Living with Diabetes

I have been experimenting a lot with the various exercise routines. And I think I understand a lot more about how I can use it to control my sugar numbers. First, any movement is good. Being diabetic means that you have to move around and be active all day. Sitting passively and watching TV for long hours is not an option. Even if I am watching TV, I tend to move around. Walk on the spot and shake my arms around. Maybe cleanup after my toddler daughter. Bless the fact that she likes to create a mess. The second thing that I have learned is that to have any impact on the sugar numbers, you got to get that heartrate into the zone. There are a bunch of sites explaining this zone. But the idea is to do enough exercise, with enough stress that your heart rate reaches the high zone for atleast 15 minutes. What this means for me is that just running on the treadmill is not enough, I have to increase the incline so that it raises my heart rate. On my NordicTrack, what works is to do a preprogr...

This has been a very hectic week. We just had a new baby. Between all the feedings and cleanings the sugar control has gone a little haywire. I am trying my best to keep things on track, but lack of sleep is a terrible annoyance. Other weird thing is how to track your sugar by time. I used to keep track of the sugar numbers two hours after breakfast, lunch and dinner. And then a early morning fasting sugar. Now the schedule is all messed up. When you are really not sleeping, when do you decide that it is a fasting sugar? If the first meal you eat is at 12:00 in the afternoon, is that considered Breakfast? To celebrate the baby, there are sweets and candies and other stuff around the house. It is harder to resist trying to nibble at one of them. I am trying my best. Trying to keep it out of sight so that things do not get overwhelmed. I would like to see how my A1C's come out in Jan. The good thing about the baby is the inner peace that I get when I hold him up and close to my heart...

I have been battling a cold and cough that is really getting to me. The pains in the back are finally gone and today I was able to get back on the treadmill. I had an interesting experience a couple of days ago. To finally be able to sleep, I decided to take Nyquil to get a good sleep. My after dinner sugar number was 151. I took Nyquil later in the night before I went to sleep. Did not eat anything before that. Woke up in the morning and checked my sugars, I was at 157. It was shocking. My morning fasting sugars tend to be in the 120's, not good, but atleast I can predict them. This was totally out of the blue and threw me into a really bad day of high sugars. Now what really happened. I kept thinking about this. I realized it must have been the Nyquil. It has alcohol in it and all is very sweet. The sugars must have gotten to me. I was amazed at my ignorance. I never thought about checking the contents of the medication. I keep looking at all the foods that I eat, but the medicat...

I have not idea why my right heel is hurting. I wake up and it feels like I have been poked in the foot with a really sharp instrument. I am unable to put any pressure on the foot. Had the same thing yesterday morning, but still managed to get on the treadmill and walk at a small pace with the incline increased. It seemed to keep the sugars in check. Today morning the pain was worser. I am baffled. It was bad enough to not be able to get on the treadmill. If it continues tomorrow, I will have to take out the yoga tapes and do them. Getting off exercise is a bad idea as getting back in is always harder.

I am not sure if anyone else has any inputs about this. Some books suggest that there is no impact of stress on your sugars, or so say the studies. But it sure seems to impact my numbers. Last couple of days have been very stressful and the fasting sugar number have now shot up into the high 130's for me. It is very confusing and disheartening. Stress seems to affect in so many weird ways. I did not eat decent dinners, was up late into the night. Was unable to get up early morning to exercise. I could not wake up at the regular hour, and so after shutting off the alarm, crawled back into the bed and tried to get some more sleep, but it was not a peaceful one. The mind was still semi active constantly telling me that I am missing my regular time on the treadmill and that is going to be killing me slowly. Even when I did finally get up and loaded up on the caffeine to get the brain going, still did not feel like getting onto the exercise machines. The motivation was all just sucked a...

Depression is a fact of life. Most of us will have to face it some time or the other. There is no single person in the world that is not susceptible or not likely to get it. Some doctors will tell you that it is a chemical imbalance, others say it is a emotional imbalance. I don't know what it is, but it sure is going to affect every human being at one time or another. A diabetic has to be a lot more vigilant about this. There are multiple reason to know how to avoid getting into a depressing state, the main one being that you start to neglect yourself and your health. Depression is characterized by a lack of interest. For a diabetic, loosing interest in maintaining your health is a very serious issue. Getting off the sugar control wagon takes very little time. Getting back on the wagon and gaining control of those wild horses is a Herculean task. Check out Jay's blog story about his feeling the effect of the big D . I am still new to the disease and am learning as I go. I real...

I used to think that there are three types of diabetes - Type 1, Type 2 and Gestational. Now I hear that scientists looking into the disease are discovering lots of other facets of the disease and are beginning to coin words like type 1.5 and type 3. There is just too much going on in the scientific world and it is all good. It is amazing that we did not have more focus on the disease before, but I am pretty sure that is because there were just not enough diabetics around. It is a simple case of economics. AS there are more people suffering, there are going to be a lot more opportunities to sell, so there are going to be a lot more innovators coming up with new and better solutions. The best NEWS I have heard for type 1 diabetics has been the successful results of the islet cell transplantation. The Islet cells are the ones that produce the insulin in your pancreas. For type 1 diabetes, the person does not have any living cells left. Once new cells are injected, the pancreas start prod...

November was diabetes awareness month. Sad thing is that I did not realize it for almost the whole month. No wonder there were so many items in the NEWS about folks struggling, surviving and beating diabetes. It is amazing to realize that even though you think of yourself being well connected, you miss something that important. Just makes me want to help create a community for the help/support for people who are living with this life long disease. I found a link posted by Jay, a Type 1 diabetic talking about the missing support network too.

The weekend is over, time well spent. Had a party at a friends house and then had one at our own. It was pretty good. Sad part was that I could not exercise the whole four days. And did not get to put the Bowflex. Need to get that machine up and running so that I can build more muscle and also loose some weight. Did eat really bad on Sunday. Lots of carbs and even a piece of cheesecake. Avoided testing the sugars as expected them to be high. Monday morning fasting sugar is at 122. Not bad considering how the Sunday was spent. I am looking forward to a more productive week. Did start the day with 30 minutes on the treadmill.

I found an interesting news item about another person trying and succeeding in controlling their diabetes type 2 with diet and exercise. News article (http://www.clintonnc.com/articles/2005/11/24/news/top_stories/topstory05.txt)

An interesting thing about Diabetes is how many numbers are involved in your daily life. There is first the blood sugar. Americans use one standard and some of the Asians use another. Most meters can be programmed to do either one. I am not sure what the Europeans and others use, but it must be one of these. The factor between the two sets is 10. In the US, we use numbers in the hundreds. Here is what is considered great - Fasting sugars under 90 Breakfast sugars checked two hours after - 120 or under. Lunch sugars checked two hours after - 120 or under. Dinner sugars checked two hours after - 120 or under. There are a lot more numbers but this is what I concentrate on. Without the medications, it is really hard for me to get to these numbers. I manage to get the 2 hours later numbers only if I have done some rigorous exercise. Else If see numbers in the 140's or 150's. Which seems to be OK too. The ADA sets a limit of 180 for the 2 hours after meals. The other set of numbers i...

For a few months after being diagnosed, I started taking Glyburide. The doctor started me off on a 10 mg dose. On the first day I had my first low sugar moment. It was horrible. It seemed like my body was being drained of all the energy. There was a tingling all over and a weird shaking starts taking over. I hated that feeling. Problem with Glyburide was that I had to keep myself under a very strict guideline. I tried to go to a lower dose of the GLyburide, but that still led to issues. One day I decided that I am going to keep the control using just diet and exercise. I have bee doing that for about 3 months now. It seems to be working. I have to get on the treadmill atleast 5 times a week. Have to be pretty much in control of my diet. Luckily for me, eating the same thing over and over again is not a problem. What I mean is that I eat the same thing for breakfast each day. It does not bother me. Infact I enjoy the consistency. The interesting thing about eating the same thing at the ...

When I first discovered I had diabetes, one of the ways I coped was to go to the books to learn as much as I can about the disease. I obviously started off from the web sites. They were a good place to start. Learnt a lot about the two types of diabetes - 1 and 2. And read some odd articles about the new 1.5 that is beginning to show up. The American Diabetes Association web pages were a nice place to start. The web pages talk about general stuff related to the disease. But my thirst for knowing more meant that I had to go find more details in books. Next I checked around at office with folks that are already diagnosed with Diabetes. I got a copy of a book from Dr. Bernstein. He is a survivor of type 1 for over 70 years and it was a great start. He seemed a little extreme but the book was very informative. You can find details of his book and his philosophy at his website - www.diabetes-normalsugars.com/ Once I read through Dr Bernstein's book, I figured that I need to know more a...

I seem to remember the day in May when the doctor announced that I had diabetes. A few weeks before I had decided to get life insurance. Life was looking good. Had a new baby, things were doing great at work, it made sense to plan for the future. The nurse who came to check us out for our medical profiles told me that my fasting sugar was unreasonably high and then the insurance company denied my request. It was shocking as I believed that I was in a reasonably good health. I finally went to see the doctor. He told me to get a blood and urine test. On seeing the result, without batting an eyelid he said that I had diabetes. It was the weirdest feeling. I just took him word. I had no real reaction to the news. It is as if I was expecting that news, which I think I was. Both my parents had diabetes, but I was only in my mid thirties. I did not expect that to happen to me at this early stage. But I accepted the doctor on face value. He was not exactly the best doctor either. I realize now...

It has been 6 months since I found out that I had diabetes type 2. The last six months have been a blur with just trying to get my hands around the problem . I call it a problem because it was a change from what I was used to. It was out of the ordinary for me. It prompted me to change my life, which in itslef is a long process. Getting diagnosed with something like diabetes is a life changing events. What you do with the NEWS is up to you. Me, after a couple of days of not knowing what to do, have been trying to address it head on. I want to take control of this. In a way it is great because now I know that I have to take care of myself and my body or else, I get into all the complications that arise.