Diets to Make Your Balls Shrivel

So, I blogged last week and within a few hours I had been sent a piece of stonkingly well disguised spam by a friend. I'm not entirely sure that his account hadn't been hacked to tell you the truth. The spam itself linked me to a web page (which has since been taken down). This page was a mocked up version of the BBC Health webpage. It even came with working links. The date, however said the 32nd January 2015, and not even the numpties in the BBC would make that mistake. Double checking by searching for the page from the BBC homepage naturally produced no results. 

Searching for the content, which I will come to in a moment, brought up a range of disgruntled women's magazines claiming their layout had been plagerised by the purveyors of said slimming aid, in order to give it legitimacy. It appears that the people who want you to buy this product regularly pretend to have been reviewed by trusted, mainstream media sites and given a glowing reference. They then spam links to their fake pages by hacking people's email. 

Even without doing any further research into this dietary fad, I would hardly want to put it in my mouth, knowing that the advertisers have to resort to imitation, fraud, hacking and spam to get their message across. Seriously, would you accept their claims? If so, what sort of a numpty are you? Please, just put all your spare cash in an envelope and mail it to me. I promise to redistribute the wealth of Nigeria to you upon receipt of a mere £40,000.

Anyway, on to the product. The spam page showed a clip from someone called Oz (of whom I've previously never heard) extolling the benefits of a bean called Garcinia cambogia. Oz, I later discovered, is a sensation salesman of the gutter press/Fox news variety, who cares little for the truth, preferring to increase his shows' ratings with drama and opinion, rather than fact. The bean itself is in fact a fruit also known as the Malabar tamarind. It grows on trees in South East Asia and looks like a small pumpkin.

On its own G. cambogia does nothing much to reduce weight. Heymsfield et al (1988) did a study using randomised trials with a placebo control. Weight loss occurs in rats, but not in humans. The fruit does contain a type of acid, though, called HCA. It is similar to citric acid and can temporarily block an enzyme that forms part of the metabolic chain turning excess sugar into stored fat. Just stopping this process temporarily will not make you lose weight unless you exercise alongside it, and I can see some of you sticking your hands up right now to point out that you could just do the exercise without taking the supplement. Yes, you could, and it would probably give similar results. A high fibre, low calorie diet would do you more good.

There is quite a reasonable overview here, on a body-building website. Bear in mind that they haven't mentioned some of the side effects: in 2005, Food and Chemical Toxicology published a study which showed large doses of HCA caused testicular toxicity in rats. I'd recommend reading the research here. It is possible that body-builders don't consider testicular atrophy to be a serious side effect, or maybe figure that most of their members would have already contracted (boom boom!) the effect from steroid overuse anyway.

One last point. HCA can stop you feeling hungry. It helps your liver pump out glucose into your blood ready for you to use during exercise. This is fab, just before you take part in a big sporting event, like a marathon or a football match, i.e. fab if you are going to use up that sugar. It is not fab if you suffer from high blood sugar (diabetes) as it works in the opposite way to insulin in many respects and could really cause some control problems. It is also not recommended for anyone with a liver problem.

Overall, in small doses, it is mostly harmless. It can only help use up stores of energy if you do the exercise to go with it. It is not a miracle weight loss product. It is not advised for diabetics, pregnant women, children, people with liver and kidney disease or the gullible. 

January with Jemima

Hey, guess what? I took gliclazide for about 18 months and I got beta cell failure! No way, you say! Yes, way, I say. This, above all things that have happened to me has left me astonishingly angry. It made NO difference at all how often I voiced my concerns to the various cogs of the NHS. I was not listened to. On one occasion a diabetic specialist nurse did give me some info about alternative drug regimes, but when I got to see the consultant, who could possibly prescribe such a thing, they had already made up their minds before they even spoke to me and dismissed the alternatives without really entertaining the idea, brushing my concerns aside with dire warnings of other side effects. What could be worse than killing off all your beta cells?

Yes, I am angry. Part of me has been damaged beyond repair by a treatment that plundered my remaining reserves instead of trying to nurse my pancreas back to health. Excuse me while I spit sugar-coated feathers.

So, I started taking insulin in December, which has brought my blood sugars down considerably (from about 18 to about 9). I'm still working out the details. On the other hand, insulin is a major appetite stimulator and I have put on at least half a stone since I started taking it i.e. in 6 weeks. This is also not good, as it has a further negative effect on my blood sugars. 

Having become aware of the desire to stuff my face (more than usual that is), I am going to have to be extra strict with myself concerning what I put in my mouth. No more swigging out of the wine bottle and eating the kids' maltesers, Jemima. Hmph. That's my career as a pirate over. 

I am also back at the gym, trying to manage to sustain a plank for more than 25 seconds and attempting to cycle a mile and a half in less than 6 minutes. Watch this space. I've been a handful of times, but my motivation is often a bit lacking because I'm tired or it's cold outside or I'm just a weeny bit pathetic and I get bored stupid watching the choice of TV on the monitors. There are four TV monitors set to four different, but almost indistinguishable channels. There is clearly someone at the sport's centre who loves just two types of programme: a) cooking shows and b) sell my house and/or buy a new one somewhere else shows. Sometimes there are four kitchens on the screens at the same time.YAWN! I'd listen to my music but the in-house hip-hop drowns out my MP3. 

I guess I'll try to get there early tomorrow morning, then. :o).

Taking Tablets

Ohh my  word, it has been a long time. I'm sorry, my adoring public, I shouldn't be letting you down like this. So, what is new?

Well, the beast that is diabetes has grabbed me by the earlobes, in the same way that Chris Tarrant used to grab unfortunate children during Tiswas. The prize I win is a selection of tablets, which reduce my sugar a bit, but not a lot. The gliclazide worked pretty well, but I was worried about early Beta cell failure, so I'm now on something called sitaglyptin, which works in a different way. Instead of making my pancreas produce more insulin, it stops the insulin in my blood from being broken down. Unfortunately, I don't think there is much insulin there to preserve, and since I've stopped taking the gliclazide, my sugar has shot up into the teens most of the time. Yes, I know, it's too high.

Weight wise, I'm down to 12 st 6, which is not bad. I lost 6lb in July when I did a week trekking in Europe and managed to walk over 130 miles in six days. It hurt, but it was a great achievement. Who knows, maybe I'll do it again next year. The exercise certainly makes me feel better, but it is hard to get going when your sugar is so high you just want to sleep.

I'm still suffering from an ice-cream addiction, but I'm not really taking in much other sugar. I'm having to be really quite careful and often spend the evenings pacing the living room to try to get the gloop out of my blood. I suppose the good thing is that, unlike gliclazide, the new tablets don't promote weight gain. I'm a pound lighter than I was in July. I hope the trend is futher downwards.

Exercise: Back on Form

Back in December I listed some of the challenges I was facing.

Problems
1) Ice cream addiction.
2) Working a 60 hour week, with no personal time.
3) Means all extra-curricular activity, like exercise, has been shelved due to lack of time and exhaustion. 

Solutions to this problem?
1) Win the lottery.
2) Give up work.
3) Go and do some exercise.
4) Stop eating ice-cream. 
5) Relax

So, here we are in March and how far have I got?

1) I haven't won the lottery. I keep trying, but some other git always pips me to the post.
2) I haven't given up work, but I have slightly reduced the workload and applied for two other, less stressful jobs. Actually, getting one of those would be like winning the lottery.
3) I have started doing lots of exercise and I feel 3000% better. I can't tell you how much better I feel now I'm up and moving again. I must remember how crap inactivity makes me feel.
4) I have reduced the amount of ice-cream I'm eating, but not managed to give it up completely. I think I have a sugar addiction. There are times when it actually hurts in my chest. It's the same feeling like when I used to crave cigarettes before I gave up many decades ago. It's probably some sort of solar plexus twitch.
5) Not a hope in hell.

Listen to your Leptin!

I really want a t-shirt telling the world to "Listen to your Leptin". It would be just sooo cool. The 25% of the country which is overweight would be doing well to heed the advice.

Leptin is the protein that tells your body when it has had enough to eat. Obese people actually produce MORE leptin than svelte people but, get this, us fatties just ignore the signals and carry on scoffing. We need to reduce the background noise so the message can get through to our brains... this means, yep, you guessed it, eating less. 

It's a vicious circle: the fatter you are, the harder it is to hear the leptin; when you slim down to a normal weight, it gets easier. 

So, mantra for the new year diet?
 
Listen to your Leptin.

Dying from a Sugar Related Disorder

I had the quarterly blood test. It's a bit like a quarterly newsletter - it comes round when you had forgotten you were going to get it, and reminds you of things you had been trying to avoid. This particular blood test showed my average blood sugar levels to be actually quite good. This was a bit of a surprise, considering the addiction to ice-cream I've been suffering from in the past few months.  

Anyway, I thought I would check my sugar, not something I do very often, but I couldn't get my machine to work. The battery had given up the ghost. Well, it took a few days to get a new one (free from the diabetes company - thank you very much Abbott Diabetes Care) and I tested my sugar.... a whopping 9.6. I've done it a few times since and it keeps coming out in the 9s, which is more pants than a Korean lingerie sweatshop.

Why, I ask myself? Several easy answers to that:
1) Ice cream addiction.
2) Working a 60 hour week, with no personal time.
3) Means all extra-curricular activity, like exercise, has been shelved due to lack of time and exhaustion.

Solutions to this problem?
1) Win the lottery.
2) Give up work.
3) Go and do some exercise.
4) Stop eating ice-cream. 
5) Relax

Sorted.

I Gotta Get Outta This Place

So, back at the coal face, I'm working a stupid amount of hours every week, getting zero exercise and stuffing my face to compensate for the lack of sleep. I am too tired to do anything except drag myself to the next job to do and then try to get through it in a zombie-fied way. I am living on ice-cream and crisps, which are kind of nice in a fat-fuelled way, but not good for the figure. My blood sugar is OK, I think. It was about 4.5 when I tested it - and let's face it, it hasn't been that good since before I was pregnant i.e. a decade ago. 

So, the over work continues and I've put on about 5lb in two months. I could blame it on the pills, (Gliclazide) which are supposed to make you gain weight, but somehow I think it is the stress I'm under and the lack of sleep that I'm getting that are actually causing the problem (i.e. face stuffing), not the pills. I have to take some responsibility. What can I say? I hate teaching and it hates me. I gotta get outta this place before it kills me.