FOOD JOURNEY
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About Me


My personal story of how I recovered from type two diabetes, freeing myself of all my medications.

   
I soon came to learn how our food supply was being tampered with and contaminated by the processed food industry.  At the age of 39 years old I walked into my family doctor’s office which I have been going to for years. At the time of my visit I wasn’t feeling so well so I quickly explained my symptoms to my doctor who then asked his attending nurse to check my glucose level. She withdrew my blood.

 Within a few seconds I was told that I was now a type two diabetic. As I sat on the examination bed taking in this news, my doctor provided no explanation and no other alternative explanation. My doctor quickly pulled out his prescription pad and started to prescribe diabetic controlling medication.

 I was not sure what to think about this diagnosis. I remembered feeling sad about this news; however, with no true understanding of what type two diabetes really was about, I knew only what I had been told:  that genetics played some part in this disease. I then asked myself, “what can I do about my diabetes?”

 I had no understanding about diabetes, but I also knew that I had to do something about this diagnosis. So I left the doctor’s office with prescription in hand to pick up my medication at my local drug store. I then headed home to try my new prescription and see if it could cure me. At the time, I did not know that drugs do not cure this disease but merely helped to control it.
    


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   As I think back to how I went about handling this disease, I took somewhat of a slow approach, because I only felt sick when I ate food or drank sugary drinks. It also did not help me that I continued to eat a high sugar diet in the form of carbohydrates, diet sodas, smoking, beer etc. Only a few months of trying to cope with this disease and taking my medications, which made me feel even sicker, I realized that there had to be a better way to cure myself than just consuming medication. It felt like I had hit a brick wall. Here I was thinking to myself, “How do I get over this wall?“

I looked all around for a way to overcome this obstacle. Only then did the answer come to me. I told myself that I had to look deep into nature for the answer. At this very moment, I knew I had to look at what I was consuming. On November 11, 2011, my food journey started.  I’ll never forget my coworker who saw me drinking a diet soda as he walked by my desk and asked me if I drank “Aspartame”.  I made a mental note of the word I had never heard before: “Aspartame”.

 On my first night of my journey, I was sitting by my computer and read the ingredients of a diet soda I had in my hand, and there it was: the word, aspartame!  I spent the rest of the night on the internet researching this ingredient.  I headed over to YouTube to see what hits I would get on aspartame. As I did a search what came up was a documentary called “Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World”. I must have seen this documentary about 3 times, taking notes and names of everyone in the movie for continued research on the days to come.
I lived alone, so on the following weeks and months I read and read all about aspartame, finding articles online and buying books on toxins from Dr. Russell L. Blaylock who was in the film Sweet Misery.  I read “Excitotoxins: the taste that kills”and then his second book “Health and Nutrition Secrets that can save your life”.   The more I read the more I started to find  toxins everywhere in canned soups, boxed foods, bags of chips, etc. I read about additional toxins like GMOs, MSG, sucralose, yeast extract, autolyzed yeast, soy protein, carrageenan, soy protein isolate, and natural flavors, and quickly cut out these ingredients from my diet.

I also learned how highly toxic sugar was for the body and cut it down to super low amounts, drinking only water for months on end. I next found a book called “Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis” which took me to another level of understanding about foods like breads, pasta, grains (food like products) and so on. The next step was cutting out grains, which made the pounds fly off with no exercise, only walking.  I started to feel my body shrinking from the inside out; pant sizes going from 38 to 33, t-shirts going from X-large to small, belts from 38 down to 34.  I returned to my doctor’s office to check how my blood work would look due to so much weight loss (51 pounds).

I knew I was on the right journey, as all my blood work started to drastically improve: A1c back to normal (5.1 non-diabetic), HDL (good cholesterol) moving back up from the very low 20's and heading up to 39 and still going up, LDL (bad cholesterol) going back closer to the normal range, triglycerides going from 816 down to 169 and moving faster down to the normal range of 150, and PH 25 vitamin D going up to 49. I believe my research has paid off. I will continue this food journey, as it has become a way of life for me. Truly, I believe this new found love for cleaner eating has basically saved my life. I currently live a happy grain free, gluten free, dairy free, life…
  

"ReWilding is not an attempt to go back towards our past - that time is behind us forever - but rather it is moving forward towards a more luminous future"  Daniel Vitalis REWILD YOURSELF  http://www.danielvitalis.com/

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After
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Dedication
I dedicate this web-site to those who have been poisoned by Aspartame, Advantame, Sucralose, MSG, GMOs, and the many Excitotoxins currently found in our food supply, and to the millions that continue to be poisoned.  I also dedicate this web-site to my beautiful mother (I love you Madre!) whose doctors failed her miserably and never considered to use nutritional medicine in her care only using drugs.  May you and your family members never come across these so called doctors? 

Thank You
A special Thank You to Ms. Cori Brackett, Mr. Brian Kang and Mr. Marcus Pizarro for all their help and contribution to the building of the web-site, I also would like to thank all the doctors (Dr. Russell L. Blaylock, Dr. Sandra Cabot, Dr. Betty Martini, Dr. Woodrow C. Monte, Dr. William Davis, Dr. Robert Lustig and the many others you will find thru-out this web-site!) who continue to be a part of this food journey and who have shared their hard work and knowledge which has played a major part in my recovery.  


"Never stop questioning”
Disease can inflict a weightless shadow, its lifeboat of loss reminding us to rebel, to question, to fight - if we listen. Too often, we are told relinquish control of ourselves to a drug or a treatment without question. This takes out an all important part of the healing process: our own active participation. Questioning is good. As an agnostic, my father was one of the most caring people that I've known. For him to be in hell simply because he could not honestly believe in Christianity is the true meaning of blasphemous. I believe that he lived an authentic life, which ultimately is that to which we all aspire.  Cori Brackett (Through the Shadows, p. 50) http://www.sweetremedyradio.com/

Grains, Bread, or Pasta?
"For instance, did you know that your genes haven't changed for the past 100,000 years? And that 8,000 years ago there were no grains, bread or pasta? The evolution of man's digestive system has been based on a diet of low-fat protein and low-density carbohydrate fruits and fiber-rich vegetables. What that now means for us is that we should still be eating like cavemen and not like cows. Why? Because genetically, mankind has not evolved to a stage at which we can consume excessive amounts of grains and breads without adverse biochemical consequences." Dr. Barry Sears, Ph.D. (Enter The Zone 1995)
http://www.drsears.com/Home/tabid/330/Default.aspx

Glycation
"A diet high in sugar causes protein and DNA to become sugar-coated, a process called glycation. (Actually, these cellular components are not sugar-coated, but rather react chemically with very reactive sugar molecules, producing unstable molecules that generate free radicals.) In the nervous system we see a similar interaction of proteins in neurons, resulting in advanced glycation end products (or AGEs). These sugar-coated proteins are also seen in diabetes because of elevated levels of sugar in the tissues. What makes these glycolated proteins so dangerous is that they are more easily oxidized than normal proteins, which then increases the risk of protein and DNA oxidation in the cell, even beyond levels we would normally expect. This is one reason why diabetics have such a high incidence of complications and associated degenerative disease." Dr. Russell L. Blaylock,MD (Health and Nutrition Secrets That Can Save Your Life) http://www.russellblaylockmd.com/

Carbohydrates
"In other words, the science itself makes clear that hormones, enzymes, and growth factors regulate our fat tissue, just as they do everything else in the human body, and that we do not get fat because we overeat; we get fat because the carbohydrates in our diet make us fat. The science tells us that obesity is ultimately the result of a hormonal imbalance, not a caloric one-specifically, the stimulation of insulin secretion caused by eating easily digestible, carbohydrate-rich foods: refined carbohydrates, including flour and cereal grains, starchy vegetables such as potatoes, and sugar, like sucrose (table sugar) and high-fructose corn syrup. These carbohydrates literally make us fat, and by driving us to accumulate fat, they make us hungrier and they make us sedentary."
Gary Taubes (Why We Get Fat and What to do About it, p. 10) 


Below you can see some of my personal blood work along with eleven A1c readings that I have put together for my Food Journey. I have been collecting copies of all my blood work from the age of 33 to compare from year to year. It is important to know theses numbers as the years go by.
 


How does the A1c test work? The A1c test is based on the attachment of glucose to hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen. In the body, red blood cells are constantly forming and dying, but typically they live for about 3 months. Thus, the A1c test reflects the average of a person’s blood glucose levels over the past 3 months. The A1c test result is reported as a percentage. The higher the percentage, the higher a person’s blood glucose levels have been. A normal A1c level is below 5.7 percent. (normal lab results may vary)

A1c for 2003 at 33 years old data reported June 28, 2003 
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Hemoglobin A1c 5.2 (normal range)
Cholesterol
Triglycerides
HDL (good cholesterol)
Risk Factor
                                                                                                                                                     LDL/VLDL
           
                


A1c for 2004 at 34 years old data reported December 1, 2004
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Hemoglobin A1c 5.6 (normal range)
Cholesterol
Triglycerides
                                                                                                                                                     HDL (good cholesterol)
                                                                                                                                                     Risk Factor
                                                                                                                                                     LDL/VLDL



Personal Lipid Panel at 34 years old data reported December 1, 2004
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ALT 82 (high)
Hemoglobin A1c 5.6 (normal range)
Cholesterol, Total 215 (high) 7.7 (ratio high)
Triglycerides 376 (high)
HDL (good cholesterol)
28 (very low)
Risk Factor
LDL/VLDL 112


A1c for 2005 at 35 years old data reported March 29, 2005
Picture
Hemoglobin A1c 5.2 (normal range)
Cholesterol
Triglycerides
                                                                                                                                                     HDL (good cholesterol)
                                                                                                                                                     Risk Factor
                                                                                                                                                     LDL/VLDL


A1c for 2005 at 35 years old data reported July 9, 2005
Picture
Hemoglobin A1c 5.2 (normal range)
Cholesterol
Triglycerides
                                                                                                                                                        HDL (good cholesterol)
                                                                                                                                                        Risk Factor
                                                                                                                                                        LDL/VLDL


Personal Lipid Panel at 39 years old data reported September 19, 2009
Picture
Hemoglobin A1c 11.3 (high)
Cholesterol 220 (high)
Triglycerides 816 (very high)
HDL (good cholesterol) 24 (very low)

Risk Factor 9.17 (high)

LDL/VLDL (cannot be calculated when triglycerides exceed 400 MG/DL)



A1c at 41 years old data reported February 28, 2011
Picture
Hemoglobin A1c 10.3 (high)
Cholesterol
Triglycerides
HDL (good cholesterol)
Risk Factor
LDL/VLDL


Personal Lipid Panel at 41 years old data reported February 7, 2011
Picture
Hemoglobin A1c
Cholesterol 159
Triglycerides 169 ( just19 points above the normal range)  
HDL (good cholesterol) 25 (very low)
Risk Factor
LDL/VLDL
Cholesterol - HDL Ratio 6.4 (high)


A1c at 42 years old data reported January 14, 2012
PictureHome Kit
Hemoglobin A1c 5.8 (normal range)
Cholesterol
Triglycerides
HDL (good cholesterol)
Risk Factor
LDL/VLDL


A1c at 42 years old data reported May 6, 2012
PictureHome Kit
Hemoglobin A1c 5.2 (normal range)
Cholesterol
Triglycerides
HDL (good cholesterol)
Risk Factor
LDL/VLDL 


A1c at 42 years old data reported September 19, 2012
Picture
Hemoglobin A1c 5.1 (normal range)
Cholesterol
Triglycerides
HDL (good cholesterol)
Risk Factor 
                                                                                                                                                          LDL/VLDL

Report  shows 1Ac Hb was 5 down from 7 !! however I personally saw the meter reading taken on this last visit and it showed 5.1 to be more accurate! I'm currently working to  get my A1c down to a 4.0. I would like to mention what took place on this particular follow up visit. I was so happy to tell my attending doctor the good news about the results of my new A1c reading of 5.2 which I personally  took at home only to get a response of "those home testing kits are no good". I could not help but feel like he was hoping I was wrong and that a new test would show I was still a diabetic. The doctor said he would have to redo a new test in the office. I said OK as his attending nurse took another reading to only come up with a new low of 5.1. I said, “yes! Baby”, as he looked at me and the nurse. I could feel his disappointment by his not even giving me a congratulations, or how did you do it?  


A1c at age 45 years old data reported March 30, 2015 Editing New Blood Work 11/11/2015

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 Hemoglobin A1c 5.1 (normal range)


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Medications
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My food journey has put me on a medication free life style!
     My old medications from left to right:
  • Metformin 500MG take 1 table by mouth twice daily with food.
  • Gilpizide 10MG take 1 tablet by mouth twice daily.
  • Lisinopril 5MG take 1 tablet by mouth every morning.
  • Lisinopril 10MG take 1 tablet by mouth every morning.
            (The milligrams on Lisinopril was moved up to 10MG from 5MG)
End of page more blood work coming soon!
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