Diabetes for Beginners

Tufts researchers recently reported that while the leading source of calories in the average American diet used to be from white bread, that may have changed.*

What it has changed to is sweet drinks, presumably including soft drinks sweetened with sugar and various fruit juices and drinks (even "All Natural" ones!). It's an interesting observation, and a subject that impinges on my own awareness.
Ever since I became diabetic, I try not to get most of my calories from either white bread or sweet drinks. Whereas white bread has manageable amounts of carbohydrates that I can deal with if I need to, I try to avoid them because I'd rather have them elsewhere. Don't get me wrong: I love soft, white bread. As for non-diet soft drinks — well, I might as well take sugar syrup intravenously.
This finding, as it turns out, also incapsulates my top-two rules of thumb about a diabetic diet. People who have just been diagnosed as diabetic often feel alarmed at discovering they have a chronic, life-threatening disease, and bewildered by all the advice that comes flying at them right at first. In the midst of all that confusion, what's a person to do? Where to start? What's most important?
Diabetes, simply put, is the condition some of us have whereby we don't metabolize carbohydrates very well. The problem involves insulin, a hormone that's vital to the metabolic cycle. Diabetes can come about for two, broad reasons: 1) our bodies have developed insulin resistance, so that the insulin we produce naturally isn't used efficiently; or 2) our bodies have stopped producing enough insulin, or any insulin at all, or never did produce insulin.
Since we diabetics don't metabolize carboydrates well, the single biggest move a new diabetic can make is to reduce her consumption of carbohydrates. (Not just refined sugar, mind you, but any carbohydrate.) My top-two simple steps:

  1. Eat less bread.
  2. Stop drinking sweet drinks.

Take those two steps and one has already significantly improved one's diabetic diet. (I feel so vindicated now that my 2-step program has been supported by research!) Given their prevalence in our diet, as indicated by the Tufts study, doing these two things can take some will power, but at least the rules are simple and easy to remember.
Oh, the fussing that I hear sometimes. I have more than one diabetic friend who simply "can't tolerate" the taste of diet sodas. It's infuriating, balancing a taste for sugar water against the many severe complications that can arise from uncontrolled blood sugar levels. It seems like a big step, but I discovered for myself that my perception of the taste of artificially sweetened drinks changed after a couple of weeks and I didn't mind them anymore. Giving up cigarettes was much, much harder.
All this business about sweet drinks brings to mind my own personal crusade. A few years ago it seemed a common occurence that I would go for lunch to one of my favorite fast-food establishments (it's happened at more than one), only to discover that the Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi syrup had been inadvertantly replaced with Cherry Coke or Dr. Pepper. And guess what: I couldn't always tell the difference, so before I knew it I could easily have consumed a week's worth of carbohydrates in one go. I was never happy to discover this, and was likely to make quite a scene when confronted (as it were) with the uniformly stupid people behind the serving counters who said "I know" with a tone of voice that said "You're not fat, will it hurt you to drink regular for once?" The answer is "YES!" It is not an issue of vanity with me that the diet soft drinks be labelled correctly — it is a serious health issue! My most innermost Bitch Queen comes out at moments like that, as you've probably guessed.
Anyway, one of the many symptoms of having chronically high blood sugar is that the body tries to eliminate the excess sugar, therefore many diabetics pee a lot, therefore many diabetics drink a lot. (NB: we drink because we pee a lot, we don't pee a lot because we drink a lot. Truly.)
So, for those people who sometimes wonder whether they've developed diabetes, here's my simple test:

If you plan a day's outing by choosing your route based on the locations of public restrooms, see your doctor.

Otherwise, I wouldn't worry about it. A person with diabetes quickly learns how cruel shop owners can be about letting "just anybody" use their restrooms.
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*"Preliminary Data Suggest That Soda And Sweet Drinks Are The Main Source Of Calories In American Diet", Science Daily, 27 May 2005, via Boing Boing.

Posted on May 27, 2005 at 19.13 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Reflections

One Response

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  1. Written by Gerard Hoeffler
    on Tuesday, 14 March 2006 at 03.50
    Permalink

    yes, it took me a while too to get used to diet soda — but i think diet pepsi is better than diet coke…. diet soda tastes sweeter if you don't use ice cubes which melt and then the water dilutes the soda syrup. — btw, have you encountered this site before: http://www.savvyhealth.com — seems to have lots of useful info for beginners including a online learning interactive quiz.

    http://www.savvyhealth.com/diabetes/

    it looks like that have some health tools, but i have not checked it out yet.

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