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.

A Helping of Tablets, with and Order of Effects on the Side

The time finally came back in June, when I started to need tablets for the diabetes. Actually, they wanted me to start them last November, but I resisted for a while. There is a psychological time required to adjust to being a tablet dependent, voluntarily admitting that your body cannot survive without medical input. It's a dent to the pride and the independence. I spent a few days feeling really down.

The standard tablet to start on is Metformin. This helps your cells absorb the sugar that is in your blood. On the down side it often upsets the tummy and gives you diarrhoea and wind. Oh joy. So I started taking the tablets, and thankfully my bowls stayed intact, although it did get a lot more gusty. My sugar came down by about a point (i.e. 8.5 to 7.5 or similar) on average. It wasn't great, but it helped a bit. Less internal organ damage. Might get to keep my eyesight a few months longer - that sort of thing.

And then... my hair started to come out. I mean great tresses of it, not just the odd strand. At the rate it was falling out I was going to be bald by the end of the summer. Excellent - bald, diabetic and flatulent.

I threw my toys out of the pram and changed my meds. Metformin was replaced with Gliclazide, which makes the pancreas produce more insulin, thus making it wear out faster. My average sugar fell another point, and my hair stopped falling out. On the other hand, these tablets make you gain weight - like I need a tablet to help me with that! Now I'm looking at a future where instead of bald, diabetic and flatulent, I am diabetic, fat and hairy. It'll be like telling King Kong to stay off the biscuits.

Hell no!

Well, I really don't know how the spammers managed to break through my google password to post pointless rubbish on my blog about sending them my bank details. Hell, there's nothing in my bank account, so I really think they are better off opening their own account and getting an overdraft like normal people. It's not even as though I have an account with that bank. Does anyone really fall for these scams? Anyway, the password is changed (again), so let's hope that is the end of it.

Since I got back off my adventure holiday, I have done virtually no exercise at all. I did a 12 mile walk one of the days and a few cycle rides, oh and some flat green bowling, oh, and a bit of outdoor climbing, but my usual regime of getting sweaty at least twice a week has been seriously curtailed. I'm not sure if it is the weather or my lack of money to pay for the gym or what exactly. I am starting to feel a little cabin feverish, though. I'm going to have to break out for a run soon.

On a more positive note, I haven't managed to put any weight back on after the holiday. I weighed in at 12st 2 this morning, which made me happy. All my too small jeans fit again. I have a whole new wardrobe (albeit 90s fashions). My BMI has shrunk to a mere 27. I can almost see the target of 25 within reach. The recent quiz on "Where are you on the Global Fat Scale?" made me a member of Chile, which is kind of bizarre. My extra skinny running friend came out as Ethiopian. She really needs to eat more.

In the past couple of weeks I have taken possession of my kitchen again, for the first time in years. My lovely, chaotic husband has been banned from cooking and making a mess. I suspect those last couple of pounds weight loss is because I serve up smaller portions of slightly more interesting food, rather than large portions of 'plonk' food. My other half learnt to cook catering for toddlers who couldn't cope with food mixed together, so he tends to cook every vegetable separately and plonks them on the plate, unadorned. Whilst I love him to bits, I was losing the will to live. It's taken me a long time to get up off my fat ass and do the cooking myself, but I think the time has finally come.

Sadly, I have also come to the conclusion that I can't put off medication for the diabetes any longer. I am embracing being a bone fide medication taking diabetic. They've put me on this wonder-drug called Metformin, which apparently works for about a year before it ceases to be useful. Some of the delightful side effects mean we have re-named it Metfartmin. Excellent. Fat, diabetic and flatulent. It doesn't come better than that.

Have you been watching the three part series on The Men Who Made Us Fat? It really is essential to get that information out there. It echoed that book ('The End to Over Eating') I read a year or two ago about food marketing causing the global obesity epidemic. As one person noted: asking the food industry to tackle the obesity crisis is like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank. 

I worry for my children. How are they going to survive against ever more sophisticated food marketing techniques? I heard recently that a well known burger outlet now asks "Is that a meal?" instead of "Will that be all?" when they serve you. The psychological effect is for you to think "Gosh! I forgot the supersize coke and fries!" although my personal reaction is "Hell no! I wouldn't come here for a meal!"