Intermittent Fasting

I tried Intermittent Fasting (IF) before. I did it for about 2 weeks and noticed that although I lost very little weight, my clothes began to fit better. Because I did not see any dramatic results, I stopped doing IF and moved on.

Now that I am checking my blood sugar on a regular basis, I was curious as to what would happen if I did IF again. As I am writing this, I am on my 7th day of IF. At first, my blood sugar did not respond in any significant way but yesterday and this morning, my blood sugar was significantly lower.

You can get tons of information on IF online. I am doing an 18/6 protocol. That is, I fast for 18 hours and then have a window of 6 hours to eat ANYTHING I want. How this works for me is that I eat my last meal of the day somewhere between 5 pm and 6 pm an then I don't eat again until noon the next day.

As far as diet protocols go, IF is the easiest way for me to change my eating habits. I am even fixing my own lunch and I am much more inclined to cook my own meals as opposed to eating fast food.

For me, the first few days of IF were the toughest. During the first few days, I tended to eat way too much food during my eating window. After the first 3 or 4 days however, I began to relax. I am now a little less hungry when my eating window opens and I am now eating smaller meals for my last meal of the day.

I am doing IF to see if I can control my blood sugar better. Many people do IF to lose weight. If I lose weight on IF it will be a bonus for me. I read somewhere that I won't see the real benefits of IF until I've done it for several weeks. I think last time I stopped too soon.

I already feel better after only 7 days and as I said, my blood sugar began responding in a positive way.

I will keep you posted.

It's called Insulin Resistance

I didn't intend this blog to become a diabetes blog. You have to forgive me if I continue to rattle on about this damn condition. As I said before, I have thrown myself head first on trying to manage the thing and as a consequence, I have a few things to say:

INSULIN RESISTANCE.
In simple terms, I am told, my condition exists because my body cannot use insulin the way normal people's bodies can. It has something to do with burned out receptors and the like. The problem with type two diabetes is mainly that although I produce insulin, I cannot use it properly. So it is with a great deal of confusion that I consented to insulin injections. I mean, if it is a problem of resistance, why pump me full of more of it? What's the point?
At first, I believed the insulin was helping. My blood sugar did drop. However, as the treatment went on, my blood sugar began to settle at a certain level, far from the levels my diabetes nurse prescribed (basically, normal fasting blood sugar levels of 80-100). In fact, I realized that insulin had no effect on my blood sugar levels if I ate around 2500 calories a day. The response to this was to up the insulin. Sigh! I was told that maybe, I should go to pre-meal insulin shots. Still, no explanation at all as to why the insulin would work if my body is incapable of using it properly.
Meanwhile, my appetite shot up through the roof and I began to rapidly gain weight. More weight = higher blood sugars.
So I stopped the shots and kept on taking the metformin. Right away my unnatural cravings for food decreased. I read up about it on the web. Sure enough, when you have all this insulin floating around in the blood stream, NOT BEING USED, your body begins to crave food. At least that's what they said on the web sites I saw. What gives??!! This doesn't sound like a sensible approach to treatment!
Now, to be fair to the medical establishment, they are trying to help people like me who didn't have the wherewithal to avoid getting the disease to begin with. You see, diabetes type two is a 'life-style' disease. It comes about because we eat too damn much and we become obese.
So the good doctors and nurses don't have much to work with. The obvious answer is to exercise, eat less, eat better foods, and ultimately drop all the excess weight but really, who's gonna do that? If I could do that I would have done it already. So I don't blame them for throwing insulin at me in industrial quantities. In this regard, my question is why haven't we come up with better ways to treat diabetes????

EMOTIONAL SUPPORT
Let's face it; we don't become obese in a vacuum. There are many emotional and psychological reasons as to why we over eat. If being over weight is a huge contributor to the onset of type 2 diabetes then shouldn't that be the primary treatment option? I've noticed that there are no diabetes support groups out there. At least they are not jumping at me the way say, AA support groups do. There should many out there and we should be encouraged or forced to go to them the way other addicts do. I am just saying. Pumping me full of metformin and insulin will only get me so far.

SUGAR LEVEL TESTING
Where the hell are the tricoders of Star Trek fame? Is it or is it not the 21st century?!

I am done for today. Thank you for stopping by.

Confusing InterWeb Interconnections

Since the advent of the World Wide Web in the early 90's (the Web, not to be confused with the Internet; one is a subset of the other), I have had a web site or a blog of some type. Most of my instances on the Web have died and gone away but some are still out there. This becomes a problem when a company which used to host my site gets absorbed by a larger company and my older stuff now lives all mixed with my newest stuff and new links take people to old sites.

Such is the case right now whereas some of my old profiles got brought back to life and my new links somehow take people to websites I no longer maintain. Case in point is Google. It seems Google now owns every company I ever hosted a site with. So, if I post a comment somewhere and you try to follow my profile you may find yourself at any of a number of old blogs that will confuse the heck out of you. Lately, I notice that people end up at my old gardening blog, which I no longer maintain.

I apologize for that. I am trying to create links on my old blogs and sites to direct people to my new blogs and sites but I don't know how effective that move has been. Sigh!

Time to boogie

Today is the day I start exercising. I like walking better than anything else because it gives me time to think and I like being outside. I may also get out a bit this afternoon to metal detect. Stage two of my dominion over diabetes has began.

Wish me luck.

Reached blood sugar goal today

Well after a week of insulin and metformin AND cutting back on the number of calories consumed, I've reached the fasting blood sugar goal set by the diabetes nurse. She set the goal at 80-110 and I woke up with a 107. Now, I am at the upper range of the goal but within the goal nonetheless. This means I can do better and will. Heck, I haven't even began to exercise yet.

The next step is to stay within the after-meal (postprandial) goal of no higher than 140. I haven't reached that yet but I think today I may. The big question however, is: what is the long-range plan? Can I keep this up? We will see.

Diabetes diatrabe

So I've been a little bitter about my diabetes for many years now. I don't like it one bit. Moreover, I have been more than a tad unhappy about the way it's treated. Surely since insulin was discovered in the 20's, better treatments have been developed. Sadly, this is not so. metformin, with it's stomach wreaking side effects, and insulin are still the only game in town. What gives!? Where are the 21st century treatments!?

Alas! at the end, this darn disease was caused by my life-style and so there is no one else to blame but me. And to be fair, I finally understood why doctors treat this disease the way they do; that is, they work under the assumption that the patient will not alter their eating habits nor they will exercise and so they pile up the metformin and the insulin.

Perhaps after taking my metformin and feeling like an alien is about to burst through my belly will motivate me to finally loose the rest of my extra weight (400lbs around the year 2000, 250lbs today) and finally kick diabetes by the wayside.

Peace.

Taming the diabetes

I'm back to receiving medical care after a hiatus of six or so years. It's time. I've fooled around enough trying to take control of my blood sugar. To that end, my new doctor employs a diabetes specialist. This lady is no non-sense and immediately laid down the law. I am now on a very low dosage of insulin and she upped the metformin dosage. Her approach got results almost immediately and my blood sugar levels drastically fell in just one day. The rapid fall has left me weak and feeling nauseated but it's all for a good cause. I also like that she set pretty high standards for me as far as my blood sugar and blood pressure goes. Let's roll!

Christmas is almost here. I can't say I am as excited about it as I was in years past. Could be my lower blood sugar levels, ha ha!

Life goes on.