Sugar Turned On Me

Anyone who was a kid remembers that when adults attempted to make something fun, it usually came out lame if not embarrassing. It’s not that their hearts weren’t in the right place, it’s just they weren’t connecting to the actual interests of their youthful audience. Trying to make medical stuff fun? Even worse.

It usually involved a musical number.

However, today someone pointed me towards a trailer for a video game targeting kids with Type 1 diabetes. It’s called The Magi and The Sleeping Star . It involves a character who is the chosen one, has to save his homeland, yadda yadda. He also is diabetic and has to periodically take care of himself.

The trailer shows a third person shooter gaming environment  similar to the Ratchet and Clank series or later Jak and Daxter games. There’s things to shoot and puzzles to solve, but mostly we see the shooting.

My fear is that someone tacked on a Blood Glucose mini-game to an existing property.  That said, it looks like it might have some entertainment value and I’m certainly not going to begrude a kid growing up with diabetes a video game that speaks directly to them. Also, all we’ve seen is one trailer and that’s not enough to form anything resembling a solid opinion.

So if you have a kid with Type 1 and you let them blow things up, keep an eye out for this one.

A friend of mine recently was told that she might be among the diabetic recently.  Knowing of my still less than a year old diagnosis, she called me and asked for tips. The call was educational, but I think more for me than for her.

My friend had already started changing her diet, eating better and working on carbs. The numbers that alarmed her doctor were borderline, not very different from what mine were like on the day my doctor got worried. So outside of pointing out that it’s not the end of the world, what was there to say?

Sadly, not a lot. I recommended a product or two that I like, reminded her to stay up beat. Thankfully, she had a handle on the situation to begin with, diabetes running in her family.

The things I was reminded of in that phone call:

• I’m am not the authority of all things related to diabetes.
• You can already be changing your lifestyle and still have blood sugar issues.
• …and that doesn’t mean you’ve failed.
•  Sometimes, solidarity is about all you can offer someone going through a bad time.

The good news is that she still has her A1C results coming, so there’s a possibility she’s not looking at diagnosis of diabetes even if she is kind of having a “come to Jesus” moment about her diet. She’s also got a great set of friends (not just me) and a good family at home to help her deal with whatever the doctor tells her.

As for me, I’m a little sad that after a year I didn’t have more to say to her (I should have this diabetes thing down, right?). But on the other hand, knowing that your knowledge isn’t complete is part of a path towards becoming wiser. And that’s something I’m pretty sure I can always do.

I work in a three story building. Nothing enormous as architecture goes, but enough to have an elevator in it. Often, that elevator prevents a challenge. And I’m not talking about the inordinate number of times it’s been down for repairs.

You see, right next to elevator is a door. That door leads to a set of stairs. The stairs, as they often do, lead up to my floor.

I don’t think about the stairs when I’m in a hurry as somewhere in my 21st century conditioning I equate “automated” with “fast”. But there are times that I think of them, often on rainy days. On rainy days, I can’t go for my lunchtime walk outside. But I’ve got my stairs.

The Stairmaster is a piece of gym equipment that sells for a fair bit of cash and demonstrates what we all pretty much had figured out: climbing stairs is exercise. The machine version of stairs has some advantages over regular stairs (less of a chance of falling, the ability to vary the depth of the step) but one of the best arguments against accquiring one or joining a gym just to use it is that you can get the same experience by just finding a nearby set of non-mechanical stairs and climbing them.

Back to rainy days.

When it rains, somewhere in the whiney-crybaby-I-don’t-wanna* part of my brain I figure I don’t have a means to exercise. But as there is a perfectly reasonable set of stairs in my building, I have to accept that I do have the means and bloody well should get off my butt and use them.

The moral of this tale is that there’s almost always a way to exercise, an environment that you can set yourself to task in even on days when you think you can’t.

And with that, I’m going to go stop talking about exercise and go do it.

*I can’t claim authorship of this adjective phrase. Thank you Ms. Alder.

I live in Virginia and the weather here, as of the end of March, is still pretty chilly. Admittedly, it changes every five minutes, so by the time I’m finished writing this post, it’s likely to be different than when I began. But on the plus side, it will be warm soon. That means I can take lunchtime walks again.

Walking has been my main form of  exercise since I was diagnosed. The best opportunity I have is mid-day, as my time at home has ever increasingly become filled with more obligations (also a reason my blogging has been a bit slack of late). The cold weather made that less practical and on some days it would have been masochistic. So, looking at my tummy and the bit of fluff I gained over the winter, I’m looking forward to getting back on the road with some regularity.

Just in time for my walks, research has shown that there’s an optimum speed for walking, about one hundred steps per minute .  That translates out to 5 steps every 3 seconds, which is a pretty easy, if brisk, pace for me. The goal is to elevate the heart rate and keep it elevated for a short time.

My town’s every changing weather patterns are bringing us rain for the next couple of days, but after that, I’ve got a short stretch of road and some time with my thoughts coming.

So, what are you doing for exercise these days?

Not to sound like a hypochondriac, but I worry when I feel okay. It’s not that I enjoy not feeling well, it’s just that when one is ailing, the things you need to do are clear: drink fluids, take medicines, etc. You have definable symptoms and ways to deal with those symptoms.

When I’m feeling okay, however, it’s much easier to ignore my health altogether. If nothing feels tight, I don’t feel the need to stretch. If I don’t feel thirsty, I lose track of how much water I am or am not drinking. If I don’t feel hungry or sluggish, I forget to check my blood sugar.

In short, being healthy sometimes is unhealthy for me.

And then there’s the fact that one can get comfortable with a symptom to the point of ignoring it. If my blood sugar is a few points off, I don’t mind. So when it’s been 106 or 107 for a few days and tell myself “that’s not too bad”, it makes me less cautious if my blood sugar goes a few points higher.

When your car is running well, that’s the time to keep up with basic maintenance. When your house is in order, that’s the time to try extra hard to keep things clean. And when I’m feeling well, that’s the time to be more careful about staying that way but unfortunately, it’s not always easy to see that.

This doesn’t mean I won’t try, because when I feel well, I may be uneasy but when I feel lousy…  I feel lousy.

High Fructose Corn Syrup, one of my favorite punching bags, has shown up again in a new study that connects the consumption of fructose, a gene called PGC-1 and insulin resistance.

As I’ve ranted before, HFCS is in everything and hard to avoid. It is a liquid sweetener that is easier to transport and use than granulated sugar and is used for its cost effectiveness. It’s also been linked with liver disease and the obesity epidemic, though not conclusively.

This recent study done by Dr. Gerald Schuman of the Yale College of Medicine dealt with the function of a gene called PGC-1 which in conjunction with another gene can trigger fat production by the liver.  Rats in the test were given a hight fructose diet with PGC-1 inhibited. These rats failed to develop insulin resistance, a condition that one would expect in rats consuming tons of fructose and also one of the symptoms of Type 2 diabetes.

The ramfications of this study are too far over the horizon to say with certainty, but if the results continue to prove true, then a missing link into HFCS and the rash of Type 2 Diabetes we’re seeing these days may no longer be missing.

Of a side note, Pepsi is getting ready to release sodas with real sugar again. Appears business is starting to listen to the demand for non HFCS sweetend products.

A friend of mine and I were discussing the Mega Millions lottery. I play pretty regularly, though I admit my chances are quite slim. She pointed out that the difference between the chances to win the lottery jackpot ( 1 in 175 million) are statistically no different from 0.

I thought about this because I understood where she’s coming from, I think. When doing scientific statistical analysis, very small numbers and zero are pretty much the same thing. Let’s say you’re testing a vaccine. Out of 10 million people, only one person seems to get better because of it. From the standpoint of a researcher, that’s the same as saying no one did; a statisically significant number did not appear. Flukes don’t count.

But if you’re that one guy, the chances are what doesn’t matter. Same as winning the lottery. Same as becoming diabetic.

According to the American Diabetes Association website , 8% of Americans have diabetes. 90-95% of those cases are Type 2 diabetes, the kind you can accquire.  So that means if you’re an American and you’re in a room with 100 people, statistically it’s probably that one of them has Type 1 diabetes and seven have Type 2.

For most bets, a mere 7% chance of negative consequences is pretty good. For your life, especially if it’s voluntary, not so much.

What this means is that your chances of getting diabetes are non trivial. There are factors that raise it or lower it, like diet or exercise, but nothing that should make you completely discount it. Get checked out with your doctor regularly. Know how much sugar and carbs are in your diet. Exercise.

Because eventually, someone is going to pick a number seven or lower out of 100. Try to make sure it’s not you.

I went to visit some friends the other night for their weekly social gathering, which apparently involves snacks. When they put out two bowls of cookies, the host rattled off some numbers: the amount of carbs, the amount of calories and the serving size. He also pointed out that one bowl was wheat and gluten free, which would be more important for one of the guests with allergies than me.

I was struck by the consideration. I bring up that I’m diabetic to friends, but it’s not exactly featured in every conversation. It’s not even featured in every conversation about food. That someone would remember and give me a heads up was huge not to mention very gracious.

Most people with chronic illness don’t want to be the center of attention. Having a problem that doesn’t go away already makes one feel abnormal. Drawing attention to it raises it to sideshow freak levels. The desire to stay out of the conversational spotlight does make the desire to do things like share food a little complicated.

I do think that if you’re going to have people over for food, having a working knowledge of their allergies and restrictions is a good idea. That way you avoid serving the vegetarians meat or having to learn the fast and hard way how to administer an epipen. But the trick is making allowances without pointing a sign at the person you’re making the allowances for and shouting “this is the defective one!”

My friend did it right and I’m grateful for that. I hope that when I host my next soiree (well, when my wife hosts it and I stand there and look all host-y) that I can match the level of graciousness as well as the level of discreetion. Because the whole point is to make those you welcome into your home feel included, not singled out. After all, awkwardness is never a welcome guest.

Recently, my wife saw a man who had a condition called Trigger Finger. This does not mean that he regularly made outlaws eat lead for their crimes against the townsfolk, but that he had a condition associated with his diabetes. I decided to see what Auntie Wikipedia had to say about it.

Trigger finger gets it’s name, not from the finger curling, but from it being released. The condition is characterized by your tendon and your tendon sheath being of mismatched size. This results in your index finger (sometimes middle or ring) cracking when you extend it. Later on, it becomes painful to extend and if you unclench a fist, the finger will remain curled until force is applied and it pops into position as if a trigger was pulled.

The diseases is ideopathic. Despite what Gregory House thinks, this has nothing to do with idiots but just means that the cause is uncertain. It has been noticed in people with diabetes and is on the list of lovely things like neuropathy and heart disease that might come about as complications.

Trigger finger is treated with cortezone injections and sometimes with surgery.

While I’m glad to know in advance about yet another thing that might happen to me, I’m not looking forward to questioning the health of my finger every time I hear it pop. Through martial arts training, playing with sharp objects and basically being a klutz now and again, my fingers have had enough to deal with without the prospect of permenantly throwing gang signs.

Then again, maybe I could form my own diabetic gang? Hyperglycemic for life, punk.

When I got diagnosed as hyperglycemic, it was recommended I do 30 min of exercise a day, every day. I followed through with that for a while, though more recently I’ve slacked off a good bit. I still try to do things like vigorously use stairs now and again, but I know it’s just a trick to make myself feel better.

For others though, this may be a way to prevent type 2 diabetes.

A study released recently suggest that as little as seven and half minutes of exercise a week could better your ability to control blood sugar. The doctor who did this research states that it’s a “dramatically different view from current thinking.” If the results hold out to further testing, this could be huge for the time challenged, hyperactive yet chairbound populace of the United States.

The suggestion is doing four to six repetitions intense physical activity for 30 seconds twice a week. Even I, the slack de la slack, can find time for that.

The sad news is that if you’re already diabetic, higher levels of exercise still seem to be the recommendation. And whether you’re diabetic or not, check with your doctor to make sure that you’re doing the exercise regimen that is right for you.

But if you find that the last time you ran was during recess on a playground or if the only thing that raises your heart rate is watching the economic news on CNN, then you may want to check into this guy’s research and see if when it comes to exercise if a little dab ‘ll do ya.

Link: Short, Intense Workouts May Fight Diabetes