083 - A Crazy Medical Story that Could Revolutionize How Physicians Treat Diabetes in Medical Practice

Can a simple lifestyle change reduce healthcare costs and improve patient outcomes without adding a cent to the budget? In this week’s Crazy Medical Story on The Independent Physician's Blueprint, we explore a groundbreaking approach that could revolutionize the treatment of diabetes.

In a recent study published by JAMA's Network Open Access, intermittent fasting outperformed standard medications like Jardiance and Metformin in controlling blood sugar levels. Coach JPMD shares his personal experience with intermittent fasting and its transformative effects on his energy and health. Discover how this underutilized strategy could be a game-changer for your patients and practice.

Listen to learn how incorporating intermittent fasting into your medical practice can not only help manage diabetes more effectively but also reduce reliance on costly medications. This episode provides insights into a practical, evidence-based approach to improving patient outcomes without breaking the bank.

Ready to rethink your approach to diabetes management? Tune in now and start implementing these life-changing strategies in your practice today!

Reference: Guo L, Xi Y, Jin W, et al. A 5:2 Intermittent Fasting Meal Replacement Diet and Glycemic Control for Adults With Diabetes: The EARLY Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Netw Open. 2024;7(6):e2416786. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.16786

Dr.Mindy Pelz - "Fast Like a Girl" https://drmindypelz.com/

Discover how medical graduates, junior doctors, and young physicians can navigate residency training programs, surgical residency, and locum tenens to increase income, enjoy independent practice, decrease stress, achieve financial freedom, and retire early, while maintaining patient satisfaction and exploring physician side gigs to tackle medical school loans.

Transcript

Coach JPMD (00:00.076)
Welcome to another crazy medical story with Coach JPMD. In today's episode, you're going to discover what I think should be the leading story. Story that should have been leading all year. A medical story that would substantially, substantially decrease healthcare costs in the United States. One that would not add one cent to a patient's budget. Welcome back to another episode where I help younger physicians decrease stress and increase income.

by transitioning from corporate to independent practices, even without any business experience. Well, this story is about intermittent fasting. And there was an interesting article, randomized clinical trial article that was released in the Open Network Access, JAMA's Network Open Access article that described a 5 -2 intermittent fasting meal replacement and glycemic control study in adult patients.

And I'll have the link to the study in the show notes. But what was interesting was that they randomized 405 patients to a diet that was controlled, where in two days they restricted the caloric intake of those patients through meal replacements. And five days they did not restrict the patients. And they compared this patient group with Jardians and Metformin.

And in the fasting group, they had a better glycemic control than the drug group. Hmm. Things that make you say, hmm. Well, interestingly enough, I've been actually fasting for the past year, year and a half intermittently. following Mindy Peltz, who was an author who

wrote the book Fast Like a Girl and where she describes something that you can do or a fasting regimen that you can do which she calls a 5 -1 -1 where you fast five days a week or you restrict your caloric intake and I do that for about 12 to 18 hours on five days a week and one day you go and eat 24 or you eat regularly.

Coach JPMD (02:17.838)
which is what I do. And that day is usually either Saturday or Sunday. And then one day you go 24 hours where you have no meal, or your last meal or at least my last meal is at six, seven PM. And I don't have another meal until 24 hours later. And what that did for me was it actually helped me decrease my weight, I lost about five pounds, I had more energy, I was able to do more with the same amount of time. And so imagine if we

as a population pushed an intermittent fasting regimen for patients with diabetes. Now this study was on early diabetes, but the amount of resources that we put into drugs and into medications and to...

other things other than nutritional habits that can be changed is is mind boggling. I don't remember one nutrition course in medical school, although that was many years ago. Maybe my memory does not serve me well, but it is common to hear amongst other professionals that

we don't get nutritional courses. And so it's great to have an article like this come out. That's a randomized clinical trial. There are lots of other articles that have shown that intermittent fasting can help decrease weight, improve immunity.

and, and whole, whole and decreased cholesterol, decreased blood pressure. So there are many things that you can do nutritionally that can help you as well as your patient. So that's my craziest medical story of the, of the week. It's about nutrition. It's about looking at the studies, being curious about things that we were not taught in medical school. And that curiosity could bring better glycemic control and diabetics and it won't cost you anything.

Coach JPMD (04:06.7)
not a dime, it won't cost a patient anything and it'll actually make them feel better. Thank you for listening to these crazy medical stories and don't forget to subscribe and follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app so that you'll never miss an episode.