I see a lot of people saying they can’t find the motivation to make the efforts fighting their diabetes would require. I think part of it is that the consequences of diabetes are often disconnected from the disease, both in effect and in time. It’s for example not entirely obvious…
Category: Basics
Basics: the “clean” diet
I saw someone recently complain that they had a “clean diet” but after meals they felt bad and nauseous. It’s surprising because for a diabetic, it’s usually when you eat badly that you feel bad, not when you have a “clean” meal. So after asking what the “clean diet” was,…
Basics: diabetes and stress
So you’ve switched your diet to a proper human diet with low carb, you do your daily exercise, and you were hoping your blood glucose levels would go down fast. But they seem to resist and stay up. One other factor in onset of diabetes and then high glycaemia is…
Basic: lung damage
We already knew that diabetes can create liver, pancreas, kidney, brain, skin, and extremeties damage. There was evidence that it was also linked to lung damage. It wasn’t clear however that the link was causation, not just correlation. It was announced at the DUKPC conference today that a meta study…
Basics: my readings are normal, I’m ok right?
I regularly see people on reddit asking other members to diagnose them based on a few glucometer readings. The expectation being that if your glucometer doesn’t show massive spikes after you eat, you’re fine. No diabetes. No need to worry. The bad news is that it’s not that simple. We…
Basics: remission through weight loss for thin people?
Most of the studies that have been carried out only consider obese people for patients (e.g. DiRECT had minimum BMI of 25kg/m2). That excludes everybody with a healthy BMI from the study. Even though 10% of people with T2 diabetes aren’t overweight. So how do you put your T2 diabetes…
Basics: can T2DM be reversed?
A discussion that comes back a lot in diabetes forums is whether T2 diabetes can be “reversed”. Heated debates concentrate on deciding if it is a possibility or simply a mirage that leads to disappointment. A lot of it is a matter of definitions. Many people use “remission” to avoid…
Basics: duration of remission
So you’ve worked hard at controlling your T2 diabetes: you’ve lost weight, you exercise, you’ve lowered your fasting blood glucose, and you don’t spike as much when you eat. You’ve switched back to a normal human diet. you’re not using any medication, and everything is fine. Yay! You’re in remission.…
Basics: is it genetic?
I’ve seen lots of people saying that the cause of T2DM is genetic. usually as a way to deny responsibility in the condition: if it’s genetics, there is nothing they can do about it, and therefore there is nothing they need to do. They have diabetes, and that’s it, they’re…
Fight diabetes: why do I feel sleepy?
Glucose is essentially toxic for your body. It uses it for energy, but free-floating glucose stresses and damages cells. It also interacts with other products to make it worse. The resulting effects are varied from cell death and gangrene in extremities, to neuropathy. When your bloodstream is full of glucose, your body tries to store it…