For the first time since I started this blog 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. 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!
Spring sprung yesterday, and the next season coming up is EATING!!!
Um…I mean…SUMMER!
Grilling, chopping, snacking, running (or walking at a leisurely pace), swimming (or sitting under a shady tree), and because we actually DO spend more time moving around than during the summer, we feel ABSOLUTELY JUSTIFIED with eating whatever we want to, because we’re really “working out”. I even found a study done in 2021 that confirms that populations AROUND THE WORLD move more during summer months than they do during the winter! (I was born, raised, left, and returned to Minnesota to marry and raise a family, taught here for 41 years, and retired here for the past 5 years.)
To be precise: “Physical Activity level follows seasonal variations…higher PA level in summer compared with other seasons, especially compared to winter. Sitting around a lot follows the opposed trend regarding seasonality. Results are consistent across very different countries: US (Desert SW, Vermont, Michigan, Boston); Canada (Nunavut, Montreal, Quebec); Iceland, Netherlands, Lithuania, Belgium, Brazil, Norway, Denmark, Australia, Scotland, Qatar, Poland, France, and Switzerland. [I note for the record that NO African country, India, China, or Russia was included in the study].
NOW, the point of today’s post is to lay out some data for my SUMMER 2025 season of posts. Basing it on my current habit of posting on my DIABETES site every other Sunday, and rotating the posts between GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT…TYPE 2 DIABETES (which is this one); and DIABETES RESEARCH RIGHT NOW!, I’ll be posting on “Summer Eating”…which I just decided to the thread!
My INTENT is to cook SUMMERY, Type 2 Diabetes-friendly meals. So…I’m hoping you enjoy it; maybe even follow along with us as we explore. I’ll begin a couple of weeks from now!
The schedule for, (in case you’re interested) Summer 2025 will be: March 23; April 6; April 20; May 4; May 18; June 1; June 15; June 29; July 13; July 27; July 10; July 24; September 7; and September 21 (and the following day is the First Day of Autumn!).
Expect our first Diabetic Summer Eating Experiment on April 6!
From the first moment I discovered I had been diagnosed with DIABETES, I joined a HUGE “club” that has been rapidly expanding since it 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 highlight Type 2 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: “Are treatments that protect the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, potentially slowing or even preventing the progression of diabetes possible?”
Early in March of this year, a study was done together by research universities with grants and scientists from the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, and the European Union to protect the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. A particularly damaging condition called glucolipotoxicity enables the progression of type 2 diabetes (T2D).
T2D, as you probably know if you have read about the condition in yourself or people you love, is “…a chronic condition where the body doesn't use insulin properly, causing blood sugar levels to become too high because the body can't effectively utilize glucose for energy; this often occurs due to a combination of factors like genetics, obesity, and lack of physical activity, and is characterized by the body's resistance to insulin, meaning cells don't respond normally to the hormone that helps glucose enter them.”
In earlier GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT…DIABETES, I’ve written about the possibility of growing a new pancreas from cells cloned from your own, albeit damaged pancreas; creating an artificial pancreas, stimulating your pancreas to repair itself, and well as new drugs that might be used to either repair or replace the insulin WE need to live.
This approach has NEVER been tried. First you need to know what “glucolipotoxicity”. I’ll be using my ability to translate technical terms into ones more people can understand. (I can do that because I have BS in biology and spent the last four decades teaching science (of various sorts) to kids who ranged in age from 10 to 18.
So, let me have at it: “glucolipotoxicity”. First I’ll break it into its “parts”:
“gluco” – is pretty obvious: it’s the kind of sugar that runs our bodies, as in “glucose”. (There are other kinds, like dextrose, sucrose, fructose, cellulose, lactose, and galactose (all of which are sugars we EAT).
Then there are sugars we USE like cellulose (the sugar wood is made of); maltodextrin; ribose (the sugar part of “deoxyribonucleic acid”, usually known as DNA); trehalose (used by bacteria); ethanol (while it’s the basic component of drinking alcohol it can be used to make the polyethylene, the plastic used to make Target and CUB-style plastic bags, and plastic food containers)…there are lots of others!
“lipo” should be obvious to anyone who has ever used the word “liposuction” – it’s fat.
And finally, “toxicity” is self-explanatory. Toxic is BAD! Put them together, and now the definition makes sense: glucolipotoxicity is “a term used to describe the harmful effects of high levels of glucose and fatty acids on pancreatic beta cells.”
So…what? What’s THAT mean?
It means that when my glucose regulation circuits are haywire, then the levels of glucose in my blood are NOT BALANCED. Insulin was MADE to keep the amount of glucose in my blood level pretty much all the time. This treatment will protect your pancreas from the ravages of the assault of genes + sugars + fatty acids + lack of REGULAR exercise and keep it producing proper levels of INSULIN.
It ALSO was made to control the levels of fatty acids (which come from stuffing my face with unhealthy amounts of sugary, fatty foods. I’d be HAPPY to blame it all on my parents! I got my DNA from them, after all! It’s THEIR fault!) from destroying the pancreas.
And they would have to accept that because there IS a genetic piece of Type 2 diabetes (and Type 1 as well…), but there’s also a part of this that I AM responsible for! I absolutely admit to poor eating habits AND counting on wme being young and active and happy to eat whatever I wanted to. “But, NOBODY WARNED ME!!!!!!!” (I whine loudly…) and the fact is that while nobody grabbed me by the front of my sweaty T-shirt and shook me and said, “You should eat healthier…”, I wasn’t born stupid, either. I have always had a choice regarding what I choose to put in my mouth and exactly how much I move my legs and arms and torso and ass.
But, I was absolutely certainly NOT going to let anyone dictate ANYTHING TO ME. And now that I am firmly living with Type 2 diabetes, I am also THRILLED to see that the World Pharmaceutical Conglomerate has produced a shot I can take. And apparently, I can keep right on stuffing my face with AS MUCH BOOZE, SUGAR, FAT, and anything else I want to because I can BUY drugs that will fix it all…
And “Yes, thank you, I HAVE taken Ozempic (pills (currently offered at a 3 month supply for HORRIBLY BITTER pills for some $3200.00 dollars for a three month supply of which my health insurance covers $10,800 and I need to come up with some $2000 a year…which I don’t have: and which anyone on a lower income than MINE would find totally and completely impossible to cover…
And you know what else, I WILL lose weight. My blood sugars WILL go down and I’ll be able to eat whatever the hell I want to and live longer than anyone who can’t afford to pay for the drugs...
Are you detecting a note of bitterness in my words? Yes. You are.
Don’t be me…though I doubt that anyone young will bother to read this because, assuming they thought like I did when I was between 15 and 45…they’ll live forever because of the Miracle Of Modern First World Medicine…and no one reading this will print it off and give it to their kids or grandkids. And if they did, the wonderful kidlings and grandkidlings won’t actually believe it…‘cause because of the wonder of magic pills and shots, we can EAT whatever we want and we can take a pill or a shot or a surgery that will let us CONTINUE to EAT whatever the heck we want to and be just fine.
And worst of all, this rant will fall on mostly blind eyes…
