Podcast How Fred Reversed His Type 2 Diabetes

How Fred Reversed His Type 2 Diabetes

Hello, Hello. Hello wonderful people. Okay. Today we are talking to a gentleman called Fred Rutman and he is telling us his story of how he had diabetes and how he reversed his diabetes. now, the reason I am telling you this story is because diabetes is not a great illness to get. You do not want to get diabetes.

And as we talk about this, you will realize that one of the things about diabetes is that it can be really difficult to know that you have diabetes. It might be that you feel tired or thirsty and you just think, oh, that's just how I feel all the time.

It’s Possible to Reverse Type 2 Diabetes

Now the good news about diabetes is that you can now reverse diabetes, you can prevent yourself from being at risk of having diabetes by making healthy changes. easy, simple, healthy changes. So if you are there thinking, oh my goodness, I'm worried that I have diabetes. Well, number one, sign up for my V I P area. I'll put this link in the show notes.

What Is My Risk of Getting Diabetes Quiz

Grab the quiz in the VIP area: https://www.drorlena.com/offers/izxhw6Bd/checkout

There's a quiz that you can do, which walks you through what your risk of diabetes is now to do that quiz. You need to know things like your weight and your height and your waist circumference, because it will put the figures in and it will mark what your risk. And if you are there thinking, oh my goodness, I've got a diagnosis of diabetes, or I want to reverse diabetes.

Want to Reverse or Prevent Diabetes?

Book a call with Dr Orlena: https://bookme.name/drorlena/dr-orlena-chat

Then feel free to reach out and have a chat with me at the moment in August, I am offering free 15 minute chats to anybody, whether you want to work with me or not. And the reason I'm doing this is just to get to know you and say hello. Now I do have various holidays booked in August, but I will leave the link in the show notes.

If you want to chat to me. I really love to chat to you now, listening to Fred's messages. One of the few things I'd like to highlight is his message of make those changes. Now make those changes now, and you are in control of your. Health.

Welcome Fred Rutman

Hello? Hello, Fred. Welcome to the fit and fabulous podcast. Hello, thank you for having me.

I'm very happy to be here. Well, thank you for coming and sharing your story with us. I'm intrigued to hear your story because you're gonna tell me the story as we record. So I don't know your story yet, but do you wanna start by just telling people a little bit about yourself? Sure. I'm a, I guess, forced into medical retirement person.

I was an economics finance marketing professor at a college in Toronto and in 2009 I had a ridiculous series of medical traumas happen to me. And that put me in the situation that I am today. So recovering from a bunch of different things and trying to write a book about what's all gone on. That sounds very interesting.

When Were You Diagnosed with Diabetes?

So. Do you, I mean, today I wanted to talk about diabetes, but I want to hear everything cuz I love knowing people's medical stories. So should we start by focusing on the diabetes and sure. When were you diagnosed with diabetes?

I was diagnosed in the emergency room in 2009 when all these things started happening to me.

Fred Didn’t Know He Had Diabetes

Okay. So I had no idea. That I was diabetic because you usually, you don't feel the symptoms, you know, later on as the, as the disease progresses, if you get the neuropathy and you know, the kidney damage and stuff, you can start to actually feel it in your body, but at the front end, most people don't really, yeah.

Even know they have it or, or feel. Yeah. Or the symptoms might be like what we call non-specific symptoms. So they, you just think, oh, it's nothing. So take us back to before that event.

What did life look like before you were diagnosed?

Life was pretty normal. You know, like most people you have your, your job and your family and you take care of those, those duties.

When I was younger, Played hockey and rugby and American football. I was never a petite person. I've got quite the frame on me. After I did my MBA in 1998, I really started to balloon. And in the early two thousands, I was up to about 340 pounds. So probably 130 kilo. Okay. Something in that range.

But, you know, I still exercised, I went to the gym, I rode my bike. And aside from having a lot of aches and pains all the time, which I just attributed to, you know, having my body beat up so much when I was younger I didn't really have anything going on.

At that time was Health something that Played on your Mind?

It played on my mind a little bit. I, I had never been a big diet. I had tried a couple of diets when I was younger. You know, there's some family history of obesity. But it never really got my attention because I had the, the mindset that you could, you know, I would exercise a bad diet mm-hmm okay.

Which is, you know, the marketing of, you know, that gets to you. So tell us, tell us what happened. In 2009, I had a series of events where it looked like I passed out random. And every time I passed out randomly, I managed to hit my head on whatever was the hardest object in the universe, in the immediate vicinity.

So this happened to me about 20 times over four or five months. So I sustained a series of concussions and I was misdiagnosed. Miscommunicated with dismissed all the things we hear about in the medical system. And I'm in no way bashing the medical system, it is what it is. And eventually they found out that I had a severe heart block, so my heart was actually stopping.

I wasn't passing out, so my heart would stop. You don't have any blood pressure, no blood and oxygen to the. And you know, you're clinically dead. So the title of my book is the summer. I died 20 times, which is actually what happened to me. So the first time I was in the hospital for this, they drew my blood work and they found I was very diabetic.

A Blood Test Showed My Sugar Level Was Very High

So I'm not sure which numbering system you use for blood sugars, but mine was 20. Yeah, I use a different one, so I don't know what that means. But I'll take that as high . So you use the American system? No, the English system, the English system. So multiply by 18. So four 20 ish. Wow. So I just had, you know, some sort of syrup running through my BL my veins.

Goodness. Yeah. Goodness. They immediately dosed me with a gallon and a half or so of insulin. And and I was on the insulin train for the next nine years. Oh, goodness. Yeah.

What did those nine Years of Having Diabetes Look Like?

It was up and down because I was trying to recover from all the head trauma and I had a couple more incidents.

In between, because the way they cured my severe heart block, or they thought they cured was to insert a pacemaker. But I had three pacemaker failures, which required emergency surgeries as well. So that's a lot of trauma to, to recover from. And the, the doctors don't really give you. A methodology to get rid of your diabetes seri saying you need to lose weight, which we know isn't very successful for most people, especially in the long term.

And I just assumed that I'm gonna be poking myself with needles and this is gonna get worse and worse and worse. And I'm probably gonna end up losing a limb or a kidney or some combination there. So it certainly didn't make me happy to be in that situation. Yes. And I have to say in defense of those doctors, it is only recently that people have realized that we can reverse diabetes.

So when I trained at medical school, we were taught. That you couldn't reverse diabetes. Now I will add a claimer to this that I trained. I did pediatrics rather than adult medicine. So after I finished at medical school, I didn't really have very much to do with adults for a long period of time. But when I was at medical school, it was, you know, you've got diabetes, that's it.

There's no going back essentially. And it's only recently that people have really realized that actually they can reverse diabetes which is what you amazingly did. So, congratulations. Well, thank you. So you graduated when in 2018. No 2001 a long time ago. not so long. I, I have a therapist and we were talking about the ages of my other doctors.

Cause I have endocrinologists and a variety of cardiologists and stuff like that. And she said, oh my God, all your doctors graduated before I was born.

That happens. So listen, tell us, so, you know, you went through this period of nine years and you know, I think one of the things I really want to highlight in this episode is diabetes is a really, really horrible disease.

90% of People with Type 2 Diabetes are at Risk of Dying Within 10 Years

In fact, I will tell you that my uncle died of diabetes a few years ago, which you know, I didn't know him very well, but it's, it is a really.

Debilitating debilitating disease, not only because it has a high death rate, but also, you know, it comes with, as you say, like a whole host of complications and effects, pretty much, you know, your entire body can be, have side effects from it. And you talked about a few things, you talked about neuropathy, which so that people understand what that means.

That's basically when your nerves stop working. And the problem with that is you may injure yourself and not feel it. And then you end up that wound not healing properly. And then as you say, you might need to have your leg amputated or your arm am amputated all the side effects of diabetes. So it's a really unpleasant illness that mm-hmm you, what do, what does the phrase go?

Diabetes Has Lots of Horrible Complications

You wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. It's really not a very nice yeah. Illness. Yeah. My understanding is it's self perpetuating. For all your other comorbidities. So if you it was sort of explained to me that for example, your body, if you didn't have diabetes, your body might be able to better fight off a cancer and you wouldn't develop into a, a, you know, something that needed treatment or would be likely to take your life.

But once you add the diabetes in. You know, your immune system just doesn't have the juice to fight things off like that or Parkinson's or the other things. Yeah. Yep. Yes, absolutely. Yes. That, and also, you know, it can affect your eyes. You know, one in three people have heart problems, kidney problems, sorry, liver.

Oh my goodness. Kidney problems was what I wanted to say in the first place. Mm-hmm, all, all these really nasty things, but the good news is, as I say, you know, in not. That recent history. Could I say that the right way around in, you know, in the, in the, in the last few decades, people have really realized that actually for type two diabetes, obviously there's type one and type two.

And we're talking about type two diabetes, which is the one that develops later on in life that actually a lot of people can reverse diabetes.

How Did You Reverse Diabetes?

What happened. Sure while, while it's top of mind though, you mentioned eye problems.

I had diabetic retinopathy in my left eye and it was at a point where my doctor sent me to the surgeon to see what he was gonna do to AB it, I guess, I, I don't think you could cure it. And in the time they were monitoring me. I had gone to see my cardiologist. I was in his exam room and he came in and he literally threw a book at me.

And the book is the obesity code by Dr. Jason Fung. Who's a nephrologist here in Toronto who was sick and tired of his patients being sick and tired. Seeing a lot of them had type two diabetes and it was damaging their kidneys and they were losing limbs and he initiated a program of intermittent fasting.

And my doc, my cardiologist said, buy this, read this, do this. But only after you talk to all your other doctors, cuz you're a bit of a complex case. And you've got a lot of medications that we need to consider. So that's my, my disclaimer, I guess if you try something like this, you have to work with your medical professionals.

And I, I started it. The, I read the book, the science made so much sense to me and it, it answered so many questions as to why diets hadn't worked. And I think one of the lines in his book, Hormones will beat willpower 24 7, and a lot of people, their problem with their weight is their hormones are out unbalanced and that causes a domino effect through the rest of your body.

Fred Started Intermittent Fasting and Reversed His Type 2 Diabetes

If you can get your insulin anchored to where it's supposed to be so many other things start healing. And that was may of 2018. When I got the go ahead to start fasting. And by December of 2019, I was off insulin. Wow. That's amazing. Congratulations. And tell us, what did your fasting look like? Cause there's lots of different ways that you can do intermittent fasting.

So what approach worked for you? Sure. It, it's an interesting story because. I read about all those approaches or a lot of them. And there's one in particular called OMA one meal a day. So people will fast, you know, 22 hours and eat that meal in the two hour eating window and stuff like that. And I thought, no way, no way will I, I have no desire to do this.

It'll never happen. And within three months, I went to one meal a day, just, just cuz that's what my, I could finally listen to my body and that's what it was telling me to. And here's a really interesting point is that in society now people think that they have to eat frequently. In fact, I've seen lots of advice, which says, oh, in order to lose weight, you have to lose eat five or six meals a day.

And I have no idea where that comes from. I'm sure somebody can enlighten me, but actually it doesn't matter how many meals a day you have in that our body just gets used to it. So back in the day, people used to eat one meal a day. And that functions perfectly, perfectly well. And you can get all your calories that you need in one meal.

Many People Fear Hunger and Eat Immediately

One of the things I'm always going on about my clients with is this idea that we have hunger and hunger is a signal that really happens in a pattern of when we normally eat. And obviously hunger does also. Tell us when we are genuinely hungry. So for example, when I go and swim and cycle lots, I feel more hungry after that, because my body's saying you've used up a lot of calories.

You need to replace those calories now. But oftentimes hunger is something, you know, this signal, but it's not like oxygen. It's not like, oh my goodness. If you don't breathe now it's lights out. What it's saying is, Hey, it would be kind of good if you've got some food now, but what happens when you don't have food?

What Happens if You Don’t Eat When You Feel Hungry?

The answer is nothing. Your body just goes and use some stores. So hunger is one of those signals that, you know, we do need hunger, but we don't need to have this relationship, which is, I feel hungry. Therefore I have to eat immediately. It's okay to feel hungry and to ignore it and just go, oh, you know what?

Society Tells Us We Have to Eat Frequently

It just goes away after a bit. Anyhow as I, my point was, you know, it is, you can just eat once a day, twice a day, whatever works for you. Basically, I just saw the other day a video from British golfer from golf monthly or something. And in his tips to beginners, he talked about having so many snacks in your golf bag because you're gonna be out there for far or five hours.

My gosh, how often do we ever go four or five hours without eating? Mm. You know, is it, it's just a, a ridiculous concept. Well, it is, I think it's partly society and I guess it's partly the way we work. And you know, why do we all eat? Well, not me, but why do people eat breakfast cereal? Because the breakfast cereal companies have said, Hey, it's a really good idea that you have this breakfast cereal that comes in this box.

And before breakfast cereal companies sold us breakfast cereals, we didn't eat breakfast cereal. Well, some people did, but most people didn't, they ate vegetables and stuff like that. So when we look back at how people used to eat, it's really interesting. And people used to eat just one meal a day. You know, that was perfectly fine for them.

The Best Solution is the One that Works For You

So, but it worked for you, which is the most important point. I always say, you know, go the way for what works you in your unique situation. So how did it, how did you feel when you first started it? I first started doing off a 12, 12 pattern because we didn't know how to manage my medications and how my body would react.

Your Mindset is Your Super Power to Reversing Type 2 Diabetes

And that was, that was really easy. It was surprisingly easy. And one of the things you have to take into account when you're starting something like this is your mindset and you. Your mindset or your positive attitude, whatever you wanna call it is your superpower. And we forget to use it so often. I was also recovering from a surgery when I just started.

So you know, I didn't feel good from the surgery, but within a month I was back to riding my bike. Just moving forward and lengthening my fasting window. The intermittent fasting is a, is a really interesting thing because most doctors, if they prescribe it, focus on the weight loss part of it, and they don't focus on all the other health benefits that happen while you're intermittent fast.

So all the atopy and the epigenetic things and the balancing of the hormones I healed ridiculously quickly from my surgery. It was, it was a pretty significant surgery. That's amazing. And so when did you start intermittent fasting? May of 2018. So three, I'm trying to think where we are four years ago.

So how have the last four years been for you? For the most part it's been really good. I had COVID like many my, one of the cardiologists from my hospital said that the fact that I was intermittent fasting actually saved my life. If I hadn't built up my immunity and my resistance and my body's ability to heal itself, I likely wouldn't be here right now talking to you.

That's amazing. So I've gotten rid of my diabetes. My asthma sleep apnea skin tags all over my body. I haven't had a migraine or a headache in four years. Except for the COVID. I haven't had a, a cold or flu it's it's just miraculous. And I was actually sorry, if you won't ask question. Well, I was just gonna ask, did you change the type of food that you eat as well?

What do you eat when you have your one meal?

I still don't eat as clean as I'd like to. What's interesting is when you fast, you, you have appetite correction. That's what allows you to eat the one meal a day. So your body gives you signals that you're full, faster than you were before. And your tastes changed.

My Body and Taste Buds Have Changes. I No Longer Desire Processed Foods

So foods that were appeal. Previously are much less appealing now in particular, the ultraprocessed foods. So, you know, potato chips or crisps as you call them you know, that I used to really enjoy often they taste gross now. Like you can really taste the, the awful oils and stuff that they're, they're coded with.

So I eat a lot more vegetables and fruit now. A lot less processed food. I never go to a drive through or any of those things anymore. So I'm, you know, probably a thousand percent better, still not perfect, but I'm not worried about perfect. Perfect. Fabulous. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story with us and congratulations.

You've made, you know, a true transformation, I would say, and super inspiring for anyone who's listening. What would be your message for people who are. You know, back where you were in 2009 and they probably don't know that they have diabetes, you know, they're overweight. And you know, that sort of like nag of, oh my goodness.

Don’t Put Off Making Healthy Changes. Tomorrow Never Comes

I ought to be more healthy, but I'm gonna put it off for tomorrow. I'm gonna put it off tomorrow. What would you say to those people tomorrow never comes, you know, it always turns into today and the longer you wait, the harder your journey is going to be. So take action. and it can save you a lot of, lot of difficulties down the road.

Don't, you know, a lot of men have trouble going to the doctors and, getting checked out and then they don't believe that they have the condition or that it'll affect them the same way. You know, it's a crock your body's your body, your cells are your cells. And if you have a problem, you need to take care of it.

You Only Have One Body and You Need to Look After It

Fabulous. I love it. Yes, absolutely. Like you only have one bodies. You have to look after it.

Connect with Fred Rutner

Tell us about the book. When's the book coming out? Well, I'm just working with a publisher now. So the target date is in February. It's mostly written now. And there'll have to be some edits and you know, all the production stuff and, you know, designing a cover and finding somebody to write a forward and that sort of thing.

Find Fred on IG: https://www.instagram.com/repeatedlydf/

But February is the target date. Perfect. And if people want to keep in contact with you, do you have a website or a place they can keep in contact with you? I have a very startup Instagram “repeatedly dead Fred”.

So they can find me on there and send me a message or send me money, whatever you want to do. perfect. Thank you so much for being with us today. My pleasure. Thank you for having me on.