So You Can’t Eat Sugar?

Since becoming a diabetic at age seventeen, a little over fourteen years ago I must have heard that question 1000′s of times. If your reading this blog and you’ve been a diabetic for any number of years I’m sure your smiling and shaking your head up and down.

However, we can’t blame people for not knowing everything that diabetics go through or have to watch out for. The same as we could never possibly know all the things that someone with fibromyalgia, or HIV/AIDS or some other chronic disease goes through.

The fact is diabetes is a very serious disease and there’s actually a lot more to dealing with the disease than just how much sugar you can eat.

Any and all carbohydrates that diabetics have to be highly scrutinized because of their glycemic affect, which means basically how quickly and sharply it will increase a persons blood sugar. For instance a regular baked potato has a higher glycemic index than a sweet potato. Sounds weird but it’s true.

That’s just one of the many things we have to worry about when it comes to diet, which is the paramount concern for staying healthy as a diabetic.

There are others though. In no particular order we must be concerned about:

*Our feet, which must be checked daily for any kind of sores or blisters. The reason being that diabetics have a weaker immune system and can develop infections rather quickly.

Also, very often there is loss of sensation in the feet so one may develop an infection and not even realize it.

*Our eyes. The leading cause of new blindness in people ages 25-74 is from diabetes.

*Erectile Dysfunction. Enough said.

*Nervous system. One common complication of diabetes is nerve damage called neuropathy.

Neuropathy usually occurs in the legs and/or fingers and toes. Its symptoms are leg pain, burning sensation, shocking sensation, pins and needles, loss of sensation, or a tingling feeling.

Not fun. I know first hand about this one.

And the list goes on: kidney failure, heart disease, high cholesterol etc.

So now, if you’re not a diabetic you can see a little more clearly into our lives and what we have to worry about.

If you are a diabetic hopefully this will jog your memory about why you should keep a tight control.

Now don’t let the list above scare the heck out of you either. Luckily this is a disease that can be controlled by you. As with everything else, you control what your future holds with diabetes.

Does it stink to have to watch everything you eat? You bet it does.

Is it annoying to have to stick yourself everyday with a needle, or for you type II diabetics who have to pop pills every single day? Of course it’s annoying. But no more annoying than having to stop for gasoline or brush your teeth, or whatever it is that you do on a daily basis.

It just all depends on how you look at things.

So, how should you look at things you might be asking? I’ll just say this. You should be extremely happy that you could control the disease you have by keeping numbers in a certain range.

That’s it. They’re just numbers on a meter. You control how high or low those numbers go by what you put in your mouth, or how much you exercise. These are the things you should be doing anyways.

So in essence we as diabetics dictate how many of the complications we develop by having some discipline.

Let’s not think of diabetes as anything else but discipline, and good habits and we’ll be fine.

We’ll get more into the specifics of how we can better discipline ourselves, and what to eat etc. in a later post.

Diabetes is not a death sentence by any means. It’s just a reminder to shape up our act and do the right thing. It’s a numbers game. So from here on out you have somewhere to come to play that numbers game, and win.

We can kick this disease in the butt and win!!

If you think you might have diabetes run don’t walk to get checked by your physician and just find out. Don’t put it off like so many do until it’s too darn late. Every complication I’ve mentioned above can be prevented. The most important thing is finding out that you have diabetes in time to prevent them.

And if you’re worried you have every right to be, but now you know you have someone here who understands your fear and pain.

See ya soon.