Living the twenty four hours a day trying to control the monster
called Diabetes is something that I am immersed in since I was diagnosed with
Diabetes and this continuous monitoring kind of life drove me on a path that had
showed me, clearly, how things related
to DB management are so misunderstood
out there by many of fellow Diabetics, their endos or nutritionists.
There is a great deal of lack in real
understanding of all the needs and requirements for achieving normal blood sugar numbers
especially in Diet issues.
In fact, if I am only supposed
to control my Diabetes and that is it; it won’t be a problem but the reality is;
being an activist in Diabetes management issue through social media websites had
put me face to face with numerous cases of severely uncontrolled Diabetes; that
always bring tears to my eyes.
I am not that kind of person who settle down by just being sympathetic
with people that need help and just wish and wish and keep wishing the good
things to happen to them and that’s it. No, I consider myself a proactive
person when it comes to real work that need to be done to save other Diabetics
from the inevitable fate of non controlled Diabetes.
Being an insulin dependent diabetic and being in the middle of such
environment of very low understanding of Diabetes management; especially among
Diabetologists and endos had put a moral obligation on me towards myself and other
fellow diabetics to push myself always to learn and get educated about how to
control my version of diabetes the right way; so I can really help others as
much as I can.
One of early books that I had read was for a CDE who is an advocate of
eating whatever I want and bolus for it and of course that needs a lot of skills to be
learnt and to do it; one has to master all about insulin skills and its factors
like insulin to carbohydrate ratio, insulin on board calculations, correction
or sensitivity factors, counting Carbohydrates, adjusting basal insulin dose, being
good in guessing of time of digestion of different kind of food, sensitivity to
insulin throughout the day and how it differs, what to do when exercise and so
on.
It is a big list of skills that I realized I needed to be clever at, which
I did master them all, but even though I found it impossible to keep my blood
sugar under 100 (normal) with carbohydrate intake more than 10 to 15 gms per
meal and that is exactly what Dr. Richard Bernstein said in his great book
Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes solution, in which he summarized it in the law of small numbers:
less carbohydrates eaten; means less insulin injected or secreted; means good control and small errors that can be fixed easily.
less carbohydrates eaten; means less insulin injected or secreted; means good control and small errors that can be fixed easily.
It was like found my savior in the middle of the ocean after 10 days lost
there and almost drowned - I followed the engineered
medical advice of Dr. Bernstein and for my amazement my numbers were
normalized almost instantly and my insulin requirement went down by almost 70%.
The problem of DB management with me was almost finished and it only needs a
daily follow up and perseverance; but what about other poor fellow diabetics
that are following the under 180 after food and under 130 fasting of ADA what about most of them get complications
after 5 years or so !!!
The main problem here is when you try to convince other Diabetics with
Dr (engineer) Bernstein findings that he tried it on himself personally which
saved him from the severe Diabetic complications that he had a lot of them at
age 40 (now he is 80) when I try to do that, I always been faced with an
unbelievable resistance from diabetics who are in a consistent non control
state of Diabetes and that makes no sense at all to me: why some Diabetics
dig very deep and look for information wherever it is and try hard to implement
those information on themselves to achieve good control of Diabetes; while
other Diabetics just ignore all information that supposed to help them and
moreover ignore all the high, low and fluctuated BS numbers that they always
have; even if this information is transferred to them on a plate of gold, why
they ignore their own non controlled version of Diabetes and argue only about whether Carbohydrate is
good or not good for us.
For those guys; I always ask them these clear and shocking four questions
and a request which I always get a YES – NO - YES –
NUMBERS - LET ME TRY answers as follows:
The first question is: Sir / Madam in
order to summarize your case currently let me ask you this: Are you eating high
Carb? Do you get high and low BS numbers (fluctuation) or steady high BS
numbers most of the time along with too many lows ..is that right?
The answer is always YES.
The second question is: Do you think your body will benefit from any
nutrients of any kind that you eat if
your blood sugar is high?
The answer is always NO;
but my blood sugar is not high; it is normal and the normal BS after food is up
to 180 (and 200 is not a big deal either!!) as my Dr. told me.
I then ask the third question : Do you agree that the
normal that we need to achieve as diabetics (regardless of any Drs or
institution opinions) is the real normal of Non Diabetic person because that make sense isn’t it?
And the answer is always YES!!
Then the final question is: would you please go ahead and measure five people
around you that are non Diabetic, non obese and in good health and get the
average?
The answer after couple of days is always between 80 to 100!!
And my final note goes: please achieve those numbers to avoid
complications - with whatever you want to eat whether it is high Carb, Low
Carb, High fat, Low fat, whatever. but just achieve it.
And the reply is: let me try…
Trying to do that with 200 gms of carbs daily is impossible (and I know it) and they start to know it also when they start trying to get their BS below 100. The previous concept of the normal BS being 180 is, now, out of equation for them – so they usually contact me or anyone knows with the following question: what to do? and the simple answer usually is: Reduce the food that raise your blood sugar until you achieve the number you want (REDUCE THE CARB)..That is it.
It can not be simpler than that – never ever.
Ahmed
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