All Geezers Talk About is Their Ailments

The existence and popularity of "self help" books is a phenomenon that I see as a window into our culture. It also touches on the recent news topic of health care. This self help culture has completely change my life. Saved my life. There are of course a lot of fad books, and crazy cult books out there. But in any human endeavor there is always 15% of us who want to lie, steal, cheat, take advantage, be violent etc. We all have different ways of dealing with the 15%. I try not to let them ruin the mainstream good stuff. Of course if I've just been mugged, or burglarized, I may not be so rational and may in fact, join the 15% for a while. The self help concept has given me knowledge, if not wisdom. But more importantly it has given me alternative approaches to solving my problems, spiritually, mentally and physically. The best example I have of self help saving my life is my experience with Diabetes. The second best example is my experience with religion. Let's leave religion for another day, another blog post. Diabetes. We all know about it. There's a few million of us who are walking around with it and don't know it. It's now an epidemic. When I got diagnosed, I was far from rational. I was ignorant also. And it was to me, mostly about losing my airman medical certificate. This meant I was grounded and out sick from my job. The mainstream medical community welcomed me into diabetes and this is what they told me: 1. this is a "progressive" disease. It will shorten your life, you'll need more and more medication, eventually you will die from it. 2. there is no cure and never will be. 3. controlling blood glucose levels will help you prolong your life, and the only really good way of having that control is with insulin. As a type 2 diabetic you still make your own insulin, but eventually your pancreas will "burn out" and you will be dependent on insulin injections. 4. As the disease progresses, if you don't do a good job of controlling blood sugar with your insulin, you will go blind from retinopathy, have your feet amputated due to neuropathy complications, have kidney failure and more. 5 don't mess with diets such as low carbohydrate. This is dangerous. Stick to the recommended food pyramid of mostly healthy grains and stay away from the fats. 6. The good news is we are your team of health professionals and we are standing by to check on you as your disease progresses. We have surgeons who can do the amputations for you. And dialysis machines to keep you alive when your kidneys fail. And eye surgeons who can do some operations on your retina to slow the process of your going blind. So this is where I began my journey of learning through my savior: self help. I was lucky. I found a great book right away: "Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution". How I was attracted to that word 'solution'! Dr. Bernstein is an inspiration. He's a type 1 and a low carb diet advocate. He was an engineer from his college days. He was working on solutions to his diabetes but ran into a brick wall with conventional medicine So he went to medical school! He knew the solution was carbs the whole time. He practically invented the little meter that all diabetics use to test blood glucose. The doctors used to do that for the diabetic in the lab, so you used to have to go to the doc, pay for the check up, get a lab slip, go to the lab, just to get a snapshot of your blood glucose for that moment. And the AMA hated giving up that power of controlling the testing of BG. That logic of course still exists today with other tests. The doctor must see you and send you to the lab because you are too stupid to know when you need the test, and you are way too stupid to know what the results mean. Even though the results are clearly explained on your lab report. We have our home test for BG thanks in part to Dr. Bernstein's hard work. My diabetes diagnosis came from the Doc who was giving me a routine airman medical. Next I went to our family doctor. She told me about Type 2 diabetes and showed me the American Diabetes Association diet. She put me on an oral medication to take once a day. She ordered a lab test for me called an H A1c. It's a long term blood glucose test. And she told me to buy a blood glucose meter. So I went out and did these things. I had plenty of time because I was off work. With full pay. But I also read Dr. Bernstein's book. And started eating low carb. Lower even then the Dr. Atkins diet! My H A1c test came back high of course. But my daily "glucose meter" numbers just kept getting better and better. Was it because of the low carb diet or was it the pills I was now taking? Soon I knew the answer and how useless and dangerous to the type 2 diabetic those pills were. The antiquated pills she had prescribed, a derivative of the old "Sulfa" drugs, lower blood sugar by stimulating your already overworked pancreas to make more insulin. But I was in the process of learning that I was "insulin resistant" and adding more insulin would indeed "burn out" the beta cells in my pancreas. In other words, the pills my Doc gave me were making my diabetes worse. Much worse. How could she not know this? And if she didn't know, then don't prescribe. "Do no harm"! So I was mad at that Doc, and I stopped taking those pills. But there's more. Before I finally fired her I asked for one more thing. As I was in a hurry to get that Airman medical certification back, I needed a lower H A1c. So since she was my doctor of record I asked her for a lab slip for a fresh H A1c. She refused because she said it is a waste of time because it's only good every three months at the soonest. So wait three months and take the test. I knew I had read somewhere that this was BS. So I learned about the H A1c and how it works by measuring glucose attached to red blood cells. I learned that changes in daily BG levels affect the test with a recency factor of a weighted average. Results can show changes in as little as one to three weeks. So that was when my Doc was really fired!. But no other Doc would allow me to take the test! For the same wacko reason! So I leaned on a Doc who was a friend and he didn't want to do it either, but he did. Guess what. My new H A1c results--after 3 weeks-- had my number at a level the FAA would accept for flying! A number that was half way to normal non-diabetic numbers! Why didn't all the Docs know about this? They do know, but they play by rules that use old knowledge to prevent being sued! So the next step was to go to a specialist because a family doc knew little about diabetes! An endocrinologist! Now we'll get somewhere. 100 miles away in Wash. D.C. He's a great guy. His wife is the nurse and their matching 2 seat Mercedes cars are shining in the lot. He's real expensive and he and his wife spend 90% of their limited time with me triple checking my insurance. I saw him twice about three months apart, and I fired him. He doesn't care. He has plenty of patients. In fact he was so busy that I saw him about 4 minutes on one visit and maybe six on the next. The reason I fired him is because he's embedded so deeply in a diabetes paradigm that he couldn't see my situation at all. As I tried to quickly explain my journey with high blood glucose he was testing me for neuropathy by using a special wand to touch the bottom of my feet. And he said I was too thin and that if I lost any more weight to call his office immediately. In other words instead of seeing my situation of early diagnosis of poor glucose tolerance and my need for diet and exercise and needing to lose another 15 pounds, he had me sized up with his patients in late stage type 1 diabetes. He wanted me not to lose weight for fear that I was emaciated which is the final and near death situation of metabolic imbalance occurring when Diabetes Mellitus goes untreated. He's one of the best Endocrinologists in the DC area. He wasn't even in the same ballpark with my condition! I liked him though. He was a nice man, but he was working too hard. So the years went by and I found a new family Doc. What I would do was decide what treatment I wanted out of the medical system. Then make up a scenario for the Doc that would make him prescribe what I figured I needed. Low carb is the closest thing I have now to a cure. There is not one single Doc whom I have seen or met who thinks it is safe to go low carb. So my real Docs are on the web and in books. Self help! I took Metformin, another oral pill to help with blood sugar numbers. But recently I had a breakthrough. Having been lax in diet and lazy about testing, my condition got worse and worse till about a month ago. It's when I discovered a new mentor on the internet. The Doc who wrote a book: "Protein Power". I havn't read it, but the guy's blog is my inspiration. Also the book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Taube. That is my new bible. This new information has made me "mad as hell" at the medical community. When I get mad I have new strength to diet and test. So I stopped taking the Metformin, because it didn't work anyway and my diet would make the late Dr. Atkins proud! And I seem to have new energy. Enough to write the longest post I've ever written. LloydLou ITTY ... ::::+::::