The Diabetes Solution Movie with RD Dikeman | KCL28

Dec 9, 2021 | Uncategorized

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Episode Description: 

Join Carole, board certified ketogenic nutrition specialist, in this special episode of Keto Chat LIVE where she chats with RD Dikeman, dad to a young man living with Type 1 diabetes, who appears in The Diabetes Solution Movie.

The diabetes community has been filled with deception for the past 50 years. The typical guidelines for managing diabetes have ultimately caused suffering for millions of people with the disease. Follow a group of families and doctors as they present a solution to managing diabetes that could spare many patients from devastating complications in this seminal documentary about diabetes, The Diabetes Solution Movie.

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Transcript:

Carole Freeman: [00:00:00] Oh, Hey, everybody we’re live. Do you have diabetes or do you have a friend family member or loved one or maybe even somebody you don’t care that much about that has diabetes. Then this episode is for you stick around. As I chat with RD, Dikeman, father, of a son with type one diabetes. Welcome to the show RD.

Carole Freeman: It’s been awhile.

RD Dikeman: Thanks for having me and it’s been a while.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. Welcome everyone. Keto chat live. I’m your host. Carole Freeman. I have master’s degree in nutrition and clinical health psychology, and I’m a board certified keto nutrition specialist. I’m so excited. We have special, very special guest today.

Carole Freeman: RD Dikeman all the way from Hawaii. Somebody is knocking on my door, I guess they’re going to. I have to know what that would be, but they’re going to have to wait. Let’s I’m going to read the medical disclaimer here, cause we gotta make sure that we we don’t want to get in trouble with anybody, but the lawyer say we need this.

Carole Freeman: Everyone, this show is meant for educational entertainment purposes. Only. It is not medical advice nor intended to diagnose, prevent, treat, or cure any condition. If [00:01:00] you have questions or concerns related to your specific medical condition please contact your personal healthcare professional.

Carole Freeman: When is the last time I saw you RD? I know the first time I met you was in San

RD Dikeman: Diego. Yeah. Maybe 2015 was

Carole Freeman: that 2015, 16, whatever. The first year of low-carb USA, you were a speaker there and just blown away by your story. And so I’m really glad, I think this is maybe our second or third interview, but or time virtually hanging out.

Carole Freeman: So I’m so glad to hear. Yeah. Oh, I can’t wait to catch up. So everyone, this is an interactive show. I can see we’ve got people watching live. So go ahead and comment. Let us know where you’re joining from. We want to know that you’re here and you’re part of the show as well too. So please join us.

Carole Freeman: I have a little quiz for you watching as well, too, just for fun. True or false people with type one and type two diabetes should eat very different diets for the best health outcomes. So let’s see what the audience says about this. Just give me a T or an F in the comments. Let’s see what everyone says.

Carole Freeman: [00:02:00] Alright RD share with us your backstory your son type one at what, nine years old, is that when he was diagnosed or was it,

RD Dikeman: yeah. Yeah, so he was a real, it was a real classic child diagnosis where we didn’t know anything about diabetes type one or type two.

RD Dikeman: And we were just eating standard, American diet, high carb, lots of processed food. Dave loved Starbucks, blueberry muffins. And just I was overweight Midwest schlub that liked to eat pizza and drink IPA beers and so on. And they’ve got progressively more and more sick under our watch.

RD Dikeman: And we didn’t, we were unable to make sense of what was happening to him. He was our first child. So there was even some thoughts that he’s just going through a phase or something like that. But he progressively lost weight, became more ill [00:03:00] and the situation became acute. And we had to rush him to the emergency room.

RD Dikeman: And it seems to me like he was within 24 hours of passing away if we had not. Yeah, there was a decision, should we go, or should we wait? And maybe we should just let him rest and get, try to get over it. And we made the right move to take him to the hospital and then we realized by the reaction of the folks who treated Dave, that he was in a serious problem, that’s a serious situation.

RD Dikeman: And it’s a long story. It always affects me emotionally because I don’t have any guilt about it because I didn’t know anything. So what could I do? But the process of. Seeing him and thinking about it, he was so ill that just reliving that moment, it was really traumatic.

RD Dikeman: And it happens all the time and it happens. It [00:04:00] happened under the watch of his pediatricians who saw him several times before it happened. So that’s one thing that the people can learn about who are watching this show is that they should do some research on detecting the signs of it because you can detect your own children or family or friends.

RD Dikeman: Because it’s it’s mysterious what happens and it happens so rapidly within a week or two. They just absolutely crash.

Carole Freeman: Wow. We’ve got Emily watching from Namibia, easy for me to say welcome Emily. Kathy is very smart viewer here. She’s saying F false for my quiz and that type ones and type two, can do the same, a low carb approach.

Carole Freeman: We’ve got Maya here as well. Welcome Maya, low carb, high protein under 30 grams of carbs for all kinds of diabetes and other metabolic syndromes. We have a very smart viewership here today. This is great. Okay. Back to your watching the movie. Okay. The diabetes [00:05:00] solution, is that the right name of the movie diabetes solution?

Carole Freeman: And so I watched that last week I don’t know how long ago it just came out. And that’s what I noticed. The story you’re sharing is so similar to all the people that were in the movie is that, they just think the kid has the flu or something like that. And it seems it’s very common then that they’re just sent home that they’re not checking.

Carole Freeman: Just if they check their blood sugar, that’s all they would have to do right. At that point.

RD Dikeman: If we would have known to check his blood sugar, we would have caught it for sure. And probably many months before he was sick, if we had happened to catch it that would have been a much different situation.

RD Dikeman: But

Carole Freeman: probably they’re just, it’s it seems like a flu. So the doctors doesn’t even think the check, the blood sugar at that point. And so by the time they’re admitted, you’re taking them to the ER, they are checking it then, but it’s pretty serious by that time. Yeah. Linda from Charleston, South Carolina.

Carole Freeman: Welcome Linda. Kathy’s in Washington, DC. Welcome. We’ve got Larry and Lakeland, Florida. Welcome everyone to the show. All [00:06:00] right, so Dave’s in the hospital, you get the news. They give you some handouts, I’m assuming, here’s how to do this and send you on your way. Is that a kind of their solution of how they told you to manage type one?

RD Dikeman: We did meet with the dietician and I don’t want to sound mean, but it did occur to us that the dietician was overweight and that we should be skeptical. I also recognized that the dietician was telling us to eat straight up food pyramid type meals, without any context of type one diabetes. And we were in we were just going through the motions at that point, but this was the appropriate moment for us to start being skeptical and we were, and I think that what happens with most people is.

RD Dikeman: You are in this situation [00:07:00] where you’re very vulnerable and your child’s health is at risk and you may not be used to dealing with authority figures, or certainly not challenging authority figures. And what they’re telling you to do is probably the worst advice possible. They’re telling you that you should eat essentially the food pyramid which has done no good for anybody over the last three decades.

RD Dikeman: Then they’re telling which is the high carb, low fat diet. And they’re doing that in the context of type one, children who have essentially no ability to efficiently process, rapid acting carbohydrate. So they send you home. And that’s it you’re cooked you follow their procedures, which are called carb, counting.

RD Dikeman: You add up the insulin necessary for each meal. [00:08:00] You inject it. There’s no discussion of why this procedure won’t work over the long-term or even the short term. And that’s the situation that people Stalin forever. They’re constantly on a blood sugar roller coaster, and there’s no way out.

RD Dikeman: I’ll tell you a quick story about a kid. We started getting involved with JDRF shortly after diagnosis and and Dave’s a real personable dude. So he quickly became a favorite of the Hawaii JDRF and he was voted. To Congress as one of the representatives from our state to petition for diabetes cure research

Carole Freeman: funds, JDRF is junior diabetes

RD Dikeman: research foundation.

RD Dikeman: Yeah. Juvenile diabetes research foundation. And so that was the first time David ever been around other type one kids. [00:09:00] And what they would do would be, we would met in this big ballroom, there were hundreds of kids from all over the country. They were fed exactly the food pyramid type meals.

RD Dikeman: And halfway through the dinner, you would hear these CGM alarms going off. It was like sirens everywhere of high blood sugars. It was the craziest damn thing. I met this kid during lunch. It was in high school. They was young. But this kid was in high school and a really sharp kid. I talked to him, I was sitting with Dave and we were sitting at a table and what classes are you taking?

RD Dikeman: And he was taking, AP bio and AP. You could tell the kid was really smart, but then I looked down at what he was eating and he was trying to do the calculation of how much insulin to take, to cover his pizza and his French fries. So he had not he had not computed that this method doesn’t work at all.

RD Dikeman: And it was just, that was just his fate to [00:10:00] constantly be on this roller coaster and do his due diligence to, to eat these high carb foods and take his insulin. And it was sad. It’s sad what’s happening to kids. No, one’s doing a damn thing about. And

Carole Freeman: except you’ve been fighting the good fight for

Carole Freeman: diagnosis. What year

RD Dikeman: Dave was diagnosed in 2013. And when we figured out that there was a way out of this mess, it was only natural to share that news and the best way to do it with social media. So we started to share Dave’s meals and his graphs and things like that in hopes of reaching people and others followed, we were talking about the movie just a second ago, Bethany and her family made this incredible documentary that’s out.

RD Dikeman: So there’s some inertia that the right solution is being realized out there.

Carole Freeman: So [00:11:00] take us through. Your transition where you started to have a light bulb or at least a big skepticism about, I know for a while that you experienced the blood sugar roller coasters with Dave, and you had awareness of wait a minute, why are we consuming this high carb and trying to chase up insulin, there’s gotta be a different way of doing this.

Carole Freeman: It’s better.

RD Dikeman: So what I, so I’m not, I’m a doctor, but not a physician. So I’m I have a PhD in physics, so it was natural for us when Dave got home and Dave was so ill that he needed to recover for a few weeks, he had lost so much weight. There was no chance of sending him back to school. And so I was like this is a perfect opportunity.

RD Dikeman: I’ll stay home from work too. And I’ll try to figure out this insulin business as we were instructed, bond endocrinologist. That if he goes too high, it’s bad. If he goes too low, it’s bad. And he drew a graph on an easel with a marker and my eyes lit up because I thought, oh, there’s some science [00:12:00] here, right?

RD Dikeman: This is going to be something that I can solve. So I tried to solve it. And we did some experiments with Dave. We gave him some high carb foods and we would give him insulin and we would graph the results. And then we would modify how much insulin we gave and when we gave it and we would give the same experiment again, and we would get a different result then I would try to get closer to just having this flat line.

RD Dikeman: And my wife would come home from work. And I’d say, I almost got it. I think we’re going to figure this out because I figured if we could just get one or two meals, then you know, and then the next day we would try it and then it would be. All whack again. And it would think why didn’t, why couldn’t I get the same result.

RD Dikeman: And I tried this for two weeks. We were trying it with one of the things we were trying it with. It was Starbucks cookies. Cause that was one of the days favorite. So we would take this cookie and we would [00:13:00] divide it up into pieces and we would give a little bit, we’ve tried all kinds of crazy things.

RD Dikeman: And Roxanne, my wife in the meantime she at some point she instinctively knew that I wasn’t going to be able to solve this because there was some days I would report good. And some days are rough. After a couple of weeks she lost confidence that we were on the right track and she was doing the the research and she found the Bernstein book and she ordered it.

RD Dikeman: Oh yeah. So the big, epiphany came for me when I realized. This was not something that was solvable. There was some, what I would call in the physics term is stochastic meaning that there’s a random process. We were getting we were keeping the experiment fixed, but the results were random.

RD Dikeman: And there’s many processes like this and physics, and they tend to occur when your physical system has some complexity [00:14:00] involved and surely there’s complexity. When you’ve got food digestion, injections, it’s a, this is not a tabletop experiment. Like you wouldn’t, you would perform in physics.

RD Dikeman: So the day I realized that it was stochastic and I was chronicling that in some math that I was doing on the computer some modeling that we were doing, we got the book in the mail and I read the book. And I opened the book to the law of small numbers, which is a famous chapter in the book.

RD Dikeman: And I realized that this dude also understood the physics of injected insulin. And that was the key and that he not only understood what I was seeing, but he understood the solution and the solution required low carb, that you would remove the random stochastic nature of the blood sugars. If you remove the carbohydrate.

RD Dikeman: And he explained how that works. And I knew he was [00:15:00] right when I read it. And I knew from looking at the way he wrote that this was a serious book. Cause we had been given like a book with the pink Panther on it and these books, and they’re not serious.

RD Dikeman: Like you can tell they’re not, this guy is a serious guy, right?

Carole Freeman: They show the pink Panther booklet in the movie, the diabetes solution. Yeah. Yeah. That’s so that’s what the hospital gave you or the nutritionist gave you, right?

RD Dikeman: Yeah. I’m sure the nutritionist loves that pink Panther, book cause they, they can understand it, but it doesn’t work.

RD Dikeman: That’s the problem.

Carole Freeman: I just I’m so I don’t know what the right word is. It was fascinating to see, especially in the last, five to 10 years, how we how we’re seeing this trend, where a lot of scientists, non nutrition, trained minds are starting to crack nutrition and figuring out things that, I been to school at two degrees in nutrition.

Carole Freeman: And while we were taught to look at research and kind of think for ourselves, we were still taught here’s the thing you do. And not really taught to [00:16:00] question all of that and figure out if maybe there’s a better way. And so I just love people like you that are coming into this space. And Helping turn things on its head and figuring out that, we don’t need to just keep doing this game of telephone, pass down the wrong information and keep it going for too long.

Carole Freeman: Let’s figure out what actually works in real humans. And let’s share that information.

RD Dikeman: It’s a weird cultural problem because as a physicist, I have to try to disprove what I’m doing every day. So if I write a theory or write some model, most of the time that I spend on writing the model is trying to come up with cases where it fails, because I have to be sure that the model is working within the guides of the approximations that I’m making and so on.

RD Dikeman: So that’s the nature of how I work on a daily basis. A physician is just the opposite, and that’s okay. But a physician [00:17:00] is taking as learning a series of protocols. It’s not a job of a physician to, to learn a protocol on how to fix a broken arm or whatever. And then to, to question that and to try to, find where that solution is bounded and so on.

RD Dikeman: And it wouldn’t work as a profession that way, but unfortunately, you’ve got a situation and then the type one diabetes world where the protocol is incorrect and the authority figures are not they’re not built to find the correct solution or admit that it’s wrong. And that’s true of most of nutrition.

RD Dikeman: If since the food pyramid has been put in place, this type one situation is an acute problem, but in general, you see it with type twos and obesity. Now it’s just a. It’s an epidemic, absolutely.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. Welcome everyone. Who’s joining us here. Go ahead and share in the chat where you’re joining us from.

Carole Freeman: And also if you want to share a [00:18:00] little personal how what’s your relationship to diabetes? Is it personal? Is it a family or friend? Share a little bit in the chat box there, the comment section we’d love to have you join in on this show. So you started, so the Dr. Bernstein’s book was the kind of a cornerstone of changing what you were doing influence your whole family.

Carole Freeman: Not just you didn’t Dave on a diet and everybody else ate whatever they wanted to around him, you all were very supportive. And tell us more about what that transition was like.

RD Dikeman: I’ll, let me start with the hard comment on that topic, which is. When I went to the community with Dave’s, before and after graphs, this is what happened when he ate oatmeal.

RD Dikeman: And this is what happened when he ate eggs. I thought that with, I couldn’t understand why the Bernstein book wasn’t more popular because of course, as a parent, you would want your child not to get the [00:19:00] complications of diabetes. And here’s the solution to that. It was pretty easy to learn the book and to solve that problem.

RD Dikeman: And what I learned was that, of course there are the nutritionists and dieticians and the endocrinologists are teaching people the wrong things, but when exposed to the right answer, meaning the right answer to control your blood sugar. There wasn’t a lot of resonance. Oh, and people should know, if you have a type one kid you’re measuring blood sugars all day long, and one of these days, your kid’s gonna eat some eggs.

RD Dikeman: And you’re going to realize that their blood doesn’t sugars go to the moon. And what I realized was that what you just said about the parents and, what we do we eat whatever we want? Are you carbs? Whatever that was a big sacrifice for people to make for themselves and the rest of their families.

RD Dikeman: And as it turns out there, aren’t a lot of people who are willing to make that change for [00:20:00] themselves even, and even though their blood sugars for their child are going up and down. And that was an astonishing thing to learn that a real. And it turns out that as you learn the processed carbohydrate foods are extremely addictive.

RD Dikeman: People can not quit the carbohydrate, even if they’re measuring these blood sugars all day long, they can’t quit it for themselves. Or if they’re the type one it’s very hard to quit. And these foods are designed to be addictive. And if you’ve ever, if you’ve ever tried to quit eating them, you’ll know that they’re addictive because I had that experience when I quit those foods it was shocking how much of a hold they have on you.

RD Dikeman: And of course, just like any addiction once you clear becomes easier for some people becomes very easy. Other people still have a kind of a daily battle for me. I have no desire to go back. I haven’t eaten [00:21:00] any grains or starch or sugar. And since, shortly after Dave’s diagnosis, it’s not a big deal.

RD Dikeman: I’m feeling a lot better. I’ve I’m much stronger. So I’m happy with I’m actually ecstatic at the personal changes that occurred with me. I am astonished and I’m ecstatic. Because I was going down the tubes, just like a lot of people who are, hitting their late forties

Carole Freeman: when it’s this, I, my clients struggle with the similar thing where I’m working with ladies that are on.

Carole Freeman: Trajectory towards type two diabetes, they’re insulin resistant and trying to lose weight. And it’s so hard to get their whole family on board with supporting that lifestyle. So they ended up being and you’re right. Like the carbohydrates are addictive and people are in denial that they are.

Carole Freeman: They just think no, that’s your issue. I don’t have a problem. So I should be able to eat whatever I want. I wanted to highlight Danny’s here. [00:22:00] A type two diabetic from Israel on Dr. Bernstein’s low carb diet for over two years, A1C went from 11.4 to 4.7 and reversed neuropathy Danny, way to go. That’s I love that story.

Carole Freeman: Thanks for sharing. It’s happy Kathy must be a registered dietician or registered dietician nutritionist. She’s getting a lot of pushback when for doing low carb. So she shared it in one of her certified diabetes educator, Facebook groups. So we’ll see if we get anybody pop in here. And Allie, welcome to the show.

Carole Freeman: And let’s say Maya type one diabetic for over 35 years, Seattle, Washington. Oh, that’s where I used to live. Welcome Maya currently in bend Oregon. Oh, I grew up in Oregon too using Dr. Bernstein’s method for seven plus years now and last A1C 4.4%. Congratulations. That’s beautiful. Lovely. Brandy, my son was diagnosed two years ago.

Carole Freeman: We are forever grateful for RD Dikeman, Bethany, McKinsey, and Dr. Bernstein for helping us love it. Welcome here, Brandy. Yeah. So Kathy is a master science. She’s [00:23:00] an oh, registered nurse and diabetes teacher. So she’s on the right side of the teaching too, so glad you’re here, Cathy. So you, yeah, change your eating habits and support of your son and then got the surprise health and wellness blessings of a dietary change yourself.

RD Dikeman: That’s right. Yeah, I think I was definitely pre-diabetic I had not taken an A1C before I switched, which was a big mistake. Cause I would have loved to see how far I had gone, but I did have a a triglyceride to HDL ratio, which was high and that reversed.

RD Dikeman: And I lost, I think I was probably 255 pounds at my max. I’m tall. So it wasn’t a total disaster, but now I’m probably 1 95 or

Carole Freeman: 267 pounds then. Yeah.

RD Dikeman: Yeah. It just came off. I didn’t even, I didn’t even try. The weight just came off and it came off in the right way too. It wasn’t. I didn’t actually, I lost weight a little too fast and I [00:24:00] became a little bit gone, but then as I started to strength, train a little bit and focus on protein, nutrition things stabilized, but I feel I feel like I spent my whole life, like always in the fridge, looking around for stuff.

RD Dikeman: And I felt at, at night when I look back on, I felt out of control with food, like I was at the mercy of food and that sucks to be that way, and so now I don’t feel that way. What time is it? It’s nine 30 here. I woke up at five I’ve had coffee. It hasn’t occurred to me to eat yet, and when I eat, I’ll have.

RD Dikeman: I have some tuna that I’ll eat for lunch and I’ll probably have some of that. And then I’ll be fine until dinner. It’s not like this constant foraging and there’s like another voice in your head telling you to eat foods that you shouldn’t eat, like I’m 255 pounds, and I’m always hungry for food.

RD Dikeman: That was a bizarre place to be,

Carole Freeman: you get freedom of two things. [00:25:00] You’re off the blood sugar rollercoaster that constantly makes you hungry. And you’re also, you’re off of the addictive foods that just drive you to over-consume. So you’re living in the land of food freedom instead of being an obsessed and addicted.

Carole Freeman: So Cathy last A1C was 4.9. Congratulations. That’s wonderful. Let’s talk about, so you brought an article. I love to feature some kind of a news article on here. And so this is some research that was published in pediatrics, the American academy of pediatrics in 2018. I’ll share the link to the article in the chat for everyone watching.

Carole Freeman: And then you’re watching the recording later. This will be in the show notes too. Walk us through what this means. So actually I want to set this up a little bit where we’ve got the diet, most dieticians that are out there medical professionals that are helping in quote unquote, helping people with type one diabetes there, and then a lot of the parents and families out there will say things like we don’t want kids to feel left out.

Carole Freeman: We don’t want them to feel [00:26:00] deprived. We want them to be, be kids and eat whatever they want. Yeah. Is that a good setup for this article?

RD Dikeman: That’s an interesting topic and its own. Yeah. That is the overwhelming battle cry of the type one parent community that the kids should be kids first and have diabetes second.

RD Dikeman: And when I use that, when I see that term used, it’s always in the context of feeding the child cupcakes grocery pastries junk food that they shouldn’t be eating anyway. And the pressure for the kids to eat obesogenic high carb foods is too high. So the parents try to rationalize it. And so you have this situation in the non-diabetic child, community where obesity and [00:27:00] pre-diabetes.

RD Dikeman: Kids are eating about two thirds of their calorie in the form of ultra processed food, where we’re just beginning to see this tidal wave of type two diabetes in children. That’s going to hit these kids hard in their twenties. And the type one response amongst parents is I want my kids to eat the same way.

RD Dikeman: It makes no sense. And we see the results already because it’s been this way for about 10 to 15 years. What happened is it was very uncommon for a type one, especially kids to be obese. Now the type one kids are more obese than their non-diabetic counterparts, where obesity is already an epidemic.

RD Dikeman: So think about that. You have type one diabetes, which is a constant if you’re eating high carb you’re in a constant state of inflammation from hyperglycemia. Then you have type two on top of that, which is for many reasons, a [00:28:00] state of inflammation. So it’s called double diabetes. And these kids are in big trouble.

RD Dikeman: You’re, as we know now the complications of diabetes come on fast. Their children are not spared. It shortens high, these high blood sugar, shortened lifespan. So the kids are going to be in a state in the future, which is a nightmare. And that is due to this attitude that they should be eating the same junk that everybody else eats.

RD Dikeman: It’s a disaster.

Carole Freeman: I have a totally. Perspective then the kids should get to eat whatever they want, right? Wait until you’re an adult to eat healthy. You’re as a child, you’re building the body that you have to live in the rest of your life. If you’re building a house, wouldn’t you want the foundation to be the strongest, most high quality portion of the house.

Carole Freeman: So it’s backwards to think that kids should eat garbage because they’re kids and they can get [00:29:00] away with it. They’re not getting away with it. You’re actually paving the road for poor health for the rest of their life. So we should be giving our kids the healthiest foods possible so they can have the healthiest long lowest health issues, the rest of their life.

Carole Freeman: That’s my soap

RD Dikeman: box truth. You’re physical physiologically. That’s correct. When you’re in puberty and even pre-puberty your genetics are primed your growth hormone as a kid is off the charts. So when you feed a kid, Protein and feed them in a low inflammation state. They’re going to grow and they’re going to grow beautifully.

RD Dikeman: But if you corrupt that state and it’s a real advantageous state and you want to take advantage of it, and if you corrupt it by feeding garbage then they’re never going to reach their potential. And I’ll brag on my own kids. I have two boys. They both eat very strictly the Bernstein diet and I don’t like the word strict they’re dedicated because [00:30:00] strict implies that there’s some sacrifice, but it’s actually an advantage for them.

RD Dikeman: And they walk around lifting weights and doing things and they develop. Beautifully. And I wish I had, I wish I had known that when I was a kid, because I would have liked to have muscles and be lean and I was always pudgy and in the refrigerator and they’re in the weight room and they’re, they’re like 6% body fat or 8% body fat or whatever they look fantastic.

RD Dikeman: They’re excelling in sports and it’s man, if you just eat right good things happen.

Carole Freeman: Brandy’s saying that those type of people are depriving their kids of healthy life without complications later in life. Thank you Brandy for ca ring about your child enough to make that change.

Carole Freeman: And some people may say it’s a sacrifice, but when you experience the quality of health and. On low carb. I don’t think that you feel like it’s a sacrifice at that point too. So let’s let the well get to the article here in a moment, but we’ll continue on this. So let’s talk about the myth then about how people will say [00:31:00] kids need carbs to grow.

Carole Freeman: That’s also perpetuated in a nutritionist and the medical community. Like they say that kids can’t grow. So as you’re, as Dave, is he like four foot tall or something, or a,

RD Dikeman: I just saw a picture of a friend of mine. His name is Lester Hightower and his son is still in high school. And he’s, Lester’s, I think, six foot four or something like that.

RD Dikeman: And his son is taller. My son is six foot two. The reality is that if you look at the research, it’s the high blood sugars that stunt. And they they do a number of things to children, too. They actually damage the developing brain. These kids grow up a large fraction of type ones with high blood sugars have erectile dysfunction.

RD Dikeman: They’re eventually unable and as it can happen in their teens, if they’re diagnosed early, they’re unable to digest their food properly. It’s called gastro-paresis, it’s a very intensely painful condition. Then you’ve got the apathies, the retinopathy. So you develop the eye [00:32:00] problems now when we were freshly diagnosed, they told us to send Dave to the eye doctor every six months to have his retina checked.

RD Dikeman: And we started doing that. And we took him in and the doctor looked at him and he said, no, it’s all good. And I said, when did you start noticing damage? And he said, oh, we notice it. We can see it right away. Oh,

Carole Freeman: wow. And little crazy.

RD Dikeman: So we don’t go to the eye doctor anymore because his blood sugar is normal.

RD Dikeman: So I don’t worry about that. Kidney disease. So there’s there’s a hundred diabetic complications. And one thing that happens with the endocrinologist is that when you take your kid in for his checkup, they don’t really do. You can’t check that the checkups are so short, right?

RD Dikeman: It’s like a mill. So they’re not checking the kids for complications. They make you see if you have maybe the check your urine for kidney problems is protein in the urine and stuff like that, but they’re not really doing an extensive physical exam. And so people are, have a false [00:33:00] sense of security.

RD Dikeman: And they they don’t want to know if you share some information about complications, they don’t particularly want to know these things. They’re too scary and they aren’t scary. So in some sense, I don’t blame them, but they’re avoidable. That’s the thing. Yep.

Carole Freeman: Maya’s right. Kids need carbs to grow.

Carole Freeman: Where did this myth come from? No scientific data to back this claim. There’s another one too, is the brain needs 130 grams of carbs a day. There’s a lot of myths and misunderstanding out there

RD Dikeman: That’s a big myth, right? The brain myth. Yeah. Yep. The brain needs normal blood sugars and the best way to achieve that, especially if you have type one is to have a low carb diet.

RD Dikeman: The damage is caused by hyperglycemia. We know that, right? In fact, it’s so well known that the ADA has changed their guidelines recently to allow for even lower targets because their targets were so high and that the research they were setting the guidelines over here. And [00:34:00] then the research was published, showing that damage is occurring within those guidelines.

RD Dikeman: It took a couple of years to respond, but now they’ve quietly lowered their their guidelines,

Carole Freeman: oh, okay. So they love, so I was so the standard, so the average person, the standards for what’s considered normal, healthy blood sugar is one number, but then for people with type two or type one diabetes, they give you a much higher number.

Carole Freeman: And that’s the only reason is because. They don’t know a way of actually getting it down to the normal. So they allow it to be just a lot worse and say that’s good enough. That’s as good as we can do. So we might as well just call that normal for your disease when it doesn’t have to be

RD Dikeman: that’s right.

RD Dikeman: If you eat their diet and you take the insulin that they prescribe, your blood sugar fluctuations are so high, it’s so big that if you try to run normal, you’re going to have hypoglycemia. The way they solve that, and they’re still solving it is to set the guidelines so high that you can run high and [00:35:00] avoid hypoglycemia.

RD Dikeman: The Bernstein method solves both hyper and hypoglycemia. So for example, with Dave, even though he’s done sports since diagnosis, he’s never had. Situation. Whereas hypoglycemia was so bad that he needed to be helped to the nurses or something like that. If he has low blood sugar, which is going to happen with the type one.

RD Dikeman: So you’re going to have to constantly be aware of your this is not a cure. You have to constantly be aware of your blood sugar, but if he does the diligence and measures his blood sugar then fixing a trending blood sugar, which would end up as hypoglycemia is as simple as reaching in your pocket and taking a glucose tab or two you’re not in a situation where you’ve, you’re lunging at juice boxes and sucking down juice boxes and emptying the fridge of food to save your life.

RD Dikeman: It’s so the fluctuations are extremely mild with with type one. So it prevents both [00:36:00] the highs and the lows, right? If you’re high. You had take a little bit of insulin and you come right down and by high, one 20 or one 30, if you’re low, maybe in the high sixties or low seventies, then you take a few grams of glucose.

RD Dikeman: So it’s a totally different way of living. Yeah. Yeah. So here’s, Dave’s this is funny because I don’t know if you can see, let’s see. So

Carole Freeman: the white line above the red there. Yeah.

RD Dikeman: So the white line, I think that we dropped the signal. There’s a break right there, but now look over just recently you can see his blood sugar went down a little bit and it hit that while

Carole Freeman: he’s at school and you’re watching, you’re able to monitor.

RD Dikeman: Yeah. He’s old. I don’t need to I’m. This is just, cause I’m a fan at this point. Yeah. You can see his blood sugar drops and you can see it popped back up right over here. And I know enough to know that he must have seen that it dropped and then he reached in his pocket and had a glucose tab.

RD Dikeman: If he had not [00:37:00] taken a glucose tablet would have dropped over the next hour and he might’ve started to feel something and then he could have taken a glucose tab, but he wouldn’t be in a situation that was dangerous where he was potentially, sweating and unresponsive and nurses had to be called.

RD Dikeman: That’ll never happen if he does what he’s doing, the way he’s doing it.

Carole Freeman: Just quality of life. Yeah. It is

RD Dikeman: a huge quality of life improvement. And I would say that Dave, by making the choices that he has saved my life and saved my wife’s life, saved our family life because there would have been nothing more miserable than to sit and watch him go down the tubes every single day for the last 10 years.

RD Dikeman: Now we can look back on those last 10 years. They say they go fast, right? We can look back and say, No damage was done. Everything worked out, we did the work and we don’t have to lie to ourselves and say, oh, that’s just the disease. And at least he [00:38:00] had the chips and the cookies and the birthday cake and was like everybody else.

RD Dikeman: Yeah.

Carole Freeman: Wow. Oh, you’re and arguably you’re healthier. Not even arguably no, without a doubt. You’re healthier than you were 10 years ago. All of you.

RD Dikeman: I can do 50 pushups. How about that? That’s shocking to me. I couldn’t do 20 when I was 18.

Carole Freeman: Oh, that’s great. That’s great. If you’re just joining us, please share where you’re joining from welcome to the show.

Carole Freeman: And also if you’re willing to share your story of how’s diabetes related to you, how’s it personal to you? Okay. The article I’m noticing. Okay. So we have June, 2018 in the American academy of pediatrics. I posted in the comments YouTube, let me share it, but Facebook didn’t like me sharing that article.

Carole Freeman: So I put the name of it in there as well. So the name of the article is management of type one diabetes with a very low carbohydrate diet. There’s a lot of names on here that I recognize. So we’ve got Dr. [00:39:00] Bernstein David Dikeman. There’s your real name? Sarah Hallberg. I also recognize Eric Westman and David Ludwig as well.

Carole Freeman: Her name. Oh, Nancy as well, too. So lots and lots of really great doctors came together to. To publish this. So tell us about it. Why is this groundbreaking and why is,

RD Dikeman: I’ve never talked about the actual details of the paper on any podcast, but yeah, that’s interesting. The paper came about because we kept posting these flat lines on social media and there were people with what do you say?

RD Dikeman: Like pitchforks or whatever outside our door trying to kill us, but then every once in a while someone else would have the bravery to post their flat lines to people like you like Maya on who’s with us now. And anyhow there was so much value in discussing the little tips and tricks that people were doing that were serious about managing their blood glucose.

RD Dikeman: That we realize we should [00:40:00] form our own kind of safe space, a Facebook group. That was the thing that made the most sense. And so all those people that we met along the way, there was probably like 50 or a hundred people. We all made this group. And

Carole Freeman: and do you know what the URL I’ll put it in the banner here,

RD Dikeman: Of the group it’s type one grit.

RD Dikeman: If you search in Facebook, you’ll find it. Anyhow, that group grew and grew, and it became clear to some of the members who were physicians and type ones themselves that we should get some published results going from this group. There were some serious researchers who will you just saw in that author list?

RD Dikeman: Belinda Linares is the, she is the head author and David Ludwig who they. know how to do a proper research. And so we had this this form that you would fill out to to qualifying, to be in the cohort. There were very strict standards and pediatrics is the, that’s the official journal of the academy of [00:41:00] American academy of pediatrics.

RD Dikeman: So to get into that journal, that the standards have to be so high. And these folks at Harvard knew how to do that. The haters of which there are many who are still pushing high carbs and high blood sugars on children. They like to refer to this study as a survey, as if people were just responding to an online poll, nothing could be further from the truth.

RD Dikeman: The results were checked with physicians And the criteria to get into the study were, or steep. You had to really be able to prove that you were a type one. So it’s it’s a research that for the first time there was one of the results. It, the first time demonstrated that the following a very low carb diet results in unprecedented glycemic control so that if the type one community adopted this diet and the way that the people in this study were doing, which was by following the Bernstein book blood [00:42:00] sugars would drop from an average around high sevens or eights to mid fives or lower.

RD Dikeman: So it’s an A1C. It’s an astonishing difference. In and blood sugar results. And not only that the study documented a number of other important points, which are critical. So they demonstrated that cholesterol ratios, which are important, cardiovascular predictors are improved. We had in the group, we had great trig to HDL ratios.

RD Dikeman: There was a lower daily insulin dose. There was normal BMI. So all these things and what the A1C, they show that there’s some incredible cardio-metabolic improvements. And the cohort people had less hypoglycemia, they had less diabetic ketoacidosis, they have less [00:43:00] hospitalizations. And then the final thing that is most interesting is that people have.

RD Dikeman: Very reticent to discuss what they were doing, what their physicians that’s because the physicians, when they find out that you’re achieving these results, you may find yourself in a situation where you’re bullied by your dietician and your endocrinologist, which is just stunning, right?

Carole Freeman: Yeah. How long was the study?

RD Dikeman: So the study was done in 2018. It probably took two years to publish it. It was a long grueling process. It needed to be done because there are so many dark forces in this world who are publishing anti they’re seeing these these flat lines too. And so you’re seeing a lot of people who were in the traditional high carb World let’s call it.

RD Dikeman: They’re pushing research papers, which are nonsense. So we needed to come out with a really high quality study to show people that this stuff really [00:44:00] works.

Carole Freeman: Okay. Yeah. That’s wonderful. That so great that, that got published. I know from just my own experience in school and one of my professors sharing how research that he had done that he says here’s what my research found, but here’s what they allowed me to publish.

Carole Freeman: Oh yeah. Yeah. So I’m like thrilled that they actually let you publish that as well. Because

RD Dikeman: well, not everybody, not all the journals a lot. We’ve tried other journals and they. Oh, wow. Yeah,

Carole Freeman: just mind blowing. Like mind blowing that that’s that probably can’t be true. We don’t want to tell people about that instead of just making yeah.

Carole Freeman: That’s well, and so the okay, so Maya’s sharing, so we’ve got a type one. Grit is the group that that RD runs oops I’m getting my banners mixed up here. Type one grit. And then Maya shared another one parents have recently diagnosed children with type one diabetes as another Facebook group too.

Carole Freeman: Thanks for sharing those. So should we talk about the movie? I didn’t ask you if you’ve got a hard out here. So [00:45:00] do you have a time that you need to be off here? No. I want

RD Dikeman: to talk about,

Carole Freeman: okay. Yeah. So diabetes solution amazing documentary. I watched it last week. It’s about an hour long, so it’s totally a watchable for people.

Carole Freeman: So how’d that come to be? And tell us more about that.

RD Dikeman: How did you like it? Oh, I

Carole Freeman: loved it. It, there wasn’t anything in there that was surprising or shocking to me, just from my experience in the low-carb world, the last six years. But I I think probably what was the most interesting too, is just seeing how, the pattern that these families went through, where their child was sick.

Carole Freeman: And they were just told they had the flu or the cold and just sent home repeatedly. Until finally things got so bad that they were on death’s door, it’s so sad that it has to go that far before it’s being recognized. And I’m hoping that part of what we can do is just to help people advocate more to, what if part of normal child checkups were just to get an A1C every year, right?

Carole Freeman: That would catch things so much earlier, both. Metabolic dysfunction, insulin [00:46:00] resistance, type one diabetes type two diabetes. We could catch a lot of stuff really easily if that was just normal part of screening for all kids, instead of this whole myth that we talked about or this I dunno, it’s false belief that kids should just eat whatever garbage they want while they’re kids.

Carole Freeman: Let’s just get an A1C test every year for every child and every human, that, I think that then that would open people’s eyes to see that you’re not getting away with eating all that stuff. And it’s not doing you any favors for there, but yeah, that’s, I think that’s part of what, what stood out.

Carole Freeman: I just love the stories of And hopefully people can watch the movie who aren’t following Dr. Bernstein’s protocol and just get some inspiration of how that can be a normal way of living for your family. It doesn’t have to be this extreme thing. That’s, you’re sacrificing everything.

Carole Freeman: You’re actually improving your health and your family connection. I can only imagine how much it bonds a family together, brings you all together in a United front that you’re doing something together. And all of you get the benefits of [00:47:00] it. Instead of just, being something that’s so depriving and sacrificial to, for one person, but yeah, I think it’s a movie that I think everyone should watch it because even, if you don’t have somebody that has type one diabetes, Maybe you do and you don’t know it.

Carole Freeman: It’s something that should be, could, should be caught a lot earlier. And then given the message that, there is a way of managing this, that so much more effective and higher quality of life than what is being told out there.

RD Dikeman: Yeah, that’s the thing about the movie is you see these families and if the family stick with it, it ends up not being a sacrifice.

RD Dikeman: It ends up being an optimization because the, the sacrifice aspect of it is totally overblown, but the the ability for the family to thrive together and do better health wise is an underrated aspect. And because most people are just [00:48:00] on average, are like the way I was, or you’re moderately to severely overweight pre-diabetic so if the parents if the parents get the message too, it’s just a win across the whole family.

RD Dikeman: And then, the kids end up being healthier than their non-diabetic friends at school. And that’s something that we see constantly and you can see it with some of the kids in the Bethany made the movie, her son river as like this tennis champ. And everybody knows that if you’re a serious athlete your diet is going to be serious too.

RD Dikeman: And so he’s going to do really well if he continues on trying to play tennis just from a dietary aspect, my son Hayden, who’s not even diabetic. The stamina and strength this guy has in the pool. He’s a water polo. Is unmatched. But anyway, the movie itself, it came about after the study, this, there, there needed to be more done and that’s where Bethany came in and [00:49:00] she wanted to document these personal stories and what was going on.

RD Dikeman: Oh, hi.

Carole Freeman: We’ve got Bethany here. Hi. Hi, Bethany. Welcome. Oh my

RD Dikeman: God. There she is. She’s bragging about you, Bethany. Yeah, since she’s been a real hero because she’s put such a personal touch on this message and people are so terrified of what’s going to happen to their children. If they go down this path, because they don’t know anybody who’s done it.

RD Dikeman: And when you see her family and her son thriving, And she makes such great common sense comments on her page on a daily basis. It’s really convincing both the example that’s being set and the logic that’s being used. And I think that’s what came out in the documentary. It’s it’s an in controvertible logic that is, is set out and then all the examples [00:50:00] of the kids, even Dave is in it at the end while he’s in it, when he’s little, but at the end you can see Dave who’s all grown up now.

RD Dikeman: And the dude is just like lean strong and handsome, who doesn’t want to be that way. And it’s culture, it’s our normal. And he handles his he handles his blood sugars with such ease and he talks about that in the documentary. So to me, the documentary is like this non-stop. Just great quote after great quote.

RD Dikeman: And so I’ve watched it a number of times and I just get, it’s like a fist pump documentary I just get it’s just so damn inspiring to watch it

Carole Freeman: well in what and how empowering for the children with type one, to be able to manage it themselves, instead of feeling the victim of blood sugar rollercoaster and, chasing their blood sugar.

Carole Freeman: I, I just, I hadn’t even thought about that before, but just thinking about, you showing his monitor, but also knowing he’s got this, he knows how to handle this and manage this. And I I used to, [00:51:00] I used a data guy an adult man with type one diabetes and definitely the experience wasn’t, he didn’t feel empowered about chasing his blood sugars all the time.

RD Dikeman: Yeah, it’s miserable to be at the mercy of these these roller coaster, blood sugar. It’s a miserable existence. It feels bad. You’re doing damage, but you feel bad now. And then you get used to feeling bad and that’s what the professionals are teaching the kids. They’re teaching the kids that they should be miserable the rest of their lives, and they should embrace the high carb junk foods because everyone else does it.

RD Dikeman: And they don’t tell the parents what the consequences are going to be. And the movie does do that. The moving lays out what the consequences are and how to avoid them and shows examples of kids that are avoiding them. [00:52:00] And you see these healthy kids and they’re really thriving. So I really hope that we break through here and reach a lot of the newly diagnosed families.

RD Dikeman: Yeah.

Carole Freeman: Bethany, will you share your page RD was saying how you share some great stuff on your page. So we share that in the comments. We’d love to share that here on the screen Matthew we’ve just got a big peak of new people watching. So go ahead and share where you’re joining us from. Welcome to the show.

Carole Freeman: If you’d like to share a little bit about how diabetes is personal to you, we’d love to hear your story as well. Matthew Neiland competence breeds confidence. We know unmanageable blood glucose levels leads to depression, easy way to avoid the doom, change the food. Yeah, we haven’t even talk about how much more happy children are when they’re eating this.

Carole Freeman: They’re not deprived. They actually have more stable blood sugars and stable mood. Let’s see Bethany. Absolutely. Let me be 83, my dude with diabetes. Wait, what

RD Dikeman: page?

Carole Freeman: Oh, okay. Okay. I don’t know her. I don’t know her [00:53:00] story. Perfect.

RD Dikeman: By the way, her Facebook page is huge. So if you go onto her, it’s interesting.

RD Dikeman: If you look at the some traditional authority pages on Facebook like diabetes, daily, or children with diabetes, or even the ADA page there’s no action. No, one’s no one’s commenting. There’s hardly any shares. If you go on to Bethany’s page, there’s hundreds of shares. There’s many hundreds of likes.

RD Dikeman: There’s many hundreds of common. So there’s a real, it’s a real, why is that? There are these associations and they’re all, they’re nicely sponsored, right? They’re sponsored by the insulin makers and the device makers and they proudly show those badges. And yet there’s no action on those pages.

RD Dikeman: No one cares about what those people have to say. It’s all a bunch of jibberish, but they’re out there proudly promoting some of that stuff. And I don’t want to say diabetes daily because they push some good stuff on their page. But in general, just the establishment [00:54:00] diabetes stuff is dead on social media.

RD Dikeman: And then you go to Bethany’s page and it’s it’s like wildfire. Everybody’s interested in what she has to say. So she’s like a real hero. The type one world.

Carole Freeman: So I I want her back up to the so you’re asking me like what I thought of the movie and talking about how the kids that were featured in there and how they’re excelling in their sports and their activities and interests they’re in.

Carole Freeman: And I hadn’t thought about it. I thought wow, they just pick these rockstar kids that are doing these amazing things. But what if it’s the other way around? What if it’s their diet that makes them these rock stars, makes them be able to live to their full potential and be these rock stars in the world?

RD Dikeman: Yeah, I it’s true. And it is it’s stunning that the food is so important that a type one kid can have an advantage over a non-diabetic kid. That’s how stark the difference is. Like I think Dave has an [00:55:00] advantage when he’s playing in sports which is just bizarre think about it.

RD Dikeman: You have to inject insulin and test and do all these things. But still with the food, it’s an advantage over the non-diabetic kids. So

Carole Freeman: yeah. Maya wishes, the movie existed when she was diagnosed four years ago. Oh, at four years old. Okay. I’m like four years old, four at four years old, 1980. If only my parents knew what the movie reveals, it would’ve saved me decades of pain, agony and suffering.

Carole Freeman: Yes. Sorry. You’ve had to go through that, but so glad that you found your way here. Bethany, McKinsey, none of this would have happened without RD and his massive bravery and leadership. That’s pretty awesome. Yeah, you’re this is a good time then to talk about like the work that you’ve been doing with Dr.

Carole Freeman: Bernstein and, interviewing him and the connection you’ve got there. So will you share more. How you’re preserving his information for that’s right.

RD Dikeman: That’s a great word preserving. So that was the idea is that I thought, oh, this guy, he knows everything. I started talking to him. I [00:56:00] was a little bit shy, little nervous to call him.

RD Dikeman: Dave said, yeah, call him. And somebody called him and we became friends. And we came up with the diabetes university, YouTube channel idea. And my idea many years ago when we started it was well, he’s getting old and we gotta Chronicle everything. But now he’s 87. He just got his 75th metal from Joslin.

RD Dikeman: Meaning he’s had type one for 75 years and he’s still going strong. There’s no, as someone gets older, you start noticing little blips. Yeah. And he’s not like that. It’s he has the mind of a very sophisticated graduate student who’s on top of their game. And you have to be on top of your game when you talk to them and deal with them because he’s at a high level just interacting with them.

RD Dikeman: So anyhow we put together a series of and Dave didn’t a lot of the work and has been doing more and more. Now my son Hayden is doing a lot of the work. But they put [00:57:00] together about 200 videos, covering all aspects of type one and see that the problem is if you say I’m going to eat low carb and you just expect results, you probably do well.

RD Dikeman: If you’re obese or your type two But if you’re a type one, there’s a lot more to the management of the condition about how do you use insulin to cover protein foods? What’s the right insulins to use. There’s a million little details you have to know to be successful and Bernstein knows all of them and basically invented them all.

RD Dikeman: I’m an inventive scientist. I’ve never invented anything as far as type one goes because he’s on top of everything. So we try to record everything that the guy knows. And we’ve been successful in doing that and his messages, through the social media spread a lot.

RD Dikeman: So it’s what the documentary and then the scientific paper, and then all these people photographing their CGM results and then [00:58:00] sharing little clips or tips from Bernstein. It’s really changed the trajectory of how type one is managed over the last five years from when Dave was diagnosed, none of this stuff existed.

RD Dikeman: And now you can see these flat lines everywhere you go into any type one group. People are posting the Bernstein book, they’re posting their flat lines. They’re posting. Why did you eat regular waffles? Why don’t you eat waffles with almond flour? So that the landscape has tote. Now the doctors and the diabetes associations haven’t changed at all.

RD Dikeman: But they’re starting to see in their patients the results. So they’re becoming, a little curious, but they still don’t understand how to do what the people are doing from the book. They haven’t read the book yet, but like even Tracy brown, the ADA director CEO. She’s what it looks like to me, she reversed her type two diabetes with a low carb diet.

Carole Freeman: But she’s not telling me she’s not coming out public with it.

RD Dikeman: Yeah. [00:59:00] You have to listen very closely and she’ll whisper it or just briefly mentioned it. But we’re this, we caught it a few times. So we wrote it down and shared it well.

Carole Freeman: So the first month that I was doing my own, six and a half, almost seven years ago that I was trying my own keto, low carb experiment.

Carole Freeman: I did it secretly. I was in the closet. I knew everyone that I went to school with, even at a master’s degree in nutrition. I did it secretly because I knew that everyone w as going to shame me, tell me it’s a fad. It’s unsustainable. That’s bad for you. You shouldn’t try to you know, restrict any foods.

Carole Freeman: You’re going to give yourself an eating disorder. And so I chronicled everything secretly for an entire month. And also the other thing we can talk about this as well. This is another great topic or myth is that if you cut out all those carbohydrate foods, you’re going to be nutrient deficient.

Carole Freeman: You’re going to be, you need, massive amounts of whole grains and lots of fruits in order to be healthy. So my own side of that was, is that I knew that would be one [01:00:00] of the criticisms. From the very beginning. I tracked all my food and chronometer, and I, that shows you your vitamins and minerals, because I knew that was going to be one of the criticisms was that, oh, when you cut certain food groups out, you can’t possibly have a nutrient dense diet.

Carole Freeman: And I was pleasantly surprised to find that no, I can easily meet all the RDA by cutting out these foods. And I’ve since come to realize that actually, when we cut out high carbohydrate foods, we’re just cutting out the least nutrient dense foods like grains and fruits actually are not full of vitamins and minerals, despite what we’ve been told.

Carole Freeman: I spoiled the question, but

RD Dikeman: isn’t it amazing how everything that is pushed is like a lie. Have you seen, have you followed the Tufts food compass stuff that came out Tufts school of nutrition just published this thing called the food compass. And if you dig into it, they [01:01:00] have school. They have foods that are rated from zero to 100.

RD Dikeman: And so beef and eggs get like in the low twenties or something. And if you plug in like lucky charms or Cheerios, they’re very high scoring,

Carole Freeman: added vitamins and minerals to it. It’s like a bowl of sugar and taking a vitamin pill a hundred percent.

RD Dikeman: So lucky charms are more nutrient rich than eggs.

RD Dikeman: That’s the conclusion of the powers that be. And then it’s just it’s just the world of nutrition. It isn’t even a science. These people are not serious thinkers.

Carole Freeman: I often joke, I probably say once every day to my clients that like 90% of the work that I do is tell people to do the opposite of what you told them to do the last 16 years.

Carole Freeman: That’s right. Oh, let’s see. Let’s see, we talked about that and we covered all your talking points that you [01:02:00] sent me. What other what else would you like to share? What else have we not talked about?

RD Dikeman: Yeah, so that’s a good question. Off the top of my head, I’m trying to think. Let’s one thing that is happening, at least with my crew here is that Dave, as he’s, Dave’s, he’s 18 now are going to be 18 in a week or two.

RD Dikeman: And he’s starting to do more of this stuff on his own. So initially when he was like 9, 10, 11, he was super gung ho and then he, he retracted a little bit and he said, you stay on Facebook. I’m on Instagram. Don’t come on Instagram. I said okay. But keep, keep sending me your graphs and your quotes and stuff like that.

RD Dikeman: He said, that’s cool. Keep doing it, but I don’t want to do, I don’t want to push it myself. I said, great. Now he’s 18 or 17, 18. Now he’s starting to do some of it. So he started going out and giving talks. So initially he was invited to give a talk at Harvard, by [01:03:00] Belinda who, who authored the cur Lee was the lead author of the paper and give it to that community at Harvard who never met a child who had been doing what he’s doing.

RD Dikeman: So they had a lot of questions like, what are you doing? Your friends are eating Cheetos, Dave, and he says I don’t eat them. And they said what about potato chips? And he said, no, I don’t eat those either. Nobody cares. So there was a lot of questions like that, but he also had to instruct them how he uses it.

RD Dikeman: Because there’s a lot of details that people they get caught in the low carb thing, but they don’t understand how to actually use insulin in the low carb context. So he taught those people and based on that, he was invited to give other talks and eventually we recorded his talk and put it on YouTube.

RD Dikeman: So it’s it’s at, low-carb down under, if you search for that on YouTube, his videos up there. And so he, and then he wrote a paper with Westman and that’s an interesting little developmental. Give me two minutes on that because the low carb stuff is intriguing to some of the [01:04:00] researchers you’re going to see these more and more studies done.

RD Dikeman: And the problem is that the researchers themselves don’t understand how to implement a low carb diet. And they don’t understand really what low carb means in the context of type one. They don’t understand how to use insulin in that context. Like for example, they don’t know how to cover protein. Like it’s almost like they’re shocked that protein requires insulin is a basic fact of physiology that they don’t even understand that.

RD Dikeman: So what’s going to happen is a lot of these low carb studies aren’t going to do well. And really they’re trying to test the method, the low carb, but really what we’re going to learn about is whether the researchers themselves understand it. So Dave and Westman anticipated this problem. And so they wrote a paper that they just published on how to do a proper, low carb study.

Carole Freeman: Oh, that’s great. Yeah, it’s really it’s a little oh gosh, what’s the word I’m looking for? A phrase that kind of is like [01:05:00] little condescending, maybe but also necessary needed, like here, let me tell you about how to actually do this correctly so that you don’t mess it up

RD Dikeman: but that’s, and social media then when these people publish the papers that show that the, the low carb, meaning, under 200 grams a day or some crazy stuff like that.

RD Dikeman: And then we’ll be able to go, ah, you didn’t read the paper on how to do the proper, low carb study. So it’s an important little, so we’re trying to make all these little, like the documentary and then the paper and then the social media and we’re trying to combat this.

RD Dikeman: The situation is as best we can.

Carole Freeman: David’s a rockstar. So I see all the blue hearts. Is that a code in the type one community for type one, grit, love.

RD Dikeman: I thought, you know what? That, I think that’s a diabetes. The blue is a diamond

Carole Freeman: heart. I think. I don’t know the code, so

RD Dikeman: yeah, I’m not sure. I feel a lot of those blue

Carole Freeman: hearts.

Carole Freeman: We want to get a little controversial and [01:06:00] touch on the idea that there’s a lot of money and keeping everybody on a lot of insulin or,

RD Dikeman: You can do the math and you can show that you’re going to use less insulin. So if they was using a high carb diet, he would be using less insulin. He still has to use insulin.

RD Dikeman: Of course. There’s no way around that. So that, that’s interesting, right? I think. That, when I raised these questions with Dr. Bernstein he points to some things in the past, which are alarming. If you looked at the ADA’s magazine diabetes they have a monthly magazine.

RD Dikeman: There’s a lot of high carb advertisements in there in the past. And he has clips of those and you would think why would you do that? Why would you advertise these foods? Or recipes that they have are high carb. So there a lot of when you’re studying this problem, a lot of things do not add up.

RD Dikeman: And, when I ask him he’s, he says, the situation stinks in every [01:07:00] direction. And I don’t understand why the same diabetes associations or charities just go on and on here’s an example, every halloween you go to these diabetes charities or these associations with these weird fake groups.

RD Dikeman: And they’ll be posting these pictures of the carb counts of all these candies. As if all we had to do was add up the number of carbs for, a mini Snickers bar and some jujubees or whatever, and then give the appropriate dose of insulin. So they pretend every year that, that this list will help you get through your Halloween.

RD Dikeman: And then the next day you look at the parents posting their CGM graphs, and the kids are up at 400. Then they’re down in the middle of the night to 40 all night long. I see the same thing every year. And then they never now they must know this. They [01:08:00] must know that the th at they’re putting out a strategy and it doesn’t work

RD Dikeman: and I’d have no idea why they’re so emphatic on letting or telling people that this is the way to have a normal Halloween, because why would you want to do that to your child who wants to have their child go to a blood sugar of 400, or have that be a possibility for some garbage candy?

RD Dikeman: This situation is bizarre, right?

Carole Freeman: Yes. Yeah. I we’re past Halloween here, but people are going to be watching this in the future. So for a future Halloween, For those of you parents out there that think that you’re depriving your child about letting them go out trick or treating in the first place.

Carole Freeman: A friend of mine that I went to school with had this brilliant strategy. So she, her kids weren’t diabetic, but also she truly believed that children shouldn’t just eat a pile of candy all the time. So she came up with the strategy that I loved. So she Santa or Easter [01:09:00] bunny or something like that, she had a Halloween witch or something that would come right.

Carole Freeman: Okay. Is this a thing you guys do? So you, do you tell it then,

RD Dikeman: Lots of the smart parents, do they, you trade in the candy for a, some cash or some, a board game or a book or a video game in case? Yeah, because the fun is in just putting on a costume and acting crazy and going around and, knocking on doors and stuff.

RD Dikeman: And you come home and you empty your pillow case. And then my kids, when they did it, they would make piles of candy and then they would count it up and then they would go, you owe me, $18. And then we would go to game, stop the next day. And they would buy a video game or something like that.

RD Dikeman: And then they know they can’t eat the candy or else it will hurt him. Like the food hurts. You that’s, it, that’s all the logic the kids need.

Carole Freeman: And how much more enjoyment they get out of that video game for months and years [01:10:00] versus, moments of poisonous stuff being put in their body.

Carole Freeman: So that’s great. Yeah. A little story of, one of my dietician friends doing an internship at a clinic and working with people with type two diabetes that are on multiple medications. And my friend is shadowing. Dietician and the trainer was telling my friend about here’s how you manage this.

Carole Freeman: And here’s how you teach them how to do carb counting. And my friend said why don’t you instruct them on how to do a low carb diet? And then they could probably get off these medications and the training dietician said why would we want to get them off their medications? And so she, my friend realized like, this is insane that they’re trying, they’re training everyone to keep them on their medications.

Carole Freeman: Here’s how to eat in a way that you can stay on your medications. Now with type one, you need to stay on insulin. Like you said that’s not like you’re gonna ever get off of that. But just the general idea that the only way to manage these diseases is to stay on lots of medications. And don’t [01:11:00] try to change your diet in a way that could minimize the amount of medications you have.

RD Dikeman: You could look at insulin and type ones as a hormone replacement. So is it some kind of medication? You could, of course it’s a medication, it’s a medicine, but it’s also replacing the body’s natural hormones. It’s not like this situation where people are going on routinely going on statins while not addressing their fundamental metabolic condition, Statens and many other medications.

RD Dikeman: So how many medications are people on a lot? How many of those are due to their poor dietary and nutrition? Approaches a lot, right?

Carole Freeman: So most men, yeah. All right. Blue is for diabetes, blue, heart for diabetes. Now, you learn something today, you guessed, you knew it. You knew it. All right.

Carole Freeman: What else did we share? What else? Anything else you’d like to cover? Talk about, share.

RD Dikeman: I’ll give [01:12:00] a final piece of advice to parents. And I see this problem all the time with newly diagnosed parents because I’m in some of those social media groups. And I think that it’s not fully appreciated how much self learning is required to manage this condition properly.

RD Dikeman: And especially if you go the route of caring about your child’s blood sugars and trying to avoid the complications of high blood sugars, which are what happened. All kids who are following the standard approach, because all kids are running high or elevated blood sugars. And what we know is that the complications of diabetes both micro and macro vascular complications are caused by elevated blood sugars.

RD Dikeman: And there’s what I would call it. Continuous risk factors for elevated blood sugars, meaning that the research [01:13:00] shows that as the blood sugars go up from normal, the complications start. Your strategy should be such that you can safely normalize your child’s blood sugars with a healthy nutrient replete diet, and the solutions are out there, but you’re going to have to piece together information on your own most likely and You if you’re lucky or if you work at it you’re going to be able to find a team that supports you a medical team and doctor are because that situation is changing a little bit.

RD Dikeman: There are people out there that will support you, but there’s a lot of learning to do. Learn what you can learn from people who are having success. And and you’re going to have to change how you function with food as a whole family, yourself included.

Carole Freeman: So is anybody put together a starter kit is so would you recommend getting Dr.

Carole Freeman: Bernstein’s book as the first [01:14:00] place? I would recommend joining one of the two Facebook groups or both of them that we mentioned too. So the, a type one grit and the other one that parents of recently diagnosed children with type one diabetes. What. What else is there like a starter pack of information?

RD Dikeman: Yeah. And there,

RD Dikeman: There was a type one mom who put together, Bernstein’s book is very technical and then his lectures are very deep so that she put together a series of clips and videos in a playlist, YouTube has playlists. So you go to the Bernstein diabetes, university, YouTube page, and you click on playlists.

RD Dikeman: There’s a parent’s playlist and it’s really shouldn’t be called parents. Cause it could be any newly diagnosed person or any person that’s interested in changing their approach to normalize their blood sugar. And there’s about 20 videos in there that cover all aspects of our 95% not all.

RD Dikeman: The most important aspects of normalizing your [01:15:00] blood sugar. So that’s a great place to go on his YouTube page if you’re more open to learning from videos rather than reading. But yeah, it makes sense to, to make buddies with people who are doing well really become a student of the Bernstein stuff.

RD Dikeman: And like we were talking a little bit around the edges that there’s a lot of myths out there, and you have to, and you have to understand them all the myth that protein foods are bad for kidneys, all of this kind of stuff. You have to learn that stuff or else you’re going to feel a little bit insecure.

RD Dikeman: So that’s, what’s in that parent’s playlist is and addresses the myths it addresses the nuts and bolts it’s for it’s for people that are just getting started.

Carole Freeman: Yeah, I think. I’m going to call that maybe the most important part of what you’re talking about is finding community of people that are healthy and doing well with this.

Carole Freeman: We live in a world where addictive carbohydrates are abundant in everywhere and that’s the norm. And in order to sustain something that’s different than the norm, you need to [01:16:00] find your own group, community of people that are doing what you want to do. And just with like financial stuff and any kind of success is that you’ve got to make friends with the people that are having the type of success that you’d like to have.

Carole Freeman: Find your true grit. That’s a different show. You’re a type one grit community. You find people that are doing what you want to do, and that’s going to be a really big you don’t want to feel alone and you want to feel like you belong. And you’re part of something that is working and successful.

Carole Freeman: Yeah, excellent. Love it so much good stuff. And I love that it’s all out there too. Here’s, Maya’s you can’t soar with Eagles. If you’re hanging with the turkeys, what let’s, you can’t soar with the the Eagles, if you’re hanging with the marshmallow peeps, right?

RD Dikeman: Maya is she’s a real hero. She runs a big Israel group and she really knows her stuff.

RD Dikeman: And I see her so actively trying there are so many people once, once you figure out how to manage this condition, you feel [01:17:00] compelled to help other people, because it’s such a miserable thing to be on that blood sugar roller coaster. And you want to help people find their way off of it. And Maya’s one of those heroic people.

RD Dikeman: That I just see constantly helping other people, providing people with correct information. And I can only imagine how many lives that she’s changed for the better. And we all have the same story, who did you meet? Who helped you first? And, there’s this network of people that are growing now, and now you see people who you don’t know, who are doing it.

RD Dikeman: You say, oh, I need to control my blood sugars better. And in the group you’ll see someone post the Bernstein thing and go, I don’t even know that person. So

Carole Freeman: Bethany McKinsey is saying this just in the JDRF, which is the juvenile diabetes research foundation will not, I think it’s mostly, nah, not allow, right?

Carole Freeman: Not allow for screenings of the film because the national JDRF office doesn’t approve of the [01:18:00] message.

RD Dikeman: What is the message of the movie? The message in the movie is that it’s possible for a type one diabetic. To manage their condition in a way that normalizes their blood sugars so that they don’t suffer from the consequences of diabetes, the complications of diabetes and the shortened lifespan by eating healthy food.

RD Dikeman: So what exactly is what is exactly as JDRF against and why is JDRF constantly publishing this Halloween candy meme that they put out every year? That’s my question. Are they interested in children running high blood sugars? I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t be interested in and type one diabetics doing better.

RD Dikeman: Can’t imagine it.

Carole Freeman: Yeah, it is unbelievable that there’s no logic there at all. Besides.

Carole Freeman: Everybody who’s who knows this is important is going to get the word out anyways. I’m sorry, JDRF. We don’t need you. Oh, that’s sad. But also, everyone watching here share this anyone that, that’s been touched by [01:19:00] diabetes, anyone you care about please share the movie.

Carole Freeman: How can people watch the movie? Cause I know it’s not on Netflix or anything like that, but Vimeo I think is where I watched it. Is that correct?

RD Dikeman: Yeah. It’s first, it’s cost a couple of bucks to rent it or buy it. If you’re international, Vimeo is the place to go.

RD Dikeman: So you go to Vimeo and you searched for diabetes solution documentary and you’ll find it. That’s a great way to do it. Yep. Bethany is on the case here, iTunes, apple TV. You can find it. It’s out there.

Carole Freeman: I bet it’s all the Vimeo worldwide. Google play YouTube. So if you can’t find us put a comment in down here and we’ll share the link, Amazon Barnes and noble, best buy all the places.

Carole Freeman: Most of the places. All right. So even on eBay. Oh that’s is it handcrafted on eBay? You like okay, so Maya’s got a link. If you’re on Facebook watching Maya just posted the [01:20:00] YouTube and the Vimeo links there oh actually she put all of them in there. So go over to my page on Facebook ketocarole.com

Carole Freeman: all the links are there to everything. Thank you so much. Maya had that ready to go. She was. Who’s charging $40 for oh, to the highest bidder. That’s cute. Maybe it comes in like a hand. You get a handcrafted note, like a card made with it too. I don’t know. That’s

RD Dikeman: My mom lives in Ohio and she hasn’t seen it yet.

RD Dikeman: Cause she’s not on the internet. Oh, she’s old school man. So my cousin is going over with it today. I think he’s going to show her cause she wants to see me in it. You know how funny? And my son

Carole Freeman: too. What is the rest of your family? Think about this, a crazy low-carb thing that you guys do.

RD Dikeman: What, in what context you mean in the context of the movie?

Carole Freeman: Not the movie, but just in general. Does your family think that’s good for you guys, but I’m still gonna eat whatever I want. Have the larger

RD Dikeman: family.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. [01:21:00] The bigger family, right? Family.

RD Dikeman: Yeah. That’s a good question.

RD Dikeman: And yeah, you can’t, so you can expect if you’re the parents, you need to eat a low carb diet. If you’re the sibling, like I told Hayden a long time ago, the worst thing that can happen to you in your life will be to watch your brother slowly decay. And so the most important thing you can do for him and yourself is to eat a low carb diet because you’re the little brother.

RD Dikeman: If you’re doing it, then he’ll do it too, because he’ll have too much pride. So that’s one reason he does it. Now what about the LAR the aunties and uncles, grandparents? If you’re out for a holiday dinner you’re going to have. The aunties and uncles, they’re going to order dessert.

RD Dikeman: And we don’t, but that’s okay. Like Dave should not have any expectation that other people in his life should follow his diet. Other than his parents it’s enough if the parents follow [01:22:00] it. So you, there’s a line where you don’t want to rub his face in it. If he’s out with his grandma, she’s not going to bust out a banana in front of his face and start eating it or something that’s rude.

RD Dikeman: But you can’t expect everybody he shouldn’t expect his friends to eat low carb. If he’s on the football team and they get pizza too bad, man, like just strip some toppings, strip the cheese and the pepperoni off, but you can’t be, you can’t be have these expectations that no one else is gonna eat carbohydrates because.

RD Dikeman: And Dave puts it. He puts it best. He says, everybody, I know, seems like these days has their own special diet. Those kids that are vegetarian, he knows kids with with food allergies. So it’s, everyone’s doing their own thing anyway. So in the end of the, at the end of the day, nobody really cares his friends don’t care if he throws the bun in the trash, it that’s an overblown consequence of the high carb thinking is thinking that, he’s going to be mocked or something like that.

RD Dikeman: It doesn’t happen.

Carole Freeman: [01:23:00] Yeah. Any random family members that have been influenced and changed their eating?

RD Dikeman: Not, I think the best example is mom and dad. That’s those are the best examples. I think that I’ve had random friends and cousins call me and uncles call me my A1C is 5.7. Is that bad? Yes. It’s bad.

RD Dikeman: What do I do? I like a piece of cake now and then, okay. You got to get over that. The cake, that’s always the problem, right? It’s the yummy foods. You gotta change your palette. Yeah.

Carole Freeman: RD it’s been an honor and a privilege to have you here today. I know everyone.

Carole Freeman: Give it up for R D for being here. Everyone. Thank you everyone for watching. I gotta give a shout out to we have a transcript sponsor of the show. So keto-space.com. It’s keto-space.com. They provide all of the transcripts for Keto chat live. And so thank you to [01:24:00] them for doing that. And so diabetes solution, movie diabetes solution book Dr. Bernstein grab that over and join the Facebook groups that we’ve mentioned as well. Any what’s the name of your YouTube channel again? Diabetes, university, diabetes, university. Go check that out as well. And anything else that people should go check out? See watching movies

RD Dikeman: go watch the movie diabetes solution movie.

RD Dikeman: Tonight, make sure you watch it immediately.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. Let’s crash. Their servers watch too many people watching it at once. So that’ll be great. On Thursday this week, come back again for the show I’ve got Siara and Kristen they’re hosts of the fiercely holistic podcast. We’re going to be talking about nutrient dense whole foods on low carb.

Carole Freeman: So join me here. Thank you everyone for showing up today. Thank you for being here for the show. Sharing is caring. Share this episode with your friends. There’s somebody out there that, that needs to know the power of how healthy you can be following low carb for both kinds of [01:25:00] diabetes.

Carole Freeman: And also, what is it? I don’t know. 80% of the 80 to 90% of the population right now is on the train to diabetes. So this is information that’s helpful for so many people out

RD Dikeman: there. So eat like a healthy type one diabetic and

Carole Freeman: be a superstar in life like RD’s son. Great. Everyone.

Carole Freeman: Thanks for watching. Thanks for being here RD. So good to see you virtually take care, everyone. See you next time.

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