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Lisa (Friend Jane with Diabetes)
Lisa (Friend Jane with Diabetes) -- Posted by Elvin66 on 08-18-03 23:50
Hi Lisa,
I tried to privately reply but the email address does no exsist. Here's the
info....
I've been an insulin dependent diabetic for 30 years. I got it when I was
three and unlinke your friend I grew up with it and I think that makes it
easier to deal with. My mother has also been a nurse most of my life and
I've had the extra help alot of people who have diabetes don't get, and alot
of extra knwledge fortunately. As a 30 year diabetic, I should have alot
more things worse wrong with me (foot,leg amputations, servere vision loss
etc.) but I don't have those things. I attribute this to the knowledge you
are seeking for your friend.
First if your friend is feeling low and blue and isolated, I strongly
suggest you let her know how important it is that she remain steady in a
support group. Nothing is worse than feeling like you have a horrible
problem no one else in the world understands. I remeber being teen and
feeling that way as o one else in school had diabetes and I was mistreated
by many oher students because i was different and i had no one who
understood my excpet my moher. I went to a camp called Diabetic camp and
everyone there including alot of the adult counselors were diabetic. It made
me feel not so alone and not so different.
Secondly, the truth about type two diabetes is that yes in the beginnning
you can get away with using pills to force the pancreas to work harder to
produce the proper amount of insulin, but eventually she will have to take
insulin. The good part about that is she will be better able to control her
bloodsgar by using insulin, but if her pancreas is still working some, now
wouldn't be the time to start that. To me it sounds like if her bloodsugars
are dropping and she is needing OJ to help her, that her insulin level is
higher than her food intake.
DOes she test her bloodsugar. It's only been recently that I realized I
though I knew by how i was feeling what my bloodsugar was. That's no longer
the truth. I test sometimes 20 times a day to ensure I am under good
control. I used ot think of it as a total pain in the arse the have to do it
and rebelled against it, but eventually I got it in my mind that if I wanted
to live as normal as the rest of the world did, you know go out to eat and
order what Iw anted on the menu, have a few drinks with friends, eat a piece
of cake etc,ealand, they seem to think the best diet for a diabetic is a ton
of starchy foods and little proteins. If I explain how your body processes
this with the insulin (weither diabetic or not) it will help you understand
why less starch and more proteins are better. When you eat say a piece of
white bread and have a bowl of rolled oats, and a glass of milk for
breakfast, you are eating mostly startch. The rolled oats, and bread are
starches and the milk because it has natural sugar also processes much like
the starches. The milk has a small amount of proteins however. Starch can
simply be called longer acting sugar. It goes in the body quick, gets used
very fast then it's excreted out. If you are a diabetic type 1 or 2, what
happens is you take your medicine either insulin or the medicine whih tells
your body to produce insulin, then you eat this high starch (sugar) meal.
What happens is the starch and the insulin hit the system, the starch wears
out of the system as the person uses their body to function, (getting up
moving around, driving to work, walking up to the office, getting awake,
geeting alert, all use the energy the starch has given you) While all this
is going on inside, the body says Hey we got food fellas, send out that
insulin now to combat it. So the body releases the insulin to cover that
starch. An hour to an hour and a half later, the starch is all gone, but the
insulin isn't. (If you are on Protophane/NPH or any type of long acting
insulin, it will be in your system for up to 12 hours, if you are using
pills that are sustiain released the same applies) So now you have a body
with insulin, which is in need of food, the bloodsugar drops, hits the
sensory nerve in the brain and adrenylin is released casuing the person to
feel dizzy, shakie, cold sweated and simply uncomfortable. The reason the
adrenylin is released is because it's te bodies own way of trying to give
itself sugar when the insulin level is too high. Adrenyln tricks the body
into thinking it is sugar and buys you a few extra minutes to get sugar,
(not long but sometimes just enough time)
In my own personal experience, to keep all of the above from happening, I
would first make sure you balance out your meals. For each starch you have,
I'd also have a protein. A better breakfast for a diabetic would be
wholewheat bread (Still a starch but takes longer to process int he system
because of the fibre) 1 egg cooked however you like but without much fat
added to cook it. A glass of milk, or a coffee r tea with milk in it. I'd
check my bloodsugar before I eat the meal, then I'd check it again in two
hours. Before meals in New Zealand and Australia (testings are read
differently across the world I've found) 4 to 7 is a good range, 2 hours
after a meal 10 or below is good. (In america and other countires who go by
milligrams per dl 72 to 126 pre meal and below 180 2 hours after a meal)
For a lunch ,eal I'd have the equavalent to a sandwhich. You get two
starches (2 wholewheat breads) 1 fat (Your mayo or butter) and a bit of
protein (A piece of cheese and two slices of a meat) you can add all the
salad foods like lettuce, tomatoe, onion, muchrooms, etc because they are
what we call free foods. They consist of mostly water, some fibres and no
calories or sugars (though tomatoes do have a small amount of sugar, I doubt
many people would eat that many on a sandwich to make a difference) For a
drink, I'd have a coffe, tea or anything else you like that has no sugar in
it. A glass of water is the best as it helps the ody flush the sugars into
the bladder faster, and that's how the vody gets rid of the sugar. (Thats
why diabetics will pee more often and be thirsty more often than a non
diabetic. If the sugar is high the body says Hey I need something to get
this stuff out of me, so it begs for water, and insulin. Once the water is
in the system, the body takes al the sugar out of the blood by sending it to
the bladder to be gotten rid of on the next urination (Note: it will also
need some insulin if it is high))
For a dinner, A good meal would be some fresh veggies, remember some veggies
are starches so only one of those with dinner If you choose to have corn,
don't make potatos with it. They are both starches) My basic dinner consists
of either a small pro chop cooked in the over without added oil, or a piece
of chicken (Thigh, breast If legs two and if wings 4) again cooked without
extra fats, a small lamb chop, or a small steak. Either a 1/2 cup mixed
veggies such as stir fry chineese frozen veggies, peas and carrots, or the
like, then a 1 starch veggie like an ear of corn, a baked potato, a sweet
potato (kumura in New Zealand and Australia) and a piece of bread or a
dinner roll. Once again if you still feel like you'd be hungry, add a salad
to it to help fill you up. It has nothing in it that's bad for you just
watch out how much dressing you use o it. (Fat is worse for diabetics as
diabetics seem to carry a heavier fat content in their bodies. If you look
at even a skinny diabetic, the amount of muscle as opposed to fat is lower.
Even the skinnies have a higher fat content and the last thing you want with
diabetes is a weight problem. Takes longer for us to get it off and causes
higher bloodsugars, because the heavier we are the less active we are)
In between all these basic meals, you also need to have snacks, but again I
stress testing the bloodsugar first. If I eat breakfast at say 8 am, and I
test at 10 am and I'm not hungry and my bloodsugar is in the right range, I
won't eat a snack. If I test and it's low, I will eat a snack consisting of
1 starch (a saltine cracker) and 1 protein (a piece of cheese) just to tie
me over till lunchtime. Same goes for the afternoon. If you eat at noon then
by 2 pm you need to test. If you're bloodsugar is high but you are still
hungry, eat a free food like a tomoato, cuke, celery, some lettuce, but if
you are low you need to eat a starch and a protein as I said above. Now mind
you these are just examples to get your friend some ideas of healthy things
she can eat. Some people hate chicken, so replace that with a food you like,
but if she sticks to the basic diet I set up and tests her bloodsugars she
may be able to postpone how long it will be befoe she has to take
injections.
And yes I can understand her fear of having to inject herself, but I will
tell you of all the people I've met in the past including ones who swore
they'd die before they injected themselves, they all say the same thing in
the end. "When I was on the pills I couldn't ever keep myself under good
control, now that I'm on insulin, I can take it when I know I'm going to eat
and test and I feel much better physically now."
I hope this lifetime of information will help you and yor friend Lisa and of
course anyone else here who needed the info. If you want to contact me on a
personal level feel free to email me at conneryf@bradymax.com
Also if I can add one important thing I just recently found out about,
Aspartame, which is the chemical name for Equal, Nutrasweet, and Spoonful
(Also called Artificial Sweetener (951) (950) has been found to cause worse
problems in diabetics. I have a website firther explaining this whih is run
off my husbands business site. If you want more info about it, please feel
free to go read up on all the research I and many other people have put
together. www.bradymax.com/nzaa
Again, I hope all this helps, and feel free to contact me anytime
Conni Brady
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