Week 1: Do I Have Diabetes?
So, after the high blood sugar shocker at my mother-in-law’s home, I drove back to my condo in the city with quite a few questions about what it meant.
How could I be in this position?
Have I done this to myself?
What do I have to do to take care of this?
Am I going to lose my feet and eyesight and have every other complication?
If I have diabetes, it might explain any number of problems I’ve had over the years.
How long has this been going on?
How much damage have I done over that time period?
I got home and ate a bag of microwave rice, and thought the entire time, “This is the kind of food that is killing me right now.”
It was late and I was tired, but an army couldn’t keep me from Googling all night long.
Sorry, I’m writing this retroactively, and I can’t remember everything that happened. It seems like months, but has only been 3 weeks as of today. I’m exhausted.
Let’s keep it short, then:
The next day I called and made an appoint to see my GP. The hospital receptionist said it would be June 1. And I replied, “Is there anything sooner,” without realizing it was just one week away. He referred to my guess of “possible diabetes” and a “general medical need.” Meh. Not to me buddy!
In the meantime, I torn into hours of videos and pages and pages of online information.
I learned about diabetes, insulin, and food.
Basically, the majority of people with diabetes have problems getting energy into their cells.
When we eat carbs, protein and fat, it is processed by the digestive system and each of these “3 macronutrietns” is broken down into glucose. Glucose is the fuel used by cells.
However, they are processed at different speeds -- carbs quickly, proteins moderately, fat slowly. And the problem is simply that we eat too many carbs -- sugar and simple starches like pasta, rice and potatoes. The carbs are flooding the blood vessels with glucose very quickly.
Our bodies have an organ called the pancreas, and it creates insulin, a hormone, in response to the level of glucose in the blood. The insulin activates certain parts of the body’s cells, and this opens up the cell to receiving the glucose.
I learned about carbohydrates and low-carb diets.
Unfortunately, with these high-carb American-style diets, our bodies are becoming overwhelmed with sugar in the blood. The pancreas has to put out more and more to compensate, and a couple of things can happen.
1) We get fat, because the excess glucose that is not used by the cells gets stored as fat deposits around the body, especially the belly.
2)The pancreas can wear out over time, and end up not being able to produce enough insulin.
3) Cells can become “insulin resistant,” meaning they don’t want to accept the insulin as the key that opens the glucose receptors any more.
I changed my diet entirely. Low-carb all the way!
My cabinets are full of stuff that will never be eaten now. I don’t care. This is about my long-term future. Whatever it takes!
I learned that exercise is a big part of treatment.
Exercise helps to take weight off and it also helps to stimulate cells so that they are more receptive to insulin.
I had been sitting around all winter until February, when I started doing push-ups in a ferverish manner. Then my elbows hurt. So, I stopped. More recently, I had begun to walk to the grocery store and back home for exercise. I decided that I would watch TV while doing aerobics. I gave this a good go, and the next day I woke up to find I’d pulled something in my right shoulder blade. I hurt like hell!
I learned about the damage that diabetes does.
Primarily, high blood sugar causes damage to small blood vessels, and nutrition and oxygen cannot reach the cells. Tons of problems begin to happen all around the body.
I learned why diabetics lose weight before they find out they have diabetes.
Because the cells are not receiving nutrition from glucose, they turn to the fat stores instead for the energy the cells are not getting. This process releases something called ketones. The ketones in the blood can cause a deadly condition called ketoacidosis. I didn’t understand what was the reason this was so bad, but I see now it’s pretty much about the dehydration. The blood becomes acidic (low pH), and the body tries to flush out all of the glucose and ketones by peeing more. To counteract this, a person becomes very thirsty all of the time and drinks lots of beverages....
I learned that diabetes affects the eyes in two ways.
First, the blood vessels can’t get to the cells of the eye in the back. So, the body makes more small blood vessels. But these are weak and can break and leak, and a diabetic can go blind from this. Also, glucose can affect the lens of the eye. It can cause it to be warped, which results in blurred vision.
So, the question was, am I diabetic. Looking backward at all my symptoms, I had to admit that it sounded entirely too plausible.
