hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2580.txt

Episode: 2580
Title: HPR2580: Diabetes
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2580/hpr2580.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 06:01:17

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This is HPR episode 2,580 entitled, I'm eating, and is part of the series, health and health care.
It is hosted by AYUKA, and is about 14 minutes long, and carries a clean flag.
The summary is, this is the story of how I became diabetic, and what I did about it.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
Support Universal Access to All Knowledge by heading over to archive.org, forward slash, donate.
Hello, this is AYUKA, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio, and another exciting episode.
And at this time, I'm going to be continuing the series that I started on health.
And this show is called Diabetes, interesting little topic there, huh?
Now, I seem to have gone through much of my life with no serious health issues.
I had the usual complement of broken bones, various colds and infections, and so on, but
nothing you would call really serious.
But while I was going about my business, unaware something was happening, I didn't recognize it.
When a change is gradual, you often don't notice it.
I was a professor of economics at a local college, and got in the habit of having a drink
with me.
Usually, it would be a diet pop because it seemed I was always trying to lose a little weight,
but if necessary, it would be water.
And I needed it.
After all, as a professor, I was lecturing for as much as an hour at a time, sometimes
even longer, and all that talking made me thirsty.
And drinking diet pop is not a problem, right?
Once a semester I had a class that was in the library, and there were signs at the entrance
that said you couldn't bring in any food or drink.
But that didn't apply to me, I thought, since I was faculty.
I do remember one of the librarians glaring at me, but what was his problem?
I didn't realize my thirst was getting worse as time went on.
And one day I was at the computer, and I didn't feel right.
I had trouble describing it.
But I called my doctor and said, well, it was kind of sort of like when you're on a roller
coaster and your stomach is that funny feeling, except I was not on a roller coaster.
I was sitting in front of the computer.
My doctor quite understandably said he had not any idea what that was about, and that
I should go to the emergency room.
And I did so, and again, tried to explain what I was feeling.
They did some tests, and we're not having much luck diagnosing the problem.
When a nurse said, you know, your blood sugar is 300, maybe that's the problem.
I had become diabetic.
Well this began a journey that I am still on, because this is one of those things that
when it happens, generally does not go back.
More testing confirmed the diagnosis.
I was around 50 at the time.
So it was not like some people who get the disease as kids and grow up with it.
My doctor started me on oral medications to help control the disease and told me that
the key to control was diet and exercise.
As it turns out, that's the key to a whole bunch of health issues.
I was not someone who did much exercising on a regular basis.
I did on occasion play some volleyball, but not as part of a league, just, you know, with
the neighbors.
And I did walk the dog pretty regularly, but I was overweight and not in particularly
good shape.
Obviously that contributed to my getting the disease, but I don't know if anyone can
say that for certain.
In any case, my doctor made it clear that I needed to make some changes.
For exercise, I looked around and found that the local high school offered water aerobics
several times a week.
That is mostly doing calisthenics well in a pool, and I've always enjoyed being in water,
so I signed up.
I've since added more exercises of various kinds, but it was a start.
On the diet side, my doctor had me focus on reducing fat intake, so I did.
I remember talking to my sister about it, and she thought it was odd since diabetes is
about sugar, not fat, but I went along with what my doctor said and reduced fat intake.
I remember getting up on a Saturday morning, picking up a couple of donuts, and heading
for the pool.
I realized now that was a serious mistake, and I've learned that my doctor thinks fat
is the culprit for most problems.
I now allow for that.
But overall, he's a pretty good doctor, just a little bit overboard on this one issue.
So now, what is diabetes?
Well, my disclaimer, first of all, I am not a doctor.
I have had the incentive to study up on this, so I think I have it right, but as usual,
you should always talk to your doctor if you have any concerns.
Put this another way, you would have to be an idiot to rely on me for medical advice.
Clear?
So diabetes is a disease of the sugar metabolism.
There are two types, called unimaginatively type 1 and type 2.
The kind I have is type 2.
What the two kinds have in common is a high level of sugar in the blood, which in turn
is due to issues with insulin.
Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas and has the purpose of taking sugar from the
blood stream and moving it into cells where the sugar can serve as a source of energy.
In type 1 diabetes, what you have is an autoimmune disease where the body mistakenly targets
the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin and destroys them.
With no cells, you have no insulin, so the blood sugar builds up.
In type 2 diabetes, the insulin is being produced more or less normally, but your cells
are much less responsive.
So you have both sugar and insulin in your blood, but the sugar builds up.
Your body knows that too much sugar is bad, so it tries to get rid of it in other ways,
such as by having the kidneys remove it and put it in your urine.
So you start to pee more and develop a raging thirst as your body tries to keep up a
flow sufficient to remove the excess sugar.
That is why I could not go an entire hour without a drink in my hand.
This also explains why, in the days before more sophisticated testing, the main symptom
of diabetes was sugar in the urine.
Now, there are health issues, okay?
Diabetes can cause serious problems if not controlled.
Among the problems are, first of all, retinopathy.
The blood vessels in the back of the eye may start to bleed.
Initial symptoms may include flashing lights and spots in your vision, cataracts and glaucoma,
and if untreated, blindness can result.
All right?
That sounds exciting.
What else do we get?
Old neuropathy.
That means that the nerves in your extremities, particularly legs and feet, become damaged.
You may begin to lose sensation there.
You could injure yourself and not know it.
Sores may not heal, and in extreme cases, gangrene can set in and lead to amputation.
Frequent infections is another possible consequence of diabetes, and then there are kidney problems
like nephropathy.
Now I've got links in the show notes to a lot of this stuff if you want to follow up more
on it.
But in other words, when you're looking at all of this, this is not something to take
lightly.
Something can make you go blind or cause you to lose body parts is a serious bummer.
Okay.
So obviously I had a problem to deal with here.
I started with oral medications, began to add exercise.
I did reduce my fat intake.
I got a blood glucose meter, and I take a reading every morning.
This is called fasting glucose, and it's important.
And that reading I take every morning lets me know if I'm in the right ballpark.
It gives me a reading of my blood glucose in terms of milligrams per desoliter.
And then my doctor would also have me go to the local lab every few months for a blood
draw to do a real detailed testing, which he would get a report on.
Again, a fasting blood test first thing in the morning.
So that would test for a number of things, but most importantly something called hemoglobin
A1c, which is a measure of the average blood glucose over the previous two to three months.
Now for the daily blood glucose, a normal reading in the morning should be under a hundred
for a non-diabetic, and the HB, the hemoglobin A1c, normal reading is below 5.7 for a non-diabetic.
My numbers were not like that.
Most mornings I'd be around 140, and when my HB, A1c was measured, it was around 7 or 8.
These are not the worst numbers ever, but they're not particularly good either.
Over time, the levels of my oral medications were raised to keep me from getting any worse,
but there were limits to what you can do with oral meds.
My doctor was hinting that insulin injections were next on the list.
And that is when I read a book that changed my life, and there's a link to this in the
show notes.
The book is called Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution.
His approach is based on extensive experimentation, and the essential insight is that you can
manage your diabetes through a combination of diet, exercise, and medication, to the point
where you are functionally a normal non-diabetic person.
And the key I was missing is that I was focused on fat in my diet when I should have been focused
on carbohydrates.
I learned that carbohydrates are always turned into sugar in your blood, so minimizing
carbohydrates becomes the essential move.
At the beginning of 2013, I decided I needed to try this after reading his book.
Fortunately, we have labeling laws in the United States, and I assume probably in most
other places as well, to require prepared foods to list the carbohydrate count.
And I could get charts for unprocessed things like fruits and vegetables.
I started by eliminating all grains and starches from my diet, then went to much higher levels
of fruits and vegetables.
That means no bread, and no potatoes for this particular Irishman.
No rice, no corn, no oatmeal.
You get the idea.
I now read labels like a hawk searching for carbohydrates.
I've learned that food manufacturers are very sneaky about putting in sugar in disguised
forms, such as calling it something like dextrose or maltodextrin.
I really think the food industry is out to kill people like me.
And I eat a lot of salad.
At least one meal a day, sometimes two is all salad.
And how has it worked?
On almost every day, my fasting blood sugar is between 70 and 80, and it would be very
rare to ever get over 100.
My hemoglobin A1c is in the low five range, and has never really gone above 5.7 since
I made that change.
Usually it's around 5.3.
I have now had three different doctors tell me that my blood sugar number is no longer
look like those of a diabetic.
To me that means that as long as I continue on the path I am on, of diet, exercise, and
oral medications, and I'm still doing all three of those things, I can go about my business
like I don't have a disease.
For instance, in 2016, my wife and I went on a bicycling trip in Europe.
In 2017, we went hiking out west in the United States in places like the Grand Canyon and
the Rocky Mountain National Park.
So I think I'm actually in pretty good shape for an older man with diabetes, and I planned
to stay that way.
So this is the first of what will be an ongoing series of things looking at these health issues.
Well, actually it's the second because I didn't introduce you a little while back.
But anyway, this is Ahuka signing off for Hacker Public Radio, and reminding you as always
to support FreeSoftware.
Bye-bye.
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