For the first time since I started this column eleven years ago, it’s going to be about me. I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes two weeks ago. While people are happy to talk about their experiences with diabetes, I WASN’T comfortable with talking about diabetes. My wife is Type 2, as are several friends of ours. The “other Type” of diabetes was what caused the death of my Best Man a year after my wife and I got married. He was diagnosed with diabetes when he was a kid. It was called Juvenile Diabetes then. Today it’s Type 1 diabetes.
Since then, I haven’t WANTED to talk about diabetes at all. But…for my own education and maybe helping someone else, and not one to shut up for any known reason, I’m reopening my blog rather than starting a new one. I MAY take a pause and write about Breast Cancer or Alzheimer’s as medical headlines dictate; but this time I’m going to drag anyone along who wants to join my HIGHLY RELUCTANT journey toward better understanding of my life with Type 2 Diabetes. You’re Welcome (???) to join me! Today: WHY CAN’T I EAT THE WAY I KNOW I SHOULD?????
Sorry for the excessive punctuation marks, but I am so FRUSTRATED!
For example, even when I think I’m “eating right”, when I take my blood sugars in the morning, they STILL show RED!
The only time I get blood sugars where they’re supposed to be is when I fast all day long – like when I KNOW I’m going to Red Robin for supper with one of my oldest friends. Then I have coffee without creamer or Half-and-Half in the morning, just Splenda, and then not eat breakfast and lunch. The last day I did that, my BS (do you experience the same subtle, “I can just ignore my blood sugars because they’re BS” moment that I do? MAN! It’s easy to think that! See, I don’t take insulin yet, and my daily pill regimen is 1 blood pressure pill in the morning, then my cholesterol and my Metformin with supper. My pill box is a little purple thing (with 8 days…don’t try and tell me THAT’S not confusing!) Two of the pills are tiny, of course, the Metformin is the monstrously huge one!)
Anyway, all of the horrific stuff that happens because of Type 2 diabetes – “What KIND of serious problems can insulin resistance (Type 2 diabetes) cause? “stresses the pancreas (where insulin is made) damaging it. Diabetes is a major cause of blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks, stroke and lower limb amputation. Diabetes and kidney disease due to diabetes caused an estimated 2 million deaths…” these are all practically invisible to me. I haven’t lost a lower limb – though the fact is that I HAVE seen it. I used to be a Certified Nursing Assistant and as a young man, had no trouble getting a job in a nursing home – because there are a FEW old men in there and they usually deal with female caregivers. They LOVED having me and I learned to keep up enough with sports, hunting, and politics to carry on a reasonably coherent conversation with them. They just liked having a young man around to chat with…One of the men, who was himself still completely “there”, but whose wife had severe dementia, was intelligent, and INCREDIBLY FUNNY. I loved working with him. But once we started to get to know each other, he told my about his wife. He’d chosen to move into the nursing home with her when her medical and health needs got so severe, he simply couldn’t cope with them anymore.
She’d been diabetic most of her life, and eventually had to have both legs amputated below the knees.
So, I KNOW one of the effects. But the others? “stress on the pancreas, damaging it (If it doesn’t hurt, it’s not real, right?)…may cause of blindness (really? In the 21st Century????), kidney failure (I can get one of my kids to donate a kidney!), heart attacks (my Dad had a quintuple bypass when he was like 70 and lived another eighteen years! I’ll just get open heart surgery); stroke – OK, THAT one scares me. Brain stroke can erase a person, creating a true zombie – walking, talking, but the person who used to be in the body is gone…; and lower limb amputation… (“Got it.”). Diabetes and kidney disease due to diabetes cause an estimated 2 million deaths…(and of course, that perennial favorite, “Everybody’s gonna die someday!”)
So, I don’t pay attention because there’s no IMMEDIATE effect on me. I can’t TELL if my pancreas is being damaged, or my eyesight is failing (I’ve had glasses since I was in sixth grade – my eyesight has ALWAYS been failing!), or my kidneys are failing, or I “might” have a heart attack…not of it is immediate.
And I’m not the only one: “Participants’ responses indicated that using healthy eating to control diabetes does not provide immediate, tangible results. Thus, these participants followed their own common sense to guide their diabetes management and improve their health. Clinicians may be better able to help patients eat healthfully if they consider these factors during medical visits.”
So, their common sense is likely as good as mine… “It won’t kill me to eat this one doughnut!” or “If I get a MEDIUM DQ Blizzard, it’s better than getting a large!”
I need to get serious. I mean, ACTUALLY serious. I need to do more than write on this blog. I need to change my life. (“But, I don’t WANT to change my life! I like my life!” to which I will now reply: “You’re gonna get LESS life if you don’t start taking care of yourself NOW!” (Add a foot stomp there at the end. It’s time, Guy, to get serious…)
Resources: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3781525/
Image: https://www.hcd.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/living-well-with-diabetes.jpg
From the first moment I discovered I had been diagnosed with DIABETES, I joined a HUGE “club” that has been rapidly expanding since t stopped being a death sentence in the early 20th Century. Currently, there are about HALF A BILLION PEOPLE who have Type 2 Diabetes. For the past 3500 years – dating back to Ancient Egypt – people have suffered from diabetes. Well, I’m one of them now… Not one to shut up for any known reason, I added a section to this blog…
Every month, I’ll be highlighting Diabetes research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from different websites, journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and share them with you. Today: Top Discoveries and Developments of 2022
The first big change is that the FDA Approved the use “of the first immune therapy for type 1 diabetes.” As a physician-scientist, Dr. Mark Anderson’s main focus is on research on ‘why diabetes happens,’ with a particular focus on type 1…‘is an autoimmune disease, where the immune system makes a mistake and kills the cells that make insulin in the pancreas, so this takes up a lot of my attention,’ he said.” It is “an injection aimed to delay the onset of stage 3 type 1 diabetes in adults in addition to pediatric patients who are eight years and older who have stage 2 type 1 diabetes.”
While this is important, I can’t really speak to it. It’s far too late for my best man, who died of complications of Type 1 diabetes a bit over 34 years ago, and living with Type 2 Diabetes has become an issue for me now – in addition to my wife and several family members. In my blog, I’ll be focusing on my own journey, as you are focusing on yours!
Let me do what I do best: translate the doctors!
“…in May of 2022, the FDA approved a new double-targeted treatment for type 2 diabetes — tirzepatide... It’s injectable and improves control of A1C levels, the measure of blood sugar levels, in adults with type 2 diabetes, working WITH diet and exercise.”
And that means…what? First of all, it’s not magic medicine. Working WITH my diet, exercise, I would get shots. That immediately eliminates those people who are either uncomfortable with shots or just plain HATE THEM. The new drug “is a dual GIP/GLP-1 receptor agonist — a drug that attaches itself to a receptor that’s either on or inside a cell and causes the same kind of action as the kinds of substances that normally affix themselves to the receptor.”
OK – I’m pretty sure that’s Greek to most of us, so let’s break it down.
“…dual GIP/GLP 1 receptor agonist” – We start with fancy words. “Gastric inhibitory polypeptide” (GIP) – my small intestines make these molecules. It’s a hormone (like the ones that make teenagers crazy!) that gets into your blood and goes to the pancreas. It works there with the good stuff from food, especially glucose, so that enough insulin is released so that the nutrients and glucose get stored in your liver, fat and muscle until they are needed to provide energy. GIP also slows emptying of food from the stomach, which decreases the rate with which fats in food are broken down and stored. Then it disappears. I don’t make enough GIP to store enough glucose and nutrients. The other one, “Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1)”, works like GIP, just not as much.
Together, they cause something called the “incretin effect” which is the release of insulin after a meal. Type 2 diabetes KNOCKS DOWN the incretin effect. Because of that, we get “hyperglycemia” – what I say to my wife when I read my blood sugars are 266. “Honey, my blood sugars are really high!” Over time, high blood sugars cause nephropathy (nerve death), retinopathy (eye problems), and cardiovascular disease (heart problems).
Tirzepatide is the first medication that activates the receptors in the cells of the pancreas to create more enough insulin to pick up and store the glucose in my blood. According to the research, this new drug works BETTER than Ozempic in every way.
Tirzepatide HAS NOT BEEN OFFICIALLY APPROVED FOR USE!!! It WAS just fast-tracked by the FDA as an official weight loss medication. (WTFudge?!?!?) One clinical trial revealed the drug reduced the weight of participants by up to 21%. The drug has been well received by those using diabetes medications. But it’s REALLY hard to get hold of because fat people LIKE ME have been getting it to lose weight. So, I’d be great for this! I have Type 2 AND I’m fat! But, that’s not what it was invented for: it was invented for people only HALF like me – people with Type 2 diabetes… (As always, tirzepatide can have some side effects like nausea and gastrointestinal symptoms.) Here's to hoping it will be approved for US!
Link: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/diabetes-the-top-discoveries-and-developments-of-2022 https://diabetesatlas.org/#:~:text=206%20million%20adults%20living%20with,caused%20by%20diabetes%20in%202021. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00239707
Image: https://asploro.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Diabetes-Research_Open-Access.jpg
