Living with Diabetes

Got my quarterly checkup done last week. The A1C numbers have gone up from 6.4 to 7.2. It is a big bummer. I am not a happy camper right now. This just reinforces my resolve to get back into the exercise and diet routine that was leading to good numbers just 3 months back. Got to go and wallow in my own misery now....

I have been reading a book called the The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead . It is a great book, a little dark as it is telling a dark story, but a good read. Makes you want to think about how there is cheating around you and how the culture is self propagating the whole things. I have seen the cheating happen in the USA as well as India. It is not that the cheating is limited to just the two countries, but I know of what I have observed myself. I myself have cheated at times and so I know I am no moral authority who is out there decrying the others for their actions. Lately I see the whole pharmaceutical industry cheating around me. They bring out new drugs in the market that are no better that the exisiting ones, but the companies and the regulatory agencises cheat the comsumers by not making comparitive studies. Negative results are being hidden away and sometimes totally wiped out. There is a concerted effort of starting more rigourous drugs on all ...

I keep seeing and talking to people who get diagnosed with diabetes and are always looking for the magic pill that will cure it. Must be the fact that right now we are always being bombarded with messages on how science has made these huge leaps in health and there is a cure for almost anything in the world. Folks do not want to think about the disease, they want a doctor to come in and just tell them what to do. Well, there is no magic bullet. Type 2 diabetes does not have a cure as yet. Sure there are doctors espousing the benefits of various drugs. Sure there are lots of people talking abut one herb or another that can cure it all. Wake up, and smell the spiced COFFEE. The only way to get control is to do it yourself. You can take herbs and pills, but no exercise spells long term doom. You have to watch what you eat, test your sugars as much as possible and move around. You have to change your lifestyle to a more active one.

There has been a flurry of posts and news going around about the stopping of the diabetes study. Made me start thinking about all this research. I know there is value in doing it, but sometimes folks are not looking at the basic information that is already out there. Case in point, Dr Bernstein. He has been dealing with the disease for decades. He is healthy and well. He has a book written about his experience and his philosophy with scientific thinking behind it. He is living proof that exercise is the key to the control of this disease. I don't know about others, but I like following him over other studies that might be suspect due to various monetary involvements.

Last week I found this new site - DiabetesFriends.net It is like Facebook but for folks affected by Diabetes. I have got myself an Id and started exploring the site. It looks interesting and can serve a great need. So come on over and join the network. Find me, I love to have other diabetic friends.

I am in the middle of a three week vacation and I am having lots of trouble keeping my fasting sugar numbers anywhere close to where I will to keep it. Here is a graphical view of my fasting sugars - The graph is coming from my own website - FightType2.com which I am very proud of. As you can see, in the mid Nov to mid Dec time frame I had started getting fasting sugars under 120s, which was a tremendous achievement. Then came Christmas ( and family) and then came this vacation (and some more family). I am struggling here to keep a tight leash on things, but my diet is very hard to keep in control since I am not in my own house. Exercise is pretty much non existent. I feel frustrated, but am trying to be patient. Just another week and I will be back home. Then I can restart a life with better control and hopefully bring the numbers down again.