PART 3.
When I was a kid there used to be a song that would be sung at pantomimes and kids parties. As so often happens with things like this, the parents thought it hilarious while the kids thought it boring and stupid. It's the sort of song that scares you for life, lodges in your brain and comes back to you in long sleepless nights to repeat and repeat in your ear, to paraphrase another song albeit a true classic.
The song I first referred to is, "There's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza". Now if you don't know it and you have a masochistic streak, do your research and look it up on You Tube. You will regret it, I assure you.
But if you are familiar with this song or would rather take my word for it, it is a question and answer sort of thing, sung between two peoples, that drones on and on until you arrive right back where you started with no answers, just suggestions to various related problems.
This is the same sort of thing that happens when you find you have high blood sugar.
You might have noticed that I keep saying "high blood sugar". A pause here while I deviate a little: I am not the world's fastest typist, so from now on I will do something that really annoys me. I will use initials instead of words. I have hated acronyms ever since I found out that one of the acronyms for ROG was Reactive Organic Gas! Too near the mark!! Please forgive me.
So I keep saying HBS and not T2D. Why? Well, this is something I want to offer you. Something which for me has a lot of power to it and which I have observed over the years. Once you say I have T2D (or any other illness, for that matter) and then say it over and over again, you start to identify with the problem and it becomes "I am T2D. This is what I am!" No, YOU are not a T2D ! Your body might have an ailment, a problem handling BS, but YOU are not that problem. YOU are just the same wonderful person you always have been. Words have more power than you can imagine over your body.
Now before you think I have lost the plot, please think of something that really frightens you. Something that pushes all your buttons. Or think of something really sad, something that upsets you. I could say think of something nice, like eating a really juicy piece of fruit or something that you really like, but it seems we are more easily persuaded when it's something that is not nice.. Medicine must taste bad to be any good??? Anyway while you are thinking nasty thoughts check out your body. There will be a reaction, albeit a small one. Why? Because your body is responding to your thoughts with some sort chemical release. Every time you say or think I am T2D you get a little shot of chemicals. And guess what? That helps push up BS.
Now back to the song... It goes round and round and comes back to the beginning and this is what happened when I found I had HBS. Round and round it would go, my head was working overtime. It started to take me over. All the main-stream stuff I read and people I spoke to, pointed to a bleak future of gentle/rapid decline, of horrendous side effects from the medication and all the time there seemed to be this despair..."well that's how it is, you will just have to manage it!" On and on. Doom and Gloom. "You need to take some drugs, but that's fine"... Or worse still, "Oh it's,only T2D, everyone gets it at your age! You just have to take a pill!"
I can still remember the impact those words had. Little shots of chemicals all the time.
And it was then that things really started to change for me. I started to look outside rather than concentrate on me. Yes, it seemed that a huge percentage of folk I knew were in the same state as me, but why? I could not remember this being the case only a few short years ago. It's not contagious or infectious so what is happening? What has changed and this is like the song about the bucket, we come right back to the beginning; it must be something we are doing now that we were not doing a few years back. How many kids had T2D? It was called Late Onset Diabetes then. It's the 80/20 ratio. What have we got to stop doing?
Let's backtrack a bit and have some bullet points, then I am going to use a dirty word and put another piece of MY puzzle into pace.
First thing I did was keep testing to check how and when my B/S went up.
2. I then took the load of my pancreas by cutting out all carbs that were of no nutritional use.
3. I removed all fats and oils that were not the Omega 3s (this is not a life long thing, but a thing that needs to be done in order to re-balance).
4. I added stuff to my diet that is known to help improve insulin sensitivity.
I recognised that this was a long-term project, as I wanted to get to the cause, not just put on that crash helmet. My time scale was 18 months.
5. After a while I bought new jeans, then some more!!!
6. And this is where I will use a dirty word so sorry if it offends! Ready?
EXERCISE. There, I said it!!
7. I will stop putting bullets now (if only I can find out how) and explain what I mean by exercise. Pervious to all this I would, if I felt the need to exercise, lie down in a darkened room until the feeling passed. But I found that exercise helps regulate BS. The muscles use it up; it's fuel. Checking my BS sugar after a meal I found that about one hour after my BS was really in my blood stream, also eating a carb free diet did no stop me from wanting more food. You know once you start... just a little more? So at one hour I went for a walk around the block. It took me about 10 mins. That's it. No running, just a brisk walk. Now do this three times a day and it's 30mins...
I kept at it, did not do any more than the 10 minutes, but what I did do was push myself to walk a little harder and faster as time went on. The result in general fitness was amazing. What's more, if my BS was high I could see it bring it down. Once when I was out with friends and went off track with my eating, I came home to "brown-trouser-high" BS levels. I walked around my block twice and down it came. Also I find, after I have had my walk I no longer want to eat more ... So win win.
9. Still got those bloody bullets...!! I took a spoonful of cinnamon a day. Now I also take a few other things which I will go into at a later date. Supplementing your diet is expensive and you have to pick and choose to see what works for you. Again I will list what I use and what I found worked for me later. But for now I just want to tell you my journey.
Quite quickly I found my BS slipped out of the "BT" range, but it was still unstable and unpredictable. What I found is that it goes along for some time, then improves, then plateaus, then improves again. I found I could control this to some degree. But best of all it was not getting worse and I was getting slimmer. A little later I will let you know some truly amazing things about weight loss, your gut and the part fat plays in your health. But if I keep going off at a tangent you will loose the will to live. I have had healing of all types, Acupuncture, Reiki, and so on and still I suffer from run away brain and verbal diarrhoea. No C word for that, sorry!
One last thing before I do hang up for today. I want to tell you about a couple of miracles that have happened through all of this. Might be a little more information than you want, but here goes.
All my life I have suffered with my stomach. I suppose you could call it IBS. But I called it the shits! If anyone suffers this way you will know what a debilitating thing it can be. It did not stop me doing things but it made certain situations a huge worry. For no apparent reason my stomach would turn and I would need a loo post haste, if not before. I won't tell you the number of hedges I have climbed or strange places I have crawled into when the need arose. A 4 hour coach journey was hell, not because I always needed a loo but because I might and of course stress made it worse. Since I have changed my diet (which I will share with you later) all is well and as never before. Cured! Yes I now have used the C word... But even more amazing Anne has suffered from Migraine for most of her adult life. When at it's worst it would put her to bed with a day wiped out and the next day she would feel like a bit of chewed string. Both of us had tried many things, some had helped but none got to the real cause.
Anne started to change her diet, along with me, out of ease and here is the nub... for 2 years now she has been migraine free, except for once when we were taken out for a meal! So there is something very good that has come out of the hassle.
All will be explained as time goes by, but for now I think you have enough to play around with.
Remember all this is just a very rough outline and is only what I have done. Constructive feed-back is always good, as are the nice words I have received already.
Lot more stuff to come. I have just remembered something else, but that can wait until next time.
Love to you all.
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