Not necessarily just with medicine,

but by the foods that you are eating?

There's a big way to do it.

Nutrition tips can make all the difference

in terms of your health and preventing diabetes

and all kinds of other chronic conditions.

And my guest today has just penned an article

on One Green Planet

all about that, where she gives ten tips to do just that.

Today, we are going to be talking about the top five.

And with that, we welcome Dr.

Hana Kahleova back to the exam room.

So good to see you again, Dr.

Kahleova So great to be here, Chuck.

So when we're talking about overall,

before we pull up your article,

which is phenomenal, by the way, before we get into these

ten tips,

I've been talking

recently on the show about just how insanely sensitive

the body can be in terms of the fuel that we put in it.

You put good fuel and healthy food and amazing things happen,

but you put that unhealthy food in, you go to el

cheapo gas station essentially and fuel up on junk food.

And guess what?

Bad things happen.

You've been doing nutrition research now for so many years.

Are you still a astounded

by just how sensitive our bodies can be to this?

I am.

I mean, it takes usually decades

to for example, develop diabetes.

And yet when you when you put the right fuel in your body,

the changes start

really happening over the course of a few days.

And in a few weeks, you can see significant,

significant improvement And sometimes it's just

astonishing how fast these changes happen on

the right kind of fuel.

All right.

Now, we are going to go ahead and pull up this article

right now.

You see it right there from one green planet.

Ten nutrition tips that help prevent

and treat diabetes and other chronic health conditions.

We're going to talk about the top five here today.

But for the full turn, you can click on that link

that is in the show description.

Or if you're listening to the podcast,

click on it in the episode notes.

Now, Dr.

Colley, over let's go right on down to the first tip, which

shockingly, with this group,

number one overall eat a healthy plant based diet.

So in terms of putting good fuel in your body,

I suppose this is about as good of a start as it gets.

Exactly.

Like just.

Just consider what happens when you don't

put the right fuel in your body.

How often does diabetes develop in people?

So the stats from the American diabetes Association show

that about 37 million of Americans,

that's about 11% of the U.S.

population has diabetes and another 96 million people.

That's about 38% of the population as prediabetes.

So these numbers should should just like

wake you up and be like, you know what?

This is something that's really important.

That's something that

more than half of the population

will somehow encounter

Their blood sugar control will be some will

somehow come up during the checkups with their doctor.

So this is a topic

that's super important because it's not only about

your blood sugar,

it's about the complications that can develop later.

It's about your kidneys.

Diabetes is the number one cause of kidney failure.

It's also about your vision.

Again, diabetes is the number one cause

for blindness in the U.S.

It's also about your cardiovascular health

because diabetes accelerate atherosclerosis

and people with diabetes have a five times

higher risk of dying of cardiovascular disease

than general population.

So all of these are important aspects of health.

And those are the reasons why you should care

what you put in your body.

Now, the good news is that when you put the right

fuel in your body, you can completely tip the odds.

People who follow

a vegan diet have their diabetes risk

cut in half compared with those who don't.

Also, they have a much lower chance

of developing diabetes compared to general population.

So these studies are interesting,

but you may be asking, well, by what if I already have

diabetes?

Is it now too late for me?

And the good news is that it's not it's never too late.

Even if you have diabetes,

a few research studies have shown

that when you switch over to a low fat vegan diet,

you can improve your blood sugar control.

You can lose weight,

you can improve your blood lipids, your blood pressure

and other cardiometabolic markers of health.

And so you can improve your health in general.

And that also includes your diabetes.

And what's amazing is that a vegan diet

can be twice effective in bringing down your blood

sugar compared to a portion control diet,

one that would be like a standard

that diabetes diet.

So a vegan

diet is really effective in the prevention

and also in the treatment of diabetes

and diabetes runs in your family.

Eating a healthy plant based diet is is the number one

recommended Yeah.

Let me let me just revisit that because I think that this bears

repeating.

Did you just say that

a plant based diet, a vegan diet, is twice

as effective as the standard prescribed diet

for people with diabetes right now?

That's exactly right.

That is an enormous difference.

That is so, so, so big.

I wish a lot more people knew that.

Goodness gracious sakes, alive.

And you also were talking about it

kind of never being too late.

So even if you have diabetes, what about for

somebody who's had it for two decades or longer?

I mean, really just been saddled with it for years.

Yeah.

Even if you had diabetes for a long time, it's never too

late to make the change.

Even if you

have type one diabetes you can give it a try.

You know,

you will probably need to continue using your insulin,

but you may cut down the DL, severe insulin.

You may be able to cut down other medications

that you're using.

So even if you're not able

to reverse the process completely, you can still see

significant improvement in your overall health.

There you go. Significant improvement.

So there's only upside to this very little doubt.

I mean, no downside that I've heard so far.

So that's that's really important to talk about now.

Number two, we're talking

about putting all of this good fuel in our body.

But what about the time that we put the good fuel in?

So you see there right in the middle of your screen,

the second tip, start

and finish eating your meals early in the day. Why?

Why is meal timing so important?

Exactly.

Why is it important?

Because meal timing is the cue

that helps to synchronize our body clock.

We have two body clocks.

One is in our brain,

which is entrained by daylight and darkness cycle.

And then we have body clocks in each

cell of our body, in each organ And these are

synchronized with the central body clock

using nutritional cues such as cycles of eating and fasting.

So when you eat, you tell your body it's day.

It's time to ramp up our metabolism.