Numbers

I'm lucky to have a good doctor who is helping to educate me in good health matters. I've got other doctors -- eyes, foot -- who are very attentive to diabetes.

I have friends and family who support my health efforts and are good role models.

I'm studying, including subscribing to some helpful websites. I'm working at it. Developing a plan, keeping track.

And I've got numbers.  They really help.

I was a big fan of NUMB3RS, the Ridley and Tony Scott CBS series in which the Eppes brothers, Don and Charlie, solve intricate FBI cases.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_(TV_series)

Numbers really help.

The scale tells the tale, of course.  Gaining 17 pounds last winter was ridiculous.

Every six month, Medicare requires that I send a month of three-times-daily glucose readings to my doctor.  Glucose test strips and lancets for finger sticks are covered by Medicare insurance.

I keep a daily record anyway, but I appreciate the requirement. Medicare has some procedures in place to root out fraud and mismanagement and this is one of them. (Yes, more are needed to get the big-number criminals who rip off the system. Medicare is working on that too.)

A few months ago, I got a diagnosis of diabetic neuropathy.  I have to say, I was upset. I've been trying to work against diabetes, and moving closer to its nasty
clutches was scary.

As the audiologist I consulted about hearing diminishment said: "Diabetes takes what it wants."

This new diagnosis has made me even more committed to oppose diabetes.

It's such a family propensity on my mother's side -- I can't mess around.

So these daily readings -- first thing in the morning and after 2 meals, or after 3 meals -- are telling a good tale.

I can see popcorn's carbohydrates a couple of hours after eating it. And I can see my new goals -- a modest-sized plate with 2/3 good fiber vegetables, 1/3 protein -- in a stable lunch and evening dinner glucose readings.

Daily blood pressure readings are pretty good too.

I'm taking a rather expensive medication, Benicar, for it. At my doctor's recommendation, I'm trying to limit sodium and caffeine.

Cutting sodium rules out a lot of highly salted foods and means developing a taste for spices rather than salt.

Cutting caffeine means switching from regular to decaff coffees and teas.

Upping my exercise from a couple of miles walked most days and a weekly tai chi class will help.

Get off your ass more, Connie.

I had an appointment with my eye doctor appointment today. The eye pressure numbers, a factor in glaucoma,  help tell the story.  I was one point up from what I measured in April, to 17 in each eye. I want to go in the other direction, down, see, but...the numbers help.

Last winter

Last winter was very cold. It lasted a long time. In April, people were complaining about how much weight they'd gained cooped up and indulging in comfort food. 12, I said.

Really it was 17 pounds, from September 2013 to April 2014.

I crawled inside a bag of doritos and ate my way through.

Processed foods are addicting in their saturation of sugars, salts and fats.

They are purposely made so by the food industry, says former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler in his 2007 book, The End of Overeating. The food industry protests, "That's what people want."

But between us, the food industry that enjoys great profits and we who consume, we're building a nation of people with obesity and avoidable disease.

The food industry gets the profits and we who eat get the diabetes and heart disease.

I recently read another David Kessler book without realizing that it was for teens.

Joe Heim wrote a pre-Halloween article for the Washington Post Magazine Oct. 26 on The Future of Candy – “Sweet Truth, Everything That’s Bad for You Has Been Restricted, Vilified or Outlawed. What Does This Mean for Candy?”

He mentioned  Dr. Kessler’s book Your Food Is Fooling You: How Your Brain Is Highjacked by Sugar, Fat, and Salt but didn’t call it a young adult book.

I got the 2013 book and didn’t notice the cover banner calling it the “Young Reader’s Edition of the New York Times bestseller The End of Overeating.”

Dense, eh? Not really. The information presented to adults and young adults and teens isn't all that different.

Some young reviewers on Amazon noted that the book is a bit repetitive. What Kessler does is include the full circle of his arguments. For example:

Food Fundamentals

1. Overeating doesn’t happen because we are weak. It doesn’t come from a lack of willpower. Overeating is primarily caused by the way sugar, fat, and salt work on our brains.

2. Foods loaded with sugar, fat, and salt are designed to get us hooked. They act on our brains the same way addictive drugs do.

3. Foods loaded with sugar, fat , and salt help create thoughts and urges that make us overeat and become overweight and obese. This leads to serious diseases like diabetes.

4. Foods loaded with sugar, fat, and salt do not satisfy hunger.

They make us eat when we are not hungry. We can never really satisfy the urges for these foods.

5. We do not need to overeat. We may feel we want to eat, but that is not the same as needing to eat.

6. We are surrounded by powerful food cues that stimulate us to eat. Some of these cues are the ads and marketing campaigns of the food industry.

7. Overeating is a habit, a habit formed over time. Every time we go through the cycle of overeating, we make the habit stronger. We become conditioned overeaters.

8. We can retrain our brains to form new eating habits

Kessler's earlier book, The End of Overeating, was eye-opening to me. His adaptation of it for teens, Your Food Is Fooling You, is giving me guidance for devising my own plan to good health through healthy eating.

Thanks, Dr. K!

Sometimes, when referring to diabetes, people will say: It's not about sugar, it's about carbohydrates. Well, it's about carbohydrates including sugar.  In fact, it's about what simple carbohydrates do to shoot up blood sugar.

Here's a good explanation of good vs. bad carbs. http://www.everydayhealth.com/diet-nutrition/101/nutrition-basics/good-carbs-bad-carbs.aspx?pos=1&xid=nl_MyCalorieCounterNewsletter_20141109

"The most important simple carbohydrates to limit in your diet include: 

• Soda
• Candy
• Artificial syrups
• Sugar
• White rice, white bread, and white pasta
• Potatoes (technically complex carb, but acting more like simple carbs in the body)
• Pastries and desserts"

It explains how "Fruits and vegetables, still simple carbohydrates still composed of basic sugars ...are drastically different from other simple carbohydrates like cookies and cakes. The fiber in fruits and vegetables changes the way that the body processes their sugars and slows down their digestion, making them a bit more like complex carbohydrates."

To our good health!

Pierce Mill in Rock Creek Park, Washington DC, Nov. 2, 2014

November is Diabetes Awareness month

November is Diabetes Awareness month. One of the websites I've discovered over the past year is the Diabetes Awareness Ribbon site on Facebook. It posts personal testimonials by people who have diabetes -- young people, older people. It's sobering stuff. https://www.facebook.com/TheDiabetesSite?fref=nf

One report today is by Jeff Howard. He says he waited too late to avoid more longterm damage to his body that can result from diabetes -- failing eyesight, circulatory problems, loss of a part of a toe, fatigue. 20 years after his diagnosis, he's making the dietary, exercise and weight management changes that help, managing stress, and getting enough rest.

He's decided to aggressively self-treat his disease (along with the treatments by doctors and physical therapists). He's positively pursuing positive changes in lifestyle that will help him. Here's the WebMD clip. http://blog.thediabetessite.com/howard-type-two/?utm_source=social%20&utm_medium=dbsaware&utm_campaign=howard-type-two&utm_term=20141103

This insidious disease quietly consumes "a little bit of your body amputated here, a little more later, a little more later," he says rightly.

I recently got hearing aids to help me with my difficulty in hearing some speech. As my audiologist put it: "Diabetes will take what it wants."

I've talked to people whose relatives have said: "I don't care, I'm going to eat what I want." They have known that amputations will be a result and they accept that. They live with and endure amputation after amputation.

Not me. My mother's loss of her left leg below the knee and her struggles to learn to stand upright again on two legs was a stark lesson. But like Jeff Howard, I wasn't serious enough. On my own, I lost part of a toe to what was then diagnosed as diabetes.

The Diabetes Awareness Ribbon is effective because it tells real people's real experiences with diabetes. They're not keeping silent any more about the struggles they have with the disease.  I admire their courage in sharing what they are enduring in order to help other people.

They may just get through to Americans who are surrounded by addicting processed food full of sugars-fats-salts.

The food industry isn't doing anything to counter diabetes...we have to do it ourselves.

Read the account in the 2013 book by one of my heroes, Dr. David Kessler, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner. It's the adaptation for young people of a 2009 book he wrote, The End of Overeating.

But there is nothing in Your Food Is Fooling You -- How Your Brain Is Hijacked by Sugar, Fat, and Salt that won't help any adult trying to contend with diabetes.

It's Diabetes Awareness month. On the Diabetes Awareness Ribbon site, this southern gentleman Jeff Howard has become aggressive. He's not raising his voice.  But he's not playing. He's in charge. Back down, diabetes.