GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT…TYPE 2 DIABETES #30: DIABETIC SUMMER EATING WITH RECIPES!

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! The recipes you see here we either HAVE tried or we WILL try!

Summer eating is ALL ABOUT THE CARBS, right?

Who cares if my blood sugar spikes the next day (or ever try eating several handfuls on real jellybeans on Easter Day? MAN! I felt like was gonna pass out – and my blood sugars weren’t even that high…)

How come as soon as I say the words “Type 2 diabetes”, I AUTOMATICALLY feel deprived and that I should feel sorry for myself? Of course, it’s a head game to try and let force my LOGICAL brain – which knows that I’m going to be in a battle against a rebellious body who constantly tries to tell me that “IT’S NOT THAT BAD!!!” and a body that I abuse with my eyes closed, knowing that when I go get that Peanut Buster Parfait (which is ABSOLUTELY ALLOWABLE and I’m NOT punishing myself for “getting diabetes”) I am absolutely going to pay for it – and if I end up having to pay for all the stuff I eat that don’t go with DIABETES OF ANY TYPE – it will speed up an already certain death – only I might keep my feet and hands and kidneys and liver…

So: I’m going to TRY and eat for my BLOOD SUGAR!

Here’s one that’s not necessarily JUST for the grill, and it’s NOT an entire fancy meal…but IS better for me than the alternative!

Grilled hamburgers, buns, ketchup, mayo, corn-on-the-cob, brats, and oh, let’s say, cookies and ice cream with chocolate sauce?

THE ALTERNATIVE

Grilled chicken breast on Brownberry Ovens WHOLE WHEAT Sandwich thins; salsa; low fat “mayo”, grilled spaghetti squash (or, more easily, spaghetti squash MOSTLY heated to “noodles” in the microwave, then grilled up on a baking dish and mixed with a dash of butter, olive oil, and some fancy combination of a salt and mild garlic, (you CAN have brats, but make them TURKEY brats and cut them so they fit on the Sandwich thins); and lastly, there are COUNTLESS chocolate chip (DARK CHOCOLATE!) cookies that are diabetic friendly (though you’ll need to EXPERIMENT so that you can fool your grandkids!); and finally something I discovered a few days ago! Take a container of your favorite lowfat/1%/2% or whatever level you want that’s NOT FULL FAT!; yogurt, pop it into the freezer for a bit, then scoop it out, sprinkle with Splenda or Monk Fruit or any other artificial sweetener (NO, DON’T USE TEN TEASPOONS!!!) but to taste, THEN add a MODERATE amount of chocolate syrup. Stir it in, and voila! You have summer grill out food that WON’T DESTROY you blood sugars – AND you can have fun with the rest of the family!

Source: It’s What We Do!
Image: https://www.hcd.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/living-well-with-diabetes.jpg

DIABETES RESEARCH RIGHT NOW! #27: After Fasting, Why Are My Blood Sugars STILL High???

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’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: "Why are my blood sugars high even AFTER I've had nothing to eat all night???

“The World Health Organization (WHO) considers type 2 diabetes, one of the pandemics of the 21st century…it is a condition that results in high levels of circulating glucose – the cellular energy fuel – due to a deficient insulin response in the body…When blood glucose, also called blood sugar, levels rise after you eat, your pancreas [is supposed to] releases insulin into the blood. Insulin then lowers blood glucose to keep it in the normal range…In T2 patients, the glucose synthesis pathway in the liver (gluconeogenesis) is hyperactivated, a process that can be controlled by drugs such as metformin. ”

HOW does the insulin from the pancreas work? “Insulin moves glucose from your blood into cells all over your body…insulin is the key that opens the doors of the cells in your body. Once insulin opens your cell doors, glucose can leave your bloodstream and move into your cells where you use it for energy.” (https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/22601-insulin)

Metformin (which is what I take) has never CURED T2. It wasn’t meant to. It’s a way to CONTROL T2. A group of researchers noticed something odd: from the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic, “…factors involved in the control of gluconeogenesis [which is the liver making blood sugars and injecting them into our bloodstream]… sometimes patients hospitalized with COVID-19 showed high glucose levels…[it] seems to be related to the ability of the virus to spark the activity of proteins involved in starting the liver up making glucose and sending it to the bloodstream…”

So, that response of the bodies of people with COVID sometimes made their body react as if they were also Type 2 diabetic. Now, I take FOUR metformin tablets every day. I was SHOCKED to read this: “The mechanisms of action of metformin, the most commonly prescribed drug for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, which reduces how much glucose is in the blood, are still not fully understood.”

In other words, researchers, doctors, and pharmacists DON’T KNOW HOW METFORMIN WORKS!!!!!!! While I intentionally made that more alarming than I could have, the fact is that as researches dig into the method of metformin function, they’re finding out WAY more than they expected, up to and including the effect of metformin in REDUCING AGING!!! “Early evidence highlighted the liver as the major organ involved in the effect of metformin on reducing blood levels of glucose. However, increasing evidence points towards other sites of action that might also have an important role, including the gastrointestinal tract, the gut microbial communities and the tissue-resident immune cells.”

“At the molecular level, it seems that the mechanisms of action vary depending on the dose of metformin used and duration of treatment. Initial studies have shown that metformin targets hepatic mitochondria (= “liver powerhouses”); however, the identification of a novel target at low concentrations of metformin at the lysosome surface might reveal a new mechanism of action. Based on the effectiveness and safety records in T2DM, attention has been given to the repurposing of metformin as part of adjunct therapy for the treatment of cancer, age-related diseases, inflammatory diseases, and COVID-19.”

Rest assured; I’ll be poking around this paper more as time goes on!

To briefly recap, it seems that HOW metformin works is even deeper than just at the level of CELLS – but deeper still into the “powerhouse” of every cell in your body: the mitochondria…

So, that’s it for now. Obviously I’ll continue to dig deeper into HOW metformin works. (I commented to my wife with a sigh, “Oh, great, now metformin with become as hard to get as Ozempic because the rich will start to pop the pills to stay young and beautiful!”

[*sigh* I vote we should just suppress THAT little bit of information!]

Links: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/06/240607121434.htm; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4214027/; https://fagron.com/news-media/post/exploring-the-multifaceted-benefits-of-metformin-hydrochloride-beyond-diabetes-management/; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-023-00833-4

Image: https://asploro.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Diabetes-Research_Open-Access.jpg