As a recently diagnosed Type 2 diabetic, there is a lot I don’t know. I thought I’d been eating healthy.
Meals were usually vegetarian, heaped with all sorts of healthy veggies. Salads were my friend. My
weight was normal and I exercised regularly, even ran marathons every so often. That’s a healthy
lifestyle, yes?
By the way, this isn’t one of our normal blog posts—but I’ve been slightly obsessed with researching
diabetes. Bear with me! We will return to regularly scheduled programming soon.
However, vegetarianism isn’t necessarily friendly to diabetics. After all, what could be more vegetarian
than rice and pasta? My comfort foods were all carbohydrate based: ice cream (nothing wrong with a
whole pint, is there?); Girl Scout cookies (yes, a whole box of Tagalongs can be a single serving);
potatoes in any way, shape, or form; candy bars as a reward for going to the grocery and sticking to my
list; Cokes when I’m hot, hot chocolate when I’m not.
Alas, that emphasis on carbs has caught up with me, like it does with more than 10% of the US
population, and that number is rising. Fortunately, so far, mine can be controlled with one pill a
day — and a change in diet.
But this isn’t a rant on how we need to eat more veggies, consume less sugar, lose weight, and so forth.
It’s about all the things I didn’t know—and am still finding out.
Did you know:
Diabetes can lead to leg cramps, most likely to attack a person when they are sleeping. I get
them four or five times a night, which leads to less sleep, which adds stress, which leads to
higher blood sugar—you get the drift. (Yes, I’m taking extra calcium. So far it helps, but doesn’t
eliminate the leg cramps.)
As your sugar level changes, so does your vision. So if your glasses seem okay sometimes and
not so okay other times, see your doctor and get checked for diabetes. (Naturally, other things
can cause vision changes, so don’t take my word for it.)
Urban residents have a greater propensity for diabetes than rural residents, though no one
knows exactly why. Possibly it is exposure to more pollutants. (Maybe now’s the time to move
to the country?)
My favorite headline? “Diabetes Type 2 Is Preventable.” It goes on to say that aging is a primary
cause. I’m sorry, but if the alternative to aging is to stop aging (i.e., die), isn’t that a rather
extreme reaction?
A person with diabetes has sweeter urine than a person without. (I believe it, but who found this
out—and how?)
In 1500 BCE, diabetes was mentioned in manuscripts. (Humans started eating cane sugar in
8000 BCE, so by my math, they were in denial (de-Nile) for 6500 years.)
At one point, opium was considered a treatment for diabetes. (If it didn’t cure it, the opium
might have made a person forget they had it…) Another doctor advised his patients to stop
eating vegetables (he probably had picky-eating kids).
And one last thing: sores take longer to heal for diabetics, especially on legs and arms. Keep that
in mind for first aid treatment (and now I’ve justified the blog.)