I’m afraid I’ve left it a bit late to post today, I work from 5:30 until 11:30 pm, which means (although I like it) sleeping until around 4:00pm because I have to squeeze in work before my insulin, that is Humulin(TM) starts to peak (in 7 to 8 hours, but the timing always varies. (Important Digression; main thread continues below) And I have to let the Humulin(TM) get going in my system for at least an hour, so it’s at least somewhat active soon after eating, waiting most of the hour to eat, if eating is at all possible [checking the log, I see I ate breakfast (2-5 oz. of a pasta, vegetable, meat mix, I eat at least twice a day, to minimize variables) every day this week, m-f, which means I began every day with a normal or near normal blood sugar. That’s a pretty good week, because reaching euglycemia, or normal blood sugar at least once every day will ensure you will not experience (with the exception of unusual circumstances, such as illness) ketoacidosis, period. This is one of the pillars of my technique: GET TO NORMAL EVERY DAY)
I can’t stress this enough, the only target for your blood sugar is normal blood sugar. This is the only way to avert complications down the road. The downside to this is that You will experience hypoglycemias. I know, even for those receiving adequate warning, reactions can be terrifying, Twenty seven years ago, in between school I worked with a lady who remarked on the equanimity with which I endured and remedied insulin reactions. She told me her diabetic husband was terrified of them. Her husband was a very large, strong and thoroughly imposing guy and you wouldn’t expect that sort of response, so I know how scary insulin shock can be. Think how bad it is for someone who can’t tell, most of the time, that it’s even happening! I see doctors, who are trying to help their patients avoid these events, encourage patients to maintain their sugar at what I consider alarmingly high levels. My friend Fred, with a diabetic daughter, told me that once at a support group meeting, he was talking to a woman who said her sugar hadn’t been under 200mg/dl in 6 months. I was horrified, I said ‘Fred she needs to be under a doctor’s care!’ He replied, ‘What are you talking about, Mike? She IS under a doctor’s care!”
The problem is, in a few years, she’ll be experiencing gradually increasing complications, cardiovascular and renal (kidneys). Her eyesight will be rapidly deteriorating (I’ll show you how to prevent that later) and she’s going to end up blind, ischemic (interruptions of blood supply) and on dialysis. THIS IS NOT A GOOD TRADE-OFF! Hypoglycemias can, in most cases, be dealt with easily and quickly (although for the elderly patient, already advanced in years, the equation might be re-examined), and this is a much simpler and easier process than living on dialysis or being blind, Then, of course there are the other commonplace results of perpetual high blood sugars, such as losing limbs, not fun.
(This is not intended to be unfairly critical of doctors. By far, most doctors are very hardworking and immensely compassionate, especially my last three doctors, people. They’re in a hopeless position, trapped between loyalty to their patient and the draconian dictates of “managed” care accountants.
On top of that they’re being lied to, yes, I said it, by pharmaceutical drug dealers interested only in perpetuating, not curing conditions which garner them billions every year. Rezulin (troglitazone) springs to mind, the TZD (thiazolidinediones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiazolidinedione) medication, reported on by 60 Minutes, in which pharmaceutical representatives state that when briefing doctors on Rezulin, if asked about possible adverse effects, they were instructed to ’steer the conversation to another topic.’ Rezulin killed at least 63 people, although I’m pretty sure NPR revised that number upward more recently. http://www.yourlawyer.com/topics/overview/rezulin)
Thread Coninues:– because that is when most of my hypoglycemias or blackouts occur, although they can and have occurred pretty much every hour of the day. Naturally, they tend to correlate with the rise and fall of the insulin activity. Anyway, I’m awake all night and had a friend come over, I hadn’t entertained in a long time, so with one thing and another, it’s already bedtime. But I would like to at least post links to some of the articles I’ve been collecting over the last 8 years, if I can figure out how, hang on. Also, I wanted to mention some of the other topics I intend to discuss, including the structure of insulin, why Humulin(TM) is NOT insulin, the role of Big Pharma in the selection and editing of research on a number of products, including insulin and the relationship between Humulin(TM) and osteoporosis (Daniels, Stephen R. M.D. , Ph.D. The Journal of Pediatrics, Vol. 144, Issue 1, Jan. 2004, page A3 — “Type 1 Diabetes and Osteoporosis”). At the same time, along, hopefully, the left edge, I’ll post the hourly log, I keep every day, and have for nine years, since shortly after I was forced to go to Humulin(TM). One of the purposes of this blog is to shed light on the existence of persons living with Hypoglycemic Unawareness (from now on, I’ll just type ‘HU) and having to depend on a synthetic drug which behaves for over 10% of the people using it, extremely erratically, causing blood sugar to skyrocket even without food and nearly always after a very small amount of food, then plunging precipitously with the space of minutes to an hour. Source:(http://members.tripod.com/diabetics_world/symptoms_of_synthetics.htm) That is, except for the days when it doesn’t do that
There will be criticisms of the technique described, I know, because of my nearly exclusive use of reagent strips for estimated blood glucose measurement. I yield willingly to these anticipated critiques, I would love to be able to use one of my many glucometers whenever I liked, but the cost of strips is prohibitively expensive for a person who, because of his condition, has to work a little more than part time (up to 30 hours/week so I can get back before the peak gets going). Also, digressing again for a moment, sometimes it’s not necessary to know exactly where your blood sugar is as long as you know it’s still high, and you need to wait to eat, or it’s not above normal and you CAN eat. People are far more likely to check their sugars more often if all they have to do is pee on a strip. Guys of course have an advantage. (Insert: I would like to stress that the data I get from reagent tapes is carefully phrased, the color ranges are assigned values which have been repeatedly correlated with one or more (occasionally) glucometers. The data extracted from reagent strips is limited to “110mg/dl or lower” to “160 mg/dl or higher” or points in between. Also, after years of experience, I can estimate correctly to within 10 milligrams (mg) blood sugars up to 200mg/dl (deciliter or one tenth of a liter). Again I would use a glucometer more often, especially during the peak, if I could afford the test strips. Because of the rapid change in glucose level around the activity peak, when it’s most effective, the 15 minute minimum delay of the reagent reading (only reflects averaged blood glucose for the period since last urination no closer than fifteen minutes earlier–you pee on the end of the strip) blood sugar can drop very low while waiting for the urine to clear. At times like that a glucometer strip is the way to go with a current reading of blood glucose. On animal insulin, I worked full-time almost exclusively for over twenty years, starting out as a clerk in a bookstore, then manager, then owning my own ten years in, eventually selling the last one, after I started waking up on the floor, confused and missing a couple of hours (during the first six months I spent on Humulin(TM), before I switched myself back, and all the aforementioned symptoms ceased). One of the best sites on the web for more information about all aspects of adverse reactions to insulin, including scientific studies, personal accounts and news about diabetes in general, is the website, founded by the late David Groves, who was experiencing the same symptoms I do, but many years earlier, called the Diabetic International Foundation, here is a link to their main page. Theyve been working on this page for several years now, but if you click on ‘the old table of Contents’ link, and scan the long list of articles, you’ll find a great deal of fascinating and infuriating material:
http://members.tripod.com/diabetics_world/
I don’t think these are displaying as links, so you may have to drag, copy and paste into the address bar, I’d open a new tab so you can flip back and forth.
Before I go, I want to post another very valuable link:http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com
That’s the main site, but here is the page with the Daily News Summary, all the research published that day on diabetes. Scan it, just to get an idea of what’s available:
http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com/d_0j_200.htm
This is an immensely useful site for anyone researching diabetes, and they’ve kept it up for years. This is a daily log of basically all the published research on diabetes every day for that day. Statistical extrapolations may also be performed on this database of research, for example, as far back as this log ran, when I first accessed about six years ago, which was the mid 90s, there were, at that time, only two studies (I believe, it was a long time ago, but that was pretty much it) on hypoglycemic reactions, as Humulin(TM) permeated the market, the number of log entries concerning hypoglycemia steadily increased. The correlation is clear.
The entire Children With Diabetes site is well worth a look, especially for families with diabetic children. Will return…
