Category: Health & Well Being

Most people are of the opinion that their medical history is private; something to be shared only with immediate family and medical practitioners. In most circumstances, this can make sense. After all, who needs to know the intimate details of your health condition and what the symptoms and problems associated with said condition may be? Honestly? Everyone. The correct answer is everyone.

I’m well beyond what can be considered conventional. Not only in matters of health, but with life in general. Unlike the previous paragraph, my personal policy has been full disclosure. Full disclosure with family. Full disclosure with friends. Definitely full disclosure with employers. Not only has this prevented a number of awkward questions throughout the years, it’s truthfully saved my life on a few occasions as well.

There’s always an exception to every rule. Even if it’s always been my personal policy, people who have been aware of my condition have gone out of their way to ignore it. I’m not talking about something straightforward like blaming my bad mood on high blood sugar. I’m referring to something more obvious and definite. this is where I’m reminded of my 11th grade French teacher…

During the 1994-95 school year, I was 17 years old and full of the same raging hormones and issues as any red-blooded teenager. Bad acne, oily skin and a singular focus on the female gender… oh, yeah! And Type-1 Diabetes! I was on two types of insulin, a fast-acting and long-acting, delivered by way of manual injection via insulin pens. I didn’t have the level of control that I have these days, especially since I was pretty much a morose, semi-goth kid who just didn’t give a shit.

I was in 11th grade French, trying to keep my eyes open during class. I likely SHOULD have recognized the symptoms, but my blood began to drop dramatically. Looking back on it now, knowing what I know, I can only assume that my initial dose of fast-acting insulin was too much for the amount of carbohydrates I had ingested at breakfast (if I had eaten any at all). I got dizzy and disoriented and wound up setting my head down on the desk and closing my eyes. I soon fell asleep at my desk.

Now I don’t know about you, but in most classrooms I’ve ever been in, teachers will take serious offence and wake any student they find passing out during their lectures. Despite the fact that teenagers have hormonal and growth imbalances that make them prone to falling asleep in class, teachers usually get pissed about it. It’s just human nature; I’d probably take offence if someone fell asleep during my lectures as well.

The point is, I was unconscious in class and my teacher was ignoring it. She knew I had Type-1 Diabetes and she also knew that I wasn’t the typical type of student who usually DID sleep in class. Common sense would dictate that she’d have assumed there was a problem. She should have halted her lecture and come over to check on me and see if there was a problem. But she didn’t. She let me be and continued on with her lesson. Bitch.

All the while, my blood kept dipping lower and lower, to the light knows how low of a level. When class was done and the lunch bell rang, one of my classmates walked over and shook me awake. He would be the one who would ultimately tell me that most people in class took notice of my passing out, but the teacher didn’t intervene. Given the nature of pack mentality, everyone figured that if the teacher didn’t care, why should they?

I staggered my way to the lunch line and got some food and made my way to a table, pretty much on autopilot. Once I had some carbohydrates floating into my system, I fell asleep in the cafeteria, from genuine exhaustion as opposed to low blood sugar. Dropping or climbing to extremes is incredibly tiring on the body. I missed the first period after lunch, until one of the cafeteria staff found me and roused me. I made the rest of my afternoon classes then walked home.

This gives you an idea of the kind of difficulties I’ve dealt with, even when I’ve TOLD the involved parties about my condition. Imagine the difficulties I’ve had with the people who have had no fuckin’ clue? This is why it’s SO important to get over your insecurities and share the specifics of your condition with the people around you. It could potentially save your life.

What would you prefer? Keeping your Diabetes history to yourself and private or providing others with information that under the right circumstance, could potentially save your life. Ultimately, the choice is up to you. But it’s definitely food for thought. Everyone nowadays is absolutely obsessed with their privacy. And with good reason, I think. But it stands to reason that there are some things that you shouldn’t keep to yourself; especially when it relates to your health and well-being. ☯

There are a lot of little details to remember when you have a condition such as Diabetes. For the most part, being 38 years into the experience has certainly created a level of “habit” or “routine” where I tend to do most things on auto-pilot on a daily basis. But then, there are the days where it feels like a wild, uncontrolled roller coaster that threatens to derail once you reach the top. There have been a number of times, even in recent years, where I’ve checked blood sugar levels and thought “What the fuck…?”

Picture this: I lay my head down to sleep one night. I wake up at about 3:00 am or thereabouts, to hit the washroom and check my glucose level via CGM. I’m reading at about 8.9 mmol/L, which in my world is perfectly satisfactory in order to continue sleeping through the night. I get back to bed and fall asleep quickly, without any issue (I’m just kidding, the no issue thing never happens). I wake up the next morning, rested and refreshed (also kidding, that DEFINITELY never happens) and test my blood sugar via finger prick before my auto mode asks for it.

Upon waking, I find myself at 7.5 mmol/L, which makes me exceptionally happy. A good, decent blood glucose to hit the ground running on a new day. In order to mitigate any potential upset, I toast a single english muffin that according to the packaging, is only 27 grams of carbohydrates. My insulin ratios are thought to be good, since they were recently checked by my endocrinologist, so I bolus accordingly. I get Nathan ready for school, load him up into the car and take him out. When I get back home, about an hour passes and I notice that I feel a little flush.

“It Is Possible To Commit No Mistakes And Still Lose. That Is Not A Weakness. That Is Life.”

– Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation

I check my sensor glucose. Bam! 10.8 mmol/L! What the hell…? It’s only been an hour and I’m considering that maybe my “fast-acting” insulin isn’t working as fast as it could and this is simply the carbs from my muffin making my levels climb before the insulin brings them back down. I get pissy, because the elevated blood glucose affects my overall time in range. I give it another hour and notice that I feel fidgety and flush, and my blood sugar has now climbed to 15.2 mmol/L. I now take steps, as the pump’s auto mode apparently needs human intervention and the increasing level is making me angry, which will only go further towards increasing my blood sugar levels.

So what was the problem? Do I simply have poor control capabilities? I seriously doubt it. You don’t survive serious complications for almost four decades, if you have poor control. But the reality is that sometimes, no matter how hard you work at it, your Diabetic day just goes to shit. End of story. So, don’t be so hard on yourself. Give yourself a break. You can do everything right and still have things go wrong. That’s just another one of the charming issues with Type-1 Diabetes. ☯

Back in the 1980’s, my parents were of the opinion that all I required for proper Diabetes control was to avoid “sugar.” The concept of carbohydrates never entered their mind (and somehow my dieticians never brought it up, either). So plenty f high-carb consumables, such as bread, milk and apple juice never entered their minds as something that could affect blood sugar. Thank the light that i took control of my own Diabetes care before any permanent damage was done.

I can’t place TOTAL blame on my parents; like most parents, I was their first exposure to Diabetes and they did the best they could. But their best can’t answer for the multitude of comas I suffered through as a child, or the Diabetic Retinopathy I had to deal with in later years, as a result. And truth be told, carbohydrates have gotten a pretty bad rap in recent decades. Multiple “fad” diets have burned carbohydrates (pun fully intended) in such a way where people genuinely believe that carbohydrates should be eliminated from their daily diets.

Here’s the thing: carbohydrates are a necessary form of energy on a person’s everyday diet. And although it’s possible to reduce your sugar consumption (you won’t catch me eating donuts every morning), reducing your carbohydrate intake is a bit trickier, since your body needs it as a primary source of fuel. But are sugars created equal? I would certainly say no!

You would think that sugar is sugar, right? It’s all 100% carbohydrates. But carbs are actually a combination of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, which is what makes up the name carbohydrates. There are many more complexities behind this, and I don’t want to drop y’all down the rabbit hole to an extreme extent, but it gives you an idea of what carbs truly are, besides the usual “you need them” rhetoric I usually stuff down your throat.

So, although regular, everyday processed sugar is 100% carbohydrates (100 grams of sugar is 100 grams of carbs), did you know that brown sugar is actually a couple of grams less in carbohydrates for 100 grams of sugar? Although that doesn’t make a huge difference in terms of usage, over the long it can mean a lower carb-count for the amount of sugar you’re using.

I’m on a bit of rant in terms of sugar, but my point is that you can never be sure of how many carbs you’re actually taking in unless you do the research and the measuring yourself. Even some nutritional information labels may not be accurate, although it can be hard to tell as your insulin sensitivity plays a big role in how you deal with those carbs.

That’s why a well-informed nutritionist or dietitian can be an invaluable tool, in tandem with your endocrinologist being on top of his or her game in ensuring your pump settings are on the ball. And most importantly, remember that not all foods, even sugar, are created equally. ☯

One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced in recent years is the thickening of my mid-section. Although I’ve never really been a big fan of a traditional six-pack (traditional Okinawan karate’s custom believes the hara, or the source of life, is in the midsection), I’m also not a big fan of having a hanging gut. Most people tend to forget that insulin is a hormone and can cause weight gain depending on its use. And given that I’ve reached my 40’s, my metabolism is no longer what it used to be.

Most of the time, and as I’ve written before, fad diets and gimmicks are usually useless. There is generally only one true, effective way to lose weight and burn fat and that’s to burn more calories than you consume. The prospect of reducing your food consumption or filling up on foods that are low in calories, such as lean meats and vegetables, are obvious ways to accomplish that goal when combined with rigorous exercise performed several times a week.

That fact doesn’t prevent some people from trying their best with things that they believe will help them along on their weight-loss journey. I’m saddened to admit that even I gave it the old college try, back in 2015. Despite how hard and how often I was working out, I decided to jump on the bandwagon and look into a supplement that I was told was “guaranteed” to help trim stomach fat. I’m talking about Conjugated Linoleic Acid, or CLA.

CLA is a fatty acid that can be found naturally in a number of foods, but it is not an “essential” fatty acid. This means that you don’t necessarily need it in order to be healthy. We consume CLA through these natural sources, but many people use an artificial CLA supplement in order to help shed some weight. For the most part, the jury is out and although it shows SOME potential towards shedding weight, it’s negligible.

According to an article posted by Healthline.ca, there have been numerous studies performed in relation to CLA and weight loss. The results usually showed only a minimal loss of fat compared to those who were given a placebo. The article talks about a matter of half a pound per month. For those who are a bit weaker in math, this means that consistent use of CLA supplements over a full year would see you lose no more than about six pounds.

The article actually offers a sadder total, estimating that long-term use of CLA over the course of six to twelve months only reduced body fat by 2.93 pounds. That’s pretty pathetic, when compared to the cost of paying for the supplements, coupled with some of the negative side effects that one will likely develop from its use. You can click on Healthline’s link above to read about some of those, but wouldn’t it be easier to simply exercise more?

I was living proof of these studies when I used CLA supplements for the better part of a year. My muscle mass increased with all the exercising I was doing but in terms of body fat, there were no results. Plus, I had dished out a bunch of money on buying the supplements when I could have been using that added money on lean meats. I love lean meats. And fish… Damn, I’m getting hungry now…

Just to give you a bit of an idea behind the financial toll this attempt took on me, I would purchase a 60-capsule bottle at about $25. I won’t make myself civilly actionable by naming the retail chain I purchased the capsules from, but the dosage is 3 to 5 capsules a day. So at the lowest dosage, I would need another bottle roughly every three weeks. This means that over the course of a year, I paid $450 for those supplements. At the highest dosage, I would need to replace the bottle every two weeks, meaning I would have paid $650 over the course of a year. Thank the light I only stuck to the lowest dose…

There are no easy shortcuts to weight loss. No magic pill or secret formula you can consume will make the fat magically melt off your gut. This is one of those things in life where you need to put the time and the work in. Despite the fact I should have known better, I had to learn it the hard way. And sometimes it needs to be that way, but I’m hoping that my post will help some understand.

Eat well, rest well and exercise well and you can be assured that weight loss will happen in its own time. And remember that every person and every person’s metabolism is different, and what works for one person may not work for you. Hopefully you won’t waste a bunch of money figuring that out. But if you are thinking of trying out a new supplement, be sure to consult your medical practitioner and do your research. ☯