Three years later, Virta is still the best thing that's ever happened to me

By Andy, a Virta patient

I've been on the Virta Treatment for a little over three years. I live in central Indiana, and I’ve been there for my whole life. I worked in a factory for 33 years, then worked at Purdue for five and a half years, and now I’ve retired but I work part-time on a farm.

My mother and brothers had diabetes, so I wasn’t surprised when I was diagnosed as well in 2011. My brother, who was a year older than me, passed away in 2006 from complications. He couldn’t get his blood sugar down, and then he lost a toe, then the foot, then the leg. When he passed away, all his organs were shutting down. My uncle also passed away from diabetes complications. I didn’t want that to happen to me.

Before Virta, I had a lot of knee pain and back pain, and I weighed 310 pounds. I wasn’t getting better, even with all the diabetes medicine I was taking. I thought I’d be taking diabetes medicine for the rest of my days, and I was just waiting for them to put me on insulin. I was starting to experience signs of neuropathy, including numbness and tingling sensations in my finger and toes.

Then, in the summer 2015, I heard about the Virta Treatment and how it could reverse my diabetes. I had no clue diabetes was reversible because I knew so many people who had suffered from diabetes and never got better.

In less than a year on Virta, I reversed my diabetes! My blood sugars are in the 80s and 90s now, and they used to be in the 200s every day. I’m down from 310 to 230 pounds. My expenses went down quite a bit because I don’t have to buy my diabetes medications anymore and was able to cut my dosage of blood pressure medicine.

Now, I get out and do things, and I chase the grandkids around. Before, I'd just sit in a chair and watch them. If I hadn't started Virta, my life could be anywhere from sitting on the couch to buried in the ground. Now, I get to spend time with my grandkids. I know I'm going to survive a lot longer because of Virta.

Doing Virta has really improved the quality of my life.  The man I help on the farm has noticed all the new energy I have now. It feels great to not feel out of breath when I’m working or need to sit. My knee and back used to ache constantly, and now that I don’t have pain, I can sleep through the night.

I’m so much more active. I used to sit on front of the television all the time, and now I'm up and moving and doing things. I can bend over and tie my shoes. That's one of the little victories that keep me excited about Virta.

My favorite part about Virta is the health coaches and the attention they give to getting and keeping you on the right track. There's a lot of help. In the diabetes reversal phase of the Virta Treatment, they kept a really close eye on me because I was still taking medicines, and they wanted to adjust them safely. It's still nice having my health coach here because they can help me with any questions or problems I have. The support network I have with my health coach and the patient community is just awesome. Plus, I have a very supportive spouse who jumped headlong into this with me. She tells me that I'm a different man now.

“It is hard to describe how appreciative I am in what the Virta Treatment did for my husband and our life. He was on a terrible path accepting diabetes’s degeneration as part of his inevitable future. Virta changed all that and now we are enjoying a healthy life and planning for the long term future. His only regret is that he wishes this program would have been around for his other family members who suffered from diabetes in the past. I love listening to him speak to other people with diabetes and encouraging them to seek out real help and reverse their condition with the Virta Treatment."
- My wife

Every time I talk to my physician, I have better numbers. That’s completely different from how it was before. I love tracking my biomarkers with Virta. It helps keep me on track because I have so much data on how what I eat affects my blood sugar.

When I first joined Virta, I had no clue if it would work. All I knew was that I was going to give it my best shot. Three years later, It's the best thing that's ever happened to me. Of course I miss certain foods, but at the end of the day, it's a whole lot better to feel healthy. I'm in it for the long haul.