What if Dementia and Type 2 Diabetes could be managed better? Or reversed?!
Without exercise, bariatric surgery or medication, we delve into the use of natural interventions to reverse Type 2 Diabetes successfully reported by renowned researchers and doctors.
Early this year, I visited relatives and friends in Malaysia. At dining tables all around my world there, from Thanksgiving to Christmas, Ponggal, Chinese or Lunar New Year, to Ramadhan, what was it that guests were berbisik-bisik whispering to each other in-between mouthfuls of delightful morsels of festive cuisine? Take a guess…
I have high cholesterol…
I am prediabetic…
I have chronic kidney disease - we need to meet!
I just had both knees replaced I’m so blessed!
My mother’s dementia is advanced, and we really don’t know how to help her.
Last Christmas, Cousin Eugene took a group of us on a hike up to Penang Hill’s Moongate Station No. 5. His enigmatic father Uncle Edward took my schoolfriends and I along this very same route when we were 17. It was our first out-of-town trip and we had just completed our O-levels. Fit as I thought I was at 17, I couldn’t make it all the way. So Uncle Edward told everyone in that group to stay still and wait while he walked me downhill to the archway of Moongate, then swiftly hiked back up again to lead my friends. I waited among white-faced monkeys and felt a little silly.
Despite not having exercised for a month, I did it! I huffed and puffed with puppy on my shoulders. I felt light and had a spring to my stride. I wore a pair of very versatile dress shoes as I didn’t pack sneakers with me and made it to station no. 5. There, we sat on a hammock, laughed and played with the resident stray dogs, a smattering of macaques, their curious babies shadowing us as if waiting for us to drop a banana on the ground.
Banana? But wait, do monkeys actually eat bananas?
The modern banana that we’ve bred is the equivalent of a slice of chocolate cake for monkeys. It’s full of sugar, and is connected with weight gain, tooth decay, and diabetes in monkeys. If that sounds a lot like the effects of too much sugar in the human diet, well, it is - Sam Westreich, PhD
What is it with marathon runners carbo-loading with pastas and bananas before a race?
How much carbohydrates do we really need?
And this, is the focus in this edition of Kurang Manis.
Before I elaborate, here are two very useful tools I’d like to share. Click on the links and save it on your phone if you like. Fun fact: whip this out next time you’re at a dinner party (not)!
I have spent the past three years deep diving into researching carbohydrates and started to question how much carbs humans actually need in a day.
“I can eat carbs because I’m a runner,” quips an in-law. He’s slim, lanky and a very enthusiastic weekend athlete.
If the person is not fat adapted and has not worked towards utilising fat as fuel for endurance activities, they will need to use carbs as fuel. America’s National Academy of Sports Medicine, NASM’s recommended only about 1g of carbs per pound of body weight. So, for someone who’s say 68kg or 150 pounds, the NASM recommended daily intake of carbohydrates is 150g. To put that in context, this is what it looks like (if you removed our graphic designer’s favourite boba bubble tea drink)!
“I don’t agree with type of food recommended in NASM for pre-race food such as apple, orange juice because I have learned that juices convert into fructose. Fructose will be transported to be stored in the liver and will only convert to glucose during an extended fasting state. Table sugar is 50% fructose,” reminds fitness coach and cofounder of A Fitness Today, Nikki Yeo.
Mid-way into Covid-19 lockdowns in 2021, I had a glucose tolerance test (GTT) done and was warned by my physician that I was tipping the scale and was pre-diabetic. She was on the verge of prescribing medication, but I promised her that I would change my lifestyle since prediabetes is really a lifestyle disease. In a modern supermarket (unlike the last article, Maimun’s jungle supermarket), it’s too easy to fill up one’s basket with foods that are heavily advertised - most of which will disappoint in satiety. Sometimes I forget what’s got sugar in it, but the more I understand the contents of my meals and snacks, the more aware I get about what would cause a spike in my glucose levels.
Prediabetic?
I’m so excited to share with you this research study by Professor Roy Taylor of the Campus for Ageing and Vitality, Newcastle University in the United Kingdom. Using innovative magnetic resonance methods, research has confirmed his Twin Cycle Hypothesis – that Type 2 diabetes is simply caused by excess fat within the liver and pancreas. Roy Taylor is professor of Medicine and Metabolism at the university whose work has shown that Type 2 diabetes is not inevitably progressive and life-long. Isn’t that quite a relief?!
[As an aside: Click here to listen to Professor Roy Taylor talk on Twitter Spaces.]
“It’s very important that you set about shedding some weight.
It will be possible to do this by taking some simple steps for instance halve the amounts of potatoes, or rice or pasta that you eat and never to eat in between meals, with the aim to lose at least 5kgs or 7 to 8kgs.
Then the next time you take a blood test, your doctor would be delighted, and he’ll say, that’s funny, your level has gone back to normal,”.
Professor Taylor
I wish to thank Theresa Loo of Pharmacist Edit for bringing light unto to Professor Taylor’s work during a podcast recording for Season Two of “Help! I’m Prediabetic! The Kurang Manis (Sugar,Less)” Podcast - Listen to the podcast on the website or in substack.
Catch Theresa Loo as Keynote Speaker - Health at the AFT International Sports Fitness Festival on Nov 4 & 5, 2023 at Port Macquarie, NSW - www.sportsfitnessfestival.com/rsvp.
Dementia is also known as Type 3 Diabetes
It’s when there’s excess glucose in the blood stream yet the brain is starved off the crucial glucose it needs to sustain all brain functions that include typing this message. As a carer of someone with early onset dementia, I’ve seen the highs and lows, and it’s evident through my daily observation that the days when the person I care for has a high intake of processed carbohydrates (noodles, bread, cakes, biscuits), fructose (fruit) or maltodextrin (hawker stall soups or milk powder or premixed sauces), it is those days that we have to deal with instant cognitive decline like answering the same questions 10x, where we are, what time it is, which month it is, if her dad is still alive or if she’s just come home from work (she retired 10 years ago)!
I need to share this because it’s so crucial a small piece of information can go a long way. I am a big foodie and love my drinks too, but moderation doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s like how you need to cut off the very thing that poisons you? A clean break? Impossible?
“Tampok tampok baysee” (a little a day won’t kill you) assures my aunt Jenny in Hokkien. She cooks the most delicious foods! But I’ve had to resist. And pose her a question why then in Malay, “sikit-sikit jadi bukit” or in an Aussie folk song, “from little things big things grow”. So, the conclusion is, "tampok tampok ay see" (a little a day can really kill!). With this notion and understanding, there’s no bravado needed, to despise the message and carry on. It is the very food we think is enriching us, but it’s the reverse. Once aware, we make mindful decisions for our households.
I’ve learnt a thing or two about fruit too. I take fruit occasionally to my dad’s chagrin as he loves his fruits and eats them daily. What if we were to propose that fruits of today from supermarkets are so curated that they are really packed with fructose and isn’t as good as is professed? A Japanese friend once told me that interestingly, in Japan, fruit is regarded as a luxury gift item, not something to be consumed daily.
“The increased consumption of fructose in the average diet through sweeteners such as high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and sucrose has resulted in negative outcomes in society through producing a considerable economic and medical burden on our healthcare system. Ingestion of fructose chronically has contributed to multiple health consequences, such as insulin resistance, obesity, liver disorders, and diabetes.”1
Fruits are tweaked to taste sweeter than they organically were meant to be. In the Quran, Hawa or Bible, Eve plucked the forbidden apple 🍎 from the Garden of Eden and presented it to Adam even though God specifically said not to. Tempted by the serpent, both took a bite.
This is what I sent to my family WhatsApp, but I’m usually ignored for being too pedantic. Allow me to send this to you and I hope even if it helps one of you, I’ve done my job.
Dementia is a disease also called Type 3 Diabetes.
The brain needs sugar, but the sugar cannot reach the brain cells because whenever we eat sugary foods (fruits, carbs), insulin is released by our pancreas into the blood stream.
But too much insulin in the blood stream becomes toxic. The blood is unable to use the insulin to carry the sugar to our brain cells.
The cells start to become insulin resistant. Then the extra sugar is deposited into our liver and that's when we get fatty liver. Or the extra sugar is pushed out to our dermis, that's when we get pimples. Or the extra sugar is pushed into other parts of our cells, that's when we get internal cysts.
Do we need to eat fruits that have been modified to look more vibrant and taste sweeter than ever before? Is fruit juice daily healthy? Can our body really take so much fructose in one hit?
In many cultures, rice, noodles, potatoes or breads are staples. When digested, these carbohydrates are the hidden sugars that convert into glucose.
Avoid toxic sugar in blood stream, avoid dementia. Is it really as simple as that? Well, then.
A News Straits Times article warns the rise of dementia cases in Malaysia will three-fold by 2050. Meanwhile in Australia, a university’s research team divulges on the pernicious habits of nosepickers could arise in dementia due to the bacteria from fingernails, transported from the cavity of the nose to the brain stem.
In a WHO report, people living with dementia are frequently denied the basic rights and freedoms available to others. In many countries, physical and chemical restraints are used extensively in care homes for older people and in acute-care settings, even when regulations are in place to uphold the rights of people to freedom and choice.
An appropriate and supportive legislative environment based on internationally accepted human rights standards is required to ensure the highest quality of care for people with dementia and their carers.
For those of us who have cared for, or spent time with someone with dementia or Alzheimer’s, you’d understand if I were to share an instance about my gorgeous mum. She’d wake up from a nap and be in a demention brain jam (I coined this term to explain a different dimension that dementia patients experience). A typical morning would have Shirl asking me to take her to that biscuit shop, the one with dozens of biscuit tins from where you could select your own. Or, I could have a choice and take her to the Indian Mee Goreng just down the road, she says. These are her favourite memories from her youth in Penang. Her state of demention has been so intriguing to me as a creative writer. It has brought a distance of 6900KM from Sydney to Penang into one conversation. Hence, Shirl is my muse and the reason behind a lot of what I do - one of them, the Move8 Fitness Movement and today marks the launch of the Move8 VR Walk-a-Hunt.
A key goal set by the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Action Plan on the Public Health Response to Dementia 2017-2025 wants 100% of countries to have at least one functioning public awareness campaign on dementia to foster a dementia inclusive society by 2025. I’m taking a step for mum today.
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