Do you suffer from Type 2 Diabetes? Forget everything you know about a “healthy” diet. Watch Mary Catherine Schallert, a registered dietitian, President of the Memphis Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics from Memphis Tennessee, talk openly about the latest innovations in Type 2 Diabetes management and how her own father finally took control of his health by embarking on a life-changing personalized nutrition journey. Take 4 minutes and discover how you too can stop avoiding eating foods you love most and improve your glucose health!
“My name is Mary Catherine Schallert, I’m a registered dietitian from Memphis Tennessee. I first learned about DayTwo last year in 2017 when I came to the FNCE conference, and shortly after that I got on a webinar, and learned a little bit more about it. I don’t have a clinical practice where I see patients with diabetes, but my father is a type 2 diabetic and would be classified as uncontrolled with diabetes as of last year. He started out with a Hemoglobin A1C of 12.8%. After talking with the DayTwo team, getting him set up with the app and also on a continuous glucose monitoring system, he has been able to bring his A1C down from 12.8% to around 7% in less than a year’s time. It’s been liberating for him, it’s been easy to follow, and it’s been just life changing for myself, for my mom, for my dad, just the control that he’s been able to get of his disease with this technology.
So, things that he may have been told, ‘you need to avoid all fruits…’ things that he felt really restricted on, he was able to look at the app and see ‘oh I can actually have this in moderation or combine it with another food item and it gets a good score for me’. So, he felt more liberated in the types of foods he could eat and then combining that with the immediate feedback from the Continuous Glucose Monitoring System where he was able to follow the recommendations from DayTwo and see that he was able to maintain good glycemic control or (and he does this sometimes too), not follow the recommendations and see ‘oh, this really does have an impact.
I have his app on my phone. I have his account on my phone as well. So then you have to get back in because they’ve done a lot of updates since the last time you were on the app, and you’ll be able to see more of those recipes and things like that because it’s such a practical application too. I think that’s a huge piece because last year I was on a webinar and one of the comments I made was the meal option was there but how do you make that move? That piece was missing and so now that that piece is part of the app, that to me is such a practical application.
I always think about it from my perspective as an educator, so what I do is teach future dietitians and when I’m teaching them best practices for their future practice and when I’m looking at the research and what’s coming out, we know that our system is broken and what we’ve been doing isn’t effective for all people. To me it’s exciting to see that personalized individualization, that’s what the marketplace wants that’s what the consumers want because what we’re seeing is effective. This to me is such a practical application of the science of the gut microbiome and how it can impact practical practice on a daily basis.”
“Who would you recommend to use it?”
“Well my dad’s an engineer so he loves numbers and he loves tech, and so the combination of those two things and then the real practical application of that immediate feedback almost showing what he’s eating and how it impacts his body has been huge for him.”