Fun with Diabetes

"Oh, my God!  You're DIABETIC?  You have to TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF!  Here, have a piece of pie.."

This morning, I was listening to a podcast of the BBC world service, in which people with AIDS were being interviewed - the interviewees commented about the uniform assumption that they had engaged in male/male sex to become infected.  I was thinking about this post when I was driving along and listening, and I thought well, the same for diabetes - people make assumptions that are based on commonly held fallacies.

If I'm diabetic, I must be eating Snickers and Bon-Bons all day.
If I'm diabetic, I must be lazy and never exercise.
If I'm diabetic, I must not realize what's good for me.

Okay, so there's some truth to the commonly held fallacies.  But, whipping up on someone who is diabetic is a sure fire way to NOT get your message across.  Especially when you're handing them a piece of cake.

In our post-baby boomer obesity, most diabetes is Type II adult onset, and is based on hyper-insulin production; basically, your body becomes numb to high levels of insulin - just as do your ears after a couple of hours listening to very loud music.  Eventually, the body's high production of insulin wears the pancreas down until it fails and then one is a Type I diabetic.

How is it that we get such over-production of insulin?  A diet that is founded on things like high-fructose corn syrup, higher sugar contents, higher refined carbohydrate intake and less physical exercise.  Our body receives a huge load of food energy to be processed, which it does with insulin produced in the pancreas. 

High fructose corn syrup does not interact with insulin to produce usable energy in the body; however, it is recognized by the body as energy-dense food, and induces the body to produce a LOT more insulin, which doesn't reduce the energy density, and MORE insulin is produced.

Finally, the body stores the unusable energy as fat.  Belly fat.  Insulin resistant belly fat.  This compounds the insulin production situation, and makes it harder to change the body's chemistry.

What will turn this around?

Back to the commonly held beliefs - diet and exercise.  Diet and exercise ONLY.

All of the medications to treat diabetes treat symptoms - not causes.  The oral medications either enhance the body's absorption of insulin, or induce the body to produce more insulin.

Back to our analogy of the ears ringing (numbness) from too much loud music.  What's the best cure for that, do you think?

How about LOUDER music?  Or, maybe work on the ear wax??

Clearly not!

Letting the ears recover, and changing the environment is how we deal with that.

How does that analogy translate back into combating diabetes?

Let the body recover and change the environment.

For the last six years, I *thought* I knew what I was doing, food-wise.  Boy, howdy (that's a Texas phrase), was I wrong about that.

Environmental change #1 - eliminate High Fructose Corn Syrup.  That is much harder than it may seem - it is a primary element of nearly all pre-packaged or prepared foods.  It's in ALL non-diet drinks.  It's in nearly all low or non-fat foods.

Environmental change #2 - reduce sugar.  Again, a challenge.  Sugar is in EVERYTHING, especially in diet, low and no-fat foods.

Environmental change #3 - dense, lean body mass consumes far more nutrients than does adipose tissue (fat).  Lean body mass increases the metabolic rate ALL day.  So, it's not just getting more active that will change the body adequately; one has to do weight training to increase muscle mass.

How can this be fun?  After all, I did promise that this was going to be FUN with diabetes.

Example #1 - virtually all (a-l-l) oral diabetes medications have as a side effect "upset stomach".  AKA diarrhea.

Example #2 - many of the sugar substitutes are sugar alcohols. Sugar alcohols are slightly different than real sugar - they have one fewer molecule - but taste just like sugar on the tongue. 

Real world example - after THOROUGHLY researching artificial sweeteners, I picked Xylitol.  It's relatively cheap, it's got a smooth taste, it has ZERO glucose load and .. no side effects. 

Okay, no bad, death causing side effects.  Sugar alcohols are laxatives.

My friend Teddy told me "oh, watch out, Xylitol is a laxative".  He has a penchant for understatement.

Don't try to use Xylitol as you have done sugar.  That, plus the oral meds all we diabetics are taking produce EXPLOSIVE, aggregated side effects.  Think "flame thrower".

Fortunately, using Xylitol has greatly reduced both my blood glucose numbers, and my consumption of coffee.  The flame thrower effect seems to have self-regulated.

Eat bananas.  It helps.  Don't eat prunes.  You have to eat one of them to keep your potassium levels up.