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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Yanno SIX, I don't understand that mania that you MUST eat a certain # of carbs per day. It's stupid. What do you get from burning carbs that you don't get from burning fat? My dog walking friend who has type 2 diabetes manages her blood sugar without any meds at all by limiting her carbs to 30 a day. (Of course, she's still producing insulin so she can get by without meds.)

And I know, from my own experience being on low dose oral meds, that if I wind up eating oat bran or (god forbid) bread or Doritos, my blood sugar, tho still in the normal range, will be at least ten points higher. The only benefit I can see from eating carbs is if you eat them in the form of veggies, nuts, beans or bran* (*in moderation) and one fruit- no more- per day. And that's just for the fiber, minerals, and healthy colors, not for the carbs themselves. Processed carbs are just MT calories IMHO.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I think it's grand that you can manage your blood sugar with long-acting alone, by matching your carb intake to your activity level.

As I mentioned, I knew rather well a couple of insulin-dependent diabetics at work, and neither of them figured out how to use their insulin and manage their diets properly.

One, altho normal weight, was consistently crashing into ketoacidotic crises and flirting with, and sometimes slipping into, coma. (We kept an eye on her, and would urge her to drink orange juice when she started getting glassy-eyed and sounding drunk, but sometimes she refused and it wound up in a 911 call. Since we had a big facility and a huge parking lot, we got good at positioning people in white, highly visible labcoats at the driveway entrance to flag the emergency vehicles to the east end of the parking lot, and one at the east end of the parking lot to the lab, and one at the lab door. As you can tell, we had a lot of practice!)

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Yeah... See, that's the only problem I'd be worried about when going back into the work force, at least for the first few weeks. I want to stay as low as I possibly can without risking danger of dropping dangerously low. They want me at a daily average of 154mg/dL, and quite frankly that's FAR too high for me and it's so easily avoided that it doesn't make any sense to do that to my long-term health.

But working at the level of physical activity for as many hours at a time as I did at my last job is something I've never come close to doing on a regular basis since my diagnosis.

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The other one kept eating carbs and using fast-acting insulin. I'd see him munching away on his sandwich and corn chips lunch after injecting his fast-acting, but bc his physical activity level was low he kept packing on the pounds and was probably 100 lbs overweight. NOT a good thing of you have an uncorrected congenital heart defect, as he did.

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It's funny you mention that, because that's something I thought about when I was shooting more insulin up those few weeks when I wasn't working and also wasn't doing a good job managing my carb intake. To be fair to him, when you have diabetes it is probably very easy to fall into a pattern of HYPER FOCUSING on the illness and your numbers while disregarding other health concerns that you still need to be wary of.

For example, it turns out that although I can't eat a full bag of chips or popcorn anymore, pork rinds are on the table. So, without looking at anything other than the carbs on the nutrition label, I decided while I was out the other day to buy all 3 flavors they had at the Dollar Tree and see which ones I liked. It was only the next day when I decided to have my bag of HOT flavored that I realized my mistake... Trans fat. And not a small amount of it either.

Fortunately though, it appears that they only used Trans Fat on the HOT flavored, and the regular and BBQ flavor don't have any. I liked the HOT, but certainly not enough to warrant willingly injesting any of that crap when I don't need to be. The BBQ was good too, but there are twice as many carbs in them than the other two flavors. Assuming that the regular flavor is good, that's going to be my go-to for a salty snack in the future since it's only 5 grams of carbs in a bag and zero trans fats. But if I really don't like them, I'm alright with doing BBQ instead since 10 grams really isn't much either. I'd just have to be slightly more mindful of when I decided to eat them. It's not as if I'd be having a bag per day or anything anyhow. Probably once a week as a treat.

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So I've seen people mis-manage a couple of different ways. Maybe, if they had CGMs back then, they would have been able to correct their mistakes, so I can't be too hard on them, but their doctors or nutritionists or SOMEbody should have stepped in and given them some better advice.

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And that's the real trick. You can't be hard on them AT ALL. Life for me would be pretty miserable right now without the CGM. Talk about the Fear of the Unknown becoming a full-on lifestyle.

I'm going to have my own episode of that for 1.5 days starting tomorrow evening. I have some tests my cardiologist ordered for me on Wednesday, and not only can't I eat 4 hours beforehand or drink coffee 12 hours beforehand, but because of the nature of CAT scans, I can't even have my GCM sensor attached because it could get damaged. And not only would I normally be changing my sensor tomorrow night, but this is the first time I've also had to use a different transmitter since its lifespan is finished on my current sensor.

I can't complain about the timing too much since it could have been WAY worse than 2 full nights and 1.5 days without continuous readings, but I'm going to be a freakin' basket case while getting heart tests conducted. Not great.

Even though I did manage to get a new Endochrinologist (YAY!), he was right about one thing... If I was going to choose a time to get Diabetes, I couldn't have picked a better time than now with the technology at our disposal for managing it. Once I figure all of this out, life will be pretty much like it was before my diagnosis thanks to that CGM. I don't think I'd be enjoying anything at all really much these days if I never knew where I was at and I had to compulsively prick my fingers 10 times a day, only to have 3.472% of the data that is available to me every day right now.

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Anyway, good on you, SIX!

Like I said, between you and BRENDA I have two great examples on how to manage chronic health problems.

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Discipline, discipline, discipline.

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Speaking of which... taking an example from BRENDA, who has her schedule which keeps her on an even keel, and SIX, who, on his mostly good days, stays positive even with setbacks I've fiddled with my schedule and I'm still very pleased with it.

And I'm trying to learn how to cope with my anxieties in a proactive way without driving myself nuts about all of the things I feel I have to complete in the next five years.

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If you ever figure out how to deal with anxiety, tell me how.



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How you do anything is how you do everything.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Dealing with anxiety?

Well, I could say "alcohol" but that's a non-starter for all three of us!

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For sure.

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I do have pills for neuropathy, which is still a misery for the front half of the soles of my feet and my fingertips... a GABA derivative.... and it does reduce that annoying tingly/buzzy/shock like feeling and definitely mellows my mood, but I don't like to be dependent on meds so even tho I'm supposed to take it every day I only take it maybe a couple times a week.

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I don't blame you. I'm on board with the medicines I'm taking that have had a long history of testing and are actually saving my life, but I'm not ever going to take anything that causes dependency or behavioral/mood changes. Never ever.

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I think what I'm going to try to do, since I tend to drive myself nuts worrying about my health and thinking too far ahead... and "awfulizing" (i.e. thinking that everything is going to end up the most awful way possible) ... is try not to think too far ahead and stay focused on what I can do, when I can do it.

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That's a good plan if you stick with it. You still do need to focus on the future, but hyperfocusing on it leads to imagining all sorts of scenarios that will never actually play out. I think I've read like 90% or more of things you imagine are going to happen never actually happen and you were worried about all sorts of things for no reason at all.

"Awfulizing" is something I do to a certain degree all the time though, for better or for worse. I kind of take my dad's approach to life and live by "if you expect nothing, you won't be disappointed". It seems to work for me. Anything better than nothing is a bonus, and you don't get let down when you never had high hopes in the first place.

Those "Actualizer" self-help types would have a field day with me though.

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Oh, and BREATHE! Deep breathing helps when I get all wound up.

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Yeah. That's not bad advice. It's funny how often we can forget to do something that is involuntary and how helpful it is in stressful situations.

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How you do anything is how you do everything.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Anyway, good on you, SIX!

Like I said, between you and BRENDA I have two great examples on how to manage chronic health problems.

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Discipline, discipline, discipline.

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Speaking of which... taking an example from BRENDA, who has her schedule which keeps her on an even keel, and SIX, who, on his mostly good days, stays positive even with setbacks I've fiddled with my schedule and I'm still very pleased with it.

And I'm trying to learn how to cope with my anxieties in a proactive way without driving myself nuts about all of the things I feel I have to complete in the next five years.

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If you ever figure out how to deal with anxiety, tell me how.



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How you do anything is how you do everything.

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Discipline is hard and I had to learn the hard way. It wasn't until after the brain surgery that my issues started showing up. So, I had to adjust, adjust and adjust.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
No more CGM readings for me for the next 36+ hours. Really, I'll probably make that about 42 hours. I was told that I'm not supposed to use the sensor with my CAT scan on Wednesday, and my current sensor was up 2 hours or so ago. I'm not about to burn one up just for a day and a half, and this will be the time I use my first replacement transmitter, so I'm definitely not risking a brand new one since they're good for 90 days. So finger pricking it is for me right now. Bummer.

My numbers stayed stubbornly high today, so I've only had about 30 grams of carbs so far. I was down to about 95 when my sensor went out, so I'm probably due for some more. Going to make my low-carb dinner anyhow, and probably eat a few chicken breasts before going to sleep after that.


If you didn't catch it in one of the other threads, Ted started insulting me about being "wet brained" again for the first time in years because idiot Second started bringing up my alcoholism again even though I've been sober for 6 and 2/3rd years now. I decided to read up about whatever "Wet Brain" was and it turns out that Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome is an actual thing that happens to some heavy drinkers and can persist even after they stop drinking, and it can leave you with a chronic Thiamine (B1) deficiency that started when your kidneys were dumping Thiamine into your system, potentially leaving you with 25% of the B1 you're supposed to have stored up. And if that's happened to me it's not helped by my ongoing coffee intake today. It turns out that you need B1 to properly break down carbohydrates and handle glucose in the body, and both type 1 and type 2 diabetics with B1 deficiency end up having that deficiency go unnoticed.

As I said in the thread where this was going on, I'm quite annoyed that none of my doctors have ordered this test since I let every one of them know about my prior struggles with alcohol. Really, any one of them could have ordered the test, but specifically my freakin' Dr. Endo should have caught that. I'm so glad I'm not seeing him anymore and I got a real Endocrinologist that I'll start seeing in September. One who got his Doctorate some time after JFK was still alive.

Hopefully the test comes out fine, but I'm glad that Ted called me a wet brain again because if I'm still very low on B1 like I probably was the entire time I was drinking, finding that out now could save my eyesight and maybe even my toes and feet one day. It might actually make my Diabetes even easier to manage than it's been as well, since it appears that it plays a very important part with your glucose levels.

It's just a shame I can't find out the answer right now. Unlike the basic panel, this one needs to be sent out of the hospital to some other lab and I won't have any results on it until possibly as late as next Monday. I'll probably have the results for the 3 tests the Cardiologist is having me do on Wednesday before I know about the B1.

Oh well...

I fixed the weakest link on my medical care team, and now everyone I've got will be tied into the online system so they'll all have access to any tests I've done and we can all communicate online about things. No more dealing with his unhelpful and unpleasant team or having my pharmacist try to contact him and never get a call back.



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How you do anything is how you do everything.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
One of hubby's very good doctors recommended "Super B complex". There are at least two brands on the market with similar formulations, but stick whichever one has the LOWEST B6 since that 'B' vitamin - unlike the others- can cause permanent nerve damage in higher-than recommended doses. (Requirement for adults is about 1.5 mg, tolerable upper limit is officially 50 mg but should probably be lower.)

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I wouldn't worry about B1 in relation to previous drinking. When alcoholics are picked up off the street and wind up in hospital, they're given an emergency infusion of 100 mg B1. (The reason they don't use oral B1 is bc B1 isn't absorbed well thru the intestinal wall IN THE PRESENCE OF/ or recent consumption of alcohol. But OK to give orally after about a week, when damage to the intestinal lining repairs itself.) That is to reverse CURRENT symptoms. If you're not symptomatic (do your eyes flutter back and forth uncontrollably?

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My eyes don't flutter like that. But they can twitch if I've had too much coffee and/or not enough water.

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do you have control of your muscles?

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Most of the time, but I have mentioned in the past how I'm getting clumsy in my old age and I wondered if maybe I was getting MS like my mom had.

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are you confused about where, when, and who you are?

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No. But I did put a gallon of milk in my kitchen cupboard overnight before my diagnosis.

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If not, you're OK!)

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That would be nice.

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It won't fix previous damage, if any.

However, B1 is required to metabolize SUGAR, and as such may be useful for people with diabetes.

100 mg B1 every day for three months improved kidney function in patients with Type 2 diabetes. [caveat: small population study]
https://www.dsm.com/pharma/en/news/dsm-pharma-blog/vitamin-b1-and-diab
etic-patients.html

The potential role of thiamine (vitamin B1) in diabetic complications
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18220605/

Health Benefits of Vitamin B1
Good for diabetes. If you have diabetes, think about getting more thiamine. Studies show that high blood sugar and insulin levels improve after taking vitamin B1 for 6 weeks. B1 also helps reduce high blood pressure and heart complications in people with diabetes.
Prevents kidney and circulation problems. A dose of vitamins B1 and B12 can help improve nerve pain in people with diabetes and may reduce the need for painkillers.
https://www.webmd.com/vitamins-and-supplements/health-benefits-of-vita
min-b-1

One thing about B1 is that it's destroyed by cooking*. But, you DO take a multivitamin which (I assume) has the daily requirement of B1. So you're probably not deficient in terms of absolute blood levels, but your actual need for B1 might be higher. So I see no reason NOT to take a "super B complex", provided you mind the B6 amounts.

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Yeah... well I had been taking that multivitamin every day AND a Vitamin D/Calcium pill every other day for at least 30 days before I had my vitamin D lab done and I was still deficient. Not by much, but I was under the desired range. And that was after several weeks of working outside at least 5 days a week for at least a few hours a day too.

I no longer have polyurea due to diagnosed diabetes and ketoacidosis, but I urinate quite a lot because of how much coffee I drink in a day. My coffee is pretty weak though. I'll use about 1/2 to 2/3rds of my 1/2 cup scoop for 12 cups, and I'll often drink two pots of it in a day.

I could be getting rid of quite a bit of stuff I need by doing that. Most of the time except for when I wake up in the morning it's clear though.

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*The infamous "they" add B1 to dog and cat food AFTER it's been cooked bc heaat destroyed B1. So when I cook up a chicken carcasse and pick the meat scraps off the bone for the zipster, I supplement it with a pinch of ground-up super B complex for that B1!

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Hehe.

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How you do anything is how you do everything.

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Cardiac calcium scoring results

Now we’ve covered the basic structure of the cardiac calcium scoring chart, let’s look in more detail at what the various scoring brackets represent:

0 – a score of zero indicates that no calcium has been found in the heart and that your chance of developing a heart attack is low
1-10 - a score from one to ten means that your chance of having heart disease is under 10% and that you have a low risk of a heart attack
11-100 – a score in this bracket means that you have mild heart disease and that your chance of a heart attack is moderate. In this case, you may be recommended treatment and lifestyle changes
101-400 – this score bracket represents a moderate amount of plaque, which could be blocking an artery, and that your chance of a heart attack is moderate or high. A score in this range can mean you will need treatment and that further tests are required
400+ - this score means that a large amount of plaque has been identified by the cardiac calcium scoring test and that the chance it is blocking an artery is over 90%. Your chance of a heart attack is high and your doctor will need to start treatment, as well as carry out further tests

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As mentioned, your age dictates, to an extent, how fast your metabolism is. In your younger years, it’s a lot quicker.

Your metabolic age parallels your current BMR to the average for age. It takes your BMR and relates it to the average for chronological ages. In this way, it can give you an insight into how your BMR sits compared to others your age.

If your metabolic age is lower than your real age, it suggests you have a faster than average metabolism. If your metabolic age is higher than your actual age, it means its much slower.

...

How can you decrease your metabolic age?

A good metabolic age is your age in real life. If you’re 40, your metabolic age should really be 40 too. Those that are fitter will find their metabolic age reads much younger than their chronological age.

To decrease your metabolic age, you need to reduce the percentage of body fat and increase the percentage of muscle mass you’re made from.

The tips for doing this are similar to most advice for weight loss or muscle conditioning.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Those are great results, SIX! Even better than one should realistically hope for.

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Puppy puppy is still sick. She was eating and drinking yesterday evening but gagging and lethargic again this AM. I'm sure she ate some non-food item bc she vomitted up one of those adhesive strips that they use to stick fake credit cards and subscription offers on ads, it even had writing still on it ("not a valid..." something) so it was easy to ID.


If she's not better by tomorrow I'm going to take her in.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Those are great results, SIX! Even better than one should realistically hope for.

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Yeah. Got the ultrasound tests in today and there doesn't appear to be anything bad from them that I can tell either. Breathing a little easier about my doctor's appointment now.

Still haven't gotten the Thiamine test back yet, but hopefully I don't have to wait until Monday for those results.

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Puppy puppy is still sick. She was eating and drinking yesterday evening but gagging and lethargic again this AM. I'm sure she ate some non-food item bc she vomitted up one of those adhesive strips that they use to stick fake credit cards and subscription offers on ads, it even had writing still on it ("not a valid..." something) so it was easy to ID.


If she's not better by tomorrow I'm going to take her in.

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Awwwww. Hope she feels better. :(




Bummer about mahjong Brenda. You'll get 'em next time.

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How you do anything is how you do everything.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Those are great results, SIX! Even better than one should realistically hope for.

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Yeah. Got the ultrasound tests in today and there doesn't appear to be anything bad from them that I can tell either. Breathing a little easier about my doctor's appointment now.

Still haven't gotten the Thiamine test back yet, but hopefully I don't have to wait until Monday for those results.

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Puppy puppy is still sick. She was eating and drinking yesterday evening but gagging and lethargic again this AM. I'm sure she ate some non-food item bc she vomitted up one of those adhesive strips that they use to stick fake credit cards and subscription offers on ads, it even had writing still on it ("not a valid..." something) so it was easy to ID.


If she's not better by tomorrow I'm going to take her in.

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Awwwww. Hope she feels better. :(




Bummer about mahjong Brenda. You'll get 'em next time.

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How you do anything is how you do everything.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Spent literally all day at the emergency vet. In the end, after my wallet got a radical cashectomy, blood work and x-rays, the good news is they found nothing seriously wrong. But puppywuppy is still feeling sick. She must have eaten something that really disagreed with her, but what it was I don't know.

I have a bagful of meds for her nausea, diarrhea, and pain, and an antibiotic (just in case), and a dog probiotic. I kid you not.

Tomorrow we have to prep for the rain and wind, which might get as high as 60 mph. Nothing I can do about the avocado trees, I just hope a falling branch doesn't knock down our power line.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I read some articles on Canada's wildfires, and it sounds like this year is worse than most.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh no. Puppywuppy is very sick. Took a turn for the worse. Vet said this is normal.
Normal???
Since when is it normal for a dog to be shitting blood??

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Went out early bc I forgot to put out my rain gage and lower one of the donwspout diverters. We're already getting a soft, warm rain with a very light wind from the northeast (as predicted). According to the storm tracker, the storm will directly overhead around 5 PM-ish. The current forecast is for about 3" of rain today, and just a little tomorrow. Not a huge amount, but so unusual to have a hurricane remnant get this far north. The last time it happened, in fact the ONLY other time it happened since modern recordkeeping began, was 1939. I think we'll probably have a non-existant fire season.

Wish I could send this storm into Canada's interior, BRENDA. Sounds like you could use it.

Anyway, back to bed for me!

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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