Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

All right, here we go.

Ready?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[LAUGHTER]

I was about to travel to Texas.

And unfortunately, our entire family

had come down with the flu.

[CLICKS]

And you know in large families, it just

travels down from one child to the next to the next.

And this time though with Sierra,

it had hung on a little bit longer than the others.

So we took her to the pediatrician.

And he took a look at her and he said, she's fine,

it's just a bad flu this year.

Don't worry about it.

And the next day, she got worse.

Everything had changed with our daughter.

She was completely limp.

She was having trouble breathing.

I called my husband.

I was in a total panic.

When Jamie arrived at the ER later that morning,

one of the charge nurses took one look at Sierra

and didn't even process paperwork.

Took her out of Jamie's arms and immediately started

working on her.

They told me they were ordering a medical transport,

taking her to the best children's hospital.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

They did a few tests.

And pretty quickly, they came back and they told Jamie,

your daughter's having a diabetic ketoacidosis.

Those words meant nothing to me.

I'd never heard it.

I didn't know what it meant.

My initial reaction is, well, that's fine,

but she's not diabetic.

And the response to that is, well, she is now.

When you see your child sitting there lifeless and all

the tubes hooked up and the monitors beeping,

all you can think is praying for mercy that God would spare her

soul.

Bring her back to you.

[BEEPING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The word "diabetes" comes from the ancient Greek word

for "funnel."

Because with so much drinking and urinating,

a diabetic seemingly funneled out anything that they drank.

The world has been studying the disease ever since.

And after all of this time, there is still

not an exact known cause, and there is still no known cure

for type 1 diabetes.

What we know is that for some reason,

your body attacks itself.

Your immune system mistakenly destroys

all of the beta cells that make your body's natural insulin,

leaving you unable to make any diagnosis type 1 diabetes.

The general guideline from the Diabetes Association

to the diabetes community is that a person with diabetes

does not need to change their diet.

As long as they practice their recommended method

for controlling the disease by counting carbohydrates

and matching it with a dose of insulin.

This fallacy has been perpetuated by major diabetes

organizations, pharmaceutical corporations, and food

manufacturers for profit for over 50 years.

[LAUGHING]

People have not been told the full truth on how to manage

their diabetes and what the consequences are.

Heart disease, cancer, diabetic peripheral neuropathy.

It affects every part of the organ system.

It leads to amputations, heart attacks.

It decreases the life expectancy on average 11 to 14 years just

with the diagnosis alone of type 1 diabetes.

So once somebody is diagnosed, the clock's ticking.

[TICKING]

[RINGS]

Well, I think we better have some chemistry, kids.

I'm going to show you the model of a molecule

from which substances are made.

Here we are.

Now this is a molecule of what substance?

Fierce looking thing, isn't it?

Ruby?

Well, It'd be a carbohydrate called glucose.

Correct.

Fine.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

A healthy human body is an extremely efficient machine.

And it is fueled by the food that we eat.

Carbohydrates like bread, cereal, and pasta

get broken down in our digestive system and turned into sugar

called glucose.

That glucose enters our bloodstream

and travels throughout the body to provide energy to our cells.

But that's not the whole story.

Glucose cannot enter cells on its own.

It needs insulin.

When we eat, a healthy body creates the appropriate amount

of insulin for the glucose.

And that insulin is what unlocks the cells for the glucose.

Without insulin, glucose will stay in the blood

and turn it thick and syrupy, damaging internal organs

and dehydrating the body, causing starvation,

and eventually, death.

[BEEPS]

Type 1 diabetics don't make insulin.

They have to have insulin.

For type 2 diabetics, they never need insulin

because their pancreas still makes plenty of insulin.

Type 2 diabetics... Pancreas is having

to work overtime because they're eating far too

many carbohydrates in the diet.

I personally don't even think that type 2 diabetes should

be called diabetes.

It should be called what it actually

is, which is carbohydrate overdose syndrome

or carbohydrate toxicity syndrome.

[CLICKS]

So my son Dave, he was on a really good football team,

and his play just dropped off the cliff.

He could barely throw a pass.

And we didn't know what was wrong.

When we took him to the doctors again,

the doctor said that he had some kind of flu and to make sure

he keeps eating, and he'll get better.

And he looked like a bag of bones.

And we took him back to the pediatrician,

and she finally agreed to do tests.

The next day when the test results came in,

we got an emergency call from her.

He needs to immediately report to the emergency room.

A healthy, non-diabetic, active,

fit kid is going to have blood sugars in the 80s and 90s.

I would give Dave a meal that we had been instructed on how

to compose from the dietitian.

And within a half an hour, his blood sugar would be 280.

And I would inject him with insulin

to get the blood sugar back down.

And with an hour or an hour and a half,

his blood sugar would be down to 40 milligrams per deciliter,

and he'd be feeling terrible.

My numbers were like this all the time.

And it just, I wasn't feeling good, because I was either low

or it just skyrocketed.

[CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It was a Friday night, and he finally started feeling like

himself again.

And we went over to my mom's house,

and we had a big family dinner.

And then that night, he woke up at 3:00

in the morning throwing up.

And he had lost some weight.

And so I finally was like, I've got to take him in.

So I took him into the ER.

And they admitted him right away.

And he had a blood sugar of close to 700.

And his A1C...

I don't remember... It was 13, somewhere

between 13 and 15 at the time.

Those numbers didn't mean anything to me.

I didn't know what they were.

I didn't really remember much in the hospital.

I remember sleeping for two days.

And I woke up, and I thought it was Saturday

when it was really Sunday.

[CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS]

My son was diagnosed five years ago with type 1 diabetes.

And for the first three years after his diagnosis,

we floundered.

I didn't feel very good.

My average blood sugar then was like 170.

We tried to do everything by the books,

as we were taught in the hospital.

You are always giving more insulin, giving more sugar,

giving more insulin, to try and achieve a flat line.

And it's not possible.

[CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS]

Neither of us have type 1 diabetes in our family.

But Jack at the age of two...

He turned two in October, and he was diagnosed

December of that same year.

Completely caught us off guard.

We thought maybe he had the flu or some type

of viral infection.

We weren't even told what normal blood sugars were.

We were sent home with instruction

to keep his blood sugar at 150.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It was presumed that he would be eating a lot of carbohydrates

that would require a lot of insulin,

specifically large doses of very fast acting insulin.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

After years of research, a small group at the University

of Toronto was able to isolate insulin by experimenting

on a dog's pancreas in 1921.

Shortly after, a patent on insulin

was awarded to the group.

But they sold it to the university for $1.

Sir Frederick Banting, one of those scientists,

justified the $1 sale, noting, "Insulin belongs to the world,

not to me."

[HISSING]

This would lead to the University of Toronto

partnering with Eli Lilly and Company

to become the first to manufacture insulin

as a life-saving treatment of diabetes.

Today, much of the world's insulin production

comes from one of three companies...

Eli Lilly, Sanofi, or Novo Nordisk.

I like to call hypoglycemia an insulin overdose.

Right.

So if you're eating a high carb meal,

you need a high dose of insulin.

You're playing a balancing act between this high carb

and this high dose of insulin.

And sometimes you roll the dice and you hit it,

but most of the time, you're going

to be off one way or the other.

This isn't an optional medicine.

This is a vitamin or something that will help with allergies.

This is life-saving.

If our children don't have insulin, they die.

That's what happened to kids before insulin came around.

You did your best to limit carbohydrates,

but their blood sugars were high.

They wasted away, and they died.

When I was diagnosed at nine years old,

I remember I was about 35 pounds.

If you see any of those pictures that

go way back to right before insulin and then after insulin,

you have these kids that were skin and bones...

That was me.

What I do remember is probably every 15 to 30 minutes,

I was drinking 16, 20 ounces of water,

and following that up with basically emptying it out

just as fast.

[CLICKS]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Two months after my diagnosis, we got a phone call.

About me.

About this one that she had just been diagnosed,

and she needed a foster family.

So I followed the ADA diet that they had told me to stick to.

Eat 60 carbs breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Take x amount of insulin.

And then in between each meal, eat 15 carbs with no insulin.

And so I thought, OK, if I do exactly what they say,

then I'll have success and I'll have good blood sugar,

because I'm following the paper.

And I'm an A student, so I'm going

to do exactly what they say.

These guidelines were given to hospitals and physicians

and dietitians by the American Diabetes Association.

It's the guiding force behind how people with diabetes

are treated.

The American Diabetes Association is the preeminent

organization for diabetes guidelines in the United

States.

Through research from various organizations,

they provide recommendations to hospitals, doctors,

and practitioners.

Who, in turn, give them to their patients with diabetes,

who build their grocery lists and fill their prescriptions.

They are funded by grants and donations.

The largest of these donors, ironically

called Banting Donors, after Sir Frederick Banting,

include the three largest insulin manufacturers.

No one has betrayed diabetics more than the American Diabetes

Association.

It's safe to say that the American Diabetes

Association has been bought off by the millions of dollars

that big pharmaceutical corporations give them

every year.

They get millions of dollars a year from multiple big food

manufacturers like Pepsi and Coca-Cola and Kraft

and Kellogg's.

In order to keep the large donors

happy to treat diabetes and manage it

as a chronic progressive disease,

they ignore the diabetics.

And the diabetics are the one ultimately

who suffer from this.

I was miserable.

I just felt sick and nauseous.

And, I mean, there just aren't words

to describe the fear that comes with blood sugar going

up and down, riding the roller coaster.

[YELLING]

[BLOWING]

And people don't know that there is another option out

there or another way of management.

[BLOWING]

I was diagnosed my freshman year in college.

I was about ready to turn 18.

And I thought that the freshman 15 was totally a fallacy.

I was losing weight.

I was sleeping great, sleeping a lot.

I could eat anything I wanted, drink anything I wanted,

and I was losing weight.

Finally, somebody said, you look like death.

From diagnosis through pretty much when I graduated from high

school, it was just ups and downs.

And I...

You missed 40% of high school.

[LAUGHS] I missed 40% of high school.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Blood sugars were never...

They were just up.

The roller coasters that you see on CGM graphs now.

We didn't have CGMs back then, but that's

what my blood sugar did.

And I didn't... I just didn't feel good.

I just didn't feel good.

But it just became normal to not feel good.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

When I was 20, I was pregnant with my first child,

and I was told that I had gestational diabetes.

By the time I had my fourth child,

they said, well, it's decided to just stay.

You're diabetic now.

I started noticing my health deteriorating.

I feel like my pancreas was sputtering at that point.

So sometimes it would work, and sometimes it wouldn't.

But it was really unpredictable.

First I had the cataracts.

And then I started having retinal bleeds.

I developed a lot of skin issues.

Cystic acne.

And I also have gastroparesis, which

is the nausea, the vomiting, and then

some subsequent digestive issues.

I have trouble controlling my bowels.

It's called diabetic diarrhea.

Neuropathy in my hands.

Neuropathy in my feet.

It was up to my knees at one point.

And then about seven years ago for Mother's Day,

I got a pedicure.

(SOFTLY) Sorry.

And I developed a foot ulcer.

It was infected lots and lots of times.

Why do they make bathroom tiles white?

I was always leaving little red footprints.

Because it would open up, and I would bleed.

I was told that blood glucose of up to 180 was perfectly fine.

Every complication I have was simmering and developing

for all those years.

Because that's too high.

I was told to avoid fat.

I was told to not have a lot of red meat.

Try to have lots of fish and chicken.

And to otherwise just count my carbs

and inject the insulin appropriately.

I wasn't given a specific diet.

Just told to inject and test.

So I wish I could go back and change that.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Films of President Eisenhower made just before his heart

attack.

A dramatic evidence of the suddenness

of the illness that shocked the nation.

The heart attack of President Dwight Eisenhower in 1955 would

start a chain of events that would change the American diet

for the next 65 years.

With a general rise in heart attacks throughout the country

in the 1950s, Ike's heart attack had the nation

scrambling for answers.

One physiologist, Ansel Keys, declared that saturated fats

were the culprit.

Even though his scientific methods

were found to be flawed, and as a result,

his outcomes were incorrect, this

was an answer that the country could latch on to.

The American Heart Association then

pushed out their low fat diet.

Which led to the food pyramid, a recommendation

to eat a low-fat, heavy carbohydrate diet.

I think the fundamental problem is that the doctors are

using 1970s style nutrition for reasons that were never

correct.

These myths have persisted for many decades now.

Really during that time from my diagnosis in 1977 through

to '95, was really the time period where the food pyramid

was actually turned upside down.

And that's when all the carbo was starting to be pushed

and the low fat.

Basically, it was OK to eat bread or rice or this or that.

That was part of my meals every single day.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

For ages, certain foods have been thought to contribute

to good health.

Now, the FDA has determined the scientific link

between nutrients and certain diseases.

The connection between diet and health

has never been so well defined.

But to make the link even clearer,

the federal government has designed this food pyramid.

It's built around five food groups.

At its base are foods like breads and pastas,

that should be eaten in greatest quantity.

Foods that should be eaten sparingly,

like those containing fats, oils, and sugar,

are at the top.

Mathematically, if you look at the food pyramid and if you

try to make a, say, a food plan for a child,

if you get rid of saturated fat from protein foods,

like meat and cheese and eggs, you've gotten rid of all

the caloric needs of the child.

So there's only one place to go to fill those caloric needs,

and that's by putting in a lot of grains and vegetable oils.

I would either first skyrocket and then probably

crash.

Or reverse... I would crash first and then eat

a lot of sugar along with the bread, and then skyrocket.

The day that Brooklyn was diagnosed,

we were actually at Disney World.

She started vomiting on our 17-hour trip down there.

We just assumed it was car sickness or the flu,

because it was November, that's flu season.

She had just played the World Series a few months before.

[CHEERING]

So she's breathing so loud that I can hear it

in the opposite bed.

I grab her underneath her... (SIGHS)

I grab her underneath her back, and I say, Brooklyn, Brooklyn?

Brooklyn.

Brooklyn.

And she's looking at me, but she's not.

Her eyes are glassed over.

Had we not gotten Brooklyn to the ER when we did,

she would have died.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

When she did finally wake up and they

felt that it was safe to feed my child,

they fed her pancakes, apple sauce.

She had yogurt.

They're hitting her with insulin,

but the insulin's not meeting the carbs

that they just put into her.

She's on an insulin drip.

But yet, the insulin drip is not keeping her blood sugar down

because they're feeding her so many carbs.

When they moved us out of ICU into a regular room,

the nurses brought one of her first meals.

And I was in shock at what they were going to feed her.

It was a personal pepperoni pizza,

a container of ice cream, a juice box, and some fruit.

It was over 90 carbs for a very first meal.

The second meal that they brought

was French toast, fruit, and orange juice, the next meal.

Then after that was a grilled cheese, mashed potatoes,

and another juice box for a type 1 diabetic.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Here, try it again.

OK, eat.

Mmm.

Yeah, you can have it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Mmm.

It didn't make any sense.

If you're feeding a ton of carbohydrate food,

it's only going to send the blood sugar skyrocketing.

Carbohydrate is the most potent determiner of your blood

sugar.

OK, if you have type 1 or your kids have type 1...

Everybody knows that blood sugars

can be affected by many things.

But carbohydrate is the biggie.

The patient asks the doctor, aren't the complications

caused by high blood sugars?

Yes.

What foods cause high blood sugars?

Carbohydrate.

Then what should I eat?

Carbohydrate.

Does that make sense?

It doesn't make sense, but you're in the state of,

did you see my son?

He's almost dead.

You're in a state of terror.

So it doesn't make sense, but you don't know what's going on.

You're disoriented.

Why would we pump our kids full of food that challenges

their body?

Their bodies that are already not able to make insulin.

Why would we do that to them?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I have friends who have severe nut allergies.

They would never dream of going near nuts.

My daughter is essentially allergic to carbs.

She cannot process carbohydrates.

She cannot, just like all other type 1 diabetics.

Yet the overall medical community

is telling me the opposite.

Lactose intolerant people don't drink milk.

Diabetics should not eat that many carbs.

So when the nutritionist came in, she said,

he can have orange juice and he can have pancakes.

And you can still take him to Pizza Hut.

I was never told that sugar raises blood sugar more rapidly

than other food.

And I didn't have that previous knowledge,

so if I would have left the hospital with that information,

I would have felt so much more ready to take on this disease.

Eventually, I met my endocrinologist.

She was going over how to count carbs

and dose my insulin appropriately.

And everything was about carbs and insulin, carbs and insulin.

I said to her, do you want me to just not eat those carbs?

And she said, no, it won't do you any good,

and you need those carbs.

And both those statements couldn't

be any more untrue, I know now.

I was told time after time after time,

there is no such thing as a diabetic diet.

Just whatever the standard diet is that you've been giving her,

just keep giving her that.

The most important thing is learning

how to control it with insulin.

So when we were in the hospital,

I remember them saying, eat whatever you want and dose

for it.

And actually, his first meal in the hospital

was a breakfast burrito.

Because I was like, that's eggs, that's no carbs,

so we don't have to dose you for that.

But then he wanted two cookies.

And after every meal, he had two cookies.

And we left the hospital with him being over 300...

Still.

My entire nursing career, this is how we've done it.

I knew that my patients at my job ate whatever they wanted,

and we just gave them the sliding scale.

I knew that their numbers were 200 and 300.

I knew that that was the norm.

That was the diabetic community.

For most medical doctors, including me,

nutrition education is at the very bottom of our list

of things that we're taught about in medical school.

Most doctors and most medical school educators

are neo maniacs...

Everything new.

They want birthing technology, new research.

If you start talking about a dietary intervention that's

250,000 years old, everyone at the table's eyes

will glass over, because that's not new.

You can't get a patent on it.

Big food manufacturers are not interested in that at all.

There are no billion dollar drugs

that can be fashioned from talking about nutrition.

So you can't make any money on the nutrition

idea that's hundreds of thousands of years old.

[RINGING]

The governing bodies put these recommendations out,

and it forces physicians to live within those guidelines

for fear of reprisal.

And if you don't follow the ADA guidelines as a doctor,

you can open yourself up to litigation.

So there's a dual prong where not only do the doctors never

learn how to control blood sugars,

they don't learn about proper nutrition.

But even if they do, they're essentially

forced to follow these incorrect guidelines.

Obviously incorrect guidelines.

In the recent position statement regarding management

of diabetes for type 1 children, the American Diabetes

Association failed to have a section dedicated to either

food or diet, which are the main contributors to high blood

sugar levels, which are responsible for diabetes

complications.

The Lifestyle Management section notes,

"There is no single ideal dietary distribution

of calories among carbohydrates, fats, and proteins

for people with diabetes."

I see it in these parent groups.

There's a lot of parent groups out there

that these people are... They're not even diabetic.

And they're sitting there giving advice, right.

And hey, you know what?

Your kid's numbers don't matter.

Doesn't matter.

It's all good.

So you can go in there and you can

share your graph of your 400, and everybody

will pat you on the back and say, hey, you know what?

Thoughts and prayers go out to you.

Well I got news for you.

When your shoulder glycates or your kidney fails,

those thoughts and prayers don't mean anything.

They don't.

You go online on Facebook.

So probably a lot of people on social media.

You see dumb stuff like this.

He won't have any energy unless you give him

carbohydrates.

Your child will resent you for the rest of his life.

What kind of mother are you to deprive

your child of a childhood?

He's not going to learn as well.

He's not going to grow.

You have to have sugar for your body to metabolize energy.

And if they don't have the sugars, then they won't grow.

That's what we were told over and over.

I've been researching for over a year low carbohydrate

diets, growth in children.

And I printed out over 60 articles

that talk about, protein, not carbohydrate

drives long bone growth in children.

People have suggested to patients and their family that

carbohydrates are required for growth.

Totally false.

Don't know where that belief comes from.

Our body can produce all the glucose

it needs from gluconeogenesis.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

This model exists where being a kid is about eating cupcakes

or cake and pizza and all that crap, right.

But as a T1 young kid, if you're not

feeding them protein and vegetables

and keeping normal blood sugar, that kid's

never going to grow to his or her full potential, ever.

Nighttime is a particularly scary time for parents when

they have a child with diabetes.

Because if that child goes low in the night...

[SIRENS]

well, they can go into a coma and not wake up.

That's what people are afraid of with young children.

They fear that low blood sugar, seizure, coma, death.

That's the scariest.

It's immediate.

It happens overnight.

So I think people think if you give your child carbohydrates,

you're going to somehow help with that.

But the truth is it's the large dose of insulin

you're giving your child that puts them at the most risk.

The only reason a child has a low blood sugar

is because there's too much insulin in their body.

These very companies who are supposed to be helping us

and advocating for us and curing us are not, right.

They're putting their name on stuff that

basically causes complications.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

So families are given a cookbook,

and it features characters that children might see on morning

cartoons.

And each character is presenting a recipe to that child

or to that mom.

And these recipes are full of carbohydrates.

And one of them that I recall was

a recipe featuring a magical character that both of my sons

love.

And it was for pumpkin waffles.

And I think just for the waffle, it

was something around 44 carbohydrates.

And that's without adding syrup.

So if you give your child a waffle and some syrup

for breakfast, that's 80-some carbohydrates...

A disaster.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I've never seen the Pink Panther stuff about carb

counting and how insulin works.

We just did what they told us.

I remember our CDE said she can eat whatever she

wants, as long as she covers.

And highs are not a big deal, as long as you catch them.

So don't worry about spiking after meals or whatever.

But as long as you're not staying up there

and you're catching them and bringing them back down.

That was what we were taught.

There's another publication given to us by the American

Diabetes Association, and it has a page where it's trying to do

a little myth-busting.

And one of them is it's a myth that people with type 1

diabetes can't eat sugar.

Now, why, when they're given such a platform and such

an ability to reach people?

Why would you not say at that moment,

it's better for people with type 1 diabetes

to completely avoid sugar?

It's just a wasted opportunity by a big governing

body that holds a lot of power with these new families.

That's basically the education that we got...

A crash course in carb counting, ratios.

How the insulin was supposed to move the glucose into cells.

And it all had to do with his carbohydrate intake.

We were told that he can eat cheeseburgers and fast food,

and that these things wouldn't change

because he was type 1 diabetic.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

If I wanted to have a brownie and I wanted to sit down

and actually calculate how many real carbs are in there and how

if it's white sugar or brown sugar or oats or whole grain,

whatever... you wanted to calculate all of that

accurately based on grams and glycemic index and how

it's working in my body, and if I worked out and if I slept

well, and if I'm in a good mood or a bad mood and if I have

insulin on board...

Go for it.

Most people don't have time.

They just take a random ratio, insulin-to-carb ratio,

that their endocrinologist set six or eight months ago.

Hasn't been tweaked.

Hasn't been changed.

And they take a brownie, and their blood sugar still

goes high.

Carb counting as a method to manage diabetes is flawed

for many reasons.

But one of the most obvious that I hope anyone can grasp

is that the FDA allows food manufacturers

to be off in their carbohydrate counts on their labels

by plus or minus 20%.

So even if you are the most avid carb counter and you weigh food

and you measure it, the fact that the label itself

can be off on a count will set you up for failure.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It is estimated that over 415 million people are living with

diabetes all over the world today.

In the United States, an estimated 35 million

diabetic patients spend over $330 billion per year on care.

Making diabetes the most expensive chronic disease

in the country.

Global insulin sales are currently near $20 billion

per year.

And costs are rising.

If every diabetic adopted a low carbohydrate diet,

there would be multiple billion dollar big pharma corporations

that would go bankrupt.

The big pharma corporations would

be in dire financial straits if they were not

able to ride the backs of diabetics anymore.

Industry wants us buying their products.

Pharmaceutical companies want us buying their products as well.

So when we're paying for carbohydrate food

and we're paying for big amounts of insulin,

those companies are thriving.

If every person with type 1 diabetes

reduced their amount of insulin by 65%,

someone is going to feel the sting of that.

The very first time I went to CVS and bought NovoLog

for $400, your heart is trying to figure out,

how in the world are you going to sustain this lifestyle

to keep your child alive?

This is what's needed for life, and it's insanely expensive.

I go to the refrigerator, and I pull out the vial of NovoLog

to give Sierra her morning dose.

And I hadn't had coffee yet, and I was still sleepy.

And I fumbled with the insulin, and it shattered to the floor.

And I cried buckets of tears.

$400 of her lifesaving medicine on the ground.

How the heck are we going to continue doing this?

How can any family afford to keep their kid alive?

No parent should ever have to think about that.

(SOFTLY) Sorry.

This is a 24 hour a day rollercoaster.

This isn't the kind of ride you take a break from.

This is day and night.

And we were desperate for something else.

In the hospitals, we started doing research.

And on the internet doing a Google search,

we kept seeing this name, Dr. Bernstein.

Bernstein.

Dr. Bernstein.

Dr. Bernstein.

Dr. Bernstein.

Bernstein's.

I read Bernstein's book and really got my blood sugars

under control to non-diabetic levels.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I remember the date that I first developed the symptoms,

because it was a couple of months after the atom bomb was

dropped.

Late 1946, diagnosis... diabetes.

We had to use reusable syringes and needles, which

we sterilized in boiling water.

After it cooled off, we'd assemble it.

And the needles would get dull.

And we had to sharpen the needles.

We had a pumice stone, and you'd rub the needle

on the pumice stone and get rid of the hooks.

You didn't know what your blood sugar level was.

Most of the time, it was either very low or very high.

And my low blood sugars were a constant problem

for the family.

And it happened that I was working for a company that made

clinical laboratory equipment.

And I saw an ad for a three pound device

that could be used in emergency rooms

to distinguish unconscious drunks

from unconscious diabetics by the blood sugars.

I said, if I knew my blood sugars...

I'm an engineer.

If I knew my blood sugars, I could do something about them.

So I ordered a meter and started measuring my blood sugars.

In the early days, I had a very creative lunch.

Peanut butter, mayo, and tuna on date nut bread.

I found that the highest blood sugars were after lunch.

So I said, well, if lunch is the biggest culprit,

it must be because the carbohydrate.

So I'm going to eliminate the bread

and eliminate the peanut butter, and I'll just

have the tuna fish and mayo and a salad.

Whammo.

The amount of insulin I took for lunch dropped dramatically,

and the blood sugars after lunch became predictable.

I decided at that point that I had to get this information out

and that the doctors would bend over backwards.

So the first thing I did was approach my own doctor,

who was president of the American Diabetes Association.

And he said, people come to me once a month for a blood sugar.

If they can measure it themselves,

I'd have no patients.

No one would come to see me.

I wrote a... it was like a cookbook.

Step by step, what do you do to have normal blood sugar

if you're a type 1 diabetic?

I submitted it to many medical journals,

and they were all rejected.

So I decided I would go to medical school

to get an MDF to my name and therefore

be able to get published.

I was diagnosed at age 12, and life expectancy for a type 1

diabetic was 30 years.

And I'm 86 right now.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

What's happened instantly, I've made instant glucose just

by chewing the bread.

Unconscious episode in hypoglycemia.

But Bernstein's situation just made sense to me.

He was the first diabetic that we

know of that checked his own blood sugar.

Now every diabetic checks their own blood sugar.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

He was able to realize, my blood sugar

is directly affected by the foods I eat.

This shouldn't be a big surprise, right.

By reducing his carb intake, he was

able to significantly stabilize the swings in his blood sugar

over time.

And that made a lot of sense to us.

And we said, well, let's give this a shot.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I couldn't believe the reduction in insulin.

Instantaneously, you started to notice the blood sugars coming

on down.

And so you cannot continue giving those large doses

of insulin, because you're low carb.

I thank God I found Dr. Bernstein.

Our insulin only costs $45.

And that insulin lasts us six months.

And it keeps my baby stable.

She's not fighting lows, she's not fighting highs.

She has a straight line.

Honestly, what we found is that we found some really

amazing recipes.

And the foods we're eating now on this low carb restriction

are some of the richest, most delicious plates

that we've ever eaten before.

We make low carb ice cream.

We make low carb pizza.

We make low carb cupcakes.

There's low carb desserts.

There's all these low carb foods that you can eat.

You don't feel deprived.

There's nothing that I can't eat.

You just have to change the recipe.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

We have a chart in our kitchen that has all

the dinners that we have throughout the week,

so whatever is on there.

But the dinner always consists of a protein and a salad

or some type of vegetables.

Our whole family is healthier now that we've all changed

our diet to adapt to what River eats.

It's easier for me.

I cook one meal.

It's simple cooking.

It's natural.

It's easy to find.

A simple saute of some vegetables

and throwing some meat on the grill and a salad and maybe

a low carb treat.

We have this moniker now that we're low carb.

And, I mean, I'm also low alcohol.

I mean, I'm also low drugs.

I mean, it's a mixed up name, I think.

Because we don't say, oh, I'm high carb.

I mean, nobody says that.

I eat the way that I think our disease dictates,

which is carbohydrate intolerance.

[HISSING]

Why is this not something I knew before?

I'm a dietitian, I went to school for this.

And I've had diabetes for 20-plus years.

Yet I've never heard of this in my life.

[SCREAMING]

[LAUGHS]

I just decided to give it a shot.

My insulin needs cut in half.

My blood sugars... Rarely over 120 anymore.

Changing my diet to a low carb diet made my blood sugars

so much easier to control.

I wasn't needing to count as high.

I was taking these lower doses of insulin.

It's much, much lower doses of insulin.

I'm on year 4 now of eating this way, low carb.

And very happy to say that kidney disease... gone.

The meds that they were giving me for that... no more.

Not even needed, per my endo.

No neuropathies.

Heart's in great shape.

So this is how it used to be.

And now this is how it is.

Being a type 1 diabetic doesn't really define who I am

at all.

I've gotten so good at managing myself

over these last couple of years that it isn't really

a problem at all for me at this point.

If I'm at a party, I'll eat a hamburger without a bun.

No one cares if I eat...

I'll eat pizza without the crust underneath,

and it's not a big deal.

10 years ago when I started eating low carb,

it was really tough to get low carb portions at dinner

or, hold the fries, give me broccoli instead.

Now it's very, very common.

Restaurants understand.

Stores have low carb products.

It's much, much easier.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

We eat cake, but we make a low carb cake, so...

I got one for my birthday.

What did we make for your birthday?

A mud pie.

A mud pie, a low carb mud pie.

For breakfast, just about every day,

we have bacon and eggs.

We saute them in rich butter.

This is not a Brooklyn issue.

This is a Wesley family issue.

What Brooklyn sees me eating, she eats.

You have to be an example for your child.

In 2018, Harvard University led a team of doctors

and scientists to study the low carbohydrate diet and its

effect on type 1 diabetics.

The findings were unprecedented.

The very low carbohydrate diet resulted in non-diabetic blood

sugar levels.

Fewer hypoglycemic events, less risk of hospitalization,

and a marked improvement on mental health.

Instead of just anecdotal evidence,

there's now a collection of scientific data

that proves part of Dr. Bernstein's diabetes solution.

Fewer carbs equals fewer complications.

We know what we're doing is working.

On the daily, his blood sugar ranges in the 90s,

sometimes in the 80s.

The reward is that he's a normal kid.

He doesn't feel his diabetes nearly as much

as we do as his parents.

And for as long as I can do it, I

want to make sure that that happens.

We wanted our child not to have complications,

to have normal blood sugars.

We wanted our life back and we wanted to sleep.

And that's exactly what we did.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[CHEERING]

We are always on top of Billy Lony.

And the... I think it was first set of our next guest.

Dikeman floats it high.

Wide open catch.

Touchdown.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Squeeze the body.

Squeeze.

Squeeze.

Squeeze.

Squeeze.

Squeeze.

Better.

(SINGING) Tonight, sleep's coming easy.

So goodnight to the boys and the girls.

Fly through the atmosphere to the morning.

Slide into daylight.

Close your eyes.

Soon you'll be dreaming of fireflies and stars in the sky.

High is your altitude for the evening.

Gliding through the night.

[VOCALIZING]

I won't ever believe it.

Because I stay right by your side.

Try counting all the sheep that are leaping.

One, two, three, four, five.

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