I Don't Want to Be Diabetic

"Did you ever know an [American] 'Indian' who was not diabetic?" someone asked me once. Person thought the question was rhetorical but, in fact, the answer is yes. Adayahi's legal identity is Cherokee and, though he's slipped onto the diabetic side of the borderline several times, he's stayed on the healthy side for most of eighty years by making the right personal choices. Genes predispose people to diabetes but they don't create the disease. Diabetes can be produced by permanent injuries (the so-called "juvenile onset" diabetes) or by personal choices that don't work with the person's predisposition toward the disease, and so allow the disease to develop. When diabetes is caused by personal choices it can nearly always be reversed by personal choices. Cherokee people may need to be a little more mindful about these choices than people of some other ethnic types, but not much. Diabetes is global. 

There are no guarantees in personal health care. There may be some underlying condition, which may or may not be fixable, that may prevent anti-diabetic choices from working for an individual. (For one of my grandmothers, the mild type of celiac disease was such a condition.) However, people who are able to make anti-diabetic choices can usually avoid having to take insulin or weigh out portions of food for most of their lives. If you do reach the stage where you must take insulin and weigh portions of food, the way back involves following the doctor's orders. If you start making anti-diabetic choices as soon as you or your doctor notice that you are "on the borderline" or have elevated blood sugar, you can stay on the healthy side of the borderline for years.

Choices that Promote Diabetes 

* High-fat diet--Atkins or just fond of meat, ice cream, chocolate, or chips. (Nuts and avocados, though oily, are much less harmful than animal fat. Vegetarians who use nuts as a primary protein source, as a group, are less likely than carnivores to develop diabetes or cardiovascular disease.)

* Simple carbs: white bread, white flour, white sugar, sweet snacks and pastries. (If you are on the borderline it's best to be careful even about sweet fruit, even though sweet fruit is the healthy kind of dessert for people who are not having problems with high or fluctuating blood sugar. Corn and potatoes are also good to save for eating when you are comfortably on the healthy side of the borderline.)

* Low-fibre diet. (Constipation doesn't seem to be a specific cause of diabetes but it doesn't help.)

* That syndrome where you feel hungry or thirsty all the time, snack all the time, go to the bathroom all the time, and don't feel satisfied...that's being on the diabetic borderline, and snacking is the way to get onto the bad side. If you are hypoglycemic and feel hungry, thirsty, tired, even sick or faint, all the time, talk to a doctor about safe ways to treat your hypoglycemia before it develops into diabetes, now. 

* Being overweight

* Drinking coffee or soda pop instead of water. (It's not the caffeine that causes diabetes; some studies suggest that caffeine may actually help prevent diabetes, especially if it stimulates people to take some exercise. The problem is the failure to drink enough water to let the body process the caffeine. You get more buzz per cup by drinking at least as much water as caffeinated drinks.)

* Drinking alcohol

* Not sleeping at night

* Hormone imbalances. The specific hormone the body needs to be producing enough of to prevent diabetes is insulin. However, the body is a complex system that uses some hormones to produce others, and estrogen/progesterone/testosterone imbalances are known to contribute to insulin imbalances. Women whose hormone balance produces premenstrual or menopausal problems are more likely to develop diabetic symptoms while premenstrual or menopausal. Pregnancy can have several harmful effects on women's health, and usually-temporary diabetes is one of them. Adrenalin and testosterone are more directly involved in raising blood pressure but also promote diabetes; oxytocin and vasopressin help reduce this effect.

* Chronic fear, worry, or anger. Feeling bad about things that happen doesn't cause diabetes unless it causes you to overeat or lose sleep. Feeling continually stressed and generally anxious, bad-tempered, grumpy, etc., can damage the whole body. Regular "anger attacks" are typical of heart disease and "anxiety or panic attacks" are typical of diabetes, but these disease conditions tend to coexist and interact. If you find yourself losing patience, especially with your immediate family or students, on a predictable cycle, you're at risk for both cardiovascular disease and diabetes. In women the predictable cycle usually coincides with the menstrual cycle; in men the cycle may be longer than a month at first, but if the condition is not addressed the cycle is likely to shorten.

* Driving instead of walking

* Riding a lawn mower instead of gardening

* Watching TV instead of choosing a way to relax that keeps you moving

* Taking medication in the "statin" category. These meds are usually prescribed for cardiovascular disease. Diabetes is part of the cardiovascular syndrome. If you can address the heart condition without taking the pills, you can probably get back on the good side of the diabetic borderline.

Stop Reading Until You've Called the Doctor If... 

* You feel hungry, thirsty, tired, sick, or faint most of the time; a snack used to help, but now you're always stuffing stuff into your mouth and never feeling any benefit from it. This is hypoglycemia in the process of developing into diabetes.

* Your hands and feet feel cold (or sometimes hot), numb, tingly, or plagued by sharp sudden pains that are not a dull ache or burning pain in a joint. Inflammation in the joints is arthritis. Irritation of the nerves is diabetes. It is, of course, possible to have both.

 * You can't get through a day's work without eating. You feel faint and might actually collapse if your stomach is empty; you have mood swings, blurred vision, even blackouts if you try to continue working or exercising without food. Normal people can fast for several days. If you can't work while fasting, you're close to the diabetic borderline.

* Your skin bruises, breaks, or tears easily and heals slowly, and/or becomes very dry (other than your hands drying out if you have to wash them several times an hour).

* You're always running to the toilet, even losing sleep because you have to use the toilet more than once in a 90-minute sleep cycle. You may also notice a sweet, fruity, or yeasty odor while you're in there.

* You black out after eating/drinking.

* You were fat for a while, but then you suddenly started losing a lot of weight without even trying. This is your body's attempt to fight off diabetes, but you need to know exactly how far onto the bad side of the diabetic borderline you are in order to make the attempt succeed.

Two Ways of Dealing with Diabetes

If you have any choice in the matter, it's helpful to know your doctor's general approach to treating diseases, especially diabetes. 

An allopathic approach to diabetes prescribes insulin supplements and a very precisely controlled, usually dairy-based diet. (This is why some older Cherokee diabetics are so miserable. They have lost or are losing lactose tolerance...and the allopathic approach doesn't even plan for an end; the doctor thinks the diet and insulin regimen need to be continued for life.) Allopathic treatments for diabetes are much simpler and easier to use than they used to be. Some people can manage their diabetes by taking a tablet instead of an insulin injection every day. Allopathic treatments are preferred by people who aren't going to do the work that is usually involved in naturopathic treatments.

A naturopathic approach may begin with the same wretched routine of testing blood and urine and taking insulin, but aims to eliminate those inconveniences, and emphasizes exercise and a high-fibre diet. You must commit to the diet and exercise regimen to benefit from a naturopathic approach, but most people who work their program can have a "normal" health-conscious life within a year or two. They still have to choose a low-fat, low-simple-carbs, high-fibre diet and get some exercise every day, but they don't have to live with  needles, syringes, or daily pills.

Either way, you will be given further tests and an individual treatment plan based on the results of those tests. You must follow the plan if you want to get back to a normal healthy life. Be careful about tweaking the plan; some tweaks may work, and others may ruin the plan. 

Choices That Help Prevent People from Being Diagnosed with Diabetes 

While they are on the healthy side of the borderline, many people can make these choices to stay there, without having to pay a doctor.

* High-fibre diet based on lots and lots of vegetables. (The difficulty is that they have to be glyphosate-free vegetables. Glyphosate does not directly cause diabetes, but over time glyphosate reactions  promote diabetes. Good luck finding veg you can safely eat!)

* Especially cucumbers. All the raw vegetables you can safely eat, including wild vegetables like chickweed and dandelions if they are the unsprayed veg available to you, can help fend off diabetes, but cucumbers are thought to contain nutrients that may be especially helpful. A Google search shows no clear consensus about why cucumbers are so valuable for preventing and curing diabetes, but a solid consensus that they are. Lettuce and tomatoes are also good for diabetics. Lemon juice is the best "dressing."

* Spinach and broccoli, raw if you can tolerate them raw, are also considered very good for fighting diabetes. Again, whether it's just the high proportion of fibre and water to starch in these vegetables, or any of several nutrients they contain, is not yet clear.

* Chromium supplements are not a universal cure or preventive for diabetes, but they've worked for many people. Just don't blame the people who swear by chromium picolinate if it does more for them than it does for you. You can safely buy a bottle of chromium tablets and take one (or more) a day as indicated on the label. Many people find themselves on the healthy side of the borderline after going through one bottle of chromium tablets. Many, not all.

(Dogs can go diabetic, too, and some vets prescribe the right size of chromium supplement for dogs.)

* Daily exercise. Brisk walking is considered the best exercise for most people. Many people stay on the healthy side of the diabetes borderline by using daily exercise alone. Two or three miles a day is usually enough. You should be able to use daily walking to reduce gasoline consumption.

* If even slightly overweight, cut back calories and increase exercise until you're at or slightly below the recommended weight for your height. Avoid crash or fad diets--just eat more "rabbit food" and less bread, meat, and desserts.

* Drinking a morning cup of coffee, black or with cream but without sugar or Nutra Sweet, may help. More caffeine than that should not be necessary and may harm. Avoid soda pop, either sugary or "diet" (with Nutra Sweet), when trying to move away from the diabetes borderline.

* Drink water--at least as much water as other liquids, for a total of about a gallon of liquid per day.

* Give yourself time to sleep at night. Many people swear by "early to bed, early to rise"; others find no special benefit in when they sleep, as long as they sleep enough. Most people feel best when they sleep seven and a half hours a night. (Most people sleep in ninety-minute cycles, so few people actually sleep eight hours--that figure includes time spent bathing and resting before falling asleep.) You know you're mildly hyperthyroid if you are normally able to sleep six hours a night, mildly hypothyroid if you feel better after sleeping nine hours.

* Work with your doctor about maximizing the benefit and minimizing the treatment time for any prescription medications, especially those prescribed for heart conditions and/or blood pressure control, since all treatment for cardiovascular disease will have some effect on treatment to cure or prevent diabetes. Ideally all treatments will ultimately work together for a complete cure of this whole syndrome.

* Chewing tobacco is less harmful than smoking, because it turns out that the most harmful chemical in cigarettes is in the paper. Tobacco is, however, naturally high in sugar even if you taste its other components more, so chewing tobacco is a good habit to break.

* Alcohol definitely promotes diabetes. If pub nights with friends are a big part of your life, be the designated driver and drink seltzer water. 

* The secret to using emotional moods to promote physical health is to look at the long-term effects different ways to "feel good" have on your overall mood. For example, drinking and partying may feel good at the time, but the hangover feels bad longer than the party feels good, so drinking and partying is not a good way to reduce emotional stress. Going on a spending or gambling spree may feel good at the time, but paying the bills feels bad longer than the spree feels good. And so on. 

* Some things that are known to promote long-term relief from emotional stress and physical pain include singing or chanting (working the diaphragm muscle to start a feel-good hormone cycle), laughing out loud (ditto), aerobic exercise (ditto), hugging and cuddling with family members (starts a hormone cycle that regulates blood pressure), prayer and/or meditation (can have several physical effects), and reconciliation with people with whom you've quarrelled (ditto). 

* Middle-aged and geriatric patients who are able to stay married to the same person after a heart attack have better results from whatever they do to manage cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Divorcees who remarried, as a group, seemed to lose some ground to the stress of living with a new companion--and several older divorced men who married younger women died. Some older men work through the stress and enjoy many good years with their younger wives. In this case nobody seems to have bothered studying the obvious effects of what both halves of the couples expected from their marriage and how they interacted with each other, except to say that continued use of Viagra or similar drugs will aggravate hypertension. A younger wife who loves her older husband, is prepared to be his nurse, and wants him to be a Partner For Life rather than a patient as long as possible, will help; a gold-digger who wants to inherit all the money before doctors get any, on the other hand...Women as a group actually survive heart attacks longer if single, though women who stay with their original husbands aren't far behind them and many of those women feel that their husbands help. Again, husbands who really love and care for their wives help, while those who merely cling to their wives, on the other hand...

* Doing things that help other people is known to be good for your health in several ways, most of which are only partly understood. Being the healthy care giver stinks, but it has some benefits that being the "bolter" lacks. Balancing those benefits with the stress is important. If relatives don't provide respite care, enlist friends.

* Whatever else you do about emotional stress, use breath control and deep breathing exercises. They have a specific beneficial effect on blood sugar. They also have an incredibly beneficial effect on pain. Women use deep breathing to get themselves through childbirth. It will work for men, too.

Like many posts at this web site, this one was suggested by a real-world conversation, after which I went home and looked up some things on the Internet. It was interesting and worthwhile; I thank the person who asked the question.