Several years ago, Lorraine O'Quinn worried that she was going to die.
For about two decades, the realtor from Trenton, Ont., said, she would often eat foods packed with heavy carbohydrates, such as bread, pastries and cereal, as well as processed foods. With a thriving family real estate business, she worked for at least 12 hours, seven days a week for about half a year during the peak home-buying season, she said.
She described her life as being on the "hamster wheel" of work, helping charities and never taking enough time to take care of herself.
She said she developed health problems, including fatty liver disease, high blood pressure, heart disease and a gallbladder attack.
And she thought her health problems and weight gain were just a normal part of life.
Then during a five-day charity hike in 2019, she said she felt a tightness in her chest and had to be hospitalized, she recalled in an interview with CTV News last month. Doctors discovered two major heart arteries were nearly fully blocked, she said, so she had to get heart stents.
That was when she realized her lifestyle was taking a toll.
Several years later, when the 57-year-old wife, mother and grandmother was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in August 2023, she decided she had to get healthier. Through an internet search, O'Quinn discovered a physician-led health program that would change her life.
She shared her journey to reversing her diabetes and chronic illness with CTVNews.ca.
Diabetes program 'changed my life'
She discovered the publicly funded LifestyleRx program and joined it that November with the hope her health would improve.
Over 12 weeks of group sessions with other participants, doctors and dieticians, she said, she found hope through the peer support and learned about stress management, triggers to unhealthy habits, and the importance of sleep and progress over perfection.
"We were learning so much more than 'take a pill, lose some weight,'" the realtor and team lead of the O'Quinn real estate team with Royal LePage said in a recent video interview with CTVNews.ca about the program.
She said through the program, participants uplifted and helped one another. "What I've realized is we need to have more lifestyle interventions so we're proactive."
During the intensive, 12-week free program, participants get lab work about the state of their health and have weekly hour-long one-on-one consultations with physicians.
Participants complete about 30 to 40 hours of work online related to diabetes and healthy strategies, including watching educational videos.
They also join weekly virtual group medical sessions where they can share what's working for them and what they're struggling with. A doctor and registered dietitian support patients and answer questions during the meetings.
The program has advantages by being accessible to more people since it is virtual and its group format means peers can help motivate each other reach their goals, said Nobe Khumalo, a registered nurse and certified diabetes educator at The Michener Institute of Education. Khumalo, who is based in Wetaskiwin, Alta., is not involved with the program.
"The people in a group could feed off each other and teach each other what they have already tried and also they understand each other because they're in the same journey," Khumalo said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca. "So shared information and experience ... can positively affect behavioural change."
It may be a challenge, however, for some people who don't live in an environment that supports lifestyle changes like having access to nutritious foods and getting good sleep, she said. In those cases, personal sessions with a counsellor may be more helpful, she said.
Small steps toward healthy habits
The self-described perfectionist said it took small steps, but she managed to create joyful experiences and develop healthier habits, including finding child-like joy in everyday life.
"It was so incredibly impactful and part of the journey where I've really changed my life," O'Quinn said.
"I would ask myself, 'Does what I'm doing align with being a healthy person?'" she said. "And if it didn't, I started to put a process in place to make little changes that were going to create a new, better me."
She learned that for her, a healthy diet included more whole foods with fibre and protein, and fermented foods as well as products with fewer carbs, sugar and processed ingredients.
She replaced her regular fix of sugary, creamy coffee with one coffee a day with no sugar, and plenty of water and herbal teas, she said.
"Once you make these changes, your taste buds change," she said. "I never have cravings … It's not a matter of being so disciplined, it's a matter of knowing what nourishes my body, and I visualize what it's doing to my insides and when I eat them."
Before she made the lifestyle and diet changes, she said, she could barely bend over and tie her shoes. Now she exercises regularly, walking daily and playing pickleball and doing Pilates about three times a week. She even won gold in pickleball tournaments with her husband and her friend this summer.
As for her busy career, she stopped working seven days a week during the peak times of the real estate season, she said.
"I'm setting healthy boundaries and I'm letting go of control," she said. "I say yes to things that fill my cup and not say yes to things that are going to stress me out."
By the time she finished the program, she was much healthier and happier. Her family doctor even told her she could stop taking Metformin, the diabetes medication she had been taking twice a day for half a year, in early January.
By that point, she had entered remission, with her doctor confirming that she had normalized blood work and a healthy liver.
As a result of the changes she made to her lifestyle, mindset and diet, she also lost 70 pounds, she said.
O'Quinn described one of the doctors as a hero in her journey to a healthier lifestyle.
Behind the LifestyleRx diabetes program
Dr. Brendan Byrne launched the LifestyleRx program during the pandemic in July 2022.
With one out of three Canadians having either diabetes or prediabetes, Byrne said, the virtual program by physicians aims to help patients with Type 2 diabetes or prediabetes improve their lifestyles and even get them into remission through nutrition, exercise, sleep and stress resilience.
Many program participants have achieved remission like O'Quinn and see other improvements, such as feeling less depressed and experiencing less chronic pain, said Byrne, chief medical officer of the virtual clinic, LifestyleRx, based in White Rock, B.C., in a video interview with CTVNews.ca.
While it isn't a diabetes cure, people can experience diabetes remission by reversing insulin resistance and improving their blood sugars, Byrne said.
Patients can experience diabetes remission for years, during which they no longer have to take medication, their blood sugars are below the threshold for Type 2 diabetes, and the complications related to the disease are greatly diminished, Byrne said.
"Most people will see some reduction in terms of the medication that they need, and pretty much everybody improves to some extent," he said.
Nearly 9,000 Canadians participated in the fully virtual program so far, Byrne said, and 4,500 are currently active in it.
How to burn fat
For one of the strategies, patients learn how to burn fat.
"In order to get that fat off the liver and reverse insulin resistance, people need to be able to actually utilize the fat that they've stored," Byrne said. "And for people with Type 2 diabetes or insulin resistance, they often can't burn fat very efficiently."
Patients can achieve this through strategies such as intermittent fasting or fasting overnight for at least 12 hours, Byrne said.
Other ways to enhance fat burning include doing easy aerobic exercises and making dietary changes such as consuming more products with fibre, he said.
Doing these strategies consistently together will lead to improvements, including weight loss, decreased insulin resistance and improved blood sugars, Byrne said.
How do you join the free program?
The publicly funded programs are free for patients in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, with plans for now to expand to Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the Maritimes, Byrne said.
If you have Type 2 Diabetes or prediabetes, you can join the program by signing up online and program staff will get a referral from your family doctor. Only those in Ontario will need the referral due to virtual care rules, Byrne said.
The program isn't geared for patients with Type 1 diabetes because it doesn't have the necessary supports yet for people with that condition, Byrne said.
There's no other specific criteria to participate – people of all age groups can join, for instance. "The biggest criteria is – and this is probably the most important thing – is that people are looking to make a change," Byrne said.
