Permission to Heal Episode #23 - A Conversation with Dr. Beverly Yates As She Connects the Dots About Our Health

Dr. Beverly Yates

Dr. Beverly Yates is a board-certified Naturopathic Doctor in private practice, the CEO and Founder of NaturalHealthCare.com. She is a heart disease and diabetes expert with over 27 years of experience. She was an MIT-trained electrical engineer before going to naturopathic medical school. She brings her unique perspective and integrative approach to help patients struggling with heart issues and diabetes who feel like nothing works for them. 

She is an internationally acclaimed diabetes expert who uses the Yates Protocol to help people get control over their blood sugar, reclaim their energy, and enjoy life again. The Yates Protocol was developed to help the growing number of new patients who wanted to get control of their blood sugar, naturally.

Dr. Beverly's Book - “Heart Health for Black Women: A Natural Approach to Healing and Preventing Heart Disease.” Signed Copies are available on your website https://drbeverlyyates.com Also available on Amazon.

Dr. Beverly’s website – Dr. Beverly Yates
Dr. Beverly Yates’s Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin
For more information, https://drbeverlyyates.com

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Transcript

 Hello everyone. And welcome to permission to heal. I am Marci Brockman, and I am thrilled that you're here today.

On our show, we have Dr. Beverly Yates from California. Dr. Beverley is a board certified naturopathic doctor in private practice. She's a heart disease and diabetes expert. With over 27 years experience. She is an internationally acclaimed diabetes expert who uses the Yates protocol to help people get control over their blood sugar, reclaim their energy and enjoy life.

Again. The Yates protocol was developed over the course of her 20 plus years in clinical practice using her systems approach from her prior career as an MIT trained electrical engineer. This I have to hear more about Dr. Gates wants to help a growing number of patients get control of their blood sugar and their lives.

Naturally welcome Dr. Beverley. Hi Marcy. Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here today with you and your. Listeners. I think this is going to be just a wonderful interview time looking forward to connecting. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah, we connected through a BSA in the fall and had a wonderful time with that great class through super connector media and Jen and Chris, just amazing people.

 And they've connected so many of us through their course that I have like dozens of new colleagues and friends now. It's pretty amazing. Yes, it's lovely. It's what should happen, right? It just was so well done. Absolutely. Absolutely. And their energy was just infectious, relentlessly infectious. Okay.

Now I generally start my interviews or podcast conversations as I prefer to call them with my six quick questions. Okay. Okay. So what six words would you use to describe yourself? Uh, let's see. Six words to describe myself would include passionate. Humorous playful, clear, um, empathetic and strategic. I know how to hone in on what's important.

That's awesome. Okay. I lose myself with that sometimes working for clarity. What is your favorite way to spend a day favorite way to spend a day? Ooh.  I'm an outdoors person where I can be probably cause I work in doors, right? So I say biking, walking, hiking, things like that. Just enjoying nature. read a delicious well-written book.

I enjoy words that are particularly well crafted. I am, I'm not necessarily, I don't consider myself a good writer, but I really admire it , I'd say holding hands with my husband, and enjoying the company of family and friends. I'm looking forward to doing a lot more of that tune. Yeah. Yeah. I keep telling my friends to get prepared for a big awkward hug.

You know, this has been a minute. Okay. How long have you been married? Okay. Uh, 34 years now. Wow. Freaking awesome. That's amazing. That's very cool. Where did you and your husband meet you? High school? It actually in the co-ed dorms. Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's cool. Yeah, my husband and I also met in college.

Um, But we never dated until like five years ago. Yeah. We, we didn't date until, uh, two or three years after graduation. It was not an immediate thing. It happens, you know? All right. That's good. It's all good. What is your favorite childhood memory? Um, a favorite childhood memory is learning to ride a bike.

I remember my mom holding the back of my seat on the bike. I was wobbly of course, like all kids are problems going down the street. And then I finally got that balance point where you put the pedals in front and you don't fall over. And I was so excited returning and looking back to see her. I still remember the look of joy on her face.

You know, she was really rooting for me. That's a great memory. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I have very, as you're talking, I have very sort of snapshot memories of my dad and I doing that. With me when I was little hadn't thought about that in a very long time bicycle thing is just like, so, um, ubiquitous, you know, like we all have that sort of memory of, yeah.

Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. What is your favorite meal? Favorite meal. Um, I really enjoy salads salads that are crunchy, you know, with like maybe a little bit of sprouts or, um, pumpkin seeds, things like that with mint and lime, they give it those extra flavors, that little burst, you know, um, it's a nice mix and, uh, it's really just something I enjoy, especially in the warmer months, do you put proteins in your salad?

Like yeah. Yeah. It could be chicken or tuna fish. It could be salmon, whatever, you know, um, makes sense. But definitely that base for me is just right. And then papaya too. If it's in season, I really enjoy that. Or if we happen to be, um, on vacation somewhere that has papaya. I appreciate that. It's just a special thing, huh?

I don't think I've ever had papaya that wasn't dried papaya. Rarely. Okay. Go here now in California, a lot of times in the market, you can get things like, Oh, all kinds of fruits from around the world and other climates, including the tropical climate, it's pretty readily, but that isn't true everywhere. So it's definitely seasonal.

We have a lot of mangoes and things like that, but I don't, I don't think that I've seen papaya in our grocery stores here, I guess maybe I'm just maybe I don't even know what it looks like. I dunno. Interesting. Um, what one piece of advice would you like to give your younger self? Yeah, I think that one of the key things that pops up for me with that is around when people show you who they are believe them.

And so if someone shows themselves to be kind or trustworthy, reliable, smart, et cetera, you know, you can go with that. And if they show themselves to be,  not trustworthy to lack, integrity, to be foolish or to be mean. Or someone who's always spiteful and just trying to drag everybody down, believe them, even if their words say otherwise that their actions really tell you who they are, actions are far more important than words.

That's a, that's a big one. Something I didn't learn until much later in my adult life. I don't think as an adolescent or even as a 20 something, I sort of understood that I took people at at what they said. Yeah. Yeah. That seems reasonable. Right. I'll do that again. You know, you get smacked down a few dozen times doing it that way.

Eventually you learn, you know, eventually.  Okay. Number six. What is the one thing you most would like to change about the world? Ooh, that's quite a list. Only one. I dunno. Feel free to ad lib. If you've got a few let's let's hear them. We can go for one. I think right now I would love to be able to change people's tendency to blame folks for their struggles with health.

So for people who like to blame others who have health problems or illnesses, I'd love to see that one go away, especially here in the U S I think it's an absolutely become a national sport. I think it has no place in human reactions interactions. Right? Cause you know, bottom line Marcy's is not helpful.

I think it is disrespectful. What's. Far more useful and respectful is to help people address any issues they have about their health. They get in the way of them being healthy, making healthy choices and truly healing. We need to help people work on making their lives better. I think that that's far, far more useful.

Um, yeah, that's something I would change for sure. Sure. So do people blame their, their genes or their DNA or their parents at parentage? Is that what you mean? There's a whole host of possibilities for who to blame, right? Like, you know, whatever's on the wheel of misfortune that day and sometimes it's just, it's just not useful.

Like for instance, since I work with so many people who have chronic illnesses, like heart disease, and especially with diabetes, people often blame folks who have, let's say type two diabetes or pre-diabetes. Specifically not type one, but for type two diabetes and pre-diabetes, they will blame them for their illness under the presumption that they somehow deserve it.

And that they've partied their way to problems with blood sugar. And often, if you are respectful and listen to people's story, to find out how the situation arose, you will discover many times they did not party. They were, they weighed there. They may have had chronic unresolved stress. They didn't get a chance to recover from.

They may have had a really poor sleep that will hijack your blood sugar. They may have had a lack of opportunity to exercise and, or they might suffer from quite a bit of injury. And so it's not easy for them to exercise. They're in so much pain. Maybe their doctors don't cooperate, they can't get like knee replacements.

I've been shocked how many people are denied. Health care that needed when they're in chronic pain and could be solved. I'm shocked sometimes at the stories that I hear and then nutrition. So my sense to be real here in the us, not everyone has access to follow the healthy food at a price they can afford.

Right. That's just real. And sometimes kids who are in schools, the schools, the way they're funded, sometimes they might have much more access to the food that's available in school, where it's lots of sugar, lots of processed stuff. There are soda cans available at the vending machine and the more we get.

That framework resolve to something healthier. The better off people will be. But a lot of people will blame folks who wind up, let's say with type two diabetes, or pre-diabetes not knowing there's this whole series of things that preceded that chronic rise in blood sugar. Right. And the good news is, is that it can correct and correct pretty quickly if you know what to do.

But I think blaming people is just not appropriate. It's not, well, any sort of life difficulty or challenge blaming somebody else or any outside source rather than internalizing your culpability in that behavior. Isn't healthy. Right. Right. And once you know, better, you can do better, but first you have to know about it and then have access to the tools they can help you make things better.

So for instance, sometimes the transition is if someone's in a lot of pain, but maybe they can get to a swimming pool. If they can get to a pool, they can safely exercise. You know, they have to put on the floaters and stuff. So if they don't know how to swim, they can still be in the pool safely and get moving.

Right. And that will start to make a difference. And, you know, there's just so many simple steps that can happen, but people have to know what it is that they personally will have to do to close those gaps. And that's the good news. The gaps can be closed, at least it's not impossible. Yeah. I think a lot of people get messed up with the motivation part.

Like I have met with nutritionists and dieticians and doctors, and I know exactly kind of what I should be doing. And I was on a really good mum. I had a lot of momentum last winter, and then the pandemic happened and that threw my momentum in the garbage disposal. Yeah. We all got in the blender together then.

Yeah. And then all of the emotional eating habits came back and everyone's sedentary. Cause we're sorta stuck inside because it's cold or at least in New York it's cold and. And it's sort of never, for me, it hasn't gotten back to that nice momentum I had while seeing with the dietician. So yeah, I'm not in any way, shape or form headed towards the diabetic thing.

Thank goodness. Knock on wood. But, but yeah, I have weight to lose. I have health to regain, right. You know, well have confidence that you will get back on track. You know, we, we all got displaced and disrupted. There's just no crossing that over. And it will take probably a few weeks to a month to really get that doubt.

And again, you will get there. We will all get there as a community and together as a nation. But I do think we need to give each other some grace while we make those transitions. That was a big deal. Yeah. It's a very big deal. I had been complaining to my therapist biweekly throughout this entire thing about my.

Bad, emotional eating habits. And, and she just kept saying, stop judging yourself. We're in the middle of an unprecedented global pandemic, and now is not the time to try new things, just be chill and calm down and be nice to yourself. And when this is all over, you can address it. That's right. That's real times, you know, the what 300 plus million of us.

Exactly. You know? Yeah. So it's starting to turn to spring a little bit. And I got my vaccine last week. I'm feeling a little better evaluations. Good. And you're on your way. On my way. On my way. It was a last minute thing with the vaccine. I had had a, because I'm a one B uh, participant, I suppose, because I'm a teacher and, I wasn't able to get an appointment until the end of March.

And then suddenly my school district opened up 400 vaccines last Wednesday through Walgreens. And so I quick went on the website, signed up, got my appointment, waited online with my little camp chair because the lines move very slowly and, yeah, Johnson and Johnson's right in my arm. And a former student of mine who is a pharmacist, gave me my vaccine.

How lovely that's great. Good, good, good. All right. Cool. Good one. That's a good, okay. All right.  So let's get to your stuff here. You have a book that you wrote. Yeah. Cool. One of the things I've done, amazing heart health for black women, a natural approach to healing and preventing heart disease. Signed copies are available on your website.

Which is doctor Dr. Beverly yates.com. That will be linked to the show notes underneath on the website, on the show notes of the podcast, and sign copies or avail. Oh yeah. Sign copies are available there. And also on Amazon, what would you tell us about your book?  My book was written with the idea of helping people who currently have heart disease to make their situation better.

And anyone who has a family history looking to avoid it, if a book was also written with that person in mind. So, so a two-pronged effort, one to help people who are in immediate jeopardy, um, to be healthier, and to be able to deal with the issues that affect heart disease. And then for those who are like, Oh no, is this in my future?

I would really like to avoid it. Right. Great. You're covered too. I think some of us would watch our parents and aunts and uncles, grandparents, and we're like, Hmm. Could I have a different outcome again, is there something that you're doing right now that will make my tomorrow's better?

And if you're in the medicine and maybe it's a total surprise, like it's been a fair number of particularly women in my practice that I've seen, who've had heart attacks and seemingly came out of the blue, no family history. And in that case, sometimes it's really discombobulating because they're like, but wait, I was doing all of these other wonderful, what they feel was healthy things.

And then this happens, you know? And so I can have that conversation with people. Part of what the book talks about is the role of things like cholesterol, like cholesterol. Oh, Marcy has gotten such a bad name. Cholesterol is considered this evil thing. Cholesterol is good for you, and it's a normal part of what your body needs is all of your sex hormones, your testosterone, estrogen, progesterone.

They're all made from a building block, a sub straight up cholesterol, cholesterol. The question is, is your body in a state of inflammation? If there's inflammation, that's present, it makes cholesterol sticky. That's what leads you to have the heart attack, strokes and all the other things that can go wrong with this.

It's also implemented. Patient is the culprit behind these really negative responses. People have. Sometimes it's something like COVID-19 and then they see, you know, this person's very sick because their body was already at a high threshold for inflammation. And then here comes this virus and now they're pushed to a place where they're going to become very sick.

Whereas other people they're not very inflamed here comes COVID-19 and not a hold on happens. That's when you see these big variability pawns, that piece together, a whole lot of stuff that I didn't know, I didn't know. So the diseases that are driven, that, that cause inflammation or that him have inflammation is a strong imprint.

If you will, our diseases, certainly one diabetes, absolutely. Um, asthma, anything that ends in it, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, um, inflammatory diseases in general immune health system problems. There are all these people much more vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19 viral attack than for other things.

They're inflammation based and things where there's not a lot of inflammation. Probably the person might be less likely as a, as a raw number. Like as a data point, they're less likely to be so vulnerable, to really nasty effects and or death from COVID-19. And that's why, you know, some people's health has been prioritized that way around.

We really need to get certain populations, immunized pre-existing conditions like obesity, you know, when someone's really obese. The extra fat on the body, unfortunately produces in the chemicals of inflammation, those cytokines, and it causes that big inflammation response. So they're already, again at that high level of threshold.

And then here comes COVID-19 and the two together, this just takes it all out of the park. And next, you know, earlier, so much sicker. That's not to say that people who are lean can't have a bad outcome, unfortunately. Sadly. Yeah. However, people who have those things that we just talked about are far more likely, and that's why it's inflammation.

So I would love it if our public health messaging going forward can talk to people about, Hey, by the way, not only do we have this viral attack, but here's what we need you to do. Let's see if we can get in five to nine servings a day or fresh fruits and vegetables or minimally processed, you know , let's see if we can get in today a 30 minute walk, like continue them Mo remind people and just give gentle reminders and nudges the same way we're telling people to wear a face mask can wash through the physical, social distancing, which is excellent messaging.

Let's tack on some things that will help us stay out of trouble for the future. This is a great time because people's health is on their mind. Like let's just clear that, you know, wow, you just really pieced together so many different pieces for me. I was seeing a dietician  last winter, who we did, I can't think of the name of it, but a series of blood tests where they ran, like 150 different blood tests to, of different foods to see how my blood see how my body reacted because to food intolerance testing or food stamps.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it. That's it. Yeah. Uh, and, and we figured out that a lot of the foods that I was eating that were typical, like diet, watch your weight, healthy foods for me, paused and inflammatory response. And they were exactly opposite of what I was supposed to be doing. And so, like you were saying your favorite meal is salad.

And I also love the crunch of a salad, but my body does not like salad. Okay. So something about lettuces that my body doesn't like. So I've eliminated that. And immediately a ton of  gastrointestinal issues disappeared. I cut out dairy or 99% of dairy and suddenly things were so much better.

Right. Wow. What a gift. I'm so glad you did that. One of my favorite sayings is tests. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So I've got a list of nice might not be healthy for you. Exactly. Absolutely. So I switched on now doing oat milk for everything and I'm not, it's just, , I was a total eye-opener totally revolutionized the way I have to grocery shop.

I have this color coded list of foods that I can eat and things that I can't things with red lines, you know, like soy it's like almost allergic for me. Okay. So let's make an important distinction because everybody let's say might have some confusion about this. A food allergy is something where it's an immediate, right?

Yeah. I'm not really talking allergy, I'm talking closing and big response, your lips might get super large. That's called Angie with DEMA and that's an, that's a medical emergency, right? Nine 11 one time or go to the emergency room or you're using epi pen, a food intolerance or a food sensitivity is one way your body has a delayed reaction.

It is not life-threatening. It does make you miserable. It can cause all kinds of skin reactions, itchy skin, funky brain pain throughout the body joint pain. It can certainly lead to gastrointestinal. So GI and gut problems, stomach problems, diarrhea, constipation, and it can lead to any host of things.

Muscle aches, just it's a long list. Bottom line. Not life threatening those cause misery. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm thank you for clarifying that. Sure. Yeah, I get those questions a lot. It's like, let me, let me just make sure people it's good. You know, we hear so much information from so many varied sources.

It's not clear. Some of it is so vague. You're like, what are they talking about? What the, the stream of infomercials that seem to pervade my Instagram feed, you know, like, just take this pill, just drink this shake, just do this exercise at this specific time. What know if that makes sense to me whatsoever?

Hi. Okay. So I was reading on Amazon,  the reviews of your book, cause I actually haven't seen it myself. Um, and, and I thought that's the, something that was very intriguing to me. There is a, a physician Dr. , um, who's a rural hospital from a rural hospital in, in Ben, in West Africa. She said you donated medical supplies and equipment to rural hospitals.

Um, that is amazing. How did that happen? And this was one of those amazing connections. Uh, another friend of mine at the time when I was in Seattle. I had moved from Portland to Seattle and had started a.com and I was looking to raise venture capital money. And, um, at the time was when the first book had come out the heart health for black women, um, healing and preventing heart disease book.

And I met Dr. Albin. It was really wonderful that connection and. They were going to go back to Benin and, and, and he was saying that, you know, I want, I have a clinic, I have four clinics and I just need more equipment I'm here in the U S trying to raise money, raise funds and, or, you know, get more equipment.

And so my equipment at the time, because I knew with,  starting up a venture capital, hopefully a venture capital based business, et cetera. I was not going to have time for clinical practice was just going to collect dust in the garage. So I was like, Hey, can I donate you? And I gave him a whole list.

You know, I had, guiding tables and supplies. , I had ear speculums, vaginal speculums, older scopes, blood pressure cuffs, like physical exam tables, all sorts of things. Right. And he was just thrilled. So I was like here, so they all found a good home. And then he had  enough money for shipping and a container was able to send things back across to

So it worked out, I was really happy. You never know, sometimes you are in the right place at the right time to help someone else solve a problem. And so I just felt really great about that. So thank you for calling attention to it. I just thought that was so crucial. Ask me about that. Really? You just research.

That's all. I like learning stuff like that. It's it's very cool. I think so many of us want to do broad community-based philanthropic things. Like our hearts are in the right place, but we just don't know how to do it or how to get involved. And, you know, there are some charities that seem a little dubious and some that are absolutely doing the right thing in the right time and the right way.

But I'm interested in these little, these little moments of serendipity, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It just, it totally worked out. That's very cool. Yeah. That's awesome. So did you always want to be a doctor? How did you know that was your career path? I just I'm so totally fascinated by people's career paths. You went to MIT to be an electrical engineer.

First I did. I did. So as a little kid, I did not want to be a doctor of any kind at the time, because when I saw doctors, when I grew up, was it, they were very unhappy. In my opinion, they seemed miserable and suffering. I remember one of our family practice docs that my mom saw a wonderful man. He was also a chain smoker there in the clinic.

I, and he literally, I think just worked himself to death. He dropped dead at about age 47 of a heart attack. And I thought, okay, this is not something I want to be. I remember some other doctor's offices. I was in as a child, you know, going with family members to the doctor , and whether it was for my own visits as a pediatrician or with the doctors, for the adults, I was just like, These didn't seem to be people that I wanted to, to model.

And I knew at that time that people thought the world of people who were doctors, but I just, I did not see that being for being, I loved science and I loved math and technology. I was always that person, I had a ham radio license as a kid, you know, I just really, really liked science and I still do. So that's all that sense.

Different thing, right? Science and medicine. Yeah, they're still trying to make friends with each other for the most part. It's a, it's a good union, but there are definitely some times where politics gets in the way, but I I'm always on the side of what is going to best serve people and patients and rooting for that.

And, we have to be realistic about the political implications of things, because sometimes we can't get anything done without paying attention to it. But bottom line is I'm more interested in results and that's where the engineering me comes through. It matters to me. Is someone better by whatever treatment or therapy or advice is given?

Did it leave them neutral or are they worse? To me, it's, those are pretty quantifiable and we can go with that. Very cool. Yeah. I, I see this as just a huge disparity people's access to healthcare in this country. Oh gosh. It's stunning. And. Yeah, I it's such a complex, absolutely multilayered problem with so many stakeholders.

Some whom obviously don't have a particularly humanistic point of view. That's not what's driving it. Yeah. So, uh, it's, it's just so scary to me, just like what you said before that there are people who can't get knee replacements who need them or organ donations who need them or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I've been surprised when I see it, the number of patients, um, that I've had over the years, who's told me that their doctor has denied their request for me replacements.

These are people who have no cartilage. So the articular cartilage between the knee joints that makes it a smooth motion. There's a layer here about like, you know, about like that. And if it's gone, then it's bone on bone. Right. You kinda met her thing. Like that hurts. It hurts. Yeah. And so they'll deny people knee replacement and I'm like, well, why?

And then they'll tell the patient will inevitably tell me some variation of this, this story, which is that, um, the doctor says they can only have a knee replacement once they have lost enough weight. To it. And I'm like, okay, hold on. You are in pain. You're unable to exercise because of the pain. Your weight has gone up because you are sedentary now.

And the level that you never were before, and you can't get the thing that will help you feel hopefully a lot better, no pain, and get you much more mobile and went more able to exercise until you somehow magically lose. Like, it just sounded like scary in what universe does this make sense? You know, and I've talked to anesthesiologists because I thought for a while, well, maybe it's anesthesia and dosing for people who weigh more, who are overweight or obese, but look, let's get real.

Two thirds of the country right now is overweight or obese dance. Etiology community is able to handle this safely in surgery. So I don't really know other than regional bad habits or standards of care where care is denied to people. I just, I think it's outrageous. It's not all, it's not all the time.

It's not everywhere, but when this happens, so if anybody's listening to this, please push back. You know, I have a dear friend of mine. She's not a patient, but a friend told me she finally threatened the doctor with going to another practice in another state in order to get the surgery. But she was so tired of being held hostage around this.

And so then when they realized why dollars are going to walk out the door, they decided to say yes, and she was able to get her knees replaced and is far more mobile now, but it should have happened like 15 years before. You know, I just, I just don't understand how that's, to me, it's disease management.

It's not healthcare. Those are different things. Absolutely. That's my opinion in an unrelated, slightly adjacent little personal story. After my son was born 23 years ago,  I had two C-sections, but uh, I had fluke crazy infection in my incision and they took the staples out and it had to like heal from the inside, out on its own.

Which required being debris did twice a day for almost six months. That's miserable as horrible, painful, awful, awful, awful. And so the doctor, I needed two visits a day from a home health care nurse to come in and do this. And I have to take pain meds before she came in, because there is nothing like that pain, at least in my experience.

And then eventually, I guess about two months into the process, the insurance company said they didn't want to pay for it anymore because it was unnecessary and they wouldn't pay for the nurse to come to my house, but they would pay for me to go to the doctor's office. Which was more money. That's the perverse system we're in.

It makes no sense, even no financial sense. You're just like more money for me to go to the doctor's office and have their staff do it then just to have the, the per diem nurse come to my house, you know, so my doctor got on the phone with the insurance company and it was just some administrator with a business degree, or I dunno what a degree in Crayola crayons.

I don't know, certainly no medical background whatsoever. And he screamed at her. Like I was shocked cause he was just losing it. And then a couple of months, more ones went by and they were like, well, you know, we noticed on your records that your husband is a scientist, let him do it instead of paying I'm like, first of all, he faints at the sight of blood.

And second of all, he's a geologist. He's not a medical professional. It's not a MetaMedia. So again, we had to complain and I've not heard that. And then they were like, well, can't you do it yourself? Like, um, it isn't a wound zone. So surgery really? First of all, I don't think it's physically possible to cause yourself that level of pain.

And in order for me to see the wound, I have to fold my body and have to close the wound. It's not like it's on my leg. It's absolutely not possible. We're so ridiculous. So that's a new twist. So your spouse should be laughing. I mean it's like theater of the absurd. You cannot make this crap up. It just, it really does happen.

Yeah. There's one by one. And after a while, don't you feel kind of almost gaslighted like, Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I did totally nuts. Yeah, we can do better. We got, we got a lot of to do, and I think we slowly are, I think that this whole pandemic in, in some respects has cleared the path for a little bit more patient-centered care.

Yes. And more people are pushing and able to get others, to help them advocate, understanding that it's not a reasonable for one person to push that rock. But if tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of millions of people push the rock, the rock is going to move. Right. It has to certainly, and, and this telehealth thing I think has been a miracle for my life.

Oh, it's been a huge help. I offered it for my patients in 2009. Some of them didn't like it back in the day, because one, they want it to be in person. They much preferred that if you can have my older patients and two, I think they didn't understand maybe the value or the power of having that option. But I kept it the whole way.

Not of course, knowing that the pandemic was going to unfold, but the second that happened and then we had our shelter in place orders here.  People were thrilled because they felt protected, especially my patients who have diabetes and heart disease, because if anybody shouldn't be out in the ocean of COVID-19, it is.

It is. I have been hopeful to have live events for people with diabetes in 2020. So Marci what's the one business you shouldn't have in 2020 live events for people. I really offense, period, unless sunset, I can go to the online program, but  sometimes you just have to flex with the situation and,  for healthcare in the U S there's just a lot of room for improvement.

There are some things we do well and we have to make it so that people who have chronic illnesses are embraced and helped and supported, particularly around the lifestyle things, because it will bring the cost of care. Down this quality of life up life satisfaction up rather than all of his misery that you see unfolding is just so unnecessary.

I'm sorry. You had the craziness with the advice that you should be able to debrief your own wound. That's crazy. Crazy. Oh, I, I was, I was very pleasantly surprised with my current back injury to find out that acupuncture is covered under my insurance. That's wonderful. I keep poachers would be, is a wonderful option.

I could practice physical therapy. It makes sense, right? Absolutely. Because why go to back surgery immediately? Because I certainly don't need that. You may not. No, an orthopedic surgeon doesn't want to see you. If the, if they know they can't help you. Right. Right. I was just very pleasantly surprised. Good.

Some good news. Absolutely. Okay, so we have a lot of stuff to talk about here.  Okay. You said, you said somewhere, I don't know it was on your website or it was in a blurb about your book that African-American women have been the only demographic group to see an increase in heart disease in the last decade.

Why is that? Yeah, so when I wrote this book in 2000 and what we'd seen in the 1990s was at that time, other demographics within the us were holding pretty steady for the incidence of heart disease. And African-American women's incidents had really taken off and I think. Some of the trends that were in place at that time, were that number one for African-American women, like all women, heart disease was at a slightly to be detected.

Women are often not as well diagnosed around this, although it's gotten better. Now that we're two decades later in the 2020s, I'm hopeful. This will continue where it's much more on physicians of all kinds of radars to screen women and to keep in their differential diagnosis, the thought that she might have heart disease or some kind and not dismiss it, not assume it is an anxiety attack or an anxiety driven thing, which is 100% valid.

It should be assessed as such mental illness and how we feel is important and can show up as seemingly hard kinds of symptoms, probably your vascular symptoms. I thought I was having a heart attack and it wound up being an anxiety thing, but I went to the hospital and they treated me as if I was a potential cardiac patient.

Did all the tests came out fine to start out with the worst. And then you move on to the things that may not be so life. Right, right. Another reason why we had , a much, much worse than the wave outcomes was by the time anybody figured out it was hard to seize. It was much more advanced, like any illness, if things are more advanced, if it's more embedded, then that person is more likely to be made sicker.

And there might be at risk of serious consequences, including death. Had it been caught sooner damage wouldn't be as bad and things would be in a better place. Right. And it just kind of makes sense. So those two phenomena really,  were making a difference. And then now we've also found who, which I could have told you as a black woman, is that a lot of times, if you're in the medical setting, sometimes when you're pointing pain, discomfort, things like that, it's not taken as seriously or it's just ignored.

 Sadly that's still a phenomenon. So by female doctors to female patients, I've found, I've seen it. I have seen it. I was with a relative, a female relative and, , We were in emergency room together. And this person was, another female doctor, a gynecologist who had no clue for instance, about some things that the other family member was experiencing.

You know, she's a woman, she hadn't experienced any of this, so she didn't really know. , and so you can't assume even if somebody is in your demographic, you just never know. Right. They may have, they may not be able to relate for whatever reason and not take it seriously.  I'm hopeful that some things around that will be much more specific and that people will remember why they got into healthcare or medicine in the first place.

Some of their training quite honestly, is very brutal and dehumanizing. And I don't think that helps. So that's my sense of it. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I, my, my youngest sister is a physician and, um, when she was going through med school and internships and residency, and we didn't see her at all, unless she had like note cards in her hands and she was studying constantly and she was working insane hours and time to feed herself or clean the house or, anything even good.

No, and I think that the care that's being given to the patients decreases because the doctors are impatient and exhausted and, and human, you know, they're absolutely human and you know, it doesn't lead to good outcome for anybody. And I think it leaves doctors more vulnerable to, have all sorts of stress related problems with their own health, a tendency towards addiction, et cetera.

It only makes sense. Right. They're trying to compensate for a system that is not designed for health. Again, it's about disease management, not caring for health. Yeah. And there's too many things so that we could talk for years about that. There's too many, too many nuances of that. Let's not go down that rabbit hole. So what does it take to have a healthy heart? So what it takes to have a healthy heart is being able to focus on the things that are going to matter, right? There's your four lifestyle pillars that are going to be big players for heart health. One is nutrition. You want to have a high fiber diet full of as many fresh foods as you can reasonably do five to nine servings of fresh fruits and vegetables a day.

If you are a plant-based eater. Great. Make sure you don't go crazy on a lot of grains or processed grain slash flours. Sometimes people become carbo Taryn's and carbo holics instead of vegetarians and vegans. Okay. When you have protein, have healthy kinds of protein, you know, have the seafood and,  fish, as long as you aren't allergic to that.

Obviously, if you would like to have chicken or Turkey, that's fine. You can have all sorts of things. Nuts and seeds are great. They also have fiber and they have healthy oils. In addition to protein, those are excellent sources, good combo package. You know, there's lots of ways to eat healthfully. That makes sense.

So that's one, another piece is exercise and exercise for heart health really needs to be about consistency and giving the heart. What I like to call dynamic range. Like if you love music, if you love performances and the art, right? Isn't it great when something's really vibrant and like in a play a theater set up, you'll have quiet moment in a play.

I have a lot of noise in a plane and they'll take you on this ride as they tell their story. And it makes me brain mostly feeling well, very similar for the heart. You want to make sure the heart has a chance to exercise that range too. So you probably want to mix it up and not do the same exercise all the time.

So you might want to have some exercise, be more aerobic, some be a little more strenuous, maybe even anaerobic, where you're really out of breath and you want to add in resistance training, keep your balance, keep your muscles primed, use it or lose it kind of a thing and keep yourself in a plan to rest.

Right? So now we talk about sleep. Sleep is the foundation upon which all health is built. This is where we rested and restore and replenish. This is where your soul, your mind, your spirit, your emotions. Get reset. You gotta hit the reset button every day. If you don't hit reset, not good. And if you have chronic sleep problems, you have to address them because they will break something for you, whether it breaks your blood pressure, it might drive up your cholesterol.

It might cause you to have a lot of brain fog. It could cause you to act out emotionally and have very difficult unrewarding relationships. You could lose your job. All sorts of things can happen from that. Then finally stress. I think of stress as the bully that grabs you by your collar and slams you up against your genetic wall and whatever your weak links are is what will be expressed if you have chronic stress from what you haven't healed.

And if that's an issue at all, whether it's adverse childhood experiences, ACEs, if it is a chronic stress from either the prior  economic collapse in 2008 and nine. Or this moment's epidemics economic collapse or whatever else might be stressful, perhaps the loss of one or more loved ones during this pandemic.

And if so, I'm so sorry for your loss. There's a lot of things that can happen for people that are unexpected car accidents, just any number of things can occur people wounded in horse. So with that in mind, prioritize where you can healing from it and recovering and create that space and let people know what you're doing.

Even if they aren't supportive. It's okay. You make it their priority. They're doing whatever they're doing. Sometimes you literally have to just have those emotional spaces for your siblings so that you can do what you need to do. To carve out that, that physical and mental time for yourself, your heart will thank you as well as everything else.

Yeah. That's hard. That to me is a metaphor, right? Like there's obviously the physical heart in our chest, but you know, Marcy, the hardest talked about by many traditions, many cultures, people's spiritual beliefs, the literature, the poems, the music, the, everything, the artwork of all around the world.

People think of the heart in more than just the physical beating thing in our chest. Right. We think about our most central part of our being. Yeah. We think about heart rate. We think about heartache, all kinds of things, something was heartfelt and sincere. It shows up all over the world. It's, it's interesting that as a human group, as a, as a tribe of humans around the world, we have really all converged on that idea of the heart being one, Oregon that plays a lot of different roles.

That's true. That's true. It's in every piece of literature, every poem it's in everything that I write personally. Yeah. It makes sense. Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Interesting. Okay. You have developed the Gates protocol. Yes. Which you named after yourself?

Could you explain what that is? So the Yates protocol is something that I've developed where I've distilled down the best practices of what I've used to help people after 27 plus years of clinical practice to achieve blood sugar control. And in this, we focus in on those four lifestyle pillars, right?

That's nutrition, exercise, stress relief, and stress management, and sleep, all sweet sleep. To really get a handle on blood sugar issues and help people achieve and maintain. Blood sugar control. So someone with type two diabetes and diabetes can start to heal and reverse that damage and improve and get there sugar levels back to a healthy range and keep them there measuring tangibly data based outcomes.

Right? The engineer man is always going to show up, looking at those numbers, that A1C, which is the average, but your control over a period of time, along with their fasting blood sugar numbers as well, and then how they live their life. For some people, this is pretty easy. They just need information. And they're like, Oh, like, like literally I surprised how often this happens.

You're gonna smile. And I tell you regardless, Oh, level of education, I am surprised that number of people I've worked with over the years who will tell me they didn't know that drinking soda all day long, like it was water or herbal tea would wreck their blood sugar. They have not a clue, real, real, like regular soda, not dying.

So regular soda. Right. And I'm like, how did you not? But they didn't know that really the can of soda. It's got like a cup of sugar in it or something like that, the bag and dump it. But you know, people, if you don't know, you don't know. Right? So those folks are easy to help because obviously problem is what they're eating and drinking and we can, we can help fix that and help change their palette.

Did you know that the tongue, the cells on the tongue turnover every 10 to about 20, 21 days, you get a whole new set of which means your taste, bud receptors are changing frequently. So you can reset. So if you are a person who has a sweet tooth craving, hi, hello, we can help you. Yeah, it's quick. I have a newfound sugar addiction because of the phone, much easier, you know that and then can take those steps and our half I can change what my taste was prefer.

This is half the battle and on and on. So yeah. So the age protocol is designed to help people with those specific issues. Using those four pillars, identifying what's stressful, not everyone has the same. Right. Responses to things we don't all, like some days somebody could, it could insult you and you probably don't care, like ha jerk keep right on going.

Right. It's like, Oh wow. And it really, yeah, it gets gets on the, it depends on who the person is when they, yeah. Sometimes we're more vulnerable or less vulnerable. Some people it's sleep. Some people are things like sleep apnea and other problems they're insomniacs or they go to sleep and then they can't sleep through the night.

And they're up three, four times a night now, busy mind. And again, you take, you take these apart, figure out what is the issue. And people can work on the things that, that matter for them. And then for exercise, some people genuinely hate exercise. And one of the things that motivate me to put this together as an ACE protocol and make this into a program was that I was finding, I was having success with people who truly.

Can't exercise because of pain. They haven't gotten the knee replacement or a hip replacement, and they still need to hear that budget grow under control and have some improvement on their weight. So the program does not depend on their ability to exercise because here's the truth of it. And people will know this is real.

There's all kinds of articles. I saw one maybe two weeks ago in the New York times, I've seen this information, other places, I think there's even a show now. And PBS talking about this very issue. You cannot out exercise this problem. So if you just exercise and you don't eat well, your stress levels are through the roof and you have poor sleep.

Your blood sugar will probably be too high. Exercise alone will not save you. Now. Why is exercise important? Yes. Heck yes, of course it is. I'm not going to sit here and say exercise doesn't matter. Yes it does. But I just want to all hold out hope for people, for whom exercises and issue those they're often neglected or blamed for the problem.

And this is actually not a useful response and it doesn't have to be like that. No. I heard something recently,  being a menopausal 52 year old woman,  I've been trying to do a little bit of research about how to make me healthier. Cause the things that I did 15, 20 years ago now, the change right. And everything changed.

And there was something that I read. I wish I remembered the whole thing, but it was something like if you  a menopausal woman that exercising strenuously can actually be counter-intuitive because it could increase your cortisol level and actually keep you from losing weight or getting in shape.

Is that true? That can be true. You can do testing again, test don't guess there is testing. Look for that stress response and see what cortisol is doing. And if you find that your corals or a response is driven up at an inappropriate time, it, you know, here's the deal with cortisol, right? It's a hormone release when we're stressed, just like adrenaline it's released when we're stressed.

Now, why do we have the release with special chemicals in our body to keep us safe? When we're stressed, stress is back in the day where we had to run from a bear or a tiger or some other immediate threat. You needed to be superwoman in that moment, Superman. Right? So to do that, your body would squeeze out these chemicals.

In this case, a cortisol is coming from your adrenal glands to allow you to meet the moment. So if you need to lift a car off of a loved one or a Boulder back in the day, whatever it was, the threatening item you have to respond, you have to do in a short time. This means all the blood that's in the center of your body, your gut.

And when it's going to leave, it's going to go to periphery to your muscles because you need to be superhero okay. In modern world. When we are stimulated by stress like that, without any physical exertions to blow off and work off those chemicals, this is dangerous because the level of cortisol stays high.

It doesn't get worked off. So to speak. I just want to keep this simple. So all your physiologists don't freak out. We got to keep this. Everybody can understand. She's talking to me. I'm an English teacher. I'm not a scientist. So I'm talking to my friend. Okay. Right. So with that in mind, with this metaphor, since you're not working off those chemicals, they stay in the blood for longer with it because you are now super human superwoman, Superman, your body releases more blood sugar because you need fast, immediate energy.

Right now, this keeps happening. This means your blood sugar doesn't go down either. Like it AWDA after you meet a crisis and emergency after respond to it, it's going to stay up to. Huh you're on a blood sugar roller coaster, then insulin from your pancreas. This is for people with pre-diabetes type two diabetes because the pancreas is making insulin that's what's normal.

There will probably overshoot because of the chronically high demand and it'll make too much grandpa of all the available blood sugar, blood sugar crash, huh? Feel crappy. Want to not feel crappy. Go eat a donut, something sugary. You put the sugar back up on a rollercoaster. 15 minutes later, poop down. You can ping pong like this the whole day.

So you go from a breakfast, white, B high carbs, lots of sugar coffee with added sugar. Then to a soda then to lunch. Lunch is probably full of processed foods. Then two o'clock in the afternoon. You do the face, plant your hands down on the desk. URI you're done. You're just done your whites, right? You're back in line at Starbucks or something.

That's two, three o'clock in the afternoon, putting sugar in something as a pick me up desperate to get the dinner. For more processed food. This is a recipe after disaster, easy. You'll employ yourself and not understanding this is what's happening. Your body was designed to keep you safe, but this process has run a muck today's lifestyles pushed us to feel stressed all the time, without any actual response to a physical event that lets us work off.

The very chemicals meant to help us. Wow. Wow. I'm exhausted. Just listening to that. Wow. Wow. That explains so much, right. So we don't get to pick it. No, I'm just saying once you know this. Yeah. Then you can rearrange your day and your night so that you can actually be healthy. So that's what the ACE protocol is about is helping people figure it out on those four things where we're going to need to focus.

Um, and from there, make the choices and changes that they need to make. And it's usually one or two things. Most people don't have all four, they need to work on. It's usually one or two that are really the money spots, the focus points that will make so much difference. It'll just unravel the whole thing.

They'll be like, Oh my gosh, this is so much easier. Yeah, for me, it's unraveling the sugar addiction and adding more exercise. The other things are okay. And for the most part I eat well, I eat according to, for the most part, what the results of those blood tests were. That's so helpful, but I also have. Sat down with an entire family sized bag of M and M's and Polish it off in two days by myself.

You know, things like that. Yeah, not good. Okay. But at least you're aware of totally aware if you're not aware. Right? Absolutely. And then my daughter found me this, um, vegan, vegan sugar. No, not sugar-free vegan. I'm dairy free. That's what I was looking for ice cream. And I had it in my mind that it was health food.

Okay. And I ate it like by the court. And then I realized it still had sugar in it. Yeah. I say by the court, no, not so much. No, not a court at a sitting, but you know, no, no, it's not like it used to be portioned out, as I say portions, right? This is brilliant. What you're talking about. Here's why the portions are such an under appreciated piece.

If you've traveled other parts of the world, what's one of the things you've noticed when you've eaten a meal, they eat less, but they eat whatever they want, but they get left. It's portions and there's no economic incentive in their business model to supersize anything including you. Right. Exactly. I don't want to be supersized.

Yeah. The portion control thing is yeah. You know, one, one simple tip I'd love to share with folks who are listening here is, when you go out to eat or if you get takeout, wherever you are in the world, listening to this is to ask for it, to go container immediately. If it wasn't already taken out and immediately divide that food in half.

 If you're actually sitting down inside the restaurant, if you're outside,  people are in the pandemic or in different situations, but cut your portion in half immediately and put it away to be enjoyed later at home. If it's already a takeout portion, as soon as you get home, cut it in half.

Yeah. That's a good habit to get into and wait 15 minutes after you finish eating, whatever the initial portion was and check in and see if you're actually hungry. It takes time for left-hand gremlins and other hormones to really do their magic around you feeling full and satisfied. It's called satiety as well as hunger abatement for the hunger to slow and for your body to realize your brain specifically, it's good to get the signaling.

And it says, you're good. We've had enough just wait 15 minutes for me. It's the pleasure of the taste and the texture of that gets me, even though I know I'm not hungry anymore and I'm full, I still want to enjoy the immediate gratification of that deliciousness on my tongue. Yeah. It's real. It's real.

And when you're stressed about other things going on outside of your realm of control, it's all too easy to, Oh my God. Last year was just insane. So yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.  So there was something else that I saw that you specifically talked to women who suffer from PCOM, polycystic ovarian syndrome and had specific nutritional tips for them.

Can you explain that a little bit? I have a couple of good friends and my stepdaughter's, , has issues with PCOS. And I'm wondering if we could turn some of this to them.  So for polycystic ovarian syndrome, it is a problem that can affect affect women, obviously, , usually reproductive years.

And in that, one of the features of PCLs is typically what's called insulin resistance. And with insulin resistance, what can happen is that the body's ability to effectively and efficiently process glucose or blood sugar is compromised. So after a while, they'll put out more and more insulin in response to blood sugar with less and less benefit, then what's supposed to happen is this insulin will come and respond to that rising blood sugar.

And meet it, not overshoot it, but meet it and make the glucose come in via the receptors on the cell, to the cell inside and provide energy for the cell. That's what glucose is supposed to do. So blood sugar has to come inside your cells in order to be useful to you. Insulin is what makes all that happen.

When there's instrument systems, then the availability of that glucose to come inside. The cell is compromised. It's lowered. And as a result, the extra blood sugar then, because the answer response is sluggish. So to speak usually creates increased body weight, increased fat. And so a person can very easily start to gain weight, even though they may not be overeating.

It's really unfortunate, but this one, these things are, are not sensitized to each other. You can get to some profound health problems for sure. Huh? So you can modulate your, your symptoms with PCOS. Bye bye. Changing the way you eat with nutrition. Yes. Exercise. Sometimes supplements, stress management will be key.

Wow. Don't be key because stress hijacks blood sugar. When you're stressed long enough, believe me, it'll just take off like a rocket and this is one way that that can show up. And then of course that core foundation of sleep. Wow. Wow. That's amazing. I love the way you explain things in a, such a, a clear, succinct way.

No wonder you used clear as one of the words that you describe yourself as so many dis disparate things have just been put together, like Legos for me. Oh, well great. Thank you. I've worked really hard to be a good communicator because I find that if people are going to make good decisions, they have to have good information and they have to understand it.

Otherwise they don't know what to do. And then they wind up not doing anything that's useful, right. Because they're just overwhelmed. So they give up. Yeah. Yeah. So you offer on your website, consultants, packages, or, , can you explain what, what you offer on your new website? Sure. Sure. So on the website what's offered is the opportunity to work with my team, where we can go through these things with you, for nutrition and exercise, stress, and sleep to help you get dialed in for blood sugar issues or for heart health kinds of problems, because they are just so sensitive to lifestyle measures and we've been able to help lots and lots and lots of people.

And we're looking to help more because these problems are growing and the current moment is just making things. Even more extreme for people. And, you know, I would really love to see people get a handle on their blood sugar because it is so central. That's one of the reasons why uncontrolled diabetes can be so devastating and people can lose their kidneys and kidney function.

When I'm on dialysis, they have compromised immune function because of all the problems with blood flow.  And the inflammation we talked about before they can wind up with heart disease. We talked about that inflammatory process with cholesterol. And in this case, its interaction with blood sugar, definitely can literally like plug up your blood vessels that way they can lose their vision ankle blind.

They can have such peripheral circulation problems with hands, toes, feet, fingers, nose clutters, the penis, et cetera. You know, people wind up with amputations in gangrenes usually of the lower limbs. It's the typically toes, feet, lower legs that are the most compromised, just because of the effects of gravity and on and on.

If there's just a host of problems that can show up. And if you can get ahold of that blood sugar and improve it over time and help them to heal. What a difference, quality of life, a lot more energy, clearer thinking diabetics are famously tired. It's a weird kind of fatigue because it gets so deeply ingrained.

It's hard for people to get the momentum. They just literally get up. They just have movement throughout their day. And, in that way it can be, it can be cruel quite frankly, and this can make the difference for entire families sometimes. What, what caused the, the choice in specialty for you?  I'm listening to you talk and you talk so passionately about this, that, and it sort of reminds me of my own sister's conversation that she had tried to fake her specialty in medical school.

How did you direct yourself to this? Yeah, that's a great question. So let's see, I got interested in heart disease for two reasons. One it's quite interesting. I was at a naturopathic medical convention. I think it was like 1998 or something. And this lady, a woman who was there was from a publishing company and she literally stalked me for two days at the conference.

And I was like, this is creepy. What is up? I finally turned around and looked at her. I was like, okay, what are you, what is going on? Like why you fall in there? Where it goes. It was just strange. So she had asked me if I would be interested in writing the book. And so this was what they had proposed. And then I did my own research.

I looked at the information from the national institutes of health, et cetera. And at the time the internet had nowhere near the access to this kind of data, but I can look at like pub med. Um, and, and I H and CDC websites and see, and go look for myself and go, Oh my goodness, this is really a surprise.

Right. So I could see that African-American women were having much more of a problem at that time with,  heart disease. Now everybody's caught up, we're all in a mess, unfortunately. And so I was like, sure, I'll write this book, , I'm honored that you would ask me to do this. So that's one reason.

Another was that my grandmother had died of a stroke, and I had been there at the house that day when the stroke happened and she died two weeks later in the intensive care unit, unfortunately, and I was 11. It was just a thank you. It was a pivotal moment in my life, for sure. Just to see what we would call now a stroke and evolution and all of the damage that was done. , our family had lost our matriarch and that was a big deal, a huge one that's pivotal. Remember that moment when my own grandmother died. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you remember those things and I'm sorry, , it, it, it matters a lot if you're there at the moment of that kind of a transition in a family, for sure.

Then for diabetes, It's like, I reconnected with my father's side of my family. I discovered that there's a big issue with blood sugar for that side of the family. And so I was like, huh, what, what really got me going in this work was the number of new patients coming in all the time who had four or five serious chronic illnesses.

I've typically seen people with serious health problems who also had diabetes. And the more I realized how common this is becoming, I mean, right now, Marcy, the numbers are staggering. There's over 137 million people in this country who have diabetes or some kind of type one. Diabetes is 5% type one is when you have to have insulin injections, correct.

Type one is when your pancreas no longer makes any insulin whatsoever. And yes, you will need to take insulin or use an insulin pump or something. Those are the people for whom the pancreas burnout and no longer banks. The insulin at all. It's a different situation for pre-diabetes type two diabetes.

That's the 95% of the diabetes pie.  And in that most of them are right now are type two diabetes because somebody who will pre-diabetes have yet to be diagnosed, they're not even aware that they've got a problem. There's so many ways that there are on ramps to becoming a person who has type two diabetes or pre-diabetes.

So that's why I talk about stress the way I do. You go stress as a classic way to become a type two diabetic. It is not eating tons of ice cream and cheesecake. That's what I say. People don't necessarily party their way to these problems. And I want people to stop blaming folks it's not useful.  Et cetera, poor sleep is another way people can become diabetic.

 Another option with this can be that someone has had a severe stress that they didn't heal from. And the other option is that they're eating their nutrition is not good along with a lack of exercise. Any two of those four together, and I haven't ever been off three or four together. Well, it's a recipe for problem.

Wow. And there's so many people. Yeah. Yeah. It's such a growing, it's a shockingly growing number. And I'd love to see that trend reversed. Like if we can put a pin in it and just say, we're going to commit to making this better over the course of the next 15 years, we could absolutely do this, but we will have to be about health care and not disease management.

Those are different things. There are different things. Yeah. Wow. Well, this has been such an eye eyeopening, informational conversation. Thank you so much for being here. You're welcome. This has been a pleasure. Thank you for asking me. I love having a chance to have these conversations and just, you know, reach people because I just think the more we can understand things in regular words, the better off we all are.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So if anybody wants to track down Dr. Beverley, you can do so at her website. Dr. D R Beverly Yates, Y a T E s.com. That will be listed in the show notes underneath where this episode is found. Thank you so much, Dr. Beverly for coming. I appreciate your time. This has been fabulous. This is my pleasure, Marcy.

I'm honored. Thank you for the asking me. I hope that people are helped that they got at least one thing clearer today. That will be great. I got a dozen things clearer today. This is great. Thank you. All right. You're welcome.