I wandered into a ring of diabetes blogs once, and they were the nicest people, struggling with an impossible task.
They were all damning their "brittle" diabetes.
They would have their carefully measured meal, with the recommended number of carbs, and take their insulin, and sometimes it would work but mostly it wouldn't. Their blood sugar would be too high, and they would take a little more insulin next time, and then it would be too low, and they would frantically eat more...
Travel, special occasions, and times they had to have one more serving of their favorite stress food; all became disasters that made them sick and frantic. Always there loomed a bleak future if they couldn't get this right, and they could not get it "right."
Doctors blamed them, and they blamed themselves.
It is what Dr. Bernstein calls
The Laws of Small Numbers.
Quote:
“Big inputs make big mistakes; small inputs make small mistakes.”
That is the first thing my friend Kanji Ishikawa says to himself each morning on arising. It is his mantra, the single most important thing he knows about diabetes.
...
The name of the game for the diabetic in achieving blood sugar normalization is predictability. It’s very difficult to use medications safely unless you can predict the effect they’ll have. Nor can you normalize blood sugar unless you can predict the effects of what you’re eating. If you can’t accurately predict your blood sugar levels, then you can’t accurately predict your needs for insulin or oral blood sugar–lowering agents. If the kinds of foods you’re eating give you consistently unpredictable blood sugar levels, then it will be impossible to normalize blood sugars.
|
By being told to load up on carbs, these diabetics are getting those unpredictable blood sugar levels. It was so terribly sad.
This, too, is the fault of Ancel Keys and his lipid hypothesis. Since diabetics have a higher risk of heart disease, they got their fat pared even more, and pushed into hearthealthywholegrains, more. So they are dealing with diabetes and heart disease. They get statins right out of the gate.
It really is horrying to step back and see it happening and know there is little I can do. That is why reforming the entire attitude is so very important.