MIT-trained engineer. Naturopathic Doctor for more than 30 years. Diabetes expert. Published author. Creator of The Yates Protocol.
Today, I bring those experiences together to help people understand their blood sugar and know what to do next.
If you’re dealing with prediabetes, type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance, or an A1C that keeps moving in the wrong direction, you may have already discovered how frustrating blood sugar can be.
You can do what you were told and still have questions.
I believe you deserve to understand what your body is telling you.
For more than 30 years, I’ve helped people look beyond isolated numbers and better understand the patterns affecting their health.
My goal is to help you replace confusion with understanding—and give you practical direction for what comes next.
I earned my degree in Electrical Engineering from MIT, with a minor in Bio-Electrical Engineering, and began my career in Silicon Valley.
Engineering taught me to think in systems.
When something isn’t working, you don’t automatically blame one piece. You look at how everything interacts. You look for patterns. You ask better questions. You identify where a change can make a difference.
Eventually, I realized I wanted to apply that way of thinking somewhere that felt more meaningful to me.
I changed careers and became a Naturopathic Doctor.
More than 30 years later, I’m still solving complicated problems—but now the systems I’m studying are human.
And that engineering background continues to inform my thought processes and helps me serve people more effectively.
It influences how I think about health to this day.
Over the years, I began seeing more and more people in my practice struggling with insulin resistance, rising blood sugar, prediabetes, and type 2 diabetes.
I was already deeply interested in helping solve these problems.
Then my connection to diabetes changed.
As I reconnected with my biological father’s side of my family, I discovered an extraordinary prevalence of diabetes and genetic risk among my relatives.
The issue moved beyond my professional work.
People I loved were living with it, too.
I understood even more clearly what diabetes can take from a person when blood sugar remains uncontrolled—the energy, independence, confidence, and health complications that can affect an entire family.
That made my work more focused.
And much more personal.
Today, helping people master their blood sugar is not simply something I do. It is the work I have chosen to dedicate this chapter of my career to.
That mission is bigger than anything I could accomplish one patient at a time. It is why I teach. Why I write. Why I created The Yates Protocol. Why I share education online. Why I speak. And why I continue building ways for more people to access practical guidance for improving their blood sugar.
I want people to understand that their health is not simply a collection of numbers on a lab report. Those numbers contain precious personal information. And when you understand the patterns behind them, you can begin making more informed choices about what happens next.
One of the biggest mistakes we can make with blood sugar is looking at one part of life in isolation.
Food matters. But so do meal timing, exercise, muscle, sleep, stress, and what happens throughout the rest of your day.
That is why I created The Yates Protocol around five foundational areas:
Instead of asking you to chase every new piece of advice, my approach helps you understand how these pieces interact and where your attention may be most useful.
Information should be explained clearly enough for you to use it.
Health recommendations have to account for stress, work, caregiving, culture, family, access, sleep, and the realities of everyday life.
I want to understand the patterns and contributing factors behind what is happening.
A difficult lab result is information—not a character judgment.
The goal is not perfection. It is learning what supports your health and building from there.
If that sounds familiar, this is the work I do.
I help people better understand their blood sugar, identify the lifestyle patterns that may be affecting it, and find the level of support that fits where they are now.
If you’ve been told your labs are fine but you know something isn’t, – or – you’re worried about your labs and not getting the support you need and want, you’re in the right place.
Systems thinking, applied to the most complex system there is: you.
Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Bio-Electrical Engineering.
Licensed Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine with more than three decades of clinical experience.
Also the author of Heart Health for Black Women: A Natural Approach to Healing and Preventing Heart Disease and a contributing author to additional published works.
Founder and Medical Director of California’s first fully accredited and board-certified Naturopathic and Integrative Medicine Residency Program. Provider of numerous Continuing Medical Education (CME) topics including heart disease in women, stress, and interactions between herbs, botanical medicines, and pharmaceutical drugs.
Former Governor-appointed member of the State of California Naturopathic Medicine Board, along with scientific, medical advisory, civic, and professional leadership roles.
Creator of a five-step approach to help people understand their blood sugar and make practical, sustainable changes to improve A1C and metabolic health.
Dr. Yates has also been featured across international television, radio, print, and digital media including ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, NPR, Fox, SiriusXM, Essence, Good Housekeeping, Reader’s Digest, and others.
I began my career as an engineer in Silicon Valley.
My engineering training still influences how I approach complicated health problems.
I have practiced Naturopathic Medicine for more than 30 years.
Diabetes affects my own family.
I am the author of two books and co-author of two other books.
My current mission is to help 3 million people reverse type 2 diabetes and prediabetes.
Whether you were recently told you have prediabetes, have been living with type 2 diabetes for years, or simply know your numbers need attention, you don’t have to keep piecing together the answers by yourself.
General advice is a guess. Your plan should be built from your data.
Find the support that meets you where you are today.
Get The Blood Sugar Shift, Dr. Beverly Yates’ free weekly newsletter with practical strategies to help you understand your numbers, lower your A1C, and know what to focus on next.
