I honestly don't really know many people who are T2 or T1. My mom is T2. She watches what she eats and exercises regularly. I don't know what her actual number are but she does test regularly and for the most part seems to have good control. She is still able to eat a relatively normal diet but has switched to whole grains, eats less junk and overall is reasonably conscientious. I was able to do that for the first 10 years too. She is on met, I think 1000 mg a day.
I have a rather distant relative of my husband's who is T2. She sort of watches what she eats but not really. She avoids eating all she wants of super sugary foods but that's it. Her son just told me the dr. just started her on insulin.
I talk to my mom about diabetes stuff. I don't much with the relative. I know that she would never eat the way I have to. She is a very sweet lady but has no self control when it comes to anything in life.
I agree, I have been a diabetic for the past 27 years, and was finally told by my endo this past appointment that i am really a T1. I have been able to manage fairly good, had a stroke about 5 years ago, very mild and then took it really seriously. However, it was just yesterday on this site that I learned the insulin to carb ratio, why didn't my doctor tell me this, instead of just playing around with my dosage.
I am sooooo sooo glad that I found this site, after only one day of trying it, my sugars yesterday never made it over 5.6 or 100.8. I know it is only one day but it is making me more aware of what I am eating and injecting.
Thank you to everyone on this site,
I will be more informed and make better choices!!!
I would like to suggest that EVERYONE (myself included) take a cold, hard look in the mirror before getting smug, superior or whiney about those other people who don't take excellent care of themselves.
Is there a mirror in your house? Do you see perfection when you look in that mirror? No?
Me neither.
Being judged and criticized for our imperfections is quite UNhelpful, in my experience. What is helpful is having access to the correct information when I am ready to hear it and am seeking it out because I'm ready to hear it.
Just something to think about when those smug-ly thoughts start bubbling up in our heads: am I being helpful, compassionate and generous with what I have learned? Or just obnoxiously blind to my own imperfections while I take inventory of someone else's imperfections -- and talking down to them about how they ought to be living their lives?
I have found that the best cure for looking down on others (and thereby driving an emotional wedge between ourselves and other people) is a bracing period of self-examination. It sure yanks me up out of any urge to feel superior.
Please note that there is a world of difference between being justifiably proud of making successful improvements in our own self-care (yay!!!) and being unjustifiably smug towards those who are not (yet) where we happen to be today.
Your heart shines through your words here, Ann. And your wisdom. Thank you for trusting us to share your story.
I am sure there are people on tudiabetes far more qualified than I who could advise how to talk effectively with your husband on this problem. Self-centered people rarely realize how profoundly their inner wars affect the people who love them. By the time loved ones speak up, they are often angry, exasperated, wounded; the words come out laden with pain and blame. The self-centered one reacts defensively and the stalemate hardens further.
In therapy I was taught to remove any trace of blame from my tone when trying to connect with beloved people in denial. Come from the place of love. -To make statements in cause/effect form: "When you do such and such, it makes me feel like this."
This is probably common knowledge these days. For me, if I have tried every approach I can find to change what is destroying me, I let go and move on. Easier said than done. For what it's worth I hear your words and feel for your struggle.
I have come to the conclusion that people who visit sites like this tend to be very interested in learning and connecting with others who share a similar situation. As is true with most things in life, there are a multitude of ways to deal or not deal as the case may be. When I was first diagnosed (I'm T1) I felt it was my duty as a health care giver to use my office as a platform of education. I now feel differently. I realized I did not want to come off as "preachy" or anything like that. Now when I have a diabetic patient I sort of feel them out on what they do and how they manage. If I sense they are interested in my opinion or knowledge then I jump in with some of the things I believe to be true and helpful. However, If I sense they don't want to discuss I just let it go now.
I agree with you Jean. I've never liked the blame game. I know that my numbers have not always been "perfect", if there is such a thing, but I know that I've always felt like I was doing the best I could do at that point in time in my life. There are many emotions that come into play when living with a chronic disease for a long period of time.
I have only encountered one T2 who is taking care of himself. We both have IT backgrounds, in a former life I was a cabinet maker/trim carpenter. Perhaps these choices of professions indicate underlying OCD/perfectionist tendency's?
All the others I meet are blissfully careening toward a very ugly end, no feeling in the feet, heart disease, even a few missing digits or limbs. I must admit I don't get it. I sometimes think I was lucky in that I spent 6 days in the hospital on diagnosis, It really got my attention. Being computer literate and loving researching things certainly helped, that's how I found this community.
But I wonder if it could be something as simple as carb addiction. We know carbs stimulate the production of endorphins in the brain. Morphine acts in a similar way so this is powerful stuff. I know I was certainly a carb addict pre diagnosis. Now if you have a metabolism that can handle carbs with no ill effects there is really no consequence to carb addiction. I work with a lady who is skinny as a rail and has a high carb snack every few hours all day every day. I recently saw an estimate that 10 to 20 % of the population has such a metabolism.
However if you have a genetic predisposition to insulin resistance + carb addiction, your addiction will have serious consequences over the long term. The estimate of the percent of the population with insulin resistance to some degree is 40% +.
If my theory is correct, and I admit it is mostly speculation, the standard advice to limit portions of carbs is next to useless, if the person is addicted to carbs. Alcoholics can't stop at one drink and a carb addict can't stop at one doughnut. Speaking of doughnuts people sometimes bring in a few dozen at work and I guarantee you I never stopped at one during my carb addict days. Since going cold turkey on the fast acting carbs 2.75 years ago I have no problem resisting. My coworkers all think I have an iron will and tell me about their friends and relatives who are destroying their health by not changing their eating habits. Instead I think I have learned to avoid the trigger that results in addictive behavior. The cravings are gone, but I'm sure they could come back as soon as I gave into the temptation to have just one.
Perhaps instead of telling people to switch to healthy whole grains they need to be told how carb addiction works and how to beat it, for the sake of their health. Telling a carb addict to switch to whole grains is like telling an alcoholic to switch to 3.2 beer the results are depressingly predictable.
Speaking of 3.2 beer, a journalist interviewed F. Scott Fitzgerald in an Asheville, NC hotel room and, after Scott passed out, noted he’d put away 43 cans of 3.2 beer.
Very interesting post, Bad Moon. My own personal belief is that carb addiction and more specifically sugar addiction is not as universal as it appears. I think that there is definitely a cultural component to the way Americans eat in the 21st century and that is a pretty strong determinant. But given motivation, I do believe most people can cut down/cut back. On this board alone there are people who have limited their carbs to very varied extent, from just quitting sugar, to picking healthier whole grain choices, to various reductions of carb intake.
I myself, as I've mentioned on here was a sugar addict, an addiction I believe to be stronger than just carbs in general (though that's strong too!). Like most addictions, my own was physiological, psychological, emotional and spiritual (if you believe that sort of thing). For me, I would watch people who ate one small disciplined piece of candy or cake and decided they were another species from me! I could not cut down and it took me several false starts to cut out. It's been 17 years now and I don't crave sugar at all. I never had a problem with carbs in general, and though I ate pretty high carb as a vegetarian, I have cut some things, eliminated others without much problem.Could I now, after 17 years, eat one piece of cake and not have cravings? I don't know, but I don't plan on testing that theory.
But for many people who don't have the physiological component of sugar or carb addiction, they can limit it. That's just my opinion and my experience with working with others with addictions and seeing others make food changes.
Where there's a will there's a way, 43 is a rather impressive total.
In my younger days I decided to try making home made beer. I figured I might as well boost the alcohol content, I think I made it 8% or better. I had several buddies, who were dedicated beer drinkers, and they just couldn't wait to taste my new product. The day arrived when I deemed it ready to drink. It was a Saturday and unexpectedly I had to work. Early in the day my wife calls and says my buddies had showed up and wanted to "taste" my beer. I told her go ahead and let them have some. I arrived home later that afternoon to be greeted by a very frazzled wife. My buddies had poured down my high test beer like it was the regular beer they were used to. They were soon rip roaring drunk and the afternoon went down hill from there. I decided I would call my new brand "Thrill Seekers" there would be a picture of a biplane flying into a mountain on the label. Upon further reflection I decided to make all further batches standard strength:)
The more time I spend here on tuD, the more I believe that our individual metabolisms vary quite a bit. So I would in no way argue that carb addiction is universal. However the combination of carb addiction and insulin resistance might make developing T2 inevitable. And once T2 develops it might explain why so many T2's have such destructive eating habits.
Good bread, either that I make myself, or from Acme Bread (Berkeley or the Ferry Building in San Francisco). Slathered with butter. Mmmmmm.....oh wait, I have lowered my carb intake.....
That sounds good but low carb bread does ok by me but there aren’t any low carb potato chips. :-(. I don’t walk into a grocery store without beginning a “chips?” debate with myself
