How I would have became diabetic!

[ellapura]

this is bit an exploration as I have been testing myself on General periodic medical checkup for the last 15 and more years..

the first indication was fatty liver and then drop in its functioning or efficiency

perhaps this was facilitated as I shifted from site work to office work and also curtailing sports activity and not reducing food intake or not going for choices of food... even before this entered into gas problems, perhaps first indication of system discomforts or metabolism (as more gas is produced or not absorbed)... I think I had gone upto 85Kgs for 167CMs at age of 45, I was with sugar 120 to 140 levels and responded well to doctors advice went for good scheme of brisk walking, exercise, dieting and reduced sugar levels and body weight, but could not sustain due to loss of interest and simply eating..

I had earlier made a thesis(informal)," sugar is sweeter to us, because it is dearer to us", now it has become so dearer and bitter, at age of 58, with more sugar head goes heavy and paining and less sugar heart goes bouncing... these are my two indicators of levels, most of the times work well; sometimes, you get both indicator active, perhaps with some time lag, the confirmatory test is feeling of hungry on low sugar.. I think I am able to manage my sugar levels...

I shall also share a condition that after getting the low sugar level sign and if I continue not taking food for another 30minutes, I reach a stable state, some transformation or system adjustment takes place..

If I had a good motion(stools) with out gas interruption that is an indication that I had good food (diabetic friendly) the previous day... if I take more sugar or oil, I will have motion problems..

now, body also got tuned to drinking tea without sugar which tastes heavenly than with sugar (which gives a feeling of saturation at tongue level..

I shall also share the flowering like experience when it comes to sugar... I just dropped one sugar particle on my tongue and took my attention to what happens... the buds opened, the sugar particles dropped into it assisted by saliva

but after becoming diabetic, somehow, I have developed a notion that diabetic pathways could be reversible....

now a days I am not fond of exercise, doctor infact fore-warned me that I can not control my diabetic through exercises after over eating... I have to control my eating, do few flexible exercises and take few medicine, let us see what happens...

sugar which was sweeter has become now bitter! Sugar has become and remain dearer now, yet in another sense!

[Hidden]

When you eat food, the body digests the macronutrients: carbohydrates, proteins – actually many different amino acids – and fats. (Anything it can’t digest, like alcohol or fiber or toxins, either passes right on through or, if it makes it into the bloodstream, gets filtered by your liver.). Your body operates not in terms of grams and calories but in terms of fuel. If you eat more fuel than your body needs – which most people do – the body is forced to store this excess. This ability to store excess fuel was an evolutionary imperative in a world that was in a state of constant “feast or famine” 50,000 years ago. Humans became very efficient fuel storage specialists and were able to survive the rigors of a hostile environment and pass those very same genes down to you and me.

Bear in mind that every type of carbohydrate you eat is eventually converted to a simple form of sugar known as glucose, either directly in the gut or after a brief visit to the liver. The truth is, all the bread, pasta, cereal, potatoes, rice, fruit, dessert, candy, and sodas you eat and drink eventually wind up as glucose. While glucose is a fuel, it is actually quite toxic in excess amounts unless it is being burned inside your cells, so the body has evolved an elegant way of getting it out of the bloodstream quickly and storing it in those cells.

It does this by having the liver and the muscles (spent during hard anaerobic exercise ) store some of the excess glucose as glycogen. Specialized beta cells in your pancreas sense the abundance of glucose in the bloodstream after a meal and secrete insulin, a peptide hormone whose job it is to allow glucose (and fats and amino acids) to gain access to the interior of muscle and liver cells.

But here’s the catch: once those cells are full, as they are almost all the time with inactive people, the rest of the glucose is converted to fat. Saturated fat.

Insulin was one of the first hormones to evolve in living things. Virtually all animals secrete insulin as a means of storing excess nutrients. It makes perfect sense that in a world where food was often scarce or non-existent for long periods of time, our bodies would become so incredibly efficient. How ironic, though, that it’s not fat that gets stored as fat – it’s sugar. And that’s where insulin insensitivity and this whole type 2 diabetes issue get confusing for most people…..

If we go back 10,000 or more years, we find that our ancestors had very little access to sugar – or any carbohydrates for that matter. There was some fruit here and there, a few berries, roots and shoots, but most of their carbohydrate fuel was locked inside a very fibrous matrix. In fact, some paleo-anthropologists suggest that our ancestors consumed, on average, only about 80 grams of carbohydrate a day. Compare that to the 350-600 grams a day in the typical diet/food today. The rest of their diet consisted of varying degrees of fat and protein. And as fibrous (and therefore complex) as those limited carbohydrate foods were, their effect on raising insulin was minimal. In fact, there was so little carbohydrate/glucose in our ancestor’s diet that we evolved four ways of making extra glucose ourselves and only one way of getting rid of the excess we consume!

Today when we eat too many carbohydrates, the pancreas pumps out insulin exactly as the DNA blueprint tell it to, but if the liver and muscle cells are already filled with glycogen, those cells start to become resistant to the call of insulin. The insulin “receptor sites” on the surface of those cells start to decrease in number as well as in efficiency. Since the glucose can’t get into the muscle or liver cells, it remains in the bloodstream. Now the pancreas senses there’s still too much toxic glucose in the blood, so it frantically pumps out even more insulin, which causes the insulin receptors on the surface of those cells to become even more resistant, because excess insulin is also toxic! Eventually, the insulin helps the glucose finds it way into your fat cells, where it is stored as fat. Again – because it bears repeating – it’s not fat that gets stored in your fat cells – it’s sugar.

Over time, as we continue to eat high carbohydrate diets and exercise less, the degree of insulin resistance increases. Unless we take dramatic steps to reduce carbohydrate intake and increase exercise, we develop several problems that only get worse over time – and the drugs don’t fix it.

[Hidden]

Yes, Diabetic pathways can be reversed. If we know (albeit "unknowingly"), how to get diabetes by filling our tank with carbohydrates, we also know how to control sugar by decreasing the same and come back to normal...or almost normal. Cut down carbohydrates, do some 30 min walking daily , increase proteins and write back in the same columns....

[usernamerao]

i am a recently diagnoised diabetic at the age of 57 years and kept on a strict exercise and diet routine by the doctor.i started with very high sugar levels with a high reading of last three months sugar levels also.i am having a numb sensation in the hands and a dull pain in the legs after i started the medicines.before i see the doctor in another 15 days can somebody assure me it is quite normal in the early days of diabetic treatment?

[ellapura]

I thank you all who responded. Inspiring and motivating responses

[ushapillai]

I thank everybody on this forum who have so willingly shared valuable information gathered over time through trial and errors and self assessment. It is truly invaluable and could perhaps save somebody from heart ache because of Diabetes the Silent Killer.