Sugar Turned On Me

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.

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

Sunday morning, I felt a bit off. My head was fuzzy. I didn’t feel sick; I just didn’t feel right. And I’d not drank the night before, so it wasn’t a hangover.

I look down at the veins on the back of my hands and see they’re prominent and puffed up.  I raise my arms, they get less prominent. I put them down and they fill up like firehoses just as they turn on the hydrant.

I say to my wife, who is far more medically knowledgeable, “I have a question for you. Probably a very dumb question. Do you think my blood pressure is up?”

I felt silly asking this because I was sure the answer would be that I was over reacting. My veins are a little puffy, this is not cause for panic.

Instead, I get told that yes, my BP looks to be elevated and I should go drink some water. This and some deep breathing fixed it.  A short meditation on the morning’s activities reminded me that I’d had a lot more coffee with breakfast than I’m used to having daily so that probably contributed to it.

Yes, I’m getting to a point.

There’s a trick to listening to your body. It’s not one I’ve mastered by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s simple: Don’t assume anything is a dumb question. Feeling sleepy in the afternoons? Don’t ignore it. Have a random pain? Don’t assume it’s going to go away. Take what your body does seriously.

A friend of mine recently told me that he may have had a heart attack. He told me this like he was asking if I’d seen Recent Action Flick or if I’d like to go sing kareoke some time. He had gone to the doctor because he’d had an elevated heart rate and shortness of breath along with some other early warning signs of a heart attack, but no chest pain.

As they were setting him up with blood pressure medication, the nurse told him “Next time, don’t wait for the chest pain.”

The human body is an amazing instrument complete with a number of backup and early warning systems. But as clever is the body is, the mind is moreso and has to be in order to rule the body properly. We can ignore signals our body is sending and this is a good thing: if you’re trapped in a burning building, you want to be able to shut off the pain from a sprained ankle so you can get out. Hunger that comes on when you’re no where near food is unwelcome and it’s best that you can ignore it. But as humans tend to push things to their limits, especially in fast paced Western culture, the ability to ignore your body is sometimes a bit of a liability.

If I’d asked the dumb question of why I was suddenly gaining weight and unable to stay awake in the afternoons a month or two earlier than I did, who knows how much better control I’d have over my blood sugar. If I’d not ignored or rationalized things like acid reflux or constant dehydration or any of the other things my body was telling me was wrong, I might never have gotten my diagnosis as hyperglycemic in the first place.

So if you’re body is doing something weird and you don’t know, please learn from the mistakes of someone who was quick to dismiss too many concerns as being inconsequential. When it comes to your health, make a point of petitioning those who know more than you. There are no dumb questions… usually just dumb choices.

While no one may be holding a spoon for you and making airplane noises, playing games with your food isn’t a bad way to form good habits. One example of this involves colors.

• When putting together a plate of food, have as many colors on your plate as possible.
• Jewel tones are best

Red peppers, yellow squash and orange yams all are on the list of things you should be more of. Even if you’re not into the striking presentation benefit that this sort of thinking can provide, there’s benefit to be had in terms of beta-carotene, fiber and vitamins from these foods.  Also, even if you do this just a little bit, it will help you pay more attention to what you’re putting into your body.

This has made me pay attention to how many things I eat that are brown.

In general, the American diet can stand to have more vegatables in it. Too few of us follow the ratio of 1/2 veggies, 1/4 starch, 1/4 protein. Little reminders like this one can make keeping good practices easier… and make foods that are worse for you look boring.

Dear Me,

There are a number of things I could write to you as you enter your 18th year that would be of great use to you by the time you hit your 37th. I could tell you which stocks to buy and when to sell them, but by doing so you’d likely negate the effect in the highly variable world of finance. I could tell you which relationships not to screw up and which not to get into, but each has taught you/me a lesson, and I wouldn’t be the person I am without it. What I will tell you about is how to avoid something that you’re doing to yourself.

Right now, you’re setting yourself up for Type 2 diabetes. No, you won’t be on insulin. Yes, it will still suck rocks.

If you wish to avoid this, start by drinking water. Straight. Without any caffiene, high fructose corn syrup or caramel coloring. At least one measure for every measure of that fizzy battery acid you push down your gullet. Start now and continue for the rest of your life.

Accept that two large orders of french fries do not constitute a meal. Yes, you can afford it now. No, you can’t afford it later.

For that matter, don’t rely on Burger King or McDonald’s too much for your food. When you get to be me, they will no longer taste good and in truth, probably don’t now.

Drink water. Yes I know I already said this one.

You like walking. Do that more. Everywhere. Never live somewhere you can’t walk to what you need. It will pay off, I promise.

Sleep regularly. Take off your clothes and brush your teeth beforehand.

Have you gotten a glass of water yet?

When you finally get around to taking martial arts, stretch before each session. It will keep you from injuring yourself and dropping the class. This will help you maintain the best health you will be in possibly ever.

Water helps with the stretching.

Do not fear salads. You will like them. Dressing is okay, but don’t overdo it. You will, but try to pull the amount back so that it doesn’t look like flakey soup in ranch broth.

With the salads, have water.

It does not make you more of a man or even more of yourself to kill a 2 Liter of soda in a sitting. Excess is excess, not a reward.

Follow these rules and maybe you won’t have to write this letter, which I realize will cause a time space paradox and such the universe into a singularity, but at least you won’t have diabetes.

So do this for yourself. Do it for your future self. And buy Google when it’s cheap oh god I can’t stop myself….

Sincerely,

Yourself