10 Alarming Skin Signs of Diabetes

Hello Health Champions. Today we're going to  talk about 10 skin signs that suggest that you  

may have diabetes or a poorly controlled blood  sugar or insulin resistance. The first sign is  

dark patches on the skin also known as acanthosis  nigricans these are going to occur where the skin  

creases where it stretches or folds and you find  them on the neck, armpit and groin primarily and  

we'll have some pictures for you toward the end  I've blurred the images in the first half here  

because a lot of people don't like to see really  graphic stuff and some of these get pretty gross  

so if you want to see them stick around and  we'll show those to you at the end. These  

patches can have a little bit of a velvety feel to  them also and when we're talking about these signs  

we want to understand a term called pathognomonic  because most of these signs are not pathognomonic  

this means that if you have a certain sign  then you're almost certain to have a condition  

and they're very very few signs like that and I  try to point that out in my videos that there are  

huge huge amounts of overlap between signs and  symptoms so we don't want to jump to conclusions  

we want to understand the bigger picture the  mechanism and then we can kind of collect  

and observe these signs and figure out what's  going on. And in this video we're going to talk  

about these signs as they primarily relate  to diabetes but also understand that that's  

not the only reason you can get these signs or  even any skin sign you can also get them from  

allergies and autoimmune disease those are very  very common number two is skin patches and these  

are a little bit more aggressive very inflamed  they're called necrobiosis lipoidica and that's  

again it's a medical term they're just using Latin  and Greek to describe what they see and they're  

seeing dyeing tissue that looks kind of like fat  like lipid this can be yellow red or brown and  

it's fortunately pretty rare and they believe  there's an autoimmune component to it because it's  

more common in type 1 diabetes than type 2  diabetes. Number three is male pattern baldness  

and I wanted to bring this up because even though  it's not really a sign of diabetes it's often  

claimed to be related to insulin resistance and  that's not really correct there are some studies  

that suggest it but most studies suggest that  there is no connection what there is a connection  

to is testosterone but not testosterone in itself  it's a byproduct called dihydrotestosterone or DHT  

but it's not even just the DHT it is the number of  receptors that you have for DHT and that is coded  

by the x chromosome so if you have a sensitivity  to this it's because there's a gene that promotes  

this that sits on your x chromosome now men have  one x and one y chromosome so if one x is faulty  

they don't have a backup whereas women have two x  chromosomes and if one is bad they still are very  

likely to have a functioning one and that's  why it is called male pattern baldness that  

women very very rarely get it. Now while there is  virtually no connection between insulin resistance  

and baldness in men there is a slight connection  in women because if you are female and insulin  

resistant then you will have more conversion of  your estrogen into testosterone than you would  

have if you didn't have insulin resistance so what  that means is if you're insulin resistant you're  

going to have more testosterone more DHT but  you still have two x chromosomes to protect you  

from male pattern baldness so it's still a very  very flimsy link. So while there are probably  

some nutritional aspects to baldness it is almost  entirely genetically determined and hereditary  

but even if you have it in your family it doesn't  mean you're bound to be bald if your parents were  

there's like a 50/50 chance  it can skip generations it can  

affect one sibling and not another so in my family  for example my grandfather had a beautiful head  

just like myself but my father and brother had  some flawed heads that had to be covered with  

hair and not only that but their hair was so  thick almost like a sheep you could bounce things  

off of it. Number four is Hidradenitis Suppurativa  again sounds like a big scary word but all it says  

is hydra means sweat adeno means gland itis means  inflammation and suppurare is about oozing so all  

it says is that you have sweat glands that are  inflamed and oozing. That means you get these  

boils that can be inflamed and painful and kind  of turn inward so they're called acne inversa  

also. Number five is blisters. These are fluid  filled blisters often called bullosis diabeticorum  

and there's nothing fancy about those blisters  it's just a condition, osis, of blisters that  

often happen with diabetics. And if you read up on  this they'll often say that they happen because of  

poorly managed type 2 diabetes and I just want  to comment on the word managed because in the  

mainstream view of things and the allopathic model  that's what you do with conditions and disease you  

manage them and what they're talking about is not  getting you healthier they're not talking about  

reversing the disease or helping you in any way  except giving you a chemical to lower your blood  

glucose that's what managing diabetes means.  But in my mind we want to think of this word  

manage a little differently manage means you keep  it forever so if you have a condition you really  

like it then you want to manage your conditions  you can keep it for a really really long time  

but if you don't like your condition much then  do something to get healthier do something  

to make your body work better and most  people are shocked to find out even having  

diabetes for 20 years they're shocked to find  out that you can actually reverse diabetes  

almost a hundred percent of cases if you just stop  eating so much sugar and carbohydrate and you get  

some circulation and movement and activity in the  body again. Number six is skin tags and these are  

kind of similar to moles in a way they stick  out from the skin but they're different because  

they're usually more like a flap that's kind of  hanging down they often occur around the eyes,  

on the neck again, and in the armpits. And they  used to not have a strong connection to really  

anything about where they came from but today  they know that insulin resistance and high glucose  

is the number one factor to promote skin tags so  if you can reverse your insulin resistance you  

stand a pretty good chance of getting rid of most  of your skin tags. Number seven rosacea is one  

of those words that really don't mean much it's  just really redness. So a lot of people will have  

rosacea and it will look in a thousand different  ways it's often confused or used synonymously  

with with eczema or even with psoriasis but with  psoriasis we need to understand that psoriasis  

is not primarily a skin condition even though it  shows up on the skin. It's an autoimmune condition  

that's an arthritis it's inflaming your joints  and this is a reason you want to pay attention to  

a lot of these because even though they show up on  the surface of the skin it means there's something  

going on deeper down. Number eight xanthelasma  are yellowish scaly patches and this is exactly  

what the word says Xanthos is yellow in Greek and  elasma is a plate of some sort so they're just  

describing what they see. These are cholesterol  deposits that you're going to find in the eyelid  

especially on the inside toward the corner of  the eye and the patches themselves are harmless  

and painless and so forth but again they mean that  there's something going on you're not processing  

cholesterol properly and even though I'm not  scared of high cholesterol per se it doesn't  

mean that cholesterol can't be a problem if  you don't know if your body can't process it  

properly so it builds up then that's not a good  thing. But this is one word that you want to try  

to memorize xanthelasma because it comes in super  handy if you like to play scrabble number nine is  

acne or acne vulgaris we usually talk about this  as teenage pimples and even though teenagers in  

general don't have a lot of insulin resistance  they do eat a lot of sugar and processed foods  

which is strongly linked to this acne. And number  10 is ulcers not in the stomach but on the skin  

and these are non-healing open wounds these are  one of the biggest problems and the closest to a  

pathognomonic sign that you can find for diabetes  meaning that if you have this you probably  

have diabetes. I saw an article where they talked  about preventing diabetic ulcers and I'm sure  

they were well-meaning so they listed things  like control blood sugar, but again in their  

model that simply means take metformin or insulin.  They suggested exercise regularly, stop smoking,  

lose weight and wash and inspect your feet  daily. Now there's nothing wrong with these  

suggestions but I'm just wondering why  isn't there anything on the list about  

stop eating sugar and reduce your carbohydrate  that drive the insulin sky high. So I would want  

to add to this reverse diabetes okay this is very  different from controlling blood sugar controlling  

blood sugar usually means eat the same stuff but  take metformin or insulin. Reversing diabetes  

means you change your lifestyles you allow your  body to re-adapt to real food low carbohydrate  

protein fat vegetables etc. and your body will  very readily go along with that and reduce the  

insulin and reverse that adaptation. So a lot of  people will watch a video like this if they think  

they may have diabetes or they be in the risk  zone but what I want to point out is don't wait  

if you look at this guy here see how proud he is  of his new car if he's like most people chances  

are his car is going to get better care than his  body. Most people take better care of their cars  

than they do their bodies and the question is  do you want to service the car before or after  

it breaks? Right? A $50 oil change is a whole lot  easier than a $5,000 engine block or transmission  

but why don't we do that with our bodies why do we  wait for our bodies to break okay don't do that.  

So one way you can do this is check and understand  your blood markers when your doctor runs a blood  

test or if you go do it on your own don't just  look at the reference ranges okay. You want your  

hemoglobin a1c to be less than 5.3 okay 5.4 is  not a big deal but don't let it slip away. 5.7  

is usually the cut off for pre-diabetes  and don't let it get there understand that  

5.3 is better if you're closer to 5.7 you're  slipping you're heading the wrong direction.  

Another test you want to do is insulin or  c-peptide those go hand-in-hand because the  

body makes exactly one molecule of insulin per one  molecule of c-peptide. You can test either one but  

insulin is a little cheaper and a little easier  to get if you really want to or if you're type  

1 or if you're trying to figure out if you're  making insulin then you can also run C--peptide  

but for most people running a fasting insulin  is totally adequate and a little bit cheaper.  

You want to have an insulin number under five  if you're super insulin sensitive it can be as  

low as two or three but 5 is still really really  good. The official range says that anything under  

25 is good if you're at 24 then they think you're  still fine. No you're not you are, you're 20 years  

in the direction of of diabetes. So don't let that  happen triglycerides is another great way because  

if your body is processing fuel it's going to  suck up those blood fats those triglycerides and  

your values are going to be low if you get insulin  resistant your cells start resisting triglycerides  

and the number goes up so the official number  is 150 but if you are insulin resistant you can  

typically get up to two three four hundred and you  wanna be really under a hundred and most people  

on a keto or a low carb diet or intermittent  fasting lifestyle even if they're not extreme  

they're going to find themselves between 50  and 80 for the most part. And one more marker  

that's useful is called VLDL very low density  lipoprotein so you take your total cholesterol  

you subtract the HDL and the LDL  you're left over with VLDL or  

remnant cholesterol. So these are triglyceride  carriers so it's just one more way to get  

more information about triglycerides basically.  And the official number says anything under 40  

is fine. No it's not anything over 20 you're  starting to slip toward insulin resistant  

and you can see this as low as 8 or 9 or 10.  Most people going low carb are going to be below  

17 or 15 or so. I mentioned that diabetes type  2 is almost entirely reversible type 1 is a  

different story that's autoimmune you can manage  it with the same principles and be healthier but  

type 2 is reversible in almost every case and how  do you do that well there's all these different  

styles and ideas and principles of eating and I've  done videos on all of these so you can go check  

them out. Paleo means that we start eating more  like our ancestors we cut out the sugar and the  

processed foods and the grain and the dairy.  So now you've already eliminated 80 percent  

of your carbohydrates you've eliminated all your  processed foods so you're eating real food. You're  

eating meat and vegetables and things like that.  Next step would be to tighten it up a little bit  

more if you're really insulin resistant if your  body is really stubborn now you cut out the sweet  

potato and you cut out some of the berries  and you go more on the low carb high fat. You  

count your carbs a little bit just to see where  you are and you cut them even further. One step  

beyond that is a ketogenic diet now you cut your  carbs down to less than five percent of your  

calories and you get into ketosis so this is just  a stricter version of of the other two basically.  

And I want to point out a couple more that are  often talked about ketovore is if you're eating  

really low carb you're eating mostly meat  but you throw in a few non-starchy vegetables  

and one more step would be carnivore where you're  eating only meat which means no carbohydrate  

and some people suggest that the reason that you  can improve your skin is that the carnivore has  

zero carbohydrate. Well that's it can  be helpful but that's not the reason  

that carnivore can help because carnivore has if  you eat meat it has protein. Protein is glucogenic  

so you actually get more insulin  stimulation on a carnivore diet  

even though it's zero carb then you do a  well-balanced keto diet. But the reason  

carnivore can help is that it's often more about  allergies than just insulin resistance and if you  

go carnivore it's like the ultimate elimination  diet. And another way to do a similar thing  

if you don't want to go all meat is called an  autoimmune paleo or AIP so now you start off  

with the paleo you skip all the grains and the  processed foods but you also eliminate some of  

the common allergens so you further cut out things  like nightshade vegetables and things with lectins  

in them as well so here you're eating a fair  amount of meat and fish and so forth but you're  

allowing yourself certain vegetables and this  works really well for some people and carnivore  

works well for other people. So now for those  who want to see those images I'm going to flash  

through them pretty quickly and then you can pause  and take a look I've left up all the notes for  

you so first we have dark patches Acanthosis  Nigricans we have skin patches necrobiosis  

lipoidica we have male pattern baldness that's not  so scary I think hidradenitis suppurativa we have  

blisters bullosis diabeticorum we have skin tags  rosacea xanthelasma acne vulgaris and ulcers which  

are non-healing open wounds. If you enjoyed this  video you're going to love that one and if you  

truly want to master health by understanding how  the body really works make sure you subscribe hit  

that bell and turn on all the notifications  so you never miss a life-saving video