Environmental Healing - Type 2 Diabetes Self-Management

Environmental Healing & Type 2 Diabetes Self-Management

Diabetes

In the first article of this series, Environmental Healing – My Journey with Type 2 Diabetes, I shared how I built my self-management plan around a proactive, holistic approach — one rooted in understanding how my blood sugar responds to my lifestyle and environment. In the second article, I explored the blood sugar cycle and how our body’s rhythms shape our daily glucose patterns.

Type 2 diabetes is a progressive condition. This means my self-management plan must evolve continuously, guided by careful observation and supported by my trusted medical team. For decades, I have kept a diary — recording my blood sugar levels and noting what I was doing, feeling, or experiencing when they changed. Over time, this simple practice became one of the most powerful tools in my journey.

I was fortunate to have my teacher and mentor, the late Dr. Keith Dawson, who encouraged me to explore deeper questions long before the science caught up: Was it stress? Air quality? The food served? The long hours? The environment itself?

His support opened a door that shaped the rest of my life.

My approach became simple but transformative: Observe → Pattern → Outcome (blood sugar) → Research.

This method helped me see what traditional diabetes education often overlooks: my blood sugar was responding not only to food, but to my environment — my sleep, my stress, the air I breathed, the light around me, the energy of a place, and the rhythms of my daily life.

Science is a moving frontier, not a finished map. What we understand today is only a fraction of what we will understand tomorrow. And as research evolves, so does my journey.

What Is Environmental Healing?

Environmental Healing, as I understand it, is the recognition that our body is not separate from the world around us. It is shaped by:

  • the air we breathe
  • the light we receive
  • the quality of our sleep
  • the stress we carry
  • the energy of our surroundings
  • the food’s relationship to its land
  • the rhythms of nature
  • the environments that calm or overwhelm us

Environmental Healing is not a treatment. It is a relationship — between body, mind, environment, and energy; it is healing.

The Nine Factors That Shape My Blood Sugar

These are the factors I have discovered so far — and I have no doubt there are more to come as the journey continues and the science advances:

  • Lifestyle (diet, movement, daily habits)
  • Sleep
  • Stress
  • Overall health & inflammation
  • Viral infections & immunity
  • Genetics & epigenetics
  • Mitochondrial function
  • Microbiome & gut health
  • Environment
  • oxygen & air quality
  • light
  • weather & climate
  • vibrational energy

Each of these will be explored in its own dedicated article in this series.

A Moment That Changed Everything

One of the turning points in my journey happened at Cathedral Grove on Vancouver Island. Whenever I drove through that ancient forest, I felt calmer, clearer, and more grounded — and my blood sugar stayed within my normal range.

Indigenous friends later shared that Cathedral Grove was a ceremonial area long before European settlement. As I expanded my research, I learned that many people describe it as a place with strong spiritual and energetic presence.

That experience opened the door to exploring vibrational energy — not as a mystical idea, but as an environmental factor that influences the nervous system, stress hormones, and ultimately, blood sugar.

What This Series Will Cover

This article is the introduction — the foundation. In the upcoming articles, I will explore each factor in depth:

  • How it affects blood sugar
  • What I observed in my own journey
  • What research says
  • How environment shapes biology
  • How Environmental Healing reframes diabetes management

Each article will stand on its own, but together they form a complete picture of how environment, lifestyle, and energy influence Type 2 diabetes.

A Parallel Series: Why Safaga?

In parallel to this series, I will also publish: Safaga Environmental Healing & Sustainability Discovery Center

A series explaining why Safaga, Red Sea, Egypt has a unique environment — its air quality, UV spectrum, mineralrich sea, stable climate, and grounding vibrational energy — creates conditions that support healing, regeneration, and metabolic balance.

Each Safaga article will link to the corresponding Environmental Healing factor article.

Together, the two series form a unified framework:

  • Environmental Healing → the science, the observations, the personal journey managing type 2 diabetes
  • Safaga Environmental Healing & Sustainability Discovery Center → the place where these principles come alive

Closing Reflection

Environmental Healing taught me that Type 2 diabetes is not only a metabolic condition.

It is a conversation — between my body and my environment.

When I listen to that conversation, my blood sugar becomes more predictable.

When I honor it, my health becomes more balanced.

And when I align myself with environments that support healing, my entire system responds.

This series is my way of sharing that journey — with clarity, honesty, and hope.

Connect with us and be part of the journey.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Environmental Healing and Type 2 Diabetes — The Journey My journey with type 2 diabetes began more than 32 years ago. I was not yet 40 — younger than the screening age recommended at the time — and I had no real understanding of what diabetes was. Yes, I had the gene: my grandmother was diagnosed at 85. And looking back, I likely had insulin resistance since childhood. But it was my busy, stressful lifestyle that finally triggered it. I remember the moment clearly. My A1c was 5.9, but my random glucose was 26 mmol/L (about 468 mg/dl). My vision was blurry. I had lost almost 45 pounds in a few weeks. I went from feeling like Superman to feeling like a shadow of myself. I was fortunate to have a dedicated family physician who immediately referred me to an exceptional endocrinologist, Dr. Haggis (now retired). Her professionalism — and her mastery of motivational interviewing, a skill still missing in much of...
Read more
Image
My Journey with Diabetes: Understanding the Blood Sugar Cycle In the first part of my journey, I learned that I have type 2 diabetes — and more importantly, how my body reacts to my lifestyle. From day one, I had no time to deny or regret. It was time to plan. With the support of my doctors, I committed to modifying my lifestyle and adopting a healthy, balanced, active, and proactive approach to my health. To do that, I needed to understand exactly what type 2 diabetes is and how the blood sugar cycle works — from the moment we eat, to how food becomes energy, or sometimes, fat. I started to see type 2 diabetes as an air conditioner with a faulty thermostat. The system is still there, the machinery is still working, but the controller — the part that keeps everything in balance — isn’t responding the way it should. In my case, I inherited a gene that made this thermostat weaker. Something in my lifes...
Read more