This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.
Can the AIP Diet (Autoimmune Protocol) and/or Paleo diet help with Type 1 diabetes? In this post I interview Emily Stauch from Flawed Yet Functional who has adult-onset Type 1 diabetes and shares her experience with these ways of eating.
We talk about :
• her story
• how she got diagnosed
• when and how she came across a gluten-free diet
• and later the AIP (Autoimmune Protocol) and Paleo diets and how they've helped her
• what her family eats
• what her doctors say
Watch the video or read the transcript below!
Michele Spring: This week I have an interview with Emily Stauch from Flawed yet Functional who has adult-onset type 1 diabetes and has used the Paleo and AIP diets to feel better and to mitigate her symptoms. She's going to talk all about this in an interview. She talks about her diagnosis and then how she went about using diet to start feeling better and using insulin and doing all of these different things, so stay tuned.
Michele Spring: Hey everybody, I have another special interview today. Today, I have Emily Stauch from Flawed yet Functional and it's going to be very interesting because she got Adult-Onset type 1 diabetes and has been able to manage it mostly through diet and her story is really incredible and it's very interesting to hear. So, I'm very excited to have her on. Thank you for joining us.
Emily Stauch: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to share my story and hopefully give some encouragement and hope to your listeners.
Michele Spring: Yeah, I think you definitely will do that. So, let me just start off by asking you, can you tell us about your story because it's definitely an interesting story about how you came across or how you developed your diabetes and everything like that. So take it away.
Emily Stauch: Yes. So, diabetes is not foreign to me. My older brother was diagnosed when he was nine years old with juvenile diabetes. So I've been around diabetes since I was six, and I'm familiar with it. But we always viewed it as a fluke, who knows how you get these autoimmune diseases, and so sorry for my brother, but he has it. So, kind of lived through life, no big deal, and going through my first pregnancy, I went in for my glucose test and I failed and I was blown away. I had no idea that my blood sugar was high, I couldn't feel it at all. So I get diagnosed with gestational diabetes, pregnancy is over, they test you again, everything is fine. So I'm like, “Great, just a fluke. Who knows where that came from?” And then get pregnant with my second and right at week 28, my glucose test was not for a couple days and I felt it. I just knew, you can feel high blood sugar, you're more lethargic, your vision gets blurred.
Emily Stauch: So I was so disappointed, I went in for my glucose test and I failed miserably and of course, the doctors were like, “Okay, well now we'll send you in for your three hour.” And it was like, “No, no, no, not necessary. I already know I have this.” So I go through that pregnancy, I get tested at the end after the birth and it's gone, everything's fine, back to normal. And through that process with both pregnancies, my endocrinologist and my OB/GYN just kind of throw up their hands like, “So weird, I don't know why you have gestational diabetes, you don't fit any of the stereotypes, just a fluke, so weird.” So then my youngest is now two. We go on a vacation and when we have a hotel we always get bottled water, we don't like drinking the hotel water. So we had a couple of gallons of water in the fridge and my husband was out because he was playing hockey. He comes in late at night to get a drink and he opens the fridge and he's like, “Where'd all the water go?” I was like, “The water? I don't know, I've been drinking it.” And he's like, “You drank a gallon and a half?” And I was like, “Well, I was really thirsty.” And he's like, “We bought it today, like this afternoon.” And it's late, it was like midnight, 1:00 AM, something like that.
Emily Stauch: I had drank almost entirely by myself, a gallon and a half of water in like 12 hours and I was like, “Hmm, maybe something's going on.” And then throughout that weekend started to see the other symptoms, the constantly thirsty, kind of lethargic. And then the following Monday I was going to go have a play date at my brother's house and so he has glucose monitors and stuff and I'm like, “Well, I guess I'll check my blood sugar there.” And on the way there I had the blurred vision, thankfully not enough where I couldn't drive, it was just the distance and I was just so disappointed. I just knew it, I just knew it, so I got to his house, walk in the door and I'm like, “Where's your glucose monitor? Let me test right now.” And I was 512 and normal is like a 100, a normal person is actually below 100 if their pancreas is working well. So that just started all the doctor's appointments and this is the real thing, this is not gestational diabetes, this is lifelong. So definitely a crushing diagnosis that I am going to be testing my blood sugar multiple times a day.
Emily Stauch: I'm injecting myself multiple times a day with insulin, and so I was really, really down about that diagnosis. So about two weeks into it and I'm still really adjusting, trying to figure out how to be a diabetic and be a mom and manage my blood sugar and tell my kids to, “Wait when mommy's going low, I have to take care of myself.” Anyway, huge transition. I was on the computer one night because again I did not like this diagnosis and I was pretty upset about it and I was literally Googling, “What are the chances of a misdiagnosis?” Which is so laughable now, clearly my blood sugar showed something's not working right. But anyways, I was in denial and I just stumbled upon articles about autoimmune diseases and not type 1 diabetes specifically, but like, “Oh, autoimmune diseases and food.” There was this connection and gluten can cause inflammation, and your gut lining and learned about leaky gut and I mean I was going down this rabbit trail. I was up for hours just glued to my TV screen article after article, journal after journal and I was just mind blown.
Emily Stauch: My husband gets home, again He was at hockey and he's like, “What are you doing?” All the lights are out from the house, I'm glued to my TV screen and I just turned around and I was like, “I think I need to stop eating gluten like right now.” And he's super supportive, he was like, “Okay, we'll just stop eating gluten.” So I did that day, I was done with my mealtime insulin right then. I never took another dose and I weaned myself off my longterm, which is like a once a day shot, insulin because again I was like, “Why is my blood sugar improving? I don't know, do I still need this?” So I kind of took it for a few days but kept decreasing my dose because it was sending me low. So after a week, just no gluten initially, I had no extra insulin. My pancreas could keep up and it was clearly mostly dead like I'd already done all the testing and I was insulin-free just managing by diet and exercise, that sort of stuff for 19 months after my diagnosis. Still seeing the endocrinologist, still sharing with them everything that I'm doing, they're mind blown, they have no idea why it's working. But yeah, 19 months until my pancreas probably died a little more because what I couldn't figure out how to do was to stop my antibody levels from being high.
Emily Stauch: I couldn't get rid of the antibody that was attacking my pancreas and I don't know how to do that and I didn't have anybody to help me. So eventually my pancreas died some more, so I'm on insulin now. I've been on for about a year, but the management is still so different. My blood sugar is way more stable, I know now because I've gone through AIP, I am still working on reintroductions, I know when a food irritates my gut because my blood sugar goes right up. When my gut gets inflamed, my blood sugar raises, and once my gut heals, I can clearly see it in the numbers. It'll just slowly come back down until it's right back to its normal level. So yeah.
Michele Spring: Yeah, it's interesting that you have that direct response like that.
Emily Stauch: Yes, yes. So that is kind of nice to try to do AIP with diabetes. You have a number, this monitor tells you the number if you're doing good, if you're not, because I didn't have a lot of the other symptoms associated with autoimmune diseases. I didn't have any gastrointestinal issues or … Oh, except for the eczema, did I say eczema yet?
Michele Spring: Mm-mm (negative).
Emily Stauch: I did not say eczema yet. I had eczema before and again, it was something that I just have it, my mom has it, it's in my family. I never even got diagnosed with it because I saw my mom tried to manage it and it didn't really help her to get steroid shots or all these treatments. And so I was just like, “Well, whatever, I have it.” In two weeks, going gluten-free, gone. It has not returned, it's gone and I was like, scaly, patchy skin, breaking, bleeding, all that stuff and it's gone. So I just forget that I had it.
Michele Spring: Yeah. I think we accept it as normal because we've seen it in our families or we've had it for so long and everything.
Emily Stauch: Yeah.
Michele Spring: I was reading through some of your history, you also had elevated thyroid as well, right?
Emily Stauch: Yes.
Michele Spring: TSH was high
Emily Stauch: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Michele Spring: Yeah, okay.
Emily Stauch: Yes, and I kind of forget about that one too. I just had it brought up to me in a primary care visit. They were like, “Oh, your thyroid levels high.” I'm like, “Oh no, it's not. But I forgot to tell you guys because my endocrinologist tests it. But since my diet change those levels, right back to normal.” Yeah and-
Michele Spring: [inaudible 00:09:45].
Emily Stauch: Go ahead?
Michele Spring: Go ahead, go ahead.
Emily Stauch: Well, and I'm not just gluten-free, I am doing the whole AIP. I'm not sure if I said that clearly enough. I started just gluten-free and then it wasn't enough and my blood sugar kept going up. So I went to an elimination diet to figure out the rest of the issues and discovered that I'm sensitive to dairy and eggs. So when I was trying to bring my blood sugar down and so I'd eat these zero carb meals of eggs, meat and cheese and I'm like, “Why is my blood sugar going up when I'm eating no carbs?” Well, because the dairy and the eggs were not working with my gut. So, I've refined my diet and then discovered all those things.
Michele Spring: That's very interesting. I find like when you don't realize that you have a sensitivity to something and it doesn't seem to make logical sense that your blood sugar is going up on a no-carb meal. Yeah, that's very interesting.
Emily Stauch: Yeah, it made no sense logically and I've tried to explain it to my endocrinologist and they're sort of on board, but they sort of are like, “Wow, that's still just doesn't follow what we think to be true.” I'm like, “I know. But I think when your gut is inflamed, things get through the cell walls out of your intestine that shouldn't and can raise your blood sugar.” I mean if you're getting partially digested food into your bloodstream, I think that's got to raise it, that's my thought anyway.
Michele Spring: Yeah and protein can do that too. I think so-
Emily Stauch: Yes, yeah, protein can, which those have protein.
Michele Spring: Right.
Emily Stauch: Yeah.
Michele Spring: So yeah, that's fascinating. So you said you did an elimination diet, but that wasn't AIP, right? That you did first?
Emily Stauch: So I've done two, right. So first I did Dr. Amy Myers autoimmune solution elimination diet and it was a good intro for me because it was a menu plan that said, “Eat this and this is the recipe and just do this.” But I didn't realize really what I was doing. So I only followed it for two weeks and I was like, “Wow, this is a lot of work. I think …” I mean, my blood sugar was awesome, like amazing and down to in the 100s to 115 I mean, super, super good. So I was like, “Well, I'm just going to reintroduce food now.” And I didn't have a system for how to do it, I wasn't using a food journal to track my blood sugar and other symptoms. I wasn't really fully doing it, and so I reintroduced foods really rapidly and then a month or month and a half later I was like, “Something's wrong again, my blood sugar is creeping back up. I still don't know why.” Because I didn't journal anything.
Emily Stauch: I didn't really keep track and I reintroduced within a couple of days, I was just trying another thing, trying another thing. So then I found AIP, which is awesome because I had just read Dr. Meyer's book at first and I just had no idea that there were other people out there. I didn't know that there were other recipes because I was looking through this list of acceptable food and was really stressed out about, “What am I going to make? What am I going to eat? How am I going to make a recipe?” And then eventually, I don't know exactly how I figured it out, but then I found on Pinterest that, “Oh, when you tag things AIP, that means autoimmune protocol.” Which was basically what Dr. Myer's system was. It was a little bit different but pretty close, and then I found Dr. Sarah Ballantyne and her books and started finding other bloggers that had food and tips and stuff. So this whole world was opened to me.
Emily Stauch: So yeah, that would have been February of 2017 or '18 I started AIP and the elimination period was much longer. I think my first reintroduction was after 43 days and it failed because I tried eggs first because I really wanted to eat eggs and it didn't work. So then I was like, “Back to the drawing board.” And it takes almost three weeks for my blood sugar to come back to normal. So it was a long time on the elimination phase before I had successful reintroductions.
Michele Spring: Were you scared to start reintroductions after the eggs?
Emily Stauch: Yeah, I was kind of like, “Oh, if all of these are going to fail … ” I just really did not want to be in the elimination phase forever, that was just so limiting and I just really wanted to be able to bake again and, we're not crazy bakers, but it just felt like there was nothing to do. And not that it wasn't eating healthy, it was the best I've ever eaten in my life. I was eating so many vegetables it was so good for me. I felt so good on it, but I did want a little freedom and I was really missing like nuts and chocolate and stuff like that.
Michele Spring: So what was the first thing that you reintroduced after the eggs then?
Emily Stauch: Oh, I have to go look at my blog to see [crosstalk 00:14:56] either almonds or wine, I would think. I think it may have been wine, I'm not sure, I really missed wine, I really did, and they were both successful. Again, I've been able to reintroduce many, many things except like the big guys, no eggs and no dairy, but everything else has really been successful. Some things definitely in moderation and not too frequently like legumes are okay, like a small amount, but not to eat them every day, that doesn't work. So-
Michele Spring: yeah.
Emily Stauch: Yeah and I've had some white rice, but that is so high in carbs. It's just difficult from a diabetic perspective to get the right dose of insulin for it. So for the white rice, it didn't seem to have a lasting effect, it wasn't like days and weeks I'm having this high blood sugar. But just not being able to get the right dose of insulin and either sending myself low or being high for like only like 12 hours or a day or so, and I'd be back to normal. But most of the time it's just not worth it for me, I don't like the stress of it. So yeah.
Michele Spring: So what are you doing now then? It's basically like Paleo without eggs and dairy or is it-
Emily Stauch: Yes. Yeah, so Paleo without eggs and dairy. At this point I don't even do ghee I'm too afraid of it. I have in mind to try maybe a non-cow dairy, like try a goat cheese or something. But I just have to be mentally ready because I don't like seeing high blood sugar for two or three weeks. It's really depressing, and even when I know what happened, I can only handle so many days of high blood sugar before I start to feel down about it. And so yeah, some of those things, the eggs, I'm not willing to try eggs again until I can find somebody who raises free-range eggs that they don't supplement their feed with corn. And I don't know anybody who does that, so-
Michele Spring: Harder to find for sure.
Emily Stauch: Yeah. So yeah, I don't know at this point and I'm down now to all the stage four reintroductions. I've really done pretty much everything else that's not any sort of dairy, I've been staying free of those. So mostly I just need to get myself geared up and try something because I haven't done a reintroduction in a couple of months because you kind of get in a stable point and you're used to it. You're used to cooking like this and it feels good and it's not a big challenge, and so sometimes I just like to sit there for a while before I something new.
Michele Spring: Yeah, and it gives your body a chance to heal even more too, which is good.
Emily Stauch: Right, right.
Michele Spring: A more successful chance at reintroducing something, I would think.
Emily Stauch: Yeah.
Michele Spring: And you successfully reintroduced nightshades as well, right?
Emily Stauch: Yes. Yeah and that was no big deal and I even think I did spaghetti sauce, really just flooded the nightshades and they were all fine. I've even done white potatoes, totally fine. Although it has been funny, so we do it as a family, everybody eats the same except for eggs. I let my kids have eggs sometimes. Other foods have reacted funny to my family, like after eliminating things out and then reintroducing foods that I would've thought never would have affected them. All of a sudden they're saying their belly hurts and I'm like, “Oh, weird.” And white potatoes is one of them. So I might just not eat them, I mean, they're not very nutritious we don't need to be eating them, but mashed potatoes are really good sometimes.
Michele Spring: But on an occasional basis maybe, I don't know.
Emily Stauch: Right.
Michele Spring: Yeah.
Emily Stauch: Yeah.
Michele Spring: So you mentioned your family like you said you eat pretty much the same. Are you worried about them getting this eventually or anything like that as well?
Emily Stauch: I am, yes. So type 1 diabetes is prevalent in my family, so I'm an adult-onset, my dad is an adult-onset, he was diagnosed in his 50s. My brother, as I mentioned, was a juvenile diagnosis and then his oldest daughter was a juvenile diagnosis, and that's just so much, that makes me nervous. Now, thank goodness there are tests, there are genetic tests and blood tests you can do on anyone to see if they're genetically predisposed to type 1 diabetes. So that is in my mind, I do plan to do that for my children. But they're at an age where needles are super scary and I'm probably just going to keep them on the diet that I believe to be giving them the best health and chance for the future of health. And we'll test them in a few years and see what their chances are. But it's like they're looking for five markers and if you have three or more, you're going to develop type 1 diabetes at some point.
Michele Spring: Interesting. How old are they, your kids?
Emily Stauch: They are four and six.
Michele Spring: Four and six, so how do they do? Like do they go to school or preschool or anything like that?
Emily Stauch: Well, my four-year-old is at home and my six-year-old is in first grade, but we homeschool. So he's here too, and any of the programs that we go to that they have childcare, I just tell them that they have the sensitivity and I provide their own snack so that there's no cross-contamination. Some of the programs now have so many kids with allergies that the snack is allergy-friendly and I give my kids the choice, I'm like, “Here's your snack I made. But if you want to take that snack you can.” But they usually take my homemade snack because it's usually a bit more hardy and nutritious and they get to eat more.
Michele Spring: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah. How do things like Halloween affect you guys?
Emily Stauch: Yeah, so that was definitely different this year. My kids are way more aware of what they can and what they can't have. So I just told them before trick or treating, “If someone gives you the choice, try to choose a fruit candy, not a chocolate candy.” I'm like, “But if they don't give you a choice, you just take what they give you.” And they were awesome. They knew which ones don't have gluten or dairy, things like Starburst and things like that don't have gluten and dairy in them. And so then when we got their bags back, we just divided it between, “These are all the dairy and the glutens.” And we gave it to somebody who would take them and that honestly, they had plenty of candy left over. It was still an insane amount of candy and yeah, I mean, I think they were a little disappointed initially when they saw how much was given away, but then when they were like, “Oh, I still have candy. Well, I'll eat this.” And they have been really good and it's our lifestyle now. So I think they're just very used to it. They're used to hearing me explain it, they explain it now what they can eat and can't eat. So Halloween again because we let them have the sugar, so they weren't too disappointed.
Michele Spring: Yeah. Well, it's good that you have that balance too because sometimes that's really hard when you have something and you want to have your kids and your family be healthy but you also have to let them live their lives and not, “I completely rebelled when I moved to college.” Kind of thing. Yeah, so no, that's good, that balance.
Emily Stauch: Yeah, just trying to educate them. I don't want there to be anything mysterious about it like, “This is exactly the reason why we do what we do and we think it's really helping you out longterm.” And yeah, I mean, I fully expect when they leave the house to make different decisions, but also if they don't feel good and even it'll probably happen like on sports trips in high school or something, they'll choose to eat something else and then I hope that they know why when they start to not feel good, they'll know why and then they can choose what they do the next time, you know?
Michele Spring: Exactly, yeah. If only they did that with us when we were smaller.
Emily Stauch: Yeah, yeah.
Michele Spring: I feel like that's half the struggle these days because we all want these things, but we kind of ignore when we don't feel so good sometimes.
Emily Stauch: Right, right. You just think that it's just normal, it's fine. Just like with the eczema and stuff, I'm like, “Well, my mom has it, so no big deal, just ignore that.”
Michele Spring: Yeah, yeah. So changing gears back to in the pre-talk, we talked about a little bit, your endocrinologist and your doctors ask you a lot of questions because they are fascinated by how well you're doing. You want to talk about that a little more?
Emily Stauch: Sure, yes. Yeah, so I still have regular visits. You know I am a type 1 diabetic, I am following the treatment plan that they prescribe. I see an endocrinologist every quarter and I have annual blood work that we look over. But yes, when I go into my visits I am usually answering their rapid-fire questions about what am I eating these days and how do I feel and why did I choose to eat those things. They take note of the diets and the reactions that I talk about and yeah, I actually give them research to go look at and they're usually completely unaware, they don't know about the autoimmune protocol. In fact, one of the practitioners I met with, she said, “Oh yeah, I'm not really up on current research because I have little kids at home.” And I was like, “Oh, so do I, but you're a doctor. Oh my, someone in your office needs to be up on current research.” Because it's not like … Yes, there's plenty of bloggers, I'm a blogger out there sharing my story. I'm not a doctor, but I'm reading medical journals like peer-reviewed things that are medical studies.
Emily Stauch: I'm not drawing my conclusions out of thin air like, “Try this magic food that does whatever.” This is medically statistically supported choices. So yeah, I've done a lot of educating of my endocrinologist and they are supportive. If there is something that is positively impacting blood sugar management, they're all about it. So they are skeptical at first, but I mean I think I've proven it to them that this is working and this works better than the standard American diet. And I've done different experiments with lower carb and higher carb and they're aware of all of that. And their only concern really is that my choices are sustainable because they're like, “We don't want you to be on these low doses of insulin and then go binge eat wedding cake or whatever and then put yourself into …” It's called diabetic ketoacidosis where your blood sugar spikes really high and then you don't have the insulin to tackle it and it can kill you, it's a really serious condition. So I understand their concern, I do. However, at this point, this is my lifestyle and I don't eat gluten cake. I won't go eat that because I do know what would happen and I mean I wouldn't even go binge eat on gluten-free donuts or whatever you have.
Emily Stauch: It is just part of being a diabetic, you need to know what your body can handle as far as sensitivity-wise and then from a carbohydrate perspective, don't undo the insulin you have in you because you will be in trouble. So yeah, so I'm not sure if I really answered your question, but yeah, I've just done a lot of re-education of my doctor's office.
Michele Spring: No, and it's great. I was just trying to figure out, and I think you've answered it, a lot of people tend to have not very supportive doctors and have to do a lot of the research like you said. And a lot of times they don't even support or scoff at dietary choices. And I find maybe it's a little bit more open-minded in the diabetes world because diet is one of those things that is used to help manage it. So maybe seeing the positive results, maybe they can correlate that a little bit more than like thyroid disease, for example, they're like, “Ugh, that wouldn't help at all.” Kind of thing.
Emily Stauch: “No connection, no connection.” Right.
Michele Spring: Yeah, no connection at all, yeah.
Emily Stauch: Yes. Yeah, it is still a little bit disappointing because they have all of these diabetes education classes when you're first diagnosed, they want you to go through all this stuff. And I went to a couple of them and that was new in my gluten-free experience and all that kind of stuff. And I was even like, “This is misinformation.”
Michele Spring: Really?
Emily Stauch: They're telling people, and I guess they're trying to just lower the carbohydrate intake for patients who aren't willing to change, so they're like, “Don't eat Yoplait full carb. Eat Yoplait light.” And I was like, “Gross, no, you shouldn't eat it at all.” It's stuff like that, where I'm like, “Oh, you're replacing, I mean, sugar, yup, sugar, with fake sugar.” So I stopped going because I just couldn't handle it.
Michele Spring: Yeah. How does fake sugar affect diabetes? Because I know that's one where you get that cephalic insulin release where your body thinks it's supposed to get sugar so it releases all the insulin and then you don't actually get the sugar so it can't do anything, how does that work?
Emily Stauch: Yeah, so my blood sugar definitely doesn't go down, the sweeteners react differently in my body. Some of them will raise my blood sugar just like sugar. I mean they say there's no carbs but it has the same reaction in my bloodstream and I need to take insulin for it. I haven't really found one … Stevia is probably the closest to no reaction, but the monk fruit and whatever, that seems to have a reaction. I know, yeah, it's not very good.
Michele Spring: I don't like the taste of it.
Emily Stauch: It's not very good. Yeah, so I just avoid all of those and if we're going to use sugar, we do it pretty sparingly. Like we have sugar honey, maple syrup in our house, but they are not commonly reached for items for anything.
Michele Spring: And that should be the way it is for all of us, [crosstalk 00:29:31]-
Emily Stauch: Right, it's a treat, it's not like I need to eat this every day.
Michele Spring: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah, no, that's great. One more question, just what would you say is the hardest part of your lifestyle now where you're eating this Paleo-ish minus eggs and whatever? What would you consider the hardest?
Emily Stauch: I think it's just keeping up with the cooking. I love to cook and yet it can still be a lot for me. You are cooking every meal, we do eat out occasionally, but not a lot because cross-contamination is difficult. We have a short list of restaurants that we trust and so it can be overwhelming in the kitchen. But to combat that, we love leftovers. So, I mean, pretty much everything I cook is a batch cook, I do not want one meal out of any time in the kitchen, multiple meals. So I think that's the main thing and I just try to tell my husband when I'm like, “I just really need you to cook.” He's a fantastic cook too, so it's not like he's incapable in the kitchen or I'm like, “We need to go out, mama needs a break from this.” So I think that's just the continuous need to be cooking healthy food.
Michele Spring: Mm-hmm (affirmative), I would say the same, probably. I think it's the same for most people, but yeah, it's finding those things like batch cooking and everything that help stave it off and make it easier and then you do get used to it. It's one of those things where, I mean, that's part of our life now. That's just what we do, so-
Emily Stauch: Yes, yup. Yeah, and making use of little time. Like if I know I need to actually cook breakfast the next morning, I don't have leftovers, well then when my kids are eating their snack, I chop all the vegetables for breakfast because nobody wants to be chopping the vegetables at 7:00 in the morning. So yeah, things like that where I'm making better use of my time, I think too, to make the kitchen time easier.
Michele Spring: Yeah, that's great. Do you have any closing words or advice for anybody that may be thinking about using AIP or Paleo or any sort of diet for their type 1 diabetes?
Emily Stauch: Yes. Oh, you've got to try it, just try. Changing your diet, it is amazing and I will tell you because I am a blogger, I have moms talking to me who have kids with diabetes and they have had the same experience as me. So that's why I think diabetes seems like such a, “You can't control it, you just got it, there's nothing you can do all.” Oh, but there's so much that you can do and there is that potential for no insulin. So oh, I would just say try it, explain it to your endocrinologist if you feel the need, but just monitor your blood sugar, change your food, that's all you got to do.
Michele Spring: Oh, awesome. So nice to know that you have that control over it.
Emily Stauch: Yeah, yeah. The food is so much more powerful than you realize. You think it's an easy input, “I'm eating this many carbs so I need this much insulin.” But it's actually not quite that easy, and yeah, the different foods create this long-lasting effect in your blood sugar that you just didn't know about. So it's a really neat thing to learn and to learn your body and how it responds to insulin and carbs and to different foods. And I just think there is a better place for you and your body in your diabetes management than the standard American diet.
Michele Spring: Great, advice. So tell me where can we find you?
Emily Stauch: Yes, well my blog is flawedyetfunctional.com and I'm also on social media, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, and all my handles are the same, they're all @flawedyetfunctional.
Michele Spring: Okay, I'll put the links for that below as well.
Emily Stauch: Perfect, thanks.
Michele Spring: Yeah, and I think that's it. So, I thank you so much for coming on and I really appreciate it.
Emily Stauch: Thanks for having me
Michele Spring: I think this will help a lot of people.
Emily Stauch: Thanks.
Michele Spring: And there you have it, that was a wonderful interview. Thanks so much to Emily for coming on. And if you enjoy these kind of interviews, my plan for the new year is to actually have one a month with various different people that have different kind of diseases and have used different kinds of dietary tactics to feel better. So that way you can see how this all works in practice and how people have used this in real life. So that's it for this week and I will see you next time.
Related Posts You Might Like
AIP Diet for Celiac Disease – an Interview with Stacey Venancio
AIP Diet for Hashimoto's – an Interview with Shanna Nemrow
