I don’t think us here on this forum represent the average diabetic.
The T1s I know off-line drink soda and eat junk-food all the time. I don’t get it, drinking a Pepsi is really not that pleasurable an activity. Unless I am low and that’s somehow all I have I may never drink a Pepsi again in my life.
Anyway how well do your offline friends with T1 do treatment ?
I agree that people here dont represent the average diabetic. However, I think maybe having a healthy diet and controlling your type 1 diabetes isn’t inextricably linked. Everybody should, of course, strive to eat as well as they can, but if you’re taking insulin for the Pepsi and junk food, and that’s your normal so you know how to deal with it, you can still maintain very good blood sugar control. I dont like it when I’m splurging and someone says something to me about the diabetes because they have no idea that I’ve already taken insulin so I have to splurge at that point, and all they are doing is diminishing the joy I get from that occasional indulgence.
I would be more worried about my friends if they were not checking their blood sugars by any means or skipping insulin, but I don’t have any type 1 diabetic friends at the moment. But either way, I think it’s none of my business. We all make choices for ourselves, and what works for one person could be devastating for the next, so if drinking that Pepsi helps them keep their sanity or whatever, it doesn’t matter if we dont understand; it’s their choice to make.
He never checks it.
I don’t think there really is such a thing as “average” for any medical condition. But I wouldn’t stereotype offline people as not taking care of themselves, I think they are just happy to continue doing what they are doing, people here are just more interested in learning new stuff ASAP (new pump models, current research, ways other people stuff, etc.). It’s just a different way of life.
When they are sick and tired of being sick and tired they will take care of their diabetes.
My step father, diagnosed with T1D decided to eat cherry pie everyday for breakfast, only check BGs a couple times a week, and forego his insulin. I think there was an element of fear mixed with resistance to accepting that he had diabetes and that he could actually do something about it.
Geeze, the only diabetic that I ever knew who drank soda is dead. His legs were amputated. He had heart failure, I think. But, I dont think he took insulin. He didn’t last long after diagnosis. He was diagnosed at an older age (in his 40s).
Typically called DENIAL.
We all go thru it and some loose a limb or die before they snap out of it.
I have to credit a old battle axe of a nurse for snapping me out of denial. She pstt me off by shouting “YOU CAN’T EAT THAT!” 1 COOKIE off their snack tray. My reaction was - YES I can provided I am not stupid about it.
I am starting to play the game in my head of I am not going to check I don’t want to know what my level is right now.
I do the guess math of what my level was and what I ate and what I think it should be but I could do better at this.
All the diabetics I knew as a child were type 2, morbidly obese men in their 60s or 70s who smoke, drank, and ate and drank what they felt like. They then chose to criticize me for high blood sugars caused by honest mistakes. Hypocrisy at its finest, and proof you dont need to be type 1 to not take care of yourself. They all had heart attacks, which is scary, but not neccessary surprising given the other factors involved.
Try to think of your BG check as information to help you make decisions. Its not a good or bad number, and not a reflection of you being good or bad.
Think about the events, and what you might change. Own it if you made a choice you regret, but move on. But we all have times we do everything “right”, and get numbers that don’t line up. Don’t give up.
ITS JUST A NUMBER.
And that number is 97 right now. I ate and went to the gym so I guess the gym knocked the peak off of it.
Does feel better knowing it then wondering.
A classic case of someone who needs some empathy (and maybe some counseling) to help them.
FWIW, in the mid-1980’s I was kinda like that guy. I rarely checked my BG with ChemStrips or Tes-Tape, took only one shot/day of NPH (because that was what was prescribed), never counted carbs, but avoided soda, OJ, cake, etc. I treated most lows with Reese’s Cups.
Then, my business neighbor was diagnosed and he was doing MDI, testing on some sort of giant meter, was carb counting (and limiting carbs). For years, I was thinking he was crazy, but then I went to a real endo and was exposed to current treatment protocols. Wow!
Yes, same here. I was just chatting with a mutual friend about that just now. He was getting diabetic dementia at the time I had to tell him to leave my house because of really crazy ideas and violence that would happen and he was dead within the year. And a mutual friend’s girlfriend had ended up around age forty “blind and insane” in a nursing home.
It’s your choice, just ty notbto ketbit interfered with too many other people!
The first guy kept telling me “it’s a quality of life thing” during our attempt at an intervention, I asked him, “and what kind of quality of life will your fourteen year old have if you are dead?” He was a single father. He moved and died in his sleep about a year after that…
Can you tell me more about this “diabetics going insane”-thing that people keep mentioning? I am not familiar.
I never understood why anyone with diabetes would need to drink regular Pepsi/coke, when diet drinks have been available for decades. Do the diet drinks really taste that different to some people?
It was certainly “common knowledge” amongst the general public in the 1980’s.
It seems likely to be wrong but I don’t have any published medical research statistics.
Oh! I’m maybe just on the young side of that. Never knew. Thanks for filling me in.
I’m guessing you didn’t drink Tab in the 80s.
Nope, I was born into the diet Pepsi generation luckily! Always wanted to try it though, I found a pink can of it in the States once and it had a cancer warning on it which kind of kept me from drinking it!