer: And know your numbers. So you know where you're at. 

Jack Heald: Are there any other numbers that they need to be aware of, to pay attention to? 

Rita Brewer: Those are the main ones, but fasting blood sugar is important too, but that's only one snippet in time for that moment that your lab was drawn. But it's still valuable. But the A1C is kind of the gold standard because it gives a three-month average. So if somebody said I ate a lot of sugar yesterday, it was like that doesn't matter because this is three months worth of data. It's a 

Jack Heald: It's a long-term. As the fasting insulin?

Rita Brewer: That's going to vary a shorter term. It's not going to be a three-month average but it's still a valuable tool for people who have a normal A1C, because if your A1C is normal and you think I'm fine, but then you do your fasting insulin and you find that it's 16 or 20, then that's a warning sign. It's Oh, okay, type 2 diabetes is coming down the road because I'm currently insulin-resistant, it's just not showing up in the blood yet.

Jack Heald: I would not ordinarily go this detailed, but I'm thinking through what it means, what fasting insulin means. So that means I haven't eaten for, what do they want, 12 or 24 hours?

Rita Brewer: 10 to 12 hours with nothing but water. 

Jack Heald: I haven't put anything in my system for 12 hours, and now I'm testing the level of insulin in my blood. Insulin is injected into the bloodstream by the pancreas in response to the presence of sugar. 

Rita Brewer: That's right. 

Jack Heald: An excess of insulin long after the sugar should have been absorbed into your cells indicates insulin resistance. Have I got all that right? 

Rita Brewer: Yes, you did. Perfect. Yep. 

Jack Heald: Okay. So single digits would be much more likely to indicate you are not insulin resistant.

Rita Brewer: Correct. Because you're processing that sugar well. When your insulin level is high, it means it's trying to process the sugar in your bloodstream. But those receptors, those insulin receptors on the cells, they get jammed up when we've got too much sugar in there. They can't open the receptors anymore and allow that sugar into the cells. So it's staying in the bloodstream and your body senses that, so it's producing more insulin to keep trying to bring that blood sugar down. 

Jack Heald: Okay. A couple of tests you guys need to take and a mindset you need to fix. This is fixable. All right.

Let's talk about Rita Brewer's practice. What's one of the most common compliments that you hear with your clients?

Rita Brewer: We kind of talked about, thank you so much for telling me that I didn't have to live with this anymore, and then helping me and then helping them to reverse it and being diabetic anymore. I mean, that's such a great gift. And for me, the most valuable thing is, you know, to see the look on their face, how happy it makes them. And to help get them off of the prescription drugs and know that they don't have to take them for life because most people don't want to have to take as many prescription drugs as they do. 

Jack Heald: Yeah. So flip side, what's one of the more common complaints that you'll get? 

Rita Brewer: People are mad that they're not getting this information.

It's like they see my webinar and my presentation, I've been diabetic for 20 years. Why? How come no one ever told me this before? So that's going to make people angry and rightfully and that's why I love talking about it because I want people to know that they have alternatives. 

Jack Heald: Yeah, I can imagine. Oh my Lord. All right, this is my favorite question. If you could deliver just one message about health and you were limited to no more than eight words, I picked that number because that's kind of the maximum number of words that you can put on a billboard and get the message across. Somebody's driving by at 60 miles an hour, you know, you can almost comprehend eight words.

What would those eight words be?

Rita Brewer: I had to think about that one, but I had two versions of it. Is that okay? Yeah, sure. So one of them is eat real whole foods and avoid seed oils. That's a big one. That's good. 

Jack Heald: You can get rid of hand with a comma, avoid seed oils. Okay. Yeah. Good. 

Rita Brewer: Or eat real food, whole foods. And I meant to say whole foods. Yeah. Eat real whole foods and call Rita Brewer. 

Jack Heald: Call Rita Brewer. All right. In that case, that leads to a question that I don't normally ask how do folks get ahold of you? 

Rita Brewer: RitaBrewer.com. Nice and easy. You can find me there, message me, make an appointment with me. All my social media links are Rita Brewer Consulting but my website is the easiest. 

Jack Heald: All right. Who's your ideal client? 

Rita Brewer: Somebody with type 2 diabetes who is really motivated to make the lifestyle changes that they need to make in order to reverse their diabetes, who wants to get off prescription drugs, who wants to lose the stubborn body fat they've been struggling with and just live their best life and not be restricted by chronic illness.

Jack Heald: You know who you are out there, RitaBrewer.com. Thanks so much, Rita. It's been good to talk to you. 

Rita Brewer: Thank you, Jack, for having me. It's been a pleasure.

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