I saw a commercial this morning for a feature on webMD's web site called the Type 2 diabetes health check. I got an 88/100, but that should have been even higher because of one of the questions at the end. It asked if people with type 2 diabetes need to take insulin, and I said no, seeing as how I don't. They said yes, you might need to take it for a while. Well that's not exactly a true/false question.
Anyways, I haven't really used WebMD before to look for information on diabetes, but I'm going to give it a try and see if there's anything interesting on there.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Why exercise is important (and why I need to get back on it)
I've been slacking lately, I'm not sure what it has been, because my diet hasn't changed dramatically, but my fasting numbers in the morning have been creeping up into the 110-120 range consistently over the last 4 weeks or so. I got to thinking about it and I figured it probably has more to do with the lack of exercise than the slightly less disciplined diet. Its not that I was hitting the gym every day for an hour back when I was exercising, it was just walking the dog an extra lap around the neighborhood, trying to start jogging a little with him, playing with him around the house, things like that. Apparently every little bit counts though, which brings me to the point of this post.....
This weekend I was asked why exercise is so important for people with Diabetes. The typical answer is that it helps you lose weight and makes you healthier overall. I wasn't satisfied with this one as exercise is still supposed to be important for me, and I don't need to lose weight (ok, maybe 5 lbs). I said that I figured it helped you manage your blood glucose better over the long term by helping control blood sugar spikes. I was kinda guessing, but I wasn't that far off according to the American Diabetes Association:
How Exercise Helps
The cliff notes of the article (which explains things in scientific terms I enjoy) are that exercise causes you to burn more sugar. To burn more sugar you need to move the glucose into the cells more efficiently to burn it for energy. The body does this by creating more paths for the sugar to enter the cell. As long as you keep exercising, those paths stick around, and help you burn glucose even when you're not exercising so you avoid those sugar spikes. If you stop exercising (or don't even start) the opposite happens. Those pathways into the cells become fewer, and it becomes harder for the glucose in the bloodstream to enter, raising your blood sugar.
So I was right, I just didn't know why until now.
This weekend I was asked why exercise is so important for people with Diabetes. The typical answer is that it helps you lose weight and makes you healthier overall. I wasn't satisfied with this one as exercise is still supposed to be important for me, and I don't need to lose weight (ok, maybe 5 lbs). I said that I figured it helped you manage your blood glucose better over the long term by helping control blood sugar spikes. I was kinda guessing, but I wasn't that far off according to the American Diabetes Association:
How Exercise Helps
The cliff notes of the article (which explains things in scientific terms I enjoy) are that exercise causes you to burn more sugar. To burn more sugar you need to move the glucose into the cells more efficiently to burn it for energy. The body does this by creating more paths for the sugar to enter the cell. As long as you keep exercising, those paths stick around, and help you burn glucose even when you're not exercising so you avoid those sugar spikes. If you stop exercising (or don't even start) the opposite happens. Those pathways into the cells become fewer, and it becomes harder for the glucose in the bloodstream to enter, raising your blood sugar.
So I was right, I just didn't know why until now.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
A little backstory before we get started
I went to the doctor for a physical in May/June of 2007 because after working a month filled with stress and overtime, I'd often find my heart racing and wanted to get checked out. I made the appointment, and they told me to get my bloodwork done beforehand so we could talk about that during the physical. That was on a Thursday, my appointment was on Monday. I received a call on Friday telling me "not to worry, but we need you to come in right away, like now". Not to worry?
A little backstory behind that, I had gastroparesis about a year before this whole episode. Its basically a nerve disease that affects the stomach and while 40% of the cases are unexplained, the rest are either caused by diabetes or lupus. Tests during this time showed I was neither, but I may have been pre-diabetic. I think the tests showed I was pre-diabetic because I actually was diabetic, but because of the gastroparesis I wasn't ingesting enough calories to actually raise my blood sugar beyond the warning level.
Anyways....
I went into the office and he told me I had diabetes, and given my physical shape, he expected it was type 1. I was told not to eat any carbs and was given a reference to a good endocrinologist. My initial fasting blood sugar was 301. My cholesterol couldn't be measured because my triglycerides were something like 401, which apparently makes calculation something like a divide by 0.
Turns out I wasn't type 1, I was type 2, not sure why. They started me on a low dose of insulin for about 2-3 weeks, then moved on to pills. I was also on lipitor for the cholesterol for a while, but quit that after a while. Primarily by watching my diet, I was off the pills by January 2008 and have been since then. My goal was to get my fasting glucose levels under 100, but I've since slacked a little on that, but to this day they remain under 120. My cholesterol came way down, then went back up (not as high as before), and I'm back on lipitor again. I hate taking pills, of any kind. It was very inspiring to know I could control my diabetes without them, but a little more work may be required on the cholesterol issue with the high fat/low carb diet. I firmly believe all the low fat hype in marketing is ill informed, but I still need to find some sort of balance.
So that's me, I've more or less cured my diabetes solely through a high fat/low carb diet, and being obsessed with numbers. My goal with this blog is to find and post about any other tips and tricks that may help me even more, and hopefully help others as well.
A little backstory behind that, I had gastroparesis about a year before this whole episode. Its basically a nerve disease that affects the stomach and while 40% of the cases are unexplained, the rest are either caused by diabetes or lupus. Tests during this time showed I was neither, but I may have been pre-diabetic. I think the tests showed I was pre-diabetic because I actually was diabetic, but because of the gastroparesis I wasn't ingesting enough calories to actually raise my blood sugar beyond the warning level.
Anyways....
I went into the office and he told me I had diabetes, and given my physical shape, he expected it was type 1. I was told not to eat any carbs and was given a reference to a good endocrinologist. My initial fasting blood sugar was 301. My cholesterol couldn't be measured because my triglycerides were something like 401, which apparently makes calculation something like a divide by 0.
Turns out I wasn't type 1, I was type 2, not sure why. They started me on a low dose of insulin for about 2-3 weeks, then moved on to pills. I was also on lipitor for the cholesterol for a while, but quit that after a while. Primarily by watching my diet, I was off the pills by January 2008 and have been since then. My goal was to get my fasting glucose levels under 100, but I've since slacked a little on that, but to this day they remain under 120. My cholesterol came way down, then went back up (not as high as before), and I'm back on lipitor again. I hate taking pills, of any kind. It was very inspiring to know I could control my diabetes without them, but a little more work may be required on the cholesterol issue with the high fat/low carb diet. I firmly believe all the low fat hype in marketing is ill informed, but I still need to find some sort of balance.
So that's me, I've more or less cured my diabetes solely through a high fat/low carb diet, and being obsessed with numbers. My goal with this blog is to find and post about any other tips and tricks that may help me even more, and hopefully help others as well.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
My Men's Health Letter
I'm going to copy and paste this from my other blog:
"Speaking of Health"
Men's Health in particular, like the magazine? I wrote in a while back about an article they had run titled "The Thin Mans Diabetes". It intrigued me because I am a thin man with diabetes. A few months back I was contacted through email for a little more information, and told they were thinking of running my letter. Well I've had the magazine for weeks, but it was on the bottom of the stack and I've been a little slow getting through them recently. This morning I was sitting in the kitchen eating my breakfast cottage cheese and flipping through when I see:
It's small and dark because I took it with my cell phone, but if you can't read it:
It's a little misleading. They didn't print my whole letter. Basically I was asking for a consolidated issue, or just an article, with all the tips and tricks for people with diabetes. They always have little snippets here and there like "Cinnamon is good for controlling your blood sugar", or "This rice has a lot of fiber so you can probably eat some". Mostly they give you tips on how not to get diabetes, which doesn't really help me.
Either way, I thought that was pretty cool. I guess it leads me to the old adage "if you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself." So basically I'm going to make a note here to ... do it myself. I'm going to try and go through all the old issues and pull out those little nuggets and consolidate them here. It probably won't begin in earnest until September.....
Well as it happens it's November, so maybe I was a little off, but whatever.
"Speaking of Health"
Men's Health in particular, like the magazine? I wrote in a while back about an article they had run titled "The Thin Mans Diabetes". It intrigued me because I am a thin man with diabetes. A few months back I was contacted through email for a little more information, and told they were thinking of running my letter. Well I've had the magazine for weeks, but it was on the bottom of the stack and I've been a little slow getting through them recently. This morning I was sitting in the kitchen eating my breakfast cottage cheese and flipping through when I see:
It's small and dark because I took it with my cell phone, but if you can't read it:
THE SWEET SCIENCE
As a 27-year-old, 170-pound,5'9" man with type-2 diabetes, I was thrilled to read an article like "The Thin Man's Diabetes" [May]. How about a section of each issue devoted to people with diabetes?
Adam, Hanahan, SC
Nearly all of the workout programs, low-cab meal plans, and stress-reduction tips in every issue can help defeat type-2 diabetes --Ed
It's a little misleading. They didn't print my whole letter. Basically I was asking for a consolidated issue, or just an article, with all the tips and tricks for people with diabetes. They always have little snippets here and there like "Cinnamon is good for controlling your blood sugar", or "This rice has a lot of fiber so you can probably eat some". Mostly they give you tips on how not to get diabetes, which doesn't really help me.
Either way, I thought that was pretty cool. I guess it leads me to the old adage "if you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself." So basically I'm going to make a note here to ... do it myself. I'm going to try and go through all the old issues and pull out those little nuggets and consolidate them here. It probably won't begin in earnest until September.....
Well as it happens it's November, so maybe I was a little off, but whatever.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Why I started this blog
Just over a year ago I found out that I had type 2 diabetes. I was 27, more or less fit, not the typical person to get type 2 diabetes. My doctor even thought I had type 1 at first because I was so out of the normal profile, but apparently I won the genetic lottery, because as I would find out soon after, my grandfather got it around 30 years of age and he was always a beanpole himself.
I decided to start this blog because of Men's Health magazine as a matter of fact. I'd been subscribed for a little while before I got 'the news', and I noticed they always had quite a few little tips and tricks in the front of the magazine, and a lot of them related to how not to end up with diabetes. I had written them a letter, which was published a month or two ago, asking them if they could round up all those tips and put them in a special article or issue. Essentially they said no, so I decided if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.
Hence this blog. And off we go.
I decided to start this blog because of Men's Health magazine as a matter of fact. I'd been subscribed for a little while before I got 'the news', and I noticed they always had quite a few little tips and tricks in the front of the magazine, and a lot of them related to how not to end up with diabetes. I had written them a letter, which was published a month or two ago, asking them if they could round up all those tips and put them in a special article or issue. Essentially they said no, so I decided if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.
Hence this blog. And off we go.
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