Jessica apple is a writer and editor with a focus on metabolic health and a co-founder of a nonprofit magazine for low carb diabetes please welcome Jessica [Applause] apple good hi I'm Jess Apple it's an honor to be here thank you so much for coming thank you for listening to my story this is not medical advice when I was in kindergarten my mom wore a black eye patch like a pirate she had a cane to help her walk but her arm shook so much she couldn't really hold the cane down on the floor she had a
disease that was hard to say and impossible to spell Mommy's body is attacking itself my dad explained no one knew why there wasn't a single day in my childhood when I didn't wonder what would make a body attack itself and I was still thinking about it when it started happening to me I got chickenpox when I was 25 I was sick for weeks and even when the pox went away I still didn't feel good but my doctor couldn't figure out what was wrong with me I can't prove it but I think that that's when my
autoimmune problems began and as is sometimes the case when there isn't a clear diagnosis it was concluded that my illness was in my head and okay fair enough because I was incredibly anxious I was in my mid 20s the same age my mom had been when she got sick and what I remembered from my childhood was when you get sick and nobody knows why you go on to endure Unthinkable suffering for more than a decade and then you die but that's not what happened to me quite the opposite I got pregnant and then for the
first time I had an oral glucose tolerance test and I found out that I had gestational diabetes my doctor was really surprised because I was young and thin and healthy because I ate according to the food pyramid lots and lots of healthy heart health healthy grains lowfat Dairy plenty of fruits and vegetables and I didn't eat meat because it wasn't because I thought meat was bad for me I just didn't want to eat animals and I had been a vegetarian for most of my life it would take 8 years and two more pregnancies for me
to finally figure out my diabetes problem strangely enough during that time my husband Mike was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes autoimmune diabetes and once again my loved one's body was attacking itself and though more than 20 years had passed since my mom was sick still no one could explain what would make a body attack itself Mike's diabetes symptoms were severe and scary and he almost died before he got the correct diagnosis but me on the contrary there was nothing dramatic about my diabetes I always presented with slightly elevated fasting glucose and my doctors weren't concerned
about it because my grandfather had had type 2 diabetes so it was genetic and genetic obviously meant inevitable I was presented with the notion that my health was predetermined and that I was doomed to be sick my anxiety about that impending doom and pretty much everything else was tremendous I carried it with me everywhere like a heavy backpack that I could never put down at the end of 2008 halfway through my third pregnancy and convinced that I had something more than gational diabetes I asked a doctor to test me for type 1 I was diagnosed
with L latent autoimmune diabetes and adults based on auto antibodies and low C peptide which indicated a diminished capacity to secrete insulin L is a slow progressing form of type one and it usually comes with insulin resistance it looks a lot like type 2 or metabolic syndrome in its early stages and it's often called type 1 and a half after my diagnosis a dietitian gave me a meal plan she sat at a desk in front of a poster of the food pyramid and she had a lot to say about my need for fiber particularly in
the form of brand flakes I tried to follow her instructions for a few days and I I ate brand flakes for breakfast but my blood sugar was never under 180 afterwards so how could they be good for me at my second appointment with tears in my eyes I explained that I couldn't eat brand flakes without a giant Spike and blood sugar and it never happened to me when I ate eggs The dietitian assured me that the problem was not the cereal it was me that's why you take insulin she explained to bring your blood sugar
down but why would I want to take a giant bolus of a really dangerous drug when I could just not eat Brown flakes they don't even taste good it defied common sense and though I trusted in my common sense I also knew that what made sense to me was not the same thing as scientific evidence so I was confused and I was scared doctors promised me that Lotto would worsen with time and there was nothing I could do about it recognizing that they might be right and I might be making a big mistake I still
opted to go with my common sense and I became a scientist of myself and I said goodbye to insulin and off I went with my little glucose meter in a big dream to have agency over my health thank you I diligently tracked my blood sugar before and after meals and I figured out what I could metabolize without needing to inject insulin I didn't know it at the time but I had essentially begun a ketogenic diet at that time aside from the groundbreaking work of Gary tals there wasn't a lot of information about carbohydrate restriction and
certainly not from the American Diabetes Association or anyone in the diabetes industry they were pushing the message that carbs were essential and that diabetes was a genetic Misfortune which had nothing to do with what you ate unless you ate a lot of red meat and and then that was the problem still today you can find terrible advice on their website today they're telling you that fruit juice is a nutritious choice but fruit juice is sugar Mike and I decided to tell the world there was another way to manage diabetes and that a life without carbs
could still be very sweet in 2009 we founded a Sweet Life a nonprofit low carb dice abetes magazine and for over 12 years we published thousands of articles about metabolic health and diabetes at the same time Mike was running marathons and I was quietly treating L with diet and exercise only what I could not tell you when I started this in 2009 I can confidently tell you today there is at least one person on this planet who has put l into remission for 15 years yes who and along the way I've spent a lot of
time contemplating the origins of autoimmune diseases because inside me has always been the little girl who watched her mother deteriorate into a body that could do nothing but breathe and I wanted to know what happened to her but even more importantly L as a mother myself I had to know what I could do to protect my children from disease so I thought a lot about L and how it straddled the line between type 1 and type 2 diabetes what was the connection between metabolic dysfunction and autoimmune disorders was insulin resistance a trigger for autoimmunity or
did autoimmunity cause insulin resistance had my keto diet put l into remission and could we start looking at all autoimmunity through a metabolic lens I had a million questions and over the course of a few years metabolic Health became a Hot Topic and it was very exciting wonderful things began to happen My Brother Sam Apple published a book called ravenous about cancer as a metabolic disease [Applause] a group called the type 1 grit publicly proved that children with diabetes could grow and thrive on a low carb diet according to Dr Bernstein's method my friend Dr
Mariela glant an endocrinologist started to treat her diabetes patients with keto and a medical doctor with Ms Dr Terry walls recovered from Ms using nutritional therapy and she she went from a wheelchair to riding a bike she was the first person I heard talk about mitochondrial dysfunction in Ms I knew that mitochondria were the cells that powered metabolism so mitochondrian metabolism something was clicking for me something was starting to make sense and so many of the metabolic Mysteries I've been wondering about were starting to unravel and critical for my self- sciencing was the work of
Harvard psychiatrist Dr Chris Palmer who says all symptoms of mental disorders can be tied directly to metabolism or more specifically mitochondria just like Dr walls had identified mitochondrial dysfunction in Ms Dr Palmer or impaired mitochondrial biology as Dr Matthew Phillips calls it Dr Palmer's brain energy Theory claims that this is also the root cause of all mental disorders impaired mitochondrial biology what could we possibly do about that actually there's great news because there's so much we can do and I was already using one of the metabolic strategies a key to genic diet but by the
time I learned about keto for mental health I been on a keto diet for so long and it was great for my blood sugar but I'd never felt any relief from my anxiety disorder so I Shrugged it off because you know nothing works for everyone but at the same time I knew that my diet was deficient in nutrients because I didn't eat meat and I had long believed that the science shows that animal fat is essential for the brain to op to work optimally except that not eating meat was also Central to my moral identity
and it wasn't something that I wanted to overcome so I had to work really really hard on myself to change and I constantly reminded myself that I am an animal with biological needs just own it I'd say to myself and until finally I did I stopped using plant fats and I replaced them with beef Tallow and my brain transformed within a few weeks my heavy backpack of anxiety turned into a handbag and the incessant voice in my head telling me to brace for impending disaster went from a scream to a whisper I had finally found
a way to be in the moment without the background noise of fearing what comes next this is just anecdotal of course I don't know if or for how long any of my health improvements will last and I'm really not qualified to tell anyone what they should or should not eat so I'll quote someone who is Dr Terry walls eat for your mitochondria she says in her famous lecture about recovering from Ms become ambassadors for your mitochondria Dr walls rose up from a wheelchair doing this my friend Hannah Warren put bipolar disorder into complete remission doing
this you just heard what I did and there are thousands of others including many of you here today who are healing using metabolic strategies and I'm so grateful to be part of this community we are demonstrating what is possible propelling science forward and Paving the way for a new approach to preventing and managing chronic illnesses thank you I just wanted to add uh I only found this out backstage she flew all the way from Tel Aviv to come give that speech [Applause] yeah
