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...