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01-12-06 |
Living Life as a Diabetic Newsletter |
Issue# 9
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Kimberly Advent
Editor
Ashley's Diabetes
Information Center
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Welcome to our Ninth Newsletter.
Thank you to everyone who has written to me with idea's on what they would like to see in this Newsletter. Remember that I put this together for You. So anything you are interested in learning about write to Kimberly and I will research it for you.
I am looking for guest writers. If you are interested in writing a guest column for this Newsletter please contact Kimberly. Let me know what you would like to write about it. Columns must be about 600 words & related to Diabetes. I reserve the right to refuse any article if I don't think it is relevent to the Newsletter.
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This Newsletter is by subscription only! Welcome to your next issue of
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- Feature
Article - Become a Diabetes Expert by Kimberly Advent
- A word from our Sponsor
- Guest Article: Ralph Brandt's Story
- Links to Informative Websites
- News on Stem Cell Research
- Sugar Free Recipes
- Kid's Corner
- Diabetic Statistics
- Subscribe/Unsubscribe
information
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| FEATURE ARTICLE, Become a Diabetes Expert by Kimberly Advent |
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I actually wrote this article over a year ago for another website. Was just looking over some of my older articles & thought I should share it here with all of you.
Becoming a Diabetes Expert
I am a diabetes expert. No I'm not a doctor or a nurse. I am a mom. A mom to a 13 year old girl named Ashley who has Juvenile Diabetes. Ashley was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes just before her fifth birthday. She went into a diabetic coma and almost died. None of that would have happened if I had known the warning signs. In this article I am going to give you some information on diabetes and the warning signs.
There are two types of Diabetes. Type I - Juvenile Diabetes and Type II - Adult Onset Diabetes. Here we are going to concentrate on Type I.
With Type I , which mainly occurs in young people, the pancreas produces very little or no insulin. This disease is now being classed as an Auto-immune disease. This is what can happen. A person becomes ill with a flu-like virus. Normally the white blood cells would attack these invading organisms and the person would begin to get better. But, in a person prone to diabetes the white blood cells become confused and attack the beta cells in the pancreas. To better understand this let me explain what the pancreas does. The pancreas is a gland positioned behind the stomach. It has two major functions. The first is to produce enzymes that help to digest food. The second is to produce the hormones insulin and glucagon. These two hormones are important because they play a major part in regulating the glucose (sugar) level in your blood by keeping it at an even or normal level. When your pancreas becomes damaged it is unable to manufacture insulin. Insulin helps your beta cells absorb sugar. Your body needs the sugar to produce energy. Your body, unable to use glucose because of the lack of insulin, is forced to obtain energy from fat instead. This is very dangerous and if not treated eventually leads to a coma.
If you are aware of them the warning signs are very easy to see. The warning signs of Juvenile Diabetes are: irritability, frequent urination which is associated with abnormal thirst, nausea or vomiting, fatigue, weight loss despite a normal (or even increased) intake of food, and unusual hunger. Something usually not mentioned but, which happened with my daughter was nightmares & sleep walking. In children, frequent bedwetting - especially by a child who never previously wet the bed - is another common sign. Just before going into a coma you will notice breath that smells like acetone (ex:fingernail polish remover). This is a sign of ketoacidosis. You should get this person to the hospital immediately.
People with Type I Diabetes are subject to episodes in which blood glucose levels are very high (hyperglycemia) and very low (hypoglycemia). Either of these conditions can lead to a serious medical emergency. To better understand this you should know that a normal blood glucose level is between 70 - 120. When my daughter went into a diabetic coma her level was over 1,000. She has been as low as 19. This is very scary. This is what I notice when Ashley becomes low. You look into her eyes and she looks far away. Her eyes are glassy and vacant looking. She becomes confused, disoriented and sometimes combative. Her speech is slow and often slurred. Her hand will tremble and she says she feels shaky. Sometimes Ashley does not recall these episodes.
Episodes of hypoglycemia (low blood glucose) which strikes suddenly, can be caused by a missed meal, too much excersize, or a reaction to too much insulin. The initial signs are hunger, dizziness, sweating, confusion, palpitations, and numbness or tingling of the lips. If not treated the individual may go on to experience double vision, trembling and disorientation; they may act strangely and may even lapse into a coma.
In contrast, a hyperglycemic (high blood glucose) episode can come on over a period of several hours or even weeks. The risk of hyperglycemia is greatest during illness. When insulin requirements rise; blood sugar can creep, ultimately resulting in a coma, a reaction also known as diabetic ketoacidosis. One of the warning signs of developing hyperglycemia is the inability to keep down fluids. Possible long term complications include stroke, blindness, heart disease, kidney failure, gangrene, and nerve damage.
So you see I am a diabetes expert. It was important for me to know my enemy. My enemy is diabetes and with education I can fight it.
If you have some great tips to help others reach their healthier living goals please send them to me at kimberlydadvent@aol.com and I will share them here.
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Guest Article: Ralph Brandt's Story
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Normally I would put a guest article here but, I think from time to time I will share letter's that I receive that I think will inspire others. So if you want to share your story Email it to Me.
At the age of 62 I'm a newby with diabetes. When I am around others who are living with the disease for long periods like you I can only be thankful to God that I got this far and I am humbled for whining at times. I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes on August 2, 2005. The doctor had not told me that my blood work was bad, it had been for over a year. The A1C was slightly over 6 for over a year, Fasting Glucose was 129, then 139 and in August they went to 6.9 and 149. The doctor more or less offhandedly said something about needing to do something about my diabetes like it was something I should know about. I responded that nobody had told me I had it. His response, "There isn't any doubt about it. You have it. I don't know what makes you think you don't."
I was kinda stunned. He hadn't told me I had anything, he hadn't shared what the blood tests meant. I'm a techie, study lots of things but had never taken the time to look at this. One of the things that is now leading me to seek another physician is this attitude of not telling the patient what is happening. The only thing he ever seemed concerned about in previous visits was my blood pressure (I'm on meds for that) and the HDL that was a little low. Had he explained that the 6.1 and 6.2 A1C's combined with the FBS going up were not good and in fact shared that with me I would have been concerned. I did see one blood test slip until I threw a shoe with the nurse three months before that. Most didn't look bad. I failed to check what the numbers I didn't recognize meant.
I had gone through a diabetes concern by a previous doctor on diabetes about 30 years ago (I'm 62) and had a 3 hour glucose tolerance test which was negative. That was based on a father and grandfather who were diabetic and a chance comment about being thirsty. I kinda bagged diabetes as a "not worry about". I keep informed on a lot of things but diabetes was not on my home-study list. My brother in law was type 1 and died of heart failure at 42. I learned some from him. Over the years I've saved two people from insulin shock, one I worked with, one who was in a hotel lobby, because I recognized the symptoms as likely that and was right. Both took insulin and then didn't eat for some time. Both were in the "looking like they were really drunk and dazed" stage. Neither were 100% coherent. Both had difficulty thinking through questions that needed a yes or no answer, in fact they were having problems with specific yes and no questions. The man in the hotel staggered to the desk at about 7 AM and the desk clerk couldn't understand him. This was a long stay place, the Residence Inn and I had talked to him several times. I had her ask him if he was diabetic, after some real thought he said yes. Did he take his insulin this morning. He nodded yes. Did he eat, the answer was no. The gal was working with me in an office. I had my back to her and asked a question about work. After repeating the question several times I turned and realized she was there but looking a little dazed. I ran through the questions, was she diabetic, did she take insulin, did she eat. Two yes answers and no time got to the problem. We got her some orange juice and them called her husband to take her to the hospital. I knew the disease from that standpoint.
But if you had asked me what blood sugar levels were good on July 1 of this year I couldn't have given a good answer. And I had no idea an A1C even was a blood test for diabetes.
I see the complaints by the medical profession that 2/3 of the diabetics are not diagnosed. Let me tell them how to find at least a significant portion of the problem. LOOK IN THE MIRROR. I GOT NO HELP INITIALLY. I am not sure my primary care (possibly soon to be ex-primary care) is any more competent to handle diabetes management than he is to do brain surgery. And I am becoming convinced this is not an unusual case.
When he sprung this on me I was told to get a meter, come back in to have the nurse show me how to use it, then test a couple times a day. That is very close to the actual wording. I asked the nurse what meter. The response was see what your medical insurance will cover. I called the medical insurance carrier. They told me they would pay for what ever the doctor wrote for. I called the doctor back and got no additional help from the nursing staff. I visited the local Walmart pharmacy and actually got some help. I'm using the Ascensia Contour (was free) but from what I see there are lots of good meters. I made a nurse appointment (Thirty nine dollars) and took the meter to the doctors office. I got little if anything out of that visit. The nurse didn't know how to use the meter. She did show me how to load the lancet, something I could have figured out on my own. They wrote me a prescription wrong, for disks rather than strips for the meter - fortunately I looked before I left the pharmacy and saw they were the Ascensia disks not the strips. This is incomprehensible to me because I gave her the sample bottle of strips to write the prescription and it clearly had “strips” rather than “disks”..
Now I see the game plan and it isn't pretty. They wanted me to log the results for 3 months and come back to let him tell me what to do. I was playing with getting worse and damaging my body so he could have me come back and manage my condition. The doctor has to fix the problem. The more I think of that the more I get angry. The nurse did mention that there is a diabetes management class here that might be good and gave me a brochure. I almost threw it away. It looked like a good way for the medical profession to make money. They really need to improve that brochure, something I mentioned to them in their evaluation. They apparently spent good money developing a great program, which is good. But they need to improve the PR to get people in. There are people out there who need the help they offer. This has been one of two bright spots in all of this, the other ironically was the Walmart Pharmacy! I am sure the medical profession would not be happy with this evaluation.
After about 2 weeks of frustration I settled down to testing on 8/14, still not sure what I was doing. By Labor day I was even more frustrated. I had glucose levels all over the place. Half of them were over 160 which means I was headed for a higher A1C than before - which I still didn't even know about. One day at work I went outside very frustrated. One of my coworkers was there smoking. I don't smoke, I go out to walk at times. If they can smoke for 10 minutes a couple times a day I can walk for 20 minutes. (OK, I'll fess up, I didn't exercise every day till this happened.) He asked me how things were going, he had heard some of what was happening. I responded that I was ready to throw the meter and strips away and just let things go. I didn't feel sick so I couldn't be that bad. I would wait till I got bad enough to worry about it. He looked at me and said, "If you want to go blind, loose a leg, have a heart attack, have a stroke, ruin your kidneys, go ahead." I responded, "I like you too." He then told me that he couldn't stop me if I wanted to destroy myself but if I wanted some help to avoid it he would try. He is a 4 year type 2. He shared some things with me for a few minutes and we talked a couple more times over the next week. By mid September I was running 30% bad points.
At that point my coworker told me I should look for a class, he had given me about as much as he could. By then his help had built him enough credibility that I would have done almost anything he suggested. I signed up for the course and took it in October.
The portions of it that I expected to have the least value were in fact the best. I actually found a dietician that I like. She tells me I need 3 snacks a day. Well, there are other things she was right about too. And I am sure I am not eating exactly like she suggests but I am getting closer. I have only had 3 bad days in the last 45. One was not realizing some ham I was eating had been soaked in a sugar sauce. That got me to 215 about 2 hours later. One was just plain stupidity at a buffet – that got me a 285. The other one was a miscount of grams of carbs that got me to 201. I have a BA in Math and I can't even keep track of the carbs in what I eat which is simple addition. I can understand why this is difficult for others.
The November 1 blood tests came back. Fasting blood sugar a high 120 but well below the 149 of three months before. The A1C which would have been impacted by the bad days of August and the not good ones of September was 6.1, equal to the value of a year before and just within range. I'm not on meds so it is pretty hard for me to get low enough to be in jeopardy. The dietician who taught the class who is diabetic said that her husband knows when she has a low sugar, she gets grouchy. It's exactly how I would describe it when I get below 90. My meter seems to be reading a little high - I did a test when I had my last lab work (120) and it read 132 so that may be 82 not 92. But to maintain the control I have to have over 28 carbs a meal and but less than 37.
Copyright 2005 Ralph Brandt The author can be contacted at Ralph.brandt@suscom.net
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| Education:
Informative Links |
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This Newsletter I will be sharing some links to websites with articles that will help educate you.
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January 2, 2006
Stem cell issue a Catch-22: Old obstacles, new year
By Dr. Sally Harris Sange
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What goes around comes around -- an old thought for the new year.
Stem cell research is one example. Our government encourages it, for
it promises innovations in treating the diseases even government
officials do not want. The catch is, if you want federal funding,
you have to use the stem cells already in stock for your research.
You may not harvest new ones.
Trouble is, the existing cells are contaminated with an animal
sugar, Neu5Gc, not found in humans. In fact, it sets off an immune
reaction in our bodies. As one of our more diplomatic researchers
put it, "it would seem best to start over again with newly derived
human embryonic stem cells that have never been exposed to any
animal products."
Neu5Gc, though not a substance humans are able to manufacture on
their own, can be found in human tissue -- for example, the lining
of the digestive tract -- and is commonly encountered in specimens
taken from cancer patients. How did it get there? As you will
recall, humans like to devour the animals that make Neu5Gc (cows,
lambs, pigs). Turns out we are what we eat.
Colon cancer and heart disease have been associated with the
consumption of red meat. You would think that's all about saturated
fat, but remember that Neu5Gc, plentiful in animal flesh, causes
inflammation, a leading explanation for many diseases.
Fred Gage at the Salk Institute is the man who showed us, after
years of believing brain damage irreversible, that we continue to
grow new nerve cells throughout our lives. He wants to know how to
harness intact body systems to turn those cells into functioning
pieces of brain and spinal cord. I say, give Gage whatever he wants.
His work may lead to treatment advances the rest of us can barely
imagine in degenerative diseases and head trauma.
A few weeks ago, Gage let us know that, while he was looking into a
cure for Parkinson's disease, he injected human stem cells into the
brains of embryonic mice. Can you guess what happened? The mice were
born with 99.9 percent mouse brains but 0.1 percent gray matter of
you-know-who.
We trust these mice will not begin acting human -- harboring petty
jealousies, starting up wars and so on. Seriously, though, 0.1
percent doesn't sound to me like a human mind trapped in the head of
a mouse. The mice, they say, acted pretty much like mice.
Officially, embryonic stem cells have never been injected into a
living human because -- well, we're just not sure what would happen.
Unofficially, researchers sometimes do crazy things. Nobel laureate
Werner Forssmann was fired from his residency for catheterizing his
own heart in 1929. Forssmann is the kind of rogue scientist who, if
alive today, might inject himself with stem cells.
But we must advance our topic, which is "going and coming around."
Listen to this: Someone has come up with a technique for growing
meat in vitro. Correct. Pilfer stem cells from a delicious-looking
pig and nurture them in a mishmash of sugars and other nutrients
until they differentiate into muscle cells. The cells form muscle
fibers, you harvest them for your table, and the pig lives on. One
enterprising engineer is looking into a small appliance for growing
your own. You could set it on the counter beside your George Foreman
grill.
"Yuck!" you say. "It makes me sick to think of growing meat in a
lab."
But here is the real question: Will vegetarians acquiesce to eating
meat if it doesn't involve a slaughtered or penned-up animal, if the
tons of drugged-up poop that livestock plop on our soil are
eliminated completely, and corn can be earmarked for starving
children instead of stuffing cows? Or will Neu5Gc and cancer be on
their minds?
Do you see what I mean?
Fred Gage must be left to his devices. He says that stimulating the
brain with certain activities may lead to improvement in the way we
think. If we are expected to wrangle with issues like stem cell
ethics, rodent humanization and incubated meat, our squash will be
needing all the help it can get.
Dr. Sally Harris Sange is a gynecologist in private practice on
Merritt Island. Contact Sange at 452-7878 or e-mail ssange@cfl.rr.com
Sally Harris Sange, MD, is a practicing gynecologist who partners
with her patients on Merritt Island. She is former Chief of Staff at
Cape Canaveral Hospital. A Diplomate of the American College of
Obstetricians and Gynecologists, she took her degrees from
Georgetown University and the Medical College of Virginia. Her
straight talk on women's health issues appears weekly in About Me.
Stem Cell updates come from The Stem Cell Information Newsletter run by Steve Meyer.
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Diabetic Eggnog
2 cups skim milk
2 tablespoons cornstarch
3 1/2 teaspoons Equal® Measure or 12 packets Equal® sweetener or 1/2 cup Equal® Spoonful
2 eggs, beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 cups skim milk, chilled
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Mix 2 cups milk, cornstarch, and Equal® in a small saucepan; heat to boiling; boil, stirring constantly
for 1 minute. Beat eggs in medium bowl. Mix about half the milk mixture into the eggs; then add this
egg mixture to remaining milk in saucepan. Cook over low heat until slightly thickened, 1 to 2 minutes,
stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla and cinnamon. Cool to room temperature;
refrigerate until chilled, or until serving time.
Stir 2 cups milk into custard mixture; serve in small glasses or punch cups. Sprinkle lightly with nutmeg.
Variation: If desired, 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons run or brandy extract can be stirred into the eggnog.
Makes 8 servings.
Serving size: 1/2 cup
Yield: 8
Exchanges: 1 Milk
Nutrition: 79 Calories, 6g Protein, 10g Carbohydrate, 1g Fat
Recipe brought to you by E-Cookbooks library
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Diabetes is one of the most common chronic diseases in school-aged children. In the United States, about 176,500 people under 20 years of age have diabetes. About 1 in every 400 to 600 children has type 1 diabetes. Each year, more than 13,000 children are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. The incidence of type 1 is about 7 per 100,000 per year in children ages 4 and under; 15 per 100,000 per year in children 5 to 9 years, and about 22 per 100,000 per year in those 10 to 14 years of age. About 75 percent of all newly diagnosed cases of type 1 diabetes occur in individuals younger than 18 years of age.
Currently, because 10 to 15 percent of children and teens are overweight – about double the number of two decades ago – increasing numbers of young people have type 2 diabetes. In several clinic-based studies, the percentage of children with newly diagnosed diabetes classified as type 2 has increased from less than 5 percent before 1994 to 30 to 50 percent in subsequent years. Although no ethnic group is untouched by the problem, the disease disproportionately affects American Indian, African American, Mexican American, and Pacific Islander youth. An example of this overrepresentation is seen among Pima Indians where the prevalence of type 2 diabetes among 15- to 19-year-olds is 5 percent.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “at risk for overweight” is defined as being in the 85th to 94th percentile and “overweight” is defined as at or above the 95th percentile on the CDC’s Body Mass Index (BMI)-for-age growth charts. These charts can be found at .
I thought you might want to try out this Diabetic Radio Station in Michigan. New Upper Michigan Diabetes Radio station
I have often had people write to me & ask how they can calculate carbs on foods that don't have nutritional info available. I fould this website that has a tool that makes it easy. Check it out Carb Calculator
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