Sugar Turned On Me

The phrase “gastric condom” sounds like the name of a punk band, but in fact is a real device being tested to combat obesity and type 2 diabetes. The concept is that there’s a device that is inserted through the digestive tract and that puts a membrane around the first 60 centimeters of the small intestine. The membrane’s presence causes the stomach and intestines to react in such a way that reduces the absorption of nutrients and causes rapid weight loss, equivalent to gastric band surgery. The process promises to be cheaper than gastric bypass or gastric band surgery, is more easily reversible and would require little change in eating habits.

Somehow, I’m still wary of it.

I have known people who have gotten gastric band surgery and had some dramatic results with it.  I understand their decision and won’t fault them for it, but I’m a little hesitant to consider surgical alteration to lose weight. I’m only slightly less iffy on the idea of doing it to reverse my diabetes.

The criteria for recommending bariatric surgery revolves around Body Mass Index (BMI) which is a measure of your weight vs. your height. At my weight prior to my diagnosis, I might have been a candidate as I had a BMI of over 35 and I had a complication (hyperglycemia). While I wasn’t very happy with my body at the time, I hardly considered myself in a condition where the best option was to surgically alter myself and I’d never trusted the BMI, knowing that it would count a body builder who weighed the same as I did as being just as obese as my sedentary butt.

If you are at a point where diabetes and weight is a critical issue for you, if your weight is due to overeating, if you can’t find another way to lose weight and if you’re doctor recommends it is safe, I can see getting the surgery and the gastric condom being a viable alternative to having your stomach stapled to itself. But it seems that nature of the device offers a quick fix to a complex problem, perhaps a little too quick.

Link: Gastric ‘condoms’ could help obese avoid surgery.

I feel lousy.

This isn’t a hangover from last night’s wing buffet. (Morning blood glucose reading, 111 by the way). It’s not just because I’m getting little sleep. I think I’m coming down with something.

Getting a cold or the flu or a stomach bug or what have you is irritating on a number of levels, aside from the usual inconvience and worry that I’ll infect my co-workers or my wife. It plays hell with my blood sugar.

I’ve gotten pretty good at reading my body. I can tell when I’m a little sugar crashy versus when I’m just tired or hungry. Being sick, especially at first when I’m not sure, throws that off.

Illness also throws off my ability to stay active, my appetite and therefore my ability to eat regularly and a number of other small things that meant the difference between me taking care of myself or not.

The people at John’s Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic   both suggest more or less the same precautions with diabetes and illness: stay hydrated, keep to your schedule and check your sugars more frequently.  Also, if you go to a doctor for you illness, make sure he knows about the diabetes too.

I doubt I’m going to the doctor or taking anything heavier than Vitamin C, but I’m still trying to pay attention. I don’t want a bad situation to get worse, because diabetes doesn’t just complicate things when I’m healthy. It’s also a royal pain when I’m experienceing, well… other royal pains.

After being diagnosed with diabetes, I was told I needed to do a number of things to keep healthy, most revolving around food. One non-food item on the list was 30 minutes of exercise a day. This wasn’t a shock as I work a desk job and had no regular outside activity, but it did leave the question of what.

The doctor, of course, recommended walking.

I like walking, so that was okay. The complication, as there’s always at least one, was setting aside 30 minutes a day to walk. I can point to afternoons where I spend an hour and a half using StumbleUpon to look at random websites of Crop Circles, but for some reason, finding the time seemed like it was going to be a problem.

I started off by taking my walks in the evening, until the first couple of days where I came home tired and not wanting to do anything, no matter how constructive. After that I started walking on my lunch hour, which worked out okay if I’d brought lunch with me. If not, I’d  walk after work.

I saw results almost immediately. I attribute the first 15 pounds I lost almost entirely to those walks. Then summer came and walking outside became impractical and sweaty.

I’ve tried to keep up some physical activity and had some success. I even found a second hand exercise bike for under ten bucks at a yard sale. I’ve used it twice.

Walking has been on my mind because, in Virginia, the weather now turning a bit. We’re getting cool afternoons and that makes me want to put my feet on the road. I’ve got an okay pair of sneakers and I’m adding to my routine a ten pound medicine ball that a friend gave me when she moved and decided she didn’t need a doorstop at the new place.

I walk more casually than I probably should for exercise purposes.  After a couple of weeks, I don’t know that I’ll even feel my heart rate go up. But yesterday, I took my first walk in a few months and found that it wore me out.

Which is literally just what the doctor ordered.

I never liked reading labels on food. At the store, I would just grab something that looked tasty or at least non-offensive and go with it. Due to diabetes, reading labels is now something I have to do to remain healthy.

For most foods it’s easy: I pick up the item, check the carbs and fiber, check the fats, make sure it has no high fructose corn syrup or partially hydrogenated oils and go. The problem comes when I get food that isn’t labeled so well, like say apples or sweet potatoes. And then what about food I prepare at home?

Fortunately, the web knows everything.

I checked out a site suggested by my doctor:NutritionData.com. It’s has the nutrition info for a large number of foods and displays it in a format similar to the nutrition labels on food packaging. It includes common dishes, individual food items like apples and chicken as well as the items at a lot of restaurants. It also displays their gylcemic index numbers, their relative fat to carbs to proteins ratio and a lot of other information that is beyond my needs but is still worth having.

When you log on, if you set up an account, you can add foods to your “pantry”. You can then go back and make recipes from your pantry and get the nutrition data from that. The only thing that irks me is that you can’t just cut and paste a whole recipe.

There are also some foods that are missing from the list. I went looking for curry paste and could only find curry powder, for instance. In comparison to what the site offers, this is a forgivable gap.

One thing that’s good about being diabetic in the 21st century is that we have access to a lot of information. By making use of the tools available to me, I have felt a lot more informed and in control of my diabetes. And more in control is better than less.

Check out the site whether you have diabetes or not. It’s worth the look.

If what follows works out, I may be out of a blog.

Researchers at the Naomi Berri Diabetes Center have been, by their claims, able to cure diabetes in mice using a component of turmeric, a spice used in curries. (Follow the link at the end to a clip and short article about it.)

Turmeric is already used as an antiseptic in India and other recent studies have suggested that it may be able to treat Alzheimer’s, slow the growth of breast cancer and be used as a pain reliever.

In June, a paper was presented national meeting of the Endocrine Society (which despite the name, is not a group of really bad superheroes or an indy rock band) showed turmeric capable of slowing the onset of Type 2 diabetes in mice by lessening insulin resistance. This alone would be great news for the blood sugar challenged, but these new claims are even more exciting.

I’m personally holding some skepticism, but only because the clip I watched promises a lot and says very little. I’m assuming that they are still talking about Type 2, but they don’t say. They also suggest that they can cure the symptoms of obesity, though the treatment would not affect weight, which is what I thought the symptom of obesity was*.

Vagueness aside though, this could mean big things and I look forward to seeing the developments. And having an additional excuse to go to my local Indian buffet.

The article in question.
Where I got my information about turmeric.
*Obesity is a complication that contributes to health problems, I know. I’m not trying to be dense, but I get irked when people discuss obesity as if it were a death sentence. Also, obesity and diabetes don’t automatically come as a set, though one increases the risk of the other. The way they talk about them in the clip is as if they were interchangeable.

There are times where I feel like I’m a poser diabetic. My case is pretty mild and what I need to do to keep it in check is pretty trivial. I don’t feel any different than I did a year ago (well, maybe a little more energetic). There’s no visible signs of my disease. At times I’ve even wondered if my doctor told me I was diabetic just to make me stop downing three Baconaters a week.

I might have not changed my life at all except there were these numbers. Like 450, which was my triglycerides which made my  bad cholesterol numbers incalculable. Then there was 6.5, which was my A1C, a number that I didn’t even know could be measured before I was told it was confirmation that yes, I was diabetic.

Last week, I wrote that I’d gotten a little scared by my daily blood sugar measurement being at 120 and a nice lady responded encouragingly that the number wasn’t that high. I’m thankful for the consolation, though in truth I already know that I’m dealing with much less of an issue than some others. The only reason it made me concerned is that it was bookended by two days of 100 mg/dl. I have a good number of days were my blood sugar is only two digits, so a 20 point deviation is a big deal to me, even though I know there are people who are happy when theirs is below 300 on a given day.

Despite my diagnosis, I consider myself lucky. I think my problem got caught early on enough that I have a good chance of minimizing it’s impact on my health and on my life. The temptation is to think that because my case is mild, I don’t need to worry about it. But I’ve got these numbers and that’s enough to keep me honest.

In three months, I dropped my triglycerides to 175 and my A1C to 5.7 and I’m really happy about that. It would be easy to let myself think I’ve gotten this licked and in another three months be back to my old diet, putting myself at risk. But in this case, it’s good for me to take great care of small things and up my chances I’ll be around to see retirement.

Diabetes, after all, is serious business.

I’d like to ask, for my perspective and for the perspective of anyone who might be reading this that if you know what your blood sugar was this morning, reply with it. It might help someone like me understand how good we’ve got it… or where but for the grace of the gods we might go. Thanks. 

When you’re a kid, your frame of reference is limited. As a result, your tastes are simple. School is tolerable because there is recess. T-shirts and sneakers trump slacks and tight leather shoes. Vegetables are yucky. And now matter how unpleasant the rest of a meal may be, there is always the comfort of dessert at the end.

I remember when I found out about diabetes as a child, I thought it was the worst fate imaginable. Sugar, after all, was what made food good. To be denied that would be too much to bear. The absence of marshmallows from breakfast cereal might alone prove to be fatal.

These were the principles upon which I based my diet. It never seemed to cause me harm, so I never had reason to question it. Because I never questioned my diet, it didn’t really change when I became a teenager or when I became an adult.

Flash forward twenty five or thirty years later and I’m sitting before my doctor as she tells me my childhood nightmare has become true. Sugar has turned on me. Soda is poison. The low carb life has gone from subject of ridicule to a basic tool for survival. Food has become a complication instead of a comfort. Dessert is not coming.

That was three months ago.

I’m fortunate in that my case is mild and treatable with exercise and diet rather than requiring medication. Still, it’s been quite the shift and the adjustment hasn’t been easy. Talking with friends facing the same situation helped. Having a family member who is facing pancreatitis (and thus on a much more restrictive diet than me) helped me put things in perspective. The light at the end of the tunnel has begun to appear, and while it might not be the candle on a cake, it’s not an oncoming train.

The truth is that what I learned by being told I’m diabetic was that I was not caring for my body. This wasn’t a sentence imposed upon me by a medical professional. It was a revelation that what steps I’d taken to live a healthier lifestyle were not sufficent and that if I wanted to live to a ripe old age, I’d have to learn how to eat all over again.

The problem was already there. I just knew about it and could therefore do something useful.

Sugar and I are working out a truce. I’ve turned to substitutes and discovered portion control. I’ve learned diabetes is not the end, just a change.

And sometimes, change is good.