Today we are seeing an explosion in type 2 Diabetes. I have had type 2 type Diabetes for over 30 years and the last 4 years cleaning up the mess and getting under control after a 4 year serious fight after a stroke on December 2007. The results after monitoring my disease first on over 30 finger pricks a day on a hand held glucose meter and finally a Continuous Glucose Monitoring System for 6 months have gotten me to a daily average of 140 on BG and an A1C of 6.4 In order to arrive at these results , I ended up having to achieve tight glucose control, regular hearty exercise, getting off actos and going on to accurate insulin injection boost assist and control rather than starlix, and fixing a leaky liver using metformin.
The data and experience doing this have been extremely revealing. In addition, I consider myself to have the old hunter-gather gene set useful for eating and surviving on the food of years ago that would consist of low-nutrient food, game, fish and assorted leaves requiring lots of exercise just to rustle up that food to survive.
Today, we have witnessed the great enlightenment of the United States where after the Second world war saw an enormous development in medical science, agriculture, computers, automation and of course home computers, 3D wide screens in the home, game boys and assorted other couch potato – low exercise entertainment and work.
The concern I have is that at same time that enormous genetic and plant improvements were being made to improve grains, corn and rice growing and nutrient quality and nutrient content; tools and products that convert us to couch potatoes have been introduced reducing over all exercise and energy burn by the human body. Furthermore, if one has the old hunter gather gene set, there will be an explosion in the volume of glucose generated by such bodies from ingesting the modern high nutrient grains and carbohydrates which upon reduced exercise can lead to the condition of excess glucose in Blood – raised BG.
The body uses glucose for energy generation, adding to fat stores and if the supply of glucose exceeds the cells need and ability to dispose or store ends up overloading the cells and backing up in the blood stream . My direct experience reveals that if there is insufficient exercise to burn off the glucose generated, one initially gets fatter and then failing that the cells begin to refuse to absorb any more glucose and then one has a condition known as insulin resistance. In conclusion, the body’s defense against too much glucose it cannot regulate is to ignore insulin – insulin resistance.
Through my experience, I found I could stop that resistance by heavily exercising, stopping all excess insulin production due to diet choices, fixing medical conditions from leaky liver dumping in excess glucose and hearty exercise to literally burn down the glucose. It must be pointed out that only thru energy burn by body in running its processes, making heat and locomotion is it possible to clear out the excess glucose so that body cells can take on more. Insulin is simply a transfer enabling hormone that enables the cell to take on glucose assuming it is capable and able to take on more glucose otherwise it goes deaf.
One thing I noted about the drug Actos is that it does enable the cells to take on more glucose when the cells have gone deaf on insulin presence in blood stream.
My experience was very clear on this due to a leaky liver that would load up my body while I was asleep doing the dawn effect and hammering blood sugar up to 240 every am. During this time I would take 26 units of 75/25 Humalog in am when I wake up and watch it do nothing. I would then walk for 2 miles and then I would see BG drop back to 100. It wasn’t till most of excess glucose marched out by walking , I would finally see the insulin power from am injection kick in and work helping to push BG down faster. Prior to walking, the lowest I could get my BG down to was 185 and that was Actos doing it by itself too.
This went on every morning for a year till I found power and timing of metformin doses to shut off errant liver.
Today, I now watch the portion size and calorie content of all carbs I eat to ensure that bread, rice, grains, pasta, cookies, buns and cakes are literally cut back to small 100 calorie portions and eat larger portions of vegetables, cheese, yogurt, etc. It’s not that I cannot eat the carbohydrates , but I have to cut back portion size back very small. The other aspect of this is to consider your energy needs versus your age, job, activity very carefully. The body can only regulate glucose so far and so much. Exceed that balance and you will see insulin resistance and the BG climb out of control.
The other important point lost in this fracas is that there are a number of organs from the gut, liver, pancreas, kidneys and brain all involved in a complex dance to regulate ones glucose level typically in non diabetic working system to 90 to 100. Depending upon any medical diseases, aging and degeneration, ones BG can be adversely affected and will require medical assistance to correct.
To be clear; Type 2 Diabetes stated in its simplest indicates that your blood sugar is too high and out of recognized bounds for a normal operating body. Beyond that, it can caused by poor carbohydrate control, lack of hearty exercise, medical issues of one or more of the key organs from a simple problem to a complex issue where all organs are off slightly along with insufficient exercise and loose carbohydrate control.
In summary and most importantly, the point of this essay is that we have in America improved the nutrient value of the foods, reduced the exercise with couch potato tools and entertainment and for the most of us are packing an old Hunter gatherer gene set optimized for the days of meager food and low nutrient value food and as such those of us on this old gene set have not seen our gene sets modified to match the new high test fuels and low exercise and as a result type 2 diabetes is exploding. For those of us aging and our key organ systems are degenerating face a critical regimene of carbohydrate reduction control, hearty exercise, medical attention and drug assists ( insulin and hormone boosts, metformin etc). In addition, in order to stop the “disease”, one needs to scale back all sorts of excessive glucose generation from diet issues and due to old gene sets, correct medical problems acerbating this issue from leaky livers on down and get strong hearty exercise of which 1 to 2 miles walking is an example will march out excess glucose and filter out completion products from the chemical process of cracking glucose.
Most interesting after being on this regimene for over 6 month, I found my body start using my own insulin and causing excessive hypoglycemic lows requiring the removal of starlix/glyburide pills, actos and the potent 75/25 humalog insulin. After doing that and going onto reduced volumes of liquid Humalog Lispro standard insulin, I found my body working very nicely with the BG slowly moving like waves on placid lake as BG slowly moving up and down in response to gut output from 130 to 170. In fact, the weekly average appears to be gradually dropping lower. All on a 1200 calorie diet with grains and carbs carefully restricted and medical fixes. In the past during excessive glucose generation, adding extra insulin on top of the body’s insulin while genetically different from the body’s own release provides some temporary relief but does not solve the problem as the body is not fooled long and learns to throw up an insulin resistance to the new comer during the interval of excessive glucose generation overall.
Today, I found Basil Insulin of Lantus – 15 units once a day and Humalog Lispro – 4 units at each meal and ½ unit at midnight most helpful in boosting body’s reduced insulin production most helpful. This is after years of blasting body on starlix pills and 75/25 liquid Insulin and now cut off. No, my pancreas and islets were not worn out or killed off.
Folks, I am not interesting in assessing blame or silly conclusions. From current research, I would humbly offer that all the work to date is critical and examination of all edge cases of black box system operation critical to achieving a tool kit of medicines to solve the medical edge cases necessary to solving the huge variant of medical short comings leading to excessive blood stream glucose loading and hopefully we will arrive at a more complete overall medical assessment and proposed overall holistic better solutions to this vexing and difficult disease.
