Believe me I know I about hoarding. One of the first things to me being able to gain control of my #s was ridding myself of the guilt and misinformation. The article you speak of seems to go beyond the typical thinking which is good because I have learned no one is typical. Normal is your norm and if you try to limit it into a box your diabetes will run you instead of you controlling it.
âNormalâ is just a button on your dishwasher.
5 Likes
aint that the truth lol
I also had a doctor that told me that Iâm always going to be a diabetic no matter how well I gain and maintain myself and reads. My diabetes team made the remark that if someone didnât know me theyâd not know that Iâm diabetic due to me having gain and maintained thus far. But that Iâll always be one.
Had a âdiabetics seminarâ I had attended. We had broken into groups and took turns at the presentations. Went to one section where our DEâs were. One of them told the rest about me and how I had maintained contact with her constantly. Also how I had improved and mentioned the above to them.
During a break one of the individuals in the group asked me about my meds etc. He is type 1. When I told that I had been off since 2013 his remark was âOh, youâre no longer diabeticâ.
At the end of the seminar there was question/answer time with the pharmacist, nutritionist and one of the DEâs. Someone asked about research etc and the nutritionist told them flat out that there wasnât any âcureâ that once youâre diabetic youâll always be one and that at moment the best you can do is to try to get and maintain a somewhat ânormalâ range. I was glad he said that. Cleared up the misconception that the other individual had. I tried to explain that myself when he was making the remark but saw it wasnât getting in to him. Hopefully he listened when the nutritionist made the comment.
But Iâve also noticed the âboutsâ going on between type 1 and type 2. Itâs in a lot of forums. Thatâs why I basically left a couple of them. I just got tired of the fighting going on. Saw some real bad âcatâ fights on a couple. Too bad.
2 Likes
I was lucky. When I was dx the doctor told me flat out that most of it was the genes and not my fault. He then set me up with a DE and nutritionist. A very good team. I got so much information from them that was helpful. Plus always stayed in contact with me through emails, in person, on phone and doctor would always take time to talk to me. Often when I was working there he would see me and motion me into his office and talk for a bit when he had a break or during his lunch. He told me that he wished that diabetics had something like the AA. That we really need something like that to help us out. I started to laugh when he said that but was told he was serious. When you think about it, makes sense. I really liked him. Too bad he moved elsewhere.
I donât go around asking people what type they are or suggest that they do what I do etc.
(1) Itâs not any of my business unless they decide to tell me.
(2) What works for me might not help them at all and vice-versa.
If asked I will tell them what I have done to get where Iâm at and what I do to try and stay there. Iâll also mention that I have one hell of a food cop too. Sometimes a control food cop(worst kind 
)
But we talk and understand each other and take as is. If asked Iâll give links to sites that I go to for information and pdfs such as âTaming the Tigerâ(very good one if you havenât read it). In fact one of my brothers was recently dx as type 2 also. It runs in my family. Have a type 1 first cousin, had a type 2 aunt, have a type 2 sister, type 2 niece(girl got hit from her mamaâs side and my side of family) and donât know how many others. Runs from my fatherâs side of family.
Any rate, when my brother got dx he asked what I was doing. So, I sent him the pdf, links and even a copy of something my nutritionist had giving me to help count carbs. Told him that this was what I was doing and working for me. But for him to take all the information to his doctor first and see what he thought before going out and doing it due to that âwhat works for me might not work for you and vice-versaâ bit. Besides I didnât know what his doctor had him doing and I sure didnât want to be the fault of any type of interference and make matters worse. Told me that he had taken all to his doctor and said the doctor thought it was good information for him to check out and follow even if he wanted to along with what he was having him do.
Guess what Iâm trying to say is that just because weâre type2 or type1 all of us have our struggles we go through all the time. Our ups and downs, our âScrew this Iâm giving up even tryingâ times. We all fall out of the car on that bumpy road and have to get back up one way or another, dust ourselves off and get right back behind that wheel again. Itâs hard no matter what type we are. We all have our battles we have to fight in this.
There shouldnât be all this fighting between the types.
2 Likes
Wil Dubois âTaming the Tigerâ is still available here as far as I know
we also have a couple interviews with him on our video library
1 Like
I really like that pdf. I share it with people a lot of times. I like his matter of fact yet humorous way of telling it at same time. Also like the part where he mentions unless we get ran over by a Fedex truck weâll wind up using needles. That no matter how hard we maintain weâll still have it wakeup. Just if lucky the bite wonât be as hard if we maintain. Right?
I know of one middle aged man who had been deemed to be T1 by a hospital team of doctors but when he met my GP who knew better and had been informed by the manâs wife that the man had felt fruit juices were healthy, that meant all the man really needed was an education in the wisdom of eating a low carbohydrate diet. The end result is the man lost all the weight he had gained by having been put on insulin by the errant hospital team. The man is now back to being non diabetic and is just eating in a wiser fashion. He was a T2 wrongly classed as a T1 because his initial testing had been so astronomically high that the hospital team figured he must have lost all ability to make insulin. Wrong assumption, that a c-peptide test could have corrected, if they had only bothered to measure that to find out.
Another woman I met about 10 years ago had at that point gained weight from having for a long while been on the drug Glyburide which forces more insulin production which as we all know can make a person gain weight. So in 2006 she had been on no injections of insulin, but had been told back then that she would need to be on insulin as her control was not very good. Well in Feb 2014 I heard from her and by that time she had been increased to 4 separate doses of 30u each, so 120u per day of insulin. She had neuropathy at that time which can occur relatively easily when taking Metformin with a poor choice of supplements as Metformin drives down B12. In less than three months on a much wiser choice of a higher quality multi vitamin mineral, her need for insulin had dropped to 83u per day in total. Now, a few weeks ago she told me she had found a doctorâs weight loss clinic whose team had helped her lose over 40 lbs and she was now not on any insulin and no longer on Metformin. So that is how a T2 can become a non diabetic, but that does not mean they can eat whatever they like in large quantities. Being healthy does take effort.
So, if every overweight diabetic were actually taught properly how to eat in a low carbohydrate fashion and if they still have a robust c-peptide test result which can measure their own insulin making ability, it certainly is possible to reverse diabetes by giving the individuals a better education. Exercise must also be part of that plan.
So, indeed letâs recognize that the medical system which does not bother to train people in the value of how to eat properly would much rather gain a patient for life by telling them they are diabetic which then causes them to gain large amounts of weight as it is so common that the low carbohydrate way of eating is not properly embraced.
There are indeed more diabetics around because of this lack of proper knowledge.
Even with that, that is NOT the same as a âcureâ which, as @Brian_BSC states, the term âreversingâ diabetes implies. These people need to continue to eat âproperlyâ and maintain whatever other lifestyle modifications they needed to reach the level of management that resulted in their so-called 'non-diabetic status." If anything in their weight/food/exercise plan fails their status could very rapidly revert to âfull-blownâ Type 2 Diabetes.
As I have said before, this happened to a close friend of the family â theyâd managed rather quickly to move from requiring insulin to no medication at all to maintain healthy blood sugars thru weight loss, diet and exercise. They were good for many years â until they fell and broke a hip, after which they returned almost immediately to full T2D, requiring insulin to manage their BG at anywhere close to healthy levels. They were - clearly - still diabetic the whole time â just controlled.
7 Likes
And what is the become a ânon diabeticâ? Another misleading term. Youâre still diabetic. You have it under control. Itâs a total â â â â â to maintain at times but weâre still diabetic. Yes reads might have a ânormalâ A1C but again, itâs hard work to get that and to maintain that. So, how can a person become ânon diabeticâ?
I do count carbs although I wouldnât say I follow âlow carbâ diets. I just watch what the hell I eat portion wise. I eat to meter but also know that it fluxes at times with what I eat. That at times will have a great read with something and then all of a sudden itâs playing games and will get high reads with it for a while. Itâs goes back and forth and Iâve learned to expect that to happen.
But I donât do a so called low carb thing. Just do the count and thatâs it.
So many think that youâre âcuredâ because you get it under control.
A few years ago someone whoâs diabetic told me about a friend they had. The friend had gotten under control. Doctor screwed up and said the âCâ word. That friend took it literally.Started living like before. Then all of a sudden body didnât feel right etc. The individual told the friend that the diabetes was acting up again and needed to go see the doctor. Friend argued saying was cured that it couldnât be acting up again. Finally was convinced to go see doctor and found out that it was acting up. That term âcuredâ is used way too loosely along with âreversedâ. And sad to say too many fall for that just like when they fall for the âsnake oilâ pushed out on them.
4 Likes
After 26 years diagnosis of type 2âŠi am just learning how unique diabetes is for each person. It eye opening!
5 Likes
I will admit that I used to think that diabetes was self-induced. Not of other diabetics; but of myself, because I literally used to pound down 15 cokes a day at one point in time. I also used to add sugar to actual sugar drinks. What I have come to realize now is that my body was out of whack and had become so used to the high BG levels (a similar effect happens with alcoholicâs) that I was craving the sugar because my body was not able to use the energy from the carbs I was feeding it, and my body was used to running high BG levels. Now that I have made some modifications and started to use Insulin, my metabolism has been kick-started some. Iâm used to BG levels in the 85-100 range, whereas seven months ago, I used to get symptoms of Hypoglycemia when my BG levels were at 120. I think type 2 diabetes is like when you throw a frog into warm water, and by the time itâs boiling, youâre already trapped. Type one is just a straight up full blown attack on the pancreas that happens really fast for some folks. Type 2 is almost the same condition. It just has a much slower onset. Some of us have a big window of time before we need to use insulin. But type 2 is also under-recognized for how deadly it is in some people. There are millions of people walking around out there with elevated BG levels damaging their bodies and they have no idea that there is a problem. Some will only receive their diagnosis once major complications occur. I was completely unaware that I had high BG levels until I looked on my ER chart from 2013 and saw a BG level of 250 that was flagged. Without this, I would have probably went another ten or more years without treatment. One disease kills the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin through an autoimmune attack, and the other kills the cells in the pancreas because of an increased need for more insulin that eventually burns out the Beta cells. Both end up needing insulin to treat. None of these disease are a joke. They are all equally taxing on the mind, body, and spirit. Any how I hope your daughter is feeling better.
J
4 Likes
@Reese2 @Terry4 I know itâs been quite a while, but I found the article I mentioned here while cleaning out my files.
1 Like
I have never perceived a â»divideâ» between T1s and T2s âŠif anything, Iâve sensed â»neutralityâ»
If T1 patients choose to make video clips criticising T2 patients âŠI guess thatâs a freedom of expression.
If the viewers are gullible enough to take on board that â»messageâ» âŠmore fool them.
1 Like