Alex’s Struggle with Type-1 Diabetes and Related Health Conditions
Alex was diagnosed with Type-1 Diabetes at the tender age of 3, and although her diet growing up was low in sugar, it still contained the pasta and potatoes that graced the average household at the time. As she got older, she had to navigate the severe blood sugar lows that go along with being Type-1, regularly combatting symptoms of confusion, irritability, and general weakness.
By the time she entered her teenage years, Alex was experiencing feelings of burnout and depression regarding her condition—but little did she know—things were about to get even more serious.
Desperate Search for Answers
In her mid-twenties, Alex was diagnosed with Retinopathy and Gastroparesis. Both conditions bring misery; Retinopathy slowly steals your vision, and Gastroparesis is a condition that effectively paralyzes the stomach, making it difficult to digest food or go to the bathroom. Alex describes her daily symptoms as hellish, and after a particularly upsetting eye doctor’s appointment, she found herself desperately searching for answers.
Her uncle had passed away as a young man from Type-1 Diabetes, and she had no interest in suffering the same fate as well.
“I was home from work one day after having gotten treatment for retinopathy, and I’m not going to go into the gruesome details on that one—but it involves injections into your eyeball—and I was not having a great time…I was on the computer, and I was like, ‘I need to know what to do—I have to figure out how to stop going blind and how to stop puking every day! Something needs to change.'”
Discovering the Low-Carb Diet Approach
Laughed at by her endocrinologist, Alex feverishly searched the internet and ended up coming across the work of Dr. Richard Bernstein, a Type-1 Diabetic like herself who—now in his late 80s—was still practicing medicine and treating diabetic patients by utilizing a low-carb diet approach. She got his book and read it in two days.
Initially wanting to dive right in, Alex had to backtrack and wean off carbs slowly, a process that eventually took two years. Even though the transition took time, by the end of it, she was experiencing predictable blood sugar, with the ability to go to the bathroom regularly too.
Carnivore Diet: An Elimination Diet
Still, she had some lingering issues, and that’s when she came across the carnivore diet. “I was like, ‘What! This is a concept?'” Alex approached it as an elimination diet, and after a year, she saw even more improvement in her overall health.
Drastic Improvement in Overall Health and Well-being
Thirty years after being diagnosed with diabetes—at 33 years old—she has been able to drastically reduce her insulin usage, her Gastroparesis is 90% in remission, and her eyesight is improving with every passing day.
On top of that, the neuropathy in her toes is completely gone, and she’s down eight pant sizes as well! Alex feels like her entire body has undergone healing. “Everything works better. I’m healthier than I ever have been in my entire life…I can’t speak enough good of all the progress that I’ve seen from making the changes that I have—and that’s what I wanted when I started!”
