Diabetic Dialogue – Dan Sodergen

Welcome to Diabetic Dialogue. I'm Sandra Ewers and we are on Women's Radio Station Today and I would like to welcome Dan Soderbrud to Women's Radio. Dan recently took part in ITV's Fast Fix Diabetes show in June with Dr. Zoe Williams and Professor Gill. And Dan is going to tell us about his journey with type 2 diabetes. Welcome, Dan, to Women's Radio Station. Thanks so much for having me on. You are very welcome. Now, Dan, tell us about how all this came about. How did you get involved with the show? I know you were one of the volunteers. Tell us all about it. Yeah, well, I was very, very, very lucky. It's amazing amount of luck, actually, for me, because I'd only been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. I probably had the condition for quite a while, actually had a lot of the different symptoms. But because I'd spoken to my doctor about a different condition, which was the onset of early dementia, which is linked to type 2 diabetes, we'd run some tests and he'd stumbled into the fact that I had type 2 diabetes. I literally went back and he said, well, you must probably haven't got early dementia, even though there is a link, but you've definitely got type 2 diabetes. Wow. That was a very good find, wasn't it? Because obviously you didn't have dementia. You were very lucky there. So, you know what I mean? And lucky at the same time. Yeah, exactly. I mean, when I tell people the story, that's exactly their reaction, which was, you know, for me personally, I was very happy because I didn't have. Well, they weren't 100% sure about the early dementia. We're doing a few more tests on that side of it, but for me, and that was the biggest pain point for me, that was my worry. But for them, it was almost like a side note that I. Well, you've got the symptoms for it. Let's do some tests. Oh, no, you definitely got type two. And I was like, okay, well, that's fine. And they said, well, you're going to have to go on Metformin, because that's what you need to do, because that's what you do next. And, you know, don't worry about it. It's a chronic disease or condition, but you'll be able to manage it with some drugs and don't worry about it too much. And I was like, well, it's interesting you say that, Doc, because I looked online and it kind of said the opposite. It said that it wasn't necessarily a chronic disease. It was very worrying to have it and some huge complications because of it and I should do something about it as quickly as possible. And of course, one of those things was reading about all the work that that Professor Roy Taylor had done and Jason Gill and other people that showed me could potentially reverse or certainly put it into remission. Types of diabetes with diet and exercise. Right, let me ask, did you take the Metformin? No, I never took Metformin, no. I went back to the doctors two weeks later. It was a brilliant moment of NHS moments because I'd taken up my two or three minutes talking about not having early dementia. They couldn't book me in again for another two weeks. You go over that kind of time allowance and they say, well, this will be for a different session. So in that time, I'd actually found out about Jason Gill's work and also a variety of other people's work, Dr. Michael Mosley and all sorts of folk that have reversed type 2 diabetes with diet and exercise. And so when I went back to the doctors, I kind of told them about all this stuff and said, well, actually, what I'm going to do, Doc, is I'm going to reverse it with type 2 and reverse my type 2 diabetes with diet and exercise. So I don't need to take Metformin and nor will I. I'm gonna give it a go this way. And because of what I do as a job, I teach people digital transformation, I teach people how to use social media and blogging and all these different kind of things as my proper job. Still self employed, still my own business, but that's what pays the rent and the rest of it. So I'd actually written a blog and that's how they found out about me, because I put this blog on LinkedIn and the research company or the producers or whatever, they found me through LinkedIn. And so that's how I stumbled in part being part of the show. Wow, a good find. So what actually happened? So it was an extreme diet, wasn't it? I know that you were taking 800 calories a day in the form of sort of shakes. Tell me all about that. It was an extreme diet. Yeah. It wasn't. How can I put this in a positive way? Well, the positive thing is I reverse type 2 diabetes, so that's the positive. It wasn't necessarily something that I would recommend everyone do, ever. It wasn't a. I've now learned an awful lot more about the process, what it does, and the work that Professor Roy Taylor and other people have done. Is absolutely right. It reverses type 2 diabetes and it does so very quickly, but it's not necessarily the most pleasurable of human experiences. I can imagine. So, yeah, you're starving yourself, technically, you're going into starvation ketosis rather than metabolic ketosis. And your listeners will know ketosis is when you start burning away the fat. When you burn away the fat, rather than burning away sugars, what really happens is you lose weight very quickly and it's that weight around your pancreas and other organs, it's that ectopic fat, as it's called, the stuff on the inside that certain people get a lot of, myself included, and because, I don't know, because it disappears from you, because you're burning it away. And that's quite a painful process. It's not an enjoyable process, of course. And were you monitored by experts and sorry to interrupt you there. Were you monitored by experts while you were doing this? Because I know that you stayed in like a particular house for four weeks, is that correct? Yeah, we stayed down in Brighton, a beautiful multi million pound paddock down in Brighton. And it, it certainly proved to me that you can have all the money in the world, but if you're not, well, it doesn't make any difference because you can't really enjoy all these nice housing and all this other stuff. We were staying in because actually I was in quite a considerable amount of pain because of having to starve myself. Because it is literally, it's not quite starvation. Starvation would be anything under 600 calories, so it's technically not starvation diet and it's not fasting either. It's a bizarre mixture of the two which works to reverse type 2 diabetes. But I say it's quite a painful process. And so for us there was. How do I put it? Yeah, we had to have medical people there, we had to have daily checkups, we actually had hourly tests that we would fill in. We had. At one point we were doing blood tests every couple of hours just to monitor the situation. So, yeah, it wasn't a normal setup. Right. Very professionally done. I think I even saw you monitoring urine. Sorry, if anybody's eating whatever they're eating right now. Sorry. But there was a time when you were like monitoring each other's urine to see if there was sugar in that. What was that experience like, I have to ask you. No, I think, to be fair, what my friends and lots of other people remember about the show is definitely the smelling of the wee is what they remember, which is interesting. Luckily for me, again, it's bizarre luck because I'd had a back complaint and because of how painful the process was, was going through. I was kind of bedridden at that time and I didn't know that when the, when Zoe Williams and some other people were turning up that that's what they were going to be filming. And so I'd have to kind of bow out of the filming for that day. But that meant that everyone else got to smell my wee and I didn't have to smell theirs. Oh my God, that's an experience. So, yeah, Luke still hasn't forgiven one of the contestants, still hasn't forgiven me about if cheap. Oh, goodness. So now with these 800 calories, obviously because you were eating so little, you didn't do any exercise at the time, did you? You were just sort of like a bit of both the first two weeks because remember, we weren't eating anything, there were shakes. So in the first two weeks you drink an awful lot of water and you have these shakes and you have them every couple of hours and you have four a day, which is around about 800 calories. Sometimes it might go down to 600 because of timings, but we were still doing eight or 10 hours of filming a day as well. So we weren't bedridden and we weren't not moving. But in the first two weeks, because of the energy depletion, you're not meant to exercise, right, because you can't do it. That's a very powerful journey for you. And did everybody. So what. How did you feel when you were doing it? Did you think I can. Were there any times that you felt you might give up? Yeah, no, I almost came home a couple of times. And one of the things that. Because obviously you were making a TV show as well, so one of the things that they didn't allow you to do is to FaceTime with your family because of the amount of changes that happen. Also not to give away the changes, so to speak. And you obviously couldn't see your family. So. My family, I'm sure, like most listeners, are very important to me. So that was a kind of a heart aching thing not being able to see my daughter Mia because she's only seven and so she's going through a wonderful time of her life and I wanted to be there, so that was my reason to want to come home. Also the fact that you get very, very cold and it's a, it's not a very pleasurable experience. And so we were quite lucky because in the retreat there was five of us going through the same thing. Right. It was a kind of almost a kind of war mentality where we were like a little mini family. And it was us versus, we say us versus the world. It was us versus normal food. So you, so you could actually support each other. I like that. Yeah, I think that's good. You know, if you were going to do it and if I was going to do it again, I don't know if I would do it the way that, I mean, remember we were making a TV show. So, you know, you're under certain parameters to do it. And I don't know if I've heard from and I've read through lots of different tests that people can do this at home. And believe me, my hat goes off to anyone who can do this change at home and also work at the same time because I would have found it impossible to work because of the amount of headaches and pain I was in. Now I understand that we're going to take a short break right now and we're going to come just take a short five minute break. And we will be joined once again by Dan Soderan who will be telling us about his fast fix experience. So do join us after the break. Thank you very much. WRS women's radio station Voice of Women Worldwide, Sarah's Universal Soul Show. What does your soul or spirituality mean to you? Welcome to future Classical Woman Awards with me, Stefania Passamonte on Women's radio Station. Welcome back. I'm Russ Cain. You're listening to in conversation with on Women's Radio Station. I'm Angie. And I'm Patsy and we're open to see what other programs we have on women's radio station, head to our website womensradiostation.com hi, I'm Valentina Barbacci and I'm the executive director of Media Matters for Women. We're a registered charity operating in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo and we produce and share podcasts via Bluetooth on mobile phones focusing specifically on women and girls excluded from information due to extreme poverty. We empower those living in rural areas with media that transforms how they access, own and share information. To find out more and be part of this movement, come check out our website@mediamattersforwomen.org do you need mediation? We are the a project charity. We provide convict resolution and community engagement services. 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Find out more@theroomupstairs.co.uk Women's radio station is a not for profit community interest company. Supporting is our passion. We're currently welcoming donations to help towards our running costs to keep this important initiative alive. To donate, simply head to our website. Every little will help. Welcome back to Diabetic Dialogue. We're on Women's radio station today and we're joined by Dan Sodergren who's telling us about his experience on ITV's Fast Fixed Diabetes show, which went out in June. Welcome back, Dan. Ah, nice to be back. Right, so we've just been talking about obviously your experience there and everything that you went through for our listeners. Now, look, you were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes last year, so what symptoms did you have last year? Well, the symptoms I had had actually say we bumped into it. I was kind of almost misdiagnosed. I was diagnosed because I'd gone for the early acceptance of Alzheimer's and then actually dementia. So it had to also do with mental fatigue and the kind of fogginess that I was going through and my memory going. And of course that's because, as explained to me since then, it's to do with your high blood sugar, obviously rots you from inside out, unfortunately, with type 2 diabetes. And it actually been going through and I'm kind of proud of it in a weird way, it'd been going through my brain. So because I've been using my brain so much because I was so clever, that's what I like to think. I wish I was clever. Yeah, well, to be fair, I'm not anymore because it gone through my brain an awful lot. 25% of your blood goes to your brain as well, so it's going to affect your brain. And that's what type two dimension, Type two have been doing. It's been triggering potential dementia. Other things have been obviously being very, very tired, drinking all the time, you know, going to the toilet at nighttime, you know, just lots of joint pain. I'd also had a lot of leg pain start the start of neuropathy, as it's called, you know, starter pins and needles in my legs. Lots of weird and wonderful stuff had happened. Right. So I can understand all that. I mean, I had the same symptoms last year, which I did ignore. I've got to say this, listeners, for about a few years, I thought I was going through the menopause and they were menopausal symptoms. So if you do get any of those symptoms, do go to see your GP or a health professional. We're just putting it out there. And just remember, listeners, this show is about type 2 diabetes. Today. It's about listening to Dan, hearing about his journey. And this is not about type 1 diabetes, how Dan reversed his diabetes, and it's type 2 that he reversed. So if you've got any other issues, do go to a health professional. Dan, did you on the Fast Fix show, you had to do get back into eating. So how did you do that? Well, that's one of the things that I found kind of the most interesting out of all the experience. Because I had like six or seven months off, I could change my relationship with food. And I must be fair, I'd never really been into health until I got ill. And now I've kind of managed to turn it all around. One of the ways that I've managed to do this. And again, I reiterate what you were saying before. This is just type 2 diabetes. This is just how to reverse type 2 diabetes. It's not necessarily healthy, it's just the way that we did it. That's low carb versus no carb. So for me, a low carbohydrate diet. And I know there's lots of people doing this, like the low carb program, some great work by Dr. Unwin and loads of folk that are now understanding this. Now the science behind it, for me, it's. It's that low carbohydrate, high fat root. That's what's worked for me personally. And that's how I've changed my relationship with food. Because before I was eating a tremendous amount of kind of beige carbohydrates, which, as you know, turned into sugars, and then I was eating quite a lot of sugar at the same time. And of course, as you know, type 2 diabetes is about having high blood sugar. So there's kind of a common sense to not doing those things. The other one that I hadn't done enough personally is I'd never slept a lot and I'd never really drank a lot of water. And that's another key for me personally for reversing my type 2 diabetes, was sleeping more and drinking more water. And then the last one, which is kind of part of the three keys which are in the book that I've written, the kind of three keys, the last one's around exercise and changing my relationship with exercise is I've been going to the gym a lot. But actually, as Jason Gill and Dr. Joe Williams pointed out for me at the time, with type 2 diabetes, that root most probably wasn't working. And instead what I should do and what I do now is I exercise, but I exercise litter and often. So I exercise for 10 minutes every hour rather than going to the gym and doing an hour and a half and then the blood sugars go down and then I eat something bad for myself. So I changed my relationship not just with food, but also with exercise and water and even sleep. That's a really good message. And it obviously has worked for you. Now, as a result, I know as a result of the show, you've actually created your own retreat, so to speak, called Be free of type 2 diabetes. Can you tell us more about that, please? Well, yeah, I mean, it was inspired on what we'd done in the thing. I mean, I didn't realize, I'm completely honest with you. I never realized how big the problem of type 2 diabetes was until I got it. Yeah. Until I kind of went and looked into it a lot. Until they did the scan on me and they worked out my liver fat was 27.2%, my liver was 27.2% fat, which is basically going to kill me. And I didn't know any of this stuff until I went on to this, went onto the program and because it basically changed my life and actually saved my life, the work of Professor Taylor and others literally saved my life. I decided that I would give up my pension bot cash it in early and launch this organization which I've launched, which is called Be free of type 2D. And there's the website www.befreeoftype2d.co.uk and what we're thinking of doing is doing retreats very similar to what we did at the Fast Fix Diabetes and taking people away for an amount of time to reteach them and kind of reprogram their bodies, but also reteach them about their relationship with food. And that's my big thing, really is it's all very well us kind of talking about what people need to do, but if you can't show them what they can need to do, you can give them the whys all you want, but you have to show them how. You have to show them what to do. And that's what we'll be doing on these retreats. That sounds very interesting because it obviously is guidance. That's what people need. And I know it's not one size fits all. I've probably said this already today. It's not one size fits all, everyone. It's about choice, how you can choose to reverse your type 2 diabetes. My choice was I did take metformin, my blood sugar was very high. I did take the metformin, but I also went on a lifestyle change and lost a load of weight and I feel better for it. So that was my choice. I was gonna say, whatever you choose to do, it's obviously about you, but you must have support from the professionals. So obviously you're saving money for the nha. I mean, it could save them, save the NHS a lot of money. I know they spend millions on fighting diabetes and obviously for medication and supporting patients. Do you think this could help with it? Well, the actual figures, if you look at it, range between like £10 billion a year, and I'm not joking, not a million, but 10 billion pounds a year. Up to. When you look at the complications, etcetera, it's up to 23 billion. So 23 billion is something like 20, maybe 27% of the actual whole budget. So if you looked at what they could do if they did this, they could save. And we were working out on the BBC when I was talking about it, it's between 5 and 10 billion pounds a year you could save if you only helped 50% of the people with type 2 diabetes. And the research that's coming back is showing that with lifestyle changes and other changes, you could most probably help between. And something I believe as well, you could change between 70 to 90%. So it's much higher than 50%. So you could actually save the whole NHS just by changing the way that the 4 million people that have got type 2 diabetes in this country and it's rising sadly, rather than dipping, look at their bodies and what they do. And I think one of the key things that I've learned is that we've got to try to take control of our own bodies again. And as you say, you're absolutely right, it is a choice. But one of the things I don't think is a choice, and I get very told off about this, is. And it's only because it's based on some of the scientific proof, is that people who are overweight or obese are much more likely to get type 2 diabetes. And one of the ways to. One of the first things you need to do if you want to reverse it, is you need to lose 15% of your body fat and losing 50% of your body fat or your body weight, that's one of the hardest things to do. We did that very quickly, but I don't know if that's necessarily the only way of doing it. But you do. But that 15% is actually quite a golden rule. So the first thing you need to do if you've got type 2 diabetes, lose 15% of your body fat, your body weight, obviously talk to health professionals as well. But I think nowadays, the modern medicine approach, everyone would say the same thing, which is it tends to be because people are overweight, rather than that people aren't, which is very different, of course, to Type one. Right. That's a very positive message there. I hope listeners out there, you must obviously adhere to these messages, obviously do speak to your doctor and a health professional if you do plan to lose weight, if you need any assistance, because obviously you can't do it on your own, you do need support. So there is support out there. Do you have a final message, Dan, to our listeners? A very quick message just before we go off air. Any other message that you'd like to give? Well, yeah, I mean, one of the ones to me, it's all based on research, it's all based on knowledge and the nurse research that's out there. So we created another website called type2diabetesfree.com. So that's type2diabetesfree.com which isn't linked to any of the retreats or anything else that we're doing. It's purely not for profit. And that will show you. There's a link from that that will show you the newest research that's out there at the moment. And that's what I suggest all listeners do, is they find out the nurse research on this stuff. It's changing every month, but the actual message seems to be continually that this low carb approach is working for 50 to 90% of the people that have got type 2 diabetes. If you're going to exercise, make sure it's. And drink more water. That's the key things. Really Brilliant. So, Dan. Thank you very much, Dan. Dan has given us the message. Do you have any questions for Dan? Or diabetic dialogue? Then email women's radio stations. Sorry, presentersomensradiostation.com and you can go or tweet us@womensradiostation.Com and thank you very much, Dan, for taking the time to come to speak to us. No, no, thank you, it's been great. You're very, very welcome. If you want to catch any of our previous programmes, obviously you can go onto womensradiostation.com and click on presenters. We spoke to Dr. Zoe Williams of the Fast Fix Diabetes Show. She's ITV's this Morning resident GP. And we've got some other shows out there we spoke to Diabetes uk. Then there's some interesting interviews. So please have a look at the site. It was very interesting speaking to Dan as well and, you know, hearing about his journey. If you do want to let me know about your journey, then please email me@presentersomensradiostation.com and I'm very happy to hear about your journey. So help me fight the war on diabetes. Thank you very much for listening. Welcome to Women's Radio Station, the voice of women worldwide. 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We empower those living in rural areas with media that transforms how they access, own and share information. To find out more and be part of this movement. Come check out our website@mediamattersforwomen.org Mirae B Ltd. We are a virtual PA consultancy. We provide remote administrative services. Our offering is diverse. We manage your calendar, we update your client database, we take care of your property in France and in London. We also offer bookkeeping and translation services. Would you like to know more? Please call 077-868-4-8998 for further information. Mirae B Limited making the life of the business owner successful. I'm Isabelle Manevy, an executive coach. Do you want to change a negative into a positive? We can do this by encouraging you to rewire your brain using simple visualization techniques. In 20 years of practice, I've seen this transform lives. For more information, look on Women's Radio website. Call me on 079-844-22171. I'm listening. Do you need mediation? We are the a project charity. We provide conflict resolution and community engagement services. Our services include community mediation for neighbour disputes, family mediation for separating couples, special education needs for parents, carers and their children, and young adults, as well as workplace mediation and restorative services. To find out more, head to womensradiostation.com or theaproject.co.uk. I'm Angie. And I'm Patsy and we're open as a trans woman living in the centre of London in 2018. The show's about all the barriers I face on a daily level, but it's also about our life stories. How we got to where we are, how we stayed positive in the face of adversity and being more than just a label. It's about finding one's true, authentic self. But it's also about your stories too. So send us a spot tweet. Send us an email at presentersomensradio. The voice of women Worldwide women's radio station is a not for profit community interest company. Supporting women is our passion. 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