Diabetes and Life

This morning, my sugar reading was 11.1 - normal is something below 6.0 and "adequate" is something below 7.0 

I've always been "high" in the morning - no obvious reason. I don't eat huge amounts at dinner time, and until recently, didn't even have a late snack. The past few months I've taken to having the late snack and another Metformin pill to level out my dosage, trying to deal with a side effect of taking 2 pills at once; diarhea. I was losing weight and felt this was the reason.

My last A1C was over 7.0 - the long-term check of how my sugar is running. This is not good. Previous have been under 7.0, mostly around the 6.2 range (mmol/L).

So I changed my regimine again.

Now I'm again losing weight - but this time mostly due to not eating enough - or at least not absorbing enough of what I do eat. I'm down below 190 lbs. and I'm most comfortable at about 195 (I'm 6' 4" tall)

I've stopped eating my fiber cereal in the morning - Raisin Bran. I'm eating eggs and some sausage - no toast. 

I've been very consistent in getting my daily exercise - usually 1/2 hour or more of hard pushing on the mountain bike - top gear around the roads and dikes here in Pitt Meadows - working up a sweat and tiring my legs quite nicely. I usually go near sunset - cooler after dinner in the Summer and just before dinner in the Winter. Days when I can't bike I'll walk, again pushing hard for around 1/2 hour or so.

Yesterday I started off with a walk in the morning - was still high :(

I spent all day yesterday doing physical things around the house - we're renovating, and I had to again move the bed as we'd finished the flooring in the master bedroom and were about to do it in the room we'd used temporarily. I ate a fairly small portion of mostly high-protein and veggies at dinner, no snack - and this morning I was again high - even higher than yesterday.

Something is not right, and I don't think it is the wasp sting from last weekend; that's all gone now. Inflamation can affect your sugar levels but this is ridiculous.

Now, to be sure, I'm 15+ years into my fight with diabetes, and my internist had predicted at the beginning that "in 10 years, you'll be on the needle" - I've been fighting that prediction the whole time and I'm still fighting it. I'm still hoping that something will come up that will prevent this - not that I hate needles or anything - but that the whole change in regimine that this would entail is not something I'm looking forward to. Mom, who was "brittle" diabetic for over 30 years, and on the needle the whole time, said, "being high will kill you eventually, being low will kill you now" and suffered a couple of broken hips due to falls when she was low.

I've experience a low. I'd been given a trial pack of "pancreas floggers" - pills that stimulate the working pancreas to produce more insulin than it does on its own. I'd taken the smallest dossage of the several in the pack, and was standing talking to Shirley and a friend when I felt weak all over and feint. I immediately sat down and called for help, "get me a cookie, I'm low" - and as I had been standing by the cookie jar, the time it took was short and I was again normal.

Today, there are no cookies in the house. The kids have left (I'm a grandfather!) and neither Shirley nor I are sweet eaters (anymore), no deserts, no snacks with sugar, no sweet (or artificially sweetened) sodas, etc. Shirley has a couple of spoons of sugar in her coffee in the morning, but that's really it. Over the past 5+ years we've only just put the last of a 10 lb. bag of sugar into the main cannister - still about 3 lbs left - and I told Shirley not to get another bag that size as it was a waste of space. In fact I'd had to ask her where the big bag was hidden as it was not in the main cupboard - relegated to the bottom of the hall closet in a can.

That's likely going to have to change - I'll need to start keeping sweets around "just in case" I expect; at least something like sugar cubes, maybe grape sugar. 

But not yet!

I still have lots of potential tricks to try before giving in to pushing and finally replacing my pancreas' work as insulin creator.

First, exercise in the morning - and I guess it is about time. Lots of people do this as a matter of course; getting up early and "going for a run" (I can't run due to knee and ankle problems but...) and "setting up" exercises - and of course the Eastern philosophy's various rituals and methods: Tai Chi, Yoga, etc.

So, instead of just having big leg muscles, I guess I'm going to have to develop muscles everywhere. Muscle is the best defense against type 2 diabetes as, even at rest, it uses energy and pulls the glucose from your blood.

I wonder if I can get another 10+ years grace from the needle. Let''s try.

richard

Tag: diabetes muscle exercise metformin