My Diabetes Journey
Note: In my journey account several names and products will be mentioned. I have not received any financial compensation from them. These are just people and products that have helped and are still helping me on my health journey. Also, I am not a doctor or medical professional so please consult your doctor about treatment or questions if you have diabetes or think you might be pre-diabetic.
November is Diabetes Awareness Month.? According to the American Diabetes Association (ADA) as of "2019, 37.3 million Americans, or 11.3% of the population, had diabetes. Nearly 1.9 million Americans have type 1 diabetes, including about 244,000 children and adolescents. Of the 37.3 million adults with diabetes, 28.7 million were diagnosed, and 8.5 million were undiagnosed" (https://diabetes.org/about-diabetes/statistics/about-diabetes).
As this month begins, I want to share with you my diabetes journey.
TRIP TO THE ER
I knew about diabetes (at least in name) since I was fairly young. My grandmother had the disease, and I was tested for it before I was eleven years old. I did not have it. Flashforward a couple of decades to Friday, April 26, 2019.? It was on that date that I began to have symptoms of appendicitis.? I would not go to the hospital until that Sunday, when the diagnosis was confirmed, and I would be prepped for my first surgery.? As I was preparing to go under the laparoscopic “knife” the anesthesiologist mentioned that my glucose level was high.? They were giving me insulin to lower it.? The doctors were not sure if my glucose level was high due to the infection in the appendix (which thankfully had not ruptured) or if I might have diabetes.? They were going to have me meet with a primary care physician following the surgery to find out about the high glucose level.?
THE RESULTS
Around a month after the surgery, I met with a primary care doctor who confirmed that I had diabetes. When I had the blood work done at the hospital my glucose level was 304 mg/dL and my Hgb A1C was 11.2%.
Woah. What do these numbers mean? What can I do about them? For someone who has never had diabetes or dealt with this disease, hearing these numbers or seeing them written a patient summary report can be a bit overwhelming.
So, what is glucose? Glucose is a fancy medical term for sugar. Our bodies (specially our cells) need glucose, but they require a substance our body creates called insulin to get the sugar into the cells. A resource entitled, Your Guide to Healthy Living with Diabetes, puts it this way. "How does insulin help glucose enter cells? Think of insulin as a key that unlocks doors to let sugar exit the blood and enter a cell. There are keyholes on most cells that insulin fits into. When this happens, the cell lets the sugar inside." Insulin is produced in the body by an organ called the pancreas.
If there is a problem with insulin in the body (either not enough insulin, not utilizing the insulin properly, or not producing any at all) the sugar will stay in the blood stream and not be able to have the keys to unlock the cells to feed them or feed them properly. That is where the numbers referenced above come into play.
Having a high glucose (sugar) level in the blood stream means that the sugar meant for my cells never got there or the cells got very little. Therefore, the blood stream becomes saturated with excess glucose that the body tries to expel, many times via more frequent urination. If everything is working correctly with glucose and insulin in the body, the blood glucose level should be between 80 mg/dL - 100 mg/dL (though different foods might spike the glucose in even non-diabetics, more on that later).
The body cells hold a record of how much glucose the body has held onto in your cells, specifically this record is in the hemoglobin protein (found in Red Blood Cells). I was told that it keeps this record for around three months. The higher the number, the more sugar the hemoglobin has held onto. Ideally, the A1C should be 6.0% or under (while other healthcare providers believe it should 5.7% or under).
Regardless of what metric is used my A1C at 11.2% and blood glucose at 304 mg/dL were too high and I needed to make changes, get support, and begin treatment on the next chapter of my diabetes journey.
CHANGES, SUPPORT, & TREATMENT
When I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, I knew that there would be changes that would have to happen in my life, that those changes would require support from family, friends, and my church. Along with the changes and support I needed to begin treatment both with medications and education on the disease I was now living with.
The first big change to my life was in the form of treatment. I had to start taking a prescription medication: Metformin. I was also enrolled in a diabetes educational class at the hospital where my primary care physician was a part of.
The diabetes class was just as helpful as the Metformin. Yes, Metformin can loser your blood sugar and help your A1C, but why how does it do it? What are the bests ways to prepare a meal? Are all carbs bad? The class which lasted an entire morning was a great help for me and for the others in the class. The health educators also showed how to take blood samples for those who had blood glucose readers. I had not been prescribed one, but also, I had (and still have a fear of needles. More on that later).
The next big change was going to be to my diet. I was someone who loved eating bread and bread-based products (especially pizza). These are products that are loaded with carbohydrates that break down into glucose and rise my blood sugar. I had been losing weight before being diagnosed with the diabetes and I thought that the exercise I had been doing was the reason for the weight loss, but it turns out the diabetes was also causing an unnatural weight loss (since the cells were not getting the glucose they needed).
I had been overweight and obese for over 15 years at the time the diabetes diagnosis in 2019. I weighed around 216 pounds (98 kg) on the day I went to the hospital. Over the course of my disease, I have lost around 41 pounds (18 kg). Though there were some points where I put on more weight than I would like to have. This was a combination of changing what I was eating, when I was eating it, and doing more exercise than I had in the past.
I have always been interested in technology and have been involved with IT work for the past twenty years and when I began on my fitness journey (around a decade before my diabetes diagnosis) I invested in an early Fitbit (now part of Google) device along with using running/walking apps on my smartphone. I also invested in a smart scale (also from Fitbit) to see my health trends. This information would be even more useful after my diagnosis.
Yet, none of these things would have happened without the support of family, friends, and my church family. Having people around you that will supportive of your new diet and provide less carb rich foods. Church dinners are a popular thing, and this pastor loves food, but I was and am thankful for my church family in their support of me in my diabetes journey. I had always loved salads (along with my carb heavy meals), now salads have become the meal to help keep glucose from spiking and lowering my A1C. Over the course of my journey so far I have been able to lower my A1C from 11.2 down to the low fives (normal A1C range).
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CONTINUE TO GROW, LEARN, AND THRIVE
Diabetes does not need to be a death sentence, nor should it stop you from growing, learning, and thriving. Since I was diagnosed in 2019, I have grown as a person and have made many changes in my life and my lifestyle.
GROW
One of the areas that I mentioned earlier was losing weight/fat and gaining muscle. I would push myself to walking almost every day and do a run/walk at least once a week. This helped me lose weight/fat and strengthen my cardio fitness. I have found that walking/running is a great way to clear my mind, take time to pray, meditate on the Bible, or listen to music. I would sign-up for my first 5K since 2017 in the summer of 2022 and complete the course in 38 minutes. This year (2023) I was able to do the same course in 32 minutes. Never stop trying and growing. You never know how far you can go.
LEARN
An ancient Greek maxim says, "Know thyself." I am someone who can be a bit of a data junkie. I had owned Fitbit devices since 2013 and they had helped me keep track of steps, distance, floors, and eventually sleep (though I remember in the early days you had to manual start and stop sleep). With my diabetes I have had added new sources of data to help me better know my body and to ask better questions of my doctors.
As I mentioned earlier I was for a lack of a better word, apprehensive, to pricking my finger for blood sugar testing. I talked to my doctor to get a prescription for 雅培 's FreeStyle Libre CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitor) of which I got.
A Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) is an amazing prescription tool for diabetics and non-diabetics if you get them through a program like January AI, Nutrisense, or Levels (since they require a prescription). The normal way to check blood glucose is with a lancet (sterile needle) pricking a finger to draw blood and then using that blood with a device that reads the amount of glucose in the blood at that very moment. A CGM works a bit differently.
A CGM measures the amount of glucose in the interstitial fluid. It as one definition put it "the extracellular fluid (ECF) between the cells." I have heard the differences between a blood glucose reading (finger sticks) and interstitial fluid measure (CGM) is that blood glucose is a main highway and interstitial fluid are the sides roads. The CGM will see what the main glucose is doing, but it takes around 10-20 minutes on average to see the affects. How does certain foods (which is different for each person) affect blood glucose? How does exercise before or after a meal affect blood glucose? These are things that a CGM can help you see to help manage your diabetes or for non-diabetics, maybe prevent or reverse pre-diabetes.
A couple of the people that I ran across online that helped me see the value of personalized health data were Daniel Kraft, MD and Michael Snyder . They both have some great discussions online on how smartphones and smartwatches can be great tools to be proactive with your health. They are pushing to reinvent the healthcare industry from being more of a "sickcare" model to a true "healthcare" model.
苹果 with their Apple Watch, which I now wear with my Fitbit (to compare data) and their Apple Health platform is a great step in proactive health. Take your own measurements (weight, blood pressure, oral temperature, etc.) and combine that with the data that these devices collect (Blood Oxygen, VO2 max, Resting Heart rate, Heart Rate Variability, etc.). It becomes as Dr. Snyder would put it a "check engine light" for your body.
Doing this measuring has helped me to thrive with my diabetes.
TWO TALKS
To view a couple of the discussions you can use the links below. There are many more on YouTube from over the past 5-7 years from these two experts.
THRIVE
Diabetes does not mean you cannot thrive. In fact, it has made me want to live more and live life to the fullest. While I was on this journey I kept seeing ads on YouTube for products from a company called UMZU . I am very cautious about online advertising, but their product called Redwood sounded like a great product to help boost my energy on my diabetes journey and so I ordered a bottle of it. That was back in 2020. Now three years later I am still ordering it along with a couple of other products from them. As I mentioned at the start of the article I do not have any connection to these companies, I am just sharing what has helped me.
Diabetes might have slowed me down or stopped me from living life, but instead it has made me more health conscious and aware of what I am putting into my body. I have done more traveling and even skydiving since I was diagnosed in 2019 and I give all glory to God for His continued grace as I thrive in this.
THE JOURNEY CONTINUES ON
I am not sure what the next steps of my journey with diabetes will take me, but that trip to the ER back in April of 2019 changed my life and I believe for the better. It made me examine my life and chose to make better and healthier choices in terms of food, exercise, and lifestyle. I will continue to grow, learn, and thrive!