Welcome to the debut of the newly released Season 2 of Body Wisdom: Beating Diabetes with Dr. Michele.

This year the podcast will be focusing on all things diabetes. As your host, I’ll be recording solo episodes which will answer some of the most common questions I’m asked as a physician such as “what CAN I eat as a diabetic?”, “how can I lose the extra weight that I’ve put on recently?”, “is it really possible to reverse type 2 diabetes?”, “What can I do to prevent my children from getting diabetes since it runs in the family?” and more. I will also be coaching patients and clients live on-air, and conducting interviews with other diabetic experts.

For the first show, I am republishing one of my favorite interviews from season 1 with Max Szadek on “Empowering Women to Learn About Diabetes.”

I hope you enjoy the show!

Max Szadek is an entrepreneur currently living in New York city and is the founder of Divabetic. After graduating from Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University, Max had a very colorful career working as a celebrity personal assistant with the legendary R&B musician Luther Vandross before his death.

Following the tragic loss to the music world, Max has since gone on to become a powerful public spokesman for diabetes awareness. One of his vehicles is the national nonprofit organization, Divabetic (divabetic.org) which partially grew out of his dismay with the lack of media attention to Luther Vandross’ diabetes. 

Though Max does not himself have the disease, he’s made it his mission to help those who do. His older brother is living with Type 1, his grandmother had diabetes as do several other family members. When Max is not busy with his work fighting for people with diabetes, he enjoys tennis, live theater, and live music. He is also a member of the largest LGBTQ Sports League in North America (Gotham Volleyball), and the New York Celebrity Assistants organization.

Show Notes:

What happened?

• Most people are not very educated about diabetes.
• It’s all too easy to forget to manage your diabetes. Life gets in the way.
• Type 2 diabetes often involves a lot of shame and blame because of the misconceptions around diabetes.
• Living with diabetes is more than just managing your sugar levels.
• People often become angry when they are diagnosed with diabetes, the disease can be frustrating to deal with. Weight gain is very common and difficult to deal with.
• You need to feel better about yourself, that will help you deal with the symptoms more effectively and improve your condition.

How do you empower women to learn about diabetes?

• The programs usually go for one to two hours.
• It usually involves an expert speaker and entertaining education.
• Max uses popular modern music on his podcast to help convey the emotion and meaning.
• Stress can lead to an addiction of eating which is especially bad for people with diabetes.
• In the last couple of months the music world has lost multiple people to complications with diabetes.
• Celebrities bring diabetes to the fore but people still don’t understand how diabetes relates to the kidneys or the eyes or other parts of their body.
• You need a diabetes care team to help manage the symptoms similar to what happens when someone is diagnosed with cancer.
• If you love yourself, you will naturally take better care of yourself. We need to help people accept themselves.

It must be such an amazing experience when you put on live shows and see the fans in person.

What are some key takeaways that women have from attending live events that educate them about diabetes in a positive way?

• Small boosts of confidence can help boost your overall care.
• Getting a makeover helps people feel good about their image, living with diabetes doesn’t mean you can’t look good.
• Marrying the education with music and showmanship has really amplified the effect of the message.
• You need to take care of your feet, special shoes for people with diabetes can help you care for your feet while still being fashionable.
• If your family has a history of Type 1 or 2 diabetes, you have to manage your condition if you want to live a full life.

Today’s show was brought to you by coaching program “Beating Diabetes: the 10 week roadmap”. For more information, head on over to my website drmichele.com and click on the work with me tab. All of the information is there about my group programs as well as 1:1 coaching.

If you have questions about diabetes that you would like me to answer on air, you can email them to me. Just go to my website drmichele.com/contact to email your questions.

Ilf you have questions you’d like to discuss with me, sign up for a free 20 minute coaching call at drmichele.com/schedule.