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Transcript
- 04:07 About Franziska Spritzler
- 10:07 Franziska’s Presentation at the Diabetes Summit
- 10:59 Net Carb Versus Total Carb
- 13:52 Effects of Going too Low Carb
- 16:59 Experimenting with Your Personal Low Carb Diet
- 19:36 Diabetes and Carbohydrate Restriction
- 21:33 Calcium in Excess and Insulin Resistance
- 22:36 Blood Sugar Levels that Spell Diabetes
- 25:46 Getting Started with a Low Carbohydrate Diet
- 26:53 Problems with Diabetes Medication
- 29:41 Health Conditions Caused By Diabetes Medication
- 34:43 The Low Carb Dietician’s Guide to Health and Beauty
- 36:47 Beauty Tips
- 38:49 Glycation
- 40:37 High Carbohydrate Levels in Fruits
- 45:13 More Beauty Tips
- 48:49 Most Pressing Health Issue in the World Today
- 50:27 Find Franziska Spritzler
Wendy Myers: Hello! My name is Wendy Myers. Thank you so much for joining me on the Live to 110 podcast. You can find this video podcast on the YouTube channel, WendyLiveTo110, and on the corresponding blog post on my website, myersdetox.com.
Today, we are having Franziska Spritzler on the show. Love that name. It has a nice ring to it. We’re going to be talking about diabetes and how you can reverse diabetes with a low carb diet. She’s a certified diabetes educator.
I met her on Jimmy Moore’s Living La Viva Low Carb Cruise. Franziska and I were hanging out with our fellow presenters on the cruise. Franziska is really, really nice and I wanted to have her on the show. She’s also a registered dietician. She’s a big advocate of the low carb diet.
She has a new book out called, The Low Carb Dietician’s Guide to Health and Beauty. I wanted to talk to her a little bit about that and how the low carb diet can make you more beautiful.
Please keep in mind that this program is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition, and is not a substitute for professional advice. Please consult your health care practitioner before engaging in any treatment that we suggest today on the show.
If you happen to goof up and have a high carb meal with some gluten (usually, high carb meals do involve a little gluten), there’s a great supplement called Glutenza. It’s by NuMedica. This is a fantastic supplement and I recommend it to my clients to take it for a little while and to take it before they go to a restaurant in case they get glutenized. In case they accidentally get a food, even if it doesn’t contain gluten, it can be cross-contaminated with gluten. Some people can have really strong immune reactions to this, to having a very, very small exposure to gluten.
So I think this is a great tool that I have in my handbag. I take a little Glutenza before I go to a restaurant or if I splurge, I have a piece of bread or something that has some gluten in it. I do really, really good most of the time, but sometimes, I screw up and I have some gluten. Big deal! So I like to have Glutenza in my arsenal tool just in case that happens.
I’m also really excited to announce my upcoming launch of my Body BioRehab Program. You can sign up to learn more about it when it launches at BodyBioRehab.com. Essentially, this is a 30-day guided program to eat a low carb, Paleo diet for 30 days just to try it out. Try it on for size to see if it can help improve your health conditions, to make you feel better and give you more energy, to reduce brain fog, and to get your mojo back, basically.
And the program is going to focus on the five pillars of health. These are the five pillars that you need to be focusing on to improve your health and reverse disease. They are diet, they are detoxification, exercise, (I’m going to have some really hilarious exercise videos showing you what you should be doing on the program). Additionally, there is going to be a supplementation plan to take a wire on the 30-day program. Just some basic supplements that I think everybody should be taking. And the program is going to focus on stress how to reduce stress and sleep, how to improve your sleep hygiene.
A lot of people, a lot of my clients don’t realize a lot of the mistakes they’re making that are preventing them from a really good night’s sleep. This is the key to health. You have got to recharge your batteries every night and get a deep, deep sleep. And I’ll teach you how to do that.
So go sign up at BodyBioRehab.com. I’m so thrilled to launch this finally. It’s been many, many months in the making and it will debut April 1st.
Our guest today is Franziska Spritzler. She is a registered dietician and a diabetes certified educator who takes the carbohydrate restricted, whole foods approach to managing diabetes and insulin resistance. She works in private practice in Huntington Beach, California, and has been following a low carb lifestyle since early 2011.
Franziska is also a freelance writer whose articles have been published online and in diabetes journals and magazines. And in January 2015, she published her first book, The Low Carb Dietician’s Guide to Health and Beauty. Go check out her website at LowCarbDietician.com.
Franziska, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Franziska Spritzler: Thank you so much for inviting me, Wendy. I’m happy to be here.
Wendy Myers: Why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about your background and why you became a voice for the low carb movement?
Franziska Spritzler: I actually went back to school to be a dietician in my mid-thirties. I was a court reporter before that. I had a strong interest in wellness and nutrition and really wanted to help people. I thought I was following really an ideal diet.
I was a Presbyterian, higher carb, very low fat, lots of whole grains. I thought this was the way that everyone should eat to manage whatever diseases they had.
So I was trained to prescribe that type of diet and I started doing so. I worked at a large veterans hospital in diabetes management and weight management. I really thought that I had the ideal diet. I felt good overall except that I would get hungry an hour or two after eating. I had to snack a lot. And if I went too long between meals, I would definitely get cranky, tired and almost feeling faint.
But I thought this was normal. All the dieticians I meet snack all the time, so I thought that was a normal way to be. I had no idea that anything might be wrong until I had lab work done for life insurance purposes in early 2011.
On the lab report that came back, my fructosamine value was flagged as high. And fructosamine is a measure of the one-week average of your blood sugar. It actually measures the amount of sugar that’s glycated to albumen.
And mine was flagged as high. My husband’s was not. And because mine was flagged as high, they also did a hemoglobin A1C measurements. My hemoglobin A1C was 5.6%, which is just 0.1% below where pre-diabetes diagnosis starts.
That was really concerning to me and I thought, “What’s going on? It can’t be my diet. I have the healthiest diet in the world. This is the diet that every person with diabetes should be following.”
So I started investigating what it could be, and my fasting blood sugar was normal. My fasting blood sugar was in the 80s. So it didn’t look I had pre-diabetes. It was actually going up a lot after meals. And I found this out by testing myself with a glucometer. I have discovered that my blood sugar was regularly going above 160 and it really should never go above 120, 130, 140 at the max.
Wendy Myers: I think that’s what everybody should do. Everyone should be getting a glucometer and checking their blood sugar before and after meals.
Franziska Spritzler: I agree.
Wendy Myers: You never know. You don’t know until you know.
Franziska Spritzler: Exactly! And it can go on for years without you knowing. And my fasting blood sugar wasn’t any kind of trigger for a doctor to say, “Oh, it’s high. Let’s test.”
So no one would have ever tested this. And even the life insurance, they’re like, “Oh, the A1C was only 5.6.” But for me, I was studying for my diabetes educator exam at the time and so I knew 5.6 is way too high for somebody my age, my fitness level and eating the way I did.
So I started doing research online. I read a lot of articles and I discovered that carbohydrate restriction is the best way to control blood sugar. There was a community called [inaudible 00:08:15] Diabetes. It’s a website for people with diabetes. I read a lot of stories and I could see that the people who had the best diabetes control, were using some form of carbohydrate restriction.
So I just started gradually playing around with it, maybe reducing by 20 grams and then 30 grams. I think was eating only about 150 grams, which isn’t that high. The average American eats double that. But it was still too high for me. Not until I got it well below 100 grams total carbohydrate per day did I start to see an improvement in my numbers.
And finally, I got down to what really works for me, staying between 30 and 50 grams of net carbohydrate. I can maintain normal blood sugar control that way.
So once I discovered this, I started my blog, Low Carb Dietician. I started writing articles and then I was actually offered the opportunity to write an article from the American Diabetes Association for their Diabetes Spectrum Journal on a low carb diet pattern for managing diabetes.
So when people say the ADA is considerably high carb, it’s not true. They are slowly changing over into making it more individualized. And they realized that some people really do like low carbohydrate diets and that it works for people.
So I wrote that and I had an opportunity to be involved in some other writing projects. And I’ve met a lot of low carb researchers in the meantime. That’s really how I got into low carbs. So it was a very fortuitous event, getting those labs back, which I really was only concerned about my cholesterol. I had no idea anything blood sugar-wise was going on.
Wendy Myers: I got my blood testing strips. I ordered some new ones. They’re from Precision, the blood testing strips.
I’ve been doing it for a little while, but I’m just continuing to do monitoring just to make sure. It’s a very good idea.
Wendy Myers: And so, you were a fellow presenter at the Diabetes Summit this coming March 23rd or the 30th hosted by Dr. Brian Mowll. What were you talking about?
Franziska Spritzler: Well, we were talking mostly about how to do a low carbohydrate diet in a very healthy, sustainable way. I think that there are a lot of misconceptions of what low carb is. Some people think a low carb diet is eating nothing but bacon and eggs for breakfast, and bunless hamburger or cheeseburger at lunch and a big steak, maybe a little bit of iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing for dinner.
I really think that it needs to be a good balance between plant foods and animal foods, lots of high fiber sources from plants and just something that you feel you can do long-term.
So that was our major thing, it was just talking about how to make it a really healthy balanced way of eating.
Wendy Myers: I tried a low carb diet before. In the past, I haven’t had blood sugar issues. But I wanted to try it out. I read Dr. Eric Westman’s book, The New Atkins. I was very intrigued by it and I was experimenting and tried it out.
But one thing that didn’t make sense to me was avoiding certain vegetables that are really nutritious because they have a high carb, like for instance, an artichoke. I was bugging out about an artichoke having 17 grams. I’m going, “Do I really want to spend my carb debit with the artichoke?”
So one thing I had a problem with was feeling I shouldn’t eat certain vegetables. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Franziska Spritzler: Sure, and here again, comes down to how low carb do you want to be. Dr. Westman’s approach is extremely low carb and he counts total carbs. You can’t subtract any of the fiber out of that artichoke because the way that I look at it, the fiber does not affect your blood sugar, so I just subtract those carbohydrates out of there.
Wendy Myers: Per net carbs. That’s called net carbs. Fiber minus the sugar or sugar minus fiber.
Franziska Spritzler: Yeah, carbs minus fiber equals net carbs, exactly. Like an avocado. An avocado is a great low carb food just like an artichoke is. An avocado is even higher in fiber though. So let’s say you have 16 grams of avocado, well 14 grams is fiber. That’s only 2 grams right there instead of the 16 that you would get if you were counting total carbs.
He also likes people to stay less than 20 grams of total carb per day. And I can see the benefit of doing that in the beginning stages. But for long-term success, I think most people can eat more than that. I’ve never gone that low myself. As I said, I do 30 to 50 grams of net carb and I get tons of vegetables. I eat vegetables at least two servings at every meal including breakfast.
I don’t avoid any of them except for the very starchy ones, and that would be things like peas and potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn. But all of the other vegetables I eat. I’ll even eat a little bit of carrots, which are a little higher in sugar because they are root vegetables. But I will still eat some small amounts and I eat berries.
My diet is probably more vegetables than most people’s.
Wendy Myers: When I tried it, I was doing the beginning stages and I was doing the 20 grams of net carbs. After a few weeks (and I talked about this in the Low Carb Cruise), I just felt really unwell. I couldn’t really think very well and I was feeling weird, like I was faint, here and there. And I thought, “This doesn’t feel healthy to me. So I abandoned it.” But I still reduce my carbohydrates. I was still much more aware of my carbohydrate intake, which has a very good effect of attempting to control your carbs and monitoring them and things like that.
Wendy Myers: Can you talk about what can happen if you go too low carb?
Franziska Spritzler: If you go too low carb, some people would say you can’t because your body makes enough glucose, and it is capable of making enough glucose. But I think if you’re doing a zero carb diet – because there are people out there who eat only meat and eggs, I’ve read about a few of them – I think long-term, that’s asking your liver to do an awful lot of work to convert all the protein and fat components that can be converted into glucose. I think it takes a lot of toll on your liver to do that. I just don’t see the point of doing it.
Some people would argue that it will also impact your thyroid. I would say that’s true if you’re not getting enough calories. If you do a low calorie, low carbohydrate diet in an attempt to lose weight – and a lot of women do this. They can just have reduction in their metabolic rate, but also just feeling very cold and tired and just not feeling well – constipation, all of it, typical hypothyroid symptoms. Generally, that doesn’t happen unless the calories are too low.
But not getting any fiber, everyone’s different in the amount that they need for good internal and intestinal health. But I know for me, I need a minimum of 25 grams of fiber a day, preferably a lot more. And if you’re getting 20 grams of total carb a day, the max you could be getting is maybe 18 or 19 grams of fiber and that would be if your sole sources were things like flaxseed that are almost 100% fiber.
Most people on a very low carbohydrate diet don’t get enough fiber. I think fiber is really important. It’s also good for protection against rectal cancer, that sort of thing.
So that is my concern about going too low. I just think people need to find a balance of what feels best for them. I know some people come to me that are in very, very low carb diet, very high fat diets that aren’t losing weight and they don’t understand why because they cut their carbohydrates down to nil, but they end up with too many calories because they’re doing so much fat.
I find that increasing their carbs by increasing especially high fiber carbs that aren’t going to make much of an impact in their blood sugar, but still give them the benefits of the vegetables and the plant foods and cutting back on their fat a little bit, that helps turn things around and get the weight loss moving again and they feel better.
So those are the things I think about a low carb diet. I don’t think it’s necessarily dangerous unless you have a condition where you need to be very, very careful about the amount of fiber that you’re getting. There are certain people who, if they don’t get the fiber, they could actually get a blockage like older people. I wouldn’t put people on a very, very low carbohydrate diet without doing a very big work-up of their past medical history and other things that are going on with them.
Wendy Myers: There’s a lot of people in the low carb movements saying, “Oh, everyone should be low carb, yadah-yadah-yadah,” but I think everyone is different. Everyone has to find the diet that works for them. I think it’s a good idea to try low carb diet and play around with it, and see what grams of carbs work for you because everyone have different genetic backgrounds, different health histories, different health conditions, et cetera, and you can’t just lump everyone together and say, “Everyone should be low carb.”
I think that everyone is a little bit different. I feel like personally, I need a little bit higher carb, maybe 100 grams is good for me. But that’s still low carb in comparison.
Franziska Spritzler: It really is. That’s the one thing I’m seeing a lot. Right now, the ketogenic low carb diet is what’s really in vogue. Everyone wants to do that Keto. I get many people contacting me, “Can you help me with a keto diet?” and I say, “Why do you want to be on a Keto diet? Do you think it’s going to help you to lose weight better than being just on a very low carb diet that includes a little more protein and plant foods or do you want a therapeutic ketogenic diet because you have brain cancer or epilepsy or something like that?”
In that case, I would say a ketogenic diet is always indicated. But for somebody who just wants to lose weight or somebody like you who does better on a hundred grams of carb a diet, that’s still low carb. Because some people think it is too high if you’re anything about 50 grams of carb a day. But that’s still well below the average intake.
You don’t have blood sugar issues and that’s great. You’re testing your blood sugar. You know that. You know how you perform best.
Most people in my family are not low carb. My husband is, but that’s just recent, and the rest of my family members are healthy.
Wendy Myers: So you finally converted him?
Franziska Spritzler: I converted him. He’s low carb most of the day, but still, his evening meal has carbohydrates. So he’s a one-meal-a-day carb guy. It works for him though. It’s great! And I want everyone to find what works for them. And if you do on a better vegetarian diet that’s higher in carbs, I think that’s fine.
And some people who even have diabetes, some people with diabetes can manage a higher carb diet. I would say most people with diabetes tend to do best with some level of carb restriction.
Wendy Myers: I wish I get my husband on my Mineral Power Program. He won’t cooperate. He doesn’t want to take supplements. So he’ll live to maybe 80. I’ll live to 110.
Franziska Spritzler: You’ll live to 110 and he’ll live to 80.
Wendy Myers: Maybe, if he’s lucky.
Wendy Myers: Let’s talk a little bit about diabetes, specifically how carbohydrate restriction can control insulin levels and even help to reverse diabetes, reverse that diagnosis.
Franziska Spritzler: That’s right. That’s what the research is showing us. In every randomized clinical trial that they’ve shown where people are actually following the diet, it lowers insulin levels, it lowers the blood sugar and people can see an improvement in A1C, a drop of 1% to 2% in just a one-or two-month period of time. It’s amazing!
Really, diabetes is a disease of carbohydrate intolerance. If you eat the carbohydrates, they break down to sugar in your body. Instead of your pancreas secreting insulin and the insulin helping that sugar to get into the cells, pancreas creates insulin, but the cells aren’t responsive to that insulin. The sugar builds up in your bloodstream and a lot of it is diverted instead of being taken up by the skeletal muscle where it should be used for energy. It’s taken to the liver and converted into fat.
And you have this increasing insulin resistance over time and it causes a lot of problems. Having high insulin can cause high blood pressure, it can really do a number on your arteries and also increase your risk for cancer.
So all of those are reasons to keep your blood sugar as stable within. I would say definitely no higher than 140. Unfortunately, the American Diabetes Association Guidelines allow your blood sugar to go up to 180 for people with diabetes, two hours after a meal.
When I worked with the VA, I had a lot of patients who thought they were doing just great because their blood sugars were under 200. But they’re still doing damage if the blood sugar is over 140. And they spent a good deal of their time sometimes with their blood sugar over 140, several hours.
Wendy Myers: And another really interesting aspect of what can promote insulin resistance (and I talk about this with my clients all the time) is when someone does a hair mineral analysis (like I do on my Mineral Power Program), if someone has really high calcium levels on their hair test, that means they have really high tissue calcium levels as well. And this can promote insulin resistance.
It’s a really interesting concept of the body chemistry that is caused by adrenal fatigue. When we have adrenal fatigue, our calcium levels will rise in our tissues. And if you almost imagine a cell, if you have too much calcium surrounding the cell, nutrients can’t get, it reduces cell permeability, and sugar can’t get in as well. Glucose can’t get into your cells and it stays in your blood stream and promotes high blood sugar.
This is a really, really interesting concept that I think a lot of people don’t know about. And you can reverse this by correcting your body chemistry. You can improve your insulin sensitivity. I think it’s a really interesting way to do that.
Franziska Spritzler: That is interesting. I had no idea. That’s really interesting.
22:36 Blood Sugar Levels that Spell Diabetes
Wendy Myers: So why don’t we talk a little bit about the diabetes numbers. What should our numbers look like before meals and after meals?
Franziska Spritzler: Ideally, before meals, you should be somewhere in the 80s, definitely below 90. If you’re in the 70s, that’s okay too. And then after meals, I really like below 120, but definitely no higher than 130. A hundred forty for people with diabetes is an absolute maximum (preferably a lot lower than that). And that’s one to two hours after eating.
Sometimes people will test two hours after eating, they’ll see the 140 and feel okay. But what was it at one hour since the one hour number could be higher. I know mine always was. Usually, if I tested it two hours, I was maybe in the 130s or 140. But sometimes at one hour, I was close to 200.
So I think it’s important to try to test it at one hour, and then test again at an hour-and-a-half or two hours and see what the difference is because you may not hit the peak at one hour, or if you wait too long, you may have passed the peak.
Wendy Myers: So let’s talk a little bit about pre-diabetes. When people are diagnosed with pre-diabetes, I think people would tend to not take it very seriously. Can you talk a little about that and how people really need to use that as a wake-up call to reverse their diet change or diet lifestyle?
Franziska Spritzler: Absolutely. This is really where diet and lifestyle can make a huge difference because if you get your blood sugar under control, you may never progress to having outright diabetes.
There are some people who will argue that pre-diabetes is just early diabetes. You’ve already got diabetes. I would say that’s true in a way meaning that you’ll never be able to eat a lot of carbohydrates again when you have pre-diabetes, but you can manage it by getting it under control.
I know when I worked with the VA, sometimes patients would come to me with an A1C of 6.6% (which 6.5%, you can be diagnosed with diabetes) and they’d say, “Well, my doctor told me I’m just border line.” And then I said, “Well, you crossed over the border. You probably have had pre-diabetes for many years, unfortunately. And we could have intervened prior to this diagnosis for diabetes.”
So I think it’s really important to know what the pre-diabetes values are. It’s 5.7% to 6.4% for your A1C, and your fasting blood sugar would be anywhere between 100 – I’m going to say 100, but they say 101 to 125.
And many, many people, I would say, over 50, probably have some at least elevated fasting blood sugar between 100 and 110. And that’s particularly true if you carry a lot of weight around the waistline.
But again, doctors really don’t get concerned until they see blood sugars well over 120. So somebody could have early diabetes and not be doing anything about it. We want to keep our blood sugar as close to a hundred as possible. And once it’s over that people should be informed about what they can do about it.
Wendy Myers: Say someone is diagnosed with diabetes, what is the first step that they should do to begin a low carbohydrate diet?
Franziska Spritzler: It depends what they’re doing at the time. Definitely cut all processed foods or sugar. If you’re drinking soda, that’s actually my first one. Some people are already doing kind of what I was, eating as healthy a diet as they possibly can. And for those people, I would say you need to start cutting back on the carbohydrates, monitoring your blood sugar after meals.
For people who are already doing maybe a lot of fruit juice, fruit juice is loaded with sugar. I would definitely cut that out. So any very concentrated forms of sugar, I would have them cut those out first.
Some people like to go all in. Some people are like, “Okay, I’m ready for a dramatic change. I just want to reverse this as quickly as possible.” I would start with carb restriction early.
But other people, if they’re following the standard American diet, drinking soda, eating a lot of chips and things, just getting those out of their diet first would be the first step before actually taking away things like bread and maybe some other foods. It might just be too much for them and they’ll just give up within a few days and say, “Forget it. I’ll take the medication that the doctor wants to give me.”
Wendy Myers: And so what are the problems with the medication? I think a lot of people think that, “Oh, I can just eat what I want. I’ll just take my insulin.” What are some of the problems and side effects of medications?
Franziska Spritzler: So the side effects of diabetes medication, with a few exceptions, they can be pretty drastic. There’s sulfonylureas. They make your pancreas produce more insulin, but they also can cause you to gain weight, they can increase your risk for heart disease and they also can cause you to have low blood sugar. It’s unpredictable how it’s going to work.
Some of them, you need to take 30 minutes before you eat and then you eat the meal. But depending on how quickly or slowly your stomach empties, you can’t guarantee exactly when the food is going to be leaving and being absorbed into your bloodstream.
So you can have a low blood sugar because the medication has told the pancreas to produce the insulin and the food’s not ready yet or the food hasn’t digested yet. So you’re putting yourself at risk for low blood sugar.
Other medications, almost all of them, are associated with weight gain and cardiovascular risk. And then insulin itself, has those problems, too much exogenous insulin.
Now, people with type I diabetes, there’s no question. They will have to inject insulin for the rest of their life because the pancreas doesn’t produce any. But for people with type II diabetes, again, when I worked at the VA, some of them were on extremely high doses of insulin, 300 units a day of insulin. And what that does is it keeps your blood pressure very elevated and it causes all kinds of metabolic issues and weight gain.
That’s the thing too. We’re trying to keep the blood sugar under control. The only way to do that in some cases, what doctors think, is to load the patient up on insulin to keep the blood sugar stable. But that high insulin can also do damage to the arterial vessels.
So the best thing to do is to keep blood sugar as well-controlled as possible with as little insulin as possible. And the way to do that, I think the best way to do it is with a low carbohydrate diet that keeps the blood sugar low, so you don’t need that amount of insulin.
Dr. Westman has done some studies on people with type II diabetes that were on hundreds of units. He’s done this in his clinic. He takes them on a very low carbohydrate diet and within a few days, they’re going from hundreds of units of insulin to needing no insulin, or minimal doses.
And that’s huge. They lose weight much, much more easily. They’re full because of the kind of food they’re eating.
So I’ve just seen so many benefits in people who adopt this approach who have diabetes. I really think it’s the number one best thing you can do.
Wendy Myers: It’s really a curse when you are diagnosed with diabetes and put on insulin. The insulin can cause you to gain weight. And it’s this catch 22 because you need to lose weight to reduce your blood sugar and control diabetes. But the medication you’re taking that control it causes you to gain weight.
I saw this in my father who was a diabetic for at least 10 years prior to his passing. And he just ballooned up. It makes the health condition worse. I’ve seen it with other family members as well, this obesity.
And the diabetes medication causes cancer, it causes at least many, many other health conditions. Can you talk a little about that?
Franziska Spritzler: So the diabetes medication you’re talking about or just taking the insulin?
Wendy Myers: Or just having diabetes. Having diabetes can lead to other diseases.
Franziska Spritzler: Oh, absolutely! It’s one of the number one causes of heart disease. Actually, most people with diabetes end up dying of heart attack or stroke. And they may not know that they have a heart disease unless they’re being monitored regularly for it.
And their cholesterol levels may be just fine. That’s the other thing. Most people with diabetes are put on statins. LDL cholesterol level looks really good and yet, they’re getting so much damage to their endothelial cells, that endothelium that plaque is forming, regardless of the LDL level. Plaque is forming and they develop a massive heart attack because of the blockage. So that’s a big thing.
And then not controlling your blood sugar can lead to just horrible – even if you end up living for several years with diabetes, you can have problems with your eyes because the high blood sugar damages the delicate vessels that lead to your retinas. And once you have any kind of damage to your eye, there is no reversing it.
With kidney damage, if you discover it early, you can reverse it by changing diet, by taking medication. But when you damage your retinas, there’s no going back. So all you can do is try to prevent further damage.
Wendy Myers: My father had that as well. He was a voracious reader. He read one or two books a week his whole life. And then towards the end, he wasn’t able to read anymore. He couldn’t see the page.
Franziska Spritzler: That’s just heartbreaking to me because these are things that are very preventable. A lot of people just don’t know. There’s not enough education about how important it is to keep blood sugar levels in control.
And even people with pre-diabetes levels can be doing damage. That’s the thing. It doesn’t have to be completely out of control blood sugar. The American Diabetes Association says any A1C under 7% is good. But that could still mean that you’re at very high values for most of the day. You can still get an A1C of 7%, being above 150 for a good part of the day. That can be doing damage to those blood vessels.
Also the extremities, when I worked at the VA, many, many people with amputations above the knee, below the knee amputations.
When I first started working there, I thought they were all injured in combat. But the majority of them actually had such bad diabetes, foot wounds and leg ulcers, gangrene that they had to have their legs amputated.
That’s the thing. I know your podcast is Live to 110, and some of these people were actually living pretty long, but they had such poor quality of life because they’ve done so much damage.
And also the kidneys, I mentioned. Most people on dialysis are there because their blood sugar was uncontrolled or their blood pressure is uncontrolled or a combination of the two.
So all of these really devastating illnesses can be prevented if you just take care of yourself and get your blood sugar under control in time because this is stuff that happens over time.
When you’re first diagnosed with diabetes, your blood sugar may be very high. But the sooner you get it under control, the less risk you are for developing problems later on.
Wendy Myers: I remember my father. I visited him one time and his toenails were in really bad shape. I said, “Dad, you need to go get a pedicure.” He said, “I can’t because if they clip me or cut me in some way, just a tiny little scratch, then it could turn into a sore, gangrene, et cetera.” So he was terrified of that happening. So I had to give him a little pedicure.
But it’s true. I think a lot of people, they think it’s not going to happen to them. They think that they’re not going to get their leg amputated or they’re not going to go blind or any of the other health consequences. People really need to wake up and start checking their blood sugar with a glucometer and doing it on a daily basis so that they can prevent this problem before it gets out of control, before they start developing symptoms.
By the time you present with symptoms, you have had some sort of underlying health condition or unbalanced body chemistry for years and this silent damage has been occurring. So I can only encourage people to get a glucometer.
Wendy Myers: Why don’t we talk a little bit about your book. You wrote a book called The Low Carb Dietician’s Guide to Health and Beauty. Talk a little bit about that and what inspired you to write it.
Franziska Spritzler: So I’ve been thinking about writing a book for a while. I wanted to write a book for women and I did want it to have some kind of a beauty component to it, but I also wanted to be – as I’ve said before, I’m really about a balanced low carb diet. I think it’s really important. I wanted to have an alternative to all of the Keto books that are out there now.
I was actually approached about a year ago by somebody from a publishing company who wanted me to write a Keto book. I said, “I just don’t really want to do it. I think Keto can work for some people, but I think just a balanced low carb approach is more what I’m up for. It’s the way that I eat.” I really think most people can benefit from eating similar to the way I eat, maybe tweaking it up or down a little bit if they need to.
And so I had that on my mind. And just last summer, I started putting together some chapter ideas, and then once I started writing, it all came to me, just all of these ideas of how can we make it as healthy as possible in a way that’s not only going to improve our health and the way we feel, but also maybe even help us to look better at every age.
I’m 48 now and things change as you get older. It’s not as easy as it was when you were in your 20s to feel and look your best every day. And I got to tell you, a low carb diet, I feel better than I have in years and I’ve actually seen changes in my skin that I’m really happy with too.
So I just wanted to share this with other women and just let them know that it’s not always a super, super high fat diet, not just a few little greens here and there. You can be on a really well-balanced diet and still be low carb.
Wendy Myers: Well, you definitely do not look 48. I commend you for that. You’re doing something right.
Franziska Spritzler: Thank you so much. Thanks. I feel good. Part of it is genetic, but I think a lot of it is lifestyle. I really do.
Wendy Myers: Why don’t you talk about some of the beauty tips you have in the book and how being low carb can help make you more beautiful?
Franziska Spritzler: Really controlling blood sugar helps because when your blood sugar is too high, you actually end up damaging not just your internal organs, but your skin as well. If you see someone who is in a really poorly-controlled blood sugar for a long time, some people with type I diabetes, unfortunately, that’s a really hard one to control. Some people just have a much harder time than others. And over time, it takes a toll on your skin. So keeping blood sugar under control at all times helps.
Also eating healthy fats. I just discovered that eating high quality fats, all different types, mono unsaturated fat, which you find in nuts and olive oil, and then the poly unsaturated fats, the Omega-3 which you find in fatty fish and also things like flaxseed and the fats that you find in dairy, all of those can have a beneficial effect on your skin.
Things like berries, raspberries have a compound called ellagic acid that can help to keep your skin more elastic as you get older. I had a list of 10 low carb beauty foods and they’re all my favorite foods. I eat almost all of these every day. Things like avocado can help protect from sun damage. And so can cocoa. I’m not talking about a Mars bar. I’m talking about real, good, dark chocolate or cocoa powder. That can help to repair sun damage that you’ve experienced.
I didn’t really know that foods could do so much for you, but there are many low carb foods that do. And again, I really just wanted to share this with people, so they have an idea of what they could do too.
Wendy Myers: I used to be a sugar addict. I was really, really bad growing up because I always had a really high metabolisms. So I ate lots of sugar every day, even eating three candy bars a day at one point. I really had a big problem with it.
Wendy Myers: But I was terrified when I read this article that said that when you eat sugar, it produces these AGEs, these advanced glycation end products. And they basically break down collagen protein. And your collagen is what keeps everything nice and firm and taut. You gain weight, your skin will suck back to its prior condition. I was terrified that by eating sugar, it’s going to age me. It’s going to make your skin start drooping and things like this. Can you talk a little about that?
Franziska Spritzler: So the advanced glycation end products, you can either eat food that contains them or they can be formed in your body and that’s a reaction between a protein and glucose. So if you have high blood sugar, that can form AGEs in your body. Having fried foods too. It’s not just sugar. But yes, sugar is definitely a big age accelerator. So it’s age both ways, A-G-E and age accelerator.
But also, fried foods for too long. Again, I’m all in favor of fat. Heating certain oils to high temperatures can cause the AGEs as well. And starchy foods that are fried can develop AGEs as well.
So it’s a balance between the AGEs that you’re consuming in food and the ones that are happening internally in the body.
Again, a low carb diet, you don’t have either one of those problems as long as you’re not doing fried pork skin or something.
Having the sugar, having the starches foods that break down to sugar and you’re eating a lot of anti-inflammatory foods in the form of non-starchy vegetables and the berries and nuts and those sorts of things.
Wendy Myers: Let’s talk about the sugar in fruit. What are some of the problems with carbohydrates in fruit? I’m a big advocate of telling people to maybe cut out some of your fruit because today the fruits are hybridized. They are bred to have really high sugar.
When I eat a blueberry that’s sour, guess what? I spit it out because there’s not enough sugar in it. And so the food manufacturers are growing fruit that has the highest sugar content. This is not the fruit that we were eating even a hundred or so years ago.
I tried to do the heirloom fruits if I can if I can find them at the farmers market. But can you talk a little bit about the problem with high carbohydrate levels in fruits?
Franziska Spritzler: People tend to think that fruits and vegetables go together and just eating as many fruits as you can is just like eating vegetables, but it’s not. As you pointed out, they’re very high in sugar. It’s not just the sugar content, but also the size of the fruits are so much bigger now.
When I was growing up, an average apple was about this size. Now, there’s bigger than babies’ heads sometimes, a big grapefruit size and that’s four apples. Really, there’s so much sugar in there. A lot of it is fructose and fructose is taken straight to your liver, having too much fruit and especially from a fruit juice. But certain fruits are higher in fructose than others. That can contribute to high triglycerides and some insulin resistance as well at the liver.
So I recommend keeping the carbs from fruit pretty low. The best ones are berries. Blackberries and raspberries are the best because they’re the highest in fiber and because the fiber doesn’t break down to sugar. For a cup of blackberries or raspberries, you’re only getting six or seven grams of net carb, which is not very much at all.
And so I have that. That’s pretty much the only fruit I eat. Sometimes, I’ll eat maybe half a small apple with some nut butter on it. But I generally don’t eat too much fruit. For people who want to eat fruit, melon can be okay because it’s very high water content, so the sugar is dilute. But something like a banana, that’s going to really increase your blood sugar quite a bit. When you think about it, banana is the only fruit that’s not juicy. It’s not juicy at all. It’s pretty compact and it’s also very sweet. There’s no sour or bitter component to it.
So bananas, even though everyone thinks it’s super healthy, they can raise your blood sugar. I know a lot of people think – or at least when I worked at the VA, a lot of the veterans had a big bowl of oatmeal topped with chopped banana and a glass of skim milk. And that’s a lot of sugar. That can be a hundred grams of carbohydrate to start your day. And for many people that’s too much and definitely, somebody with diabetes.
Wendy Myers: I just cringe when I read about these fruitarians on the internet eating 10 and 20 bananas a day. I’m like, “You are destroying your body.” Tropical fruits have so much sugar.
Of course, I love tropical fruits they have so much sugar. It tastes amazing. The pineapple and bananas and papayas. I’ve really started to shy away from those. I have for a long time. Even this morning, I was just grabbing something to go out the door, and there are some bananas there. And I’m like, “No, there’s just too much sugar.”
Also, fruits aren’t as nutrient-dense as people think they are because of the hybridization of fruits and because many times, they are fertilized with NPK fertilizers. That’s three minerals where minerals in our bodies should have a hundred minerals. And so the fruits because of the way they’re hybridized, they just do not have the amount of nutrition.
So people I think mistakenly think they’re getting this huge nutrition boost from eating some fruit – but granted some fruits are very nutrient-dense like berries. I’m definitely a big fan of berries. But I don’t want people kid themselves thinking they’re eating this amazingly nutritious food. It’s definitely better than French fries, but they’re not as nutrient-dense as people think, unfortunately. And plus they’re stored at the store for a long time and transported.
I see all these fruits from Chile in Whole Foods and I’m not buying that. That’s a week old at least. Just the nutrients aren’t there.
Franziska Spritzler: That’s right. The nutrients have evaporated by that point. The sugar never leaves though. You’re still left with the sugar.
Wendy Myers: The sugar concentrates in the grapes or what-not. They’re just more and more concentrated.
Wendy Myers:We got off the topic a little bit. Can you talk a little bit about some of the other beauty tips that you have in your book?
Franziska Spritzler: So one of the big ones is getting enough sleep. They have done studies – I mean, I know it’s hard. When you look in a mirror after you haven’t had sleep, you notice it. You think, “Do other people notice it?” And over the long term especially, it can take a real toll on your looks, not to get enough sleep. So that’s a big one.
And just maintaining as low stress levels as you can which is almost impossible in our daily lives, just the way that we live now. But taking some time out for yourself, all of those things, it’s really that beauty from within thing.
I didn’t mention sunscreen in my book at all, but I think using some kind of sunscreen is important too for your skin, doing as much as you can from the inside to protect it.
And just getting comfortable with yourself too. Being the best that you can be, and not trying to compete with people.
As I said, I’m getting older. I’m not trying to look like I’m in my twenties anymore. I just want to be the best I can be inside and out and I think when you fill yourself with good food and take care of yourself, then that shows on the outside.
Wendy Myers: What are some of the other favorite tips that you have in the book or some of your favorite topics that you discussed in the book?
Franziska Spritzler: I talked about protein intake. I think that was another thing like the Ketogenic diet where some people are promoting like, “Cut back on your protein so that your ketone levels will be higher.” But when you cut back on protein, you can end up losing some muscle mass. I think you perform better, have better energy and even more satiety when you have a decent amount of protein.
I have a chart in my book for depending on if you’re small, large or medium-framed woman and I have you measure your wrist to find out which one you are how much protein you should have. I say, somewhere between 1.2 to 2.0 grams per kilogram. So that’s about 0.6 grams to 1.0 gram per pound. And some people do better on the lower end, some people on the higher end. But I think going too low in protein can be a problem.
And I mentioned earlier, fiber, that’s a big one. I think soluble fiber especially is so important and in some of these very low carbohydrate diets, people just aren’t getting enough fiber. That’s something that I really like to bring to people’s attention because I read things.
There’s this book called The Fiber Menace, about how fiber is bad for you, but he’s mostly talking about added fiber like the fiber in the wheat that people add versus fiber that comes from whole foods. I just don’t think there’s anything wrong with it and I think most people would benefit from increasing rather than decreasing the amount that they eat.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, you probably should avoid metamucil with psyllium husks and things like that. I’m not a fan of that at all. Eat your broccoli.
Franziska Spritzler: Eat your broccoli and Brussels sprouts. Brussels sprouts have so much soluble fiber. And then as I said, flaxseed, chia seed, all of those things. There are so many ways to get fiber in your diet and I just don’t see the point of avoiding it. I see much more benefit to it.
And for people who wanted to control their blood sugar too, having more soluble fiber actually helps to control your blood sugar, both fasting and postprandial.
Wendy Myers: Well, Franziska, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.
Franziska Spritzler: Well, I’ve enjoyed myself. Thank you so much for having me, Wendy.
Wendy Myers: Well, you’re not off the hook yet because I have one question I like to ask all of my guests.
What do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?
Franziska Spritzler: I would say the fact that we have such a huge aging population. I want everyone to live a long life, but I want it to be healthy and a good quality of life.
So the 110, the age to 110, I want that to be 110 wonderful years, not the last 30 years to be on all kinds of medication where you can’t think straight, where you’re incapacitated and lying in a bed and not able to take care of yourself. That is a big thing to me.
The baby boomers are aging. It’s going to be very expensive to take care of a lot of sick people. So I’d rather everyone do all they can to be healthy so they can age and have wonderful, wonderful older years.
Wendy Myers: It makes me so sad when I hear people, they’re turning 60 and 65 and they’re on two, three and even ten medications. I cannot even imagine living like that. I saw my father do it. My father was on ten medications and only one or two supplements. And I saw how he suffered and he just felt terrible all the time because of all these drug interactions and muscle wasting from statins and neuropathy and all kinds of issues related to his drug use.
That’s actually what prompted me to start myersdetox.com because people can reverse their diseases and they can live a long, healthy disease-free life without taking medications.
So that, if anything, is my main message on the website.
Wendy Myers:Franziska, why don’t you tell the listeners where they can find you and where they can get your book?
Franziska Spritzler: My website is Low Carb Dietician. So it’s www.LowCarbDietician.com. There is a book link on there, but it’s available on Amazon. It’s called The Low Carb Dietician’s Guide to Health and Beauty and it’s available in the Kindle and also a paperback version.
Wendy Myers: And what is your website again?
Franziska Spritzler: It’s LowCarbDietician.com, all one word. LowCarbDietician.com. If you just type in low carb dietician in the search engine, my site should come up first.
Wendy Myers: And you guys, you can also see her presentation at the Diabetes Summit coming up March 23rd or the 30th. Just click on the link below the video on YouTube or in the corresponding blog post on my website.
And thank you guys so much for listening. If you want to learn all about how to reverse health conditions naturally and all about detoxification, how to do it right with infrared saunas, go to my website, myersdetox.com.
You can also check out my new online health program. It’s a 30-day program with menu plans and all kinds of ways to improve your diet and lifestyle. It’s definitely a low carb diet plan, Paleo diet plan. Go to BodyBioRehab.com. That’s going to be up April 1st. I’m so excited about that.
And thank you guys so much for listening to the Live to 110 podcast.
