Dr. Pete
In January of 2019 I was diagnosed with prediabetes. When I saw the blood report and the doctors email I was afraid. I felt like I was being stalked by an assassin. I wondered if an alien had taken up residence in my body and was killing me one small bite at a time.
I was sixty years old when I got the email. I’ve got a daughter who is twenty-four and an amazing wife and a good life. But with a diagnosis of prediabetes I felt like my life was in jeopardy—all could be lost to the ravages of this chronic disease.
The prognosis was bleak: full blown diabetes in as little as three years along with the associated complications including kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, amputation, stroke, etc. According to the American Diabetes Association (ADA) diabetes is a disease that is to be managed using medications—according to the ADA it cannot be cured or reversed.
I was a rock climber and mountaineer for almost forty years of my life and I’m no stranger to life and death situations. This is not the first time that I have had my life threatened. But it was the first time that I’ve been threatened by something I couldn’t see, an existential threat from within, rather than from without.
I have endured storms and rock fall and even took ground falls in my career but I survived all of it. Sometimes I made it through by luck and at other times it was experience that saved me—always though, the threat was in my face. The near death experiences that I have had, and the fact that I have lost friends to the mountains, has created in me a deep respect for life, and the things that make life worth living—my family and friends and having a purpose.
The thing that makes metabolic diseases like diabetes so scary is the fact that it is a silent killer. You have no idea that anything deadly is happening to you. Then one day you see your doctor and have a blood test and the next day an email zips into your life with note that says, “Please exercise more and eat a Mediterranean diet.”
And you say to yourself, “How the hell did I get here?”
I’m not the type of guy who drinks sugary drinks and eats the cupcakes in the employee lounge or eats fast food—I can’t remember the last time when I ate a Big Mac or a Krispy Kreme donut.
This diagnosis just didn’t make sense to me because over the decades I had indeed consumed a Mediterranean diet although I was guilty of habitually drinking beer, eating potatoes, rice, and chocolate. Oh, and I almost forgot, I am a fourth year CrossFit athlete. So when I read the doctors email and pondered a life of insulin injections and amputations I got up out of my seat, moved to the bathroom, and stared at my reflection in the mirror and said, “There’s no way that I am going to be a diabetic!”
The more I read about diabetes, the more horrified I became. I actually experienced fear…you know…the clenching in your gut and sweaty palms. The first thing I did was cut out the beer, potatoes, and rice. I doubled down on CrossFit exercising twice a day but my fasting blood sugar continued to rise. I rapidly came to the conclusion that I wasn’t getting better. In fact, under the medical Standard of Care with its diet of whole grains and legumes I was quickly transitioning to full blown Type 2 Diabetes.
I seemed destined for insulin injections and the drugs needed to mitigate the damages of high insulin and blood sugars. I saw my future in the hospital breathing oxygen with a bandaged stump where my foot used to be. Was this the best that our medical establishment could offer me?
I felt hopeless until I stumbled upon the ketogenic diet. The diet is low in carbohydrate, high in fat, and moderate in protein and my blood sugar started to normalize within a few days. 52 days later I was free of diabetes and my A1C had dropped from 5.8 to 4.9. I known this sounds too good to be true? Doesn’t it?
But my story is not too good to be true! The scientific data is unequivocal: the Ketogenic diet reverses diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease and I am the living evidence of this fact. Dropping the carbs normalizes your blood sugar quickly and I was able to take back my metabolic health in just a couple of months.
I have transformed my life and changed how I think about food. My transformation has also changed how I think about life and growing old. I don’t plan on sitting around hooked up to an oxygen bottle in a motorized recliner for the latter years of my life telling stories about how things used to be before I got sick.
I plan on living a full life with my wife and daughter. Hell, I want to take my grand children rock climbing and SCUBA diving in my 80’s. Just because I am now in my sixties doesn’t mean that I have to settle for diabetes.
I realized that by making the ketonic shift in my lifestyle that my value to the reader is that I know how to accomplish the reversal of diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. As a chemist, veteran teacher of twenty-seven years, and a certified health coach, I can help you achieve the same health goals that I have achieved for myself.
I can show you how to regain your metabolic health and help you wrench your life back from the ravages of chronic disease. You don’t have to lose your health, your vitality, or die early.
Come with me if you want to live!