THE DIABETES PANDEMIC AND A SOLUTION: THE PROBLEM: The body is a community of cells, working together for the greater good of the whole. Cells live in an ideal environment. Each cell gets everything it needs, food, water, oxygen through tthe blood in return for its special function. Signals are also sent through the circulatory system by special chemicals called hormones. One hormone called insulin informs cells to accept sugar being sent to them in the blood. Insulin is released when you eat. If cells already are loaded with sugar, they begin to resist the command to accept more sugar. Instead the sugar is sent into storage as fat. Another problem is repeated insulin spikes. When insulin comes to the cell too often, the cell begins to resist the command to open to let sugar in. This results is the body ramps up the insulin level to give a louder order to let in sugar. An unhealthy environment builds up, with too much sugar in the blood, too much insulin and cells with built-up resistance against insulin. Another bad feature of this is that because insulin shunts excessive sugar into fat, continuous high insulin levels debilitate the body’s ability to access fat for energy. Even if you restrict calories, in this environment, the cells can not access energy from fat so they turn down their activity levels (the only choice they have, because the sugar can’t get in!) You feel tired. The normal situation is that when food is unavailable, fat can be used to make sugar and fuel the body. There is usually fat for many days of energy. THE SOLUTION: What you want is to restore normal functioning: The cells waiting for sugar and responsive to the command to take it in. You have to reset your system; making friends with your cells. Cells will drop their defenses to insulin in time. **If already a diabetic consult with a doctor. If you don't eat, the body has one day's worth of sugar in the liver. After that, it will begin to dip into fat stores for energy. It makes the right amount of sugar. from the fat. Also, giving the body regular meals say breakfast, lunch, dinner is good. The cells rest and chill out and prepare to receive the proper sugar they need. If you eat in a 6-8 hour window, you are fasting most of the time which is good. OTHER BENEFITS TO FASTING: When not belabored by excessive sugar and ‘LET IT IN’ commands, the cells go into repair mode. They fix their mechanisms. They weed out old broken cells and reuse their parts to make new cells. You become more alert; ready to look for food. WHAT IS NATURAL?: This feast/fasting cycle is the natural way we are designed for. Frequent meals tip the system into an unhealthy over-fed, insulin resist condition. High unrefined carbohydrates give a surge of sugar the cells resist taking in. Avoid them.