Keeping motivated.

I hit this summer after my exams, hard. With a lack of hours at work, stresses of new ventures in my life (learning to drive, volunteering, extra free time!) I fell into a bit of a funk, and my diabetes has suffered massively. With erratic blood sugars and inulin doses, I've gained weight, lost motivation and generally have ended up in a bit of a hopeless spiral!

Not to worry! All is not lost, yet...

I've been trying to eat as all natural as possible. More fresh cooked dinners from home, more fruits and veggies, and less processed refined foods. It does help that I'm vegetarian, but I'm hoping that eating much better will mean I can drop my insulin also, and thus lose weight!

I'm going back to the gym next month: due to financial issues, I had to freeze my membership, but that was no excuse: I could have gone biking, or even dare I say it "jogging." I hate jogging, even on a treadmill. But I'm going to start biking again. Exercise after all, improved your body's ability to utilise insulin, has lasting effects on lowering your blood sugar levels and exercise itself prevents against a whole bunch of nasties later in life.

I really don't know why I struggle with it so much!

All the best guys!
R x

The Rumour Mill!

This is just a super quick post to mention a couple of things I've heard recently. Bear in mind these are just articles i've read, so the information may be partially inaccurate...that being said it's always nice to have hope!

I've heard a couple of things: one, that two dogs have effectively been cured of diabetes using gene therapy! Now this just sounds amazing! Although the diabetes was induced unnaturally in these dogs, the DNA injected into them, cured the diabetes! You can read the full article here:

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34394/title/Dogs-Cured-of-Type-1-Diabetes/

Now I know we're a little different from our canine friends, but it indicates that progress is being mad.

The other recent development has been that of the biohub: an essentially artificial organ, which acts of a house for artificial insulin producing cells, planted into the human. Sounds daunting, but again, seems to work!

http://www.diabetesmine.com/2013/03/newsflash-dri-creating-mini-biohub-organ-to-mimic-pancreas.html
These developments all seemed to come at once, which indicated to me great progress is being made towards a cure, and I have hope it might be in my lifetime.

But I'm still trying my best to live my life and manage the diabetes I do have now.

Rx

Meltdown!

I have been going into diabetes meltdown recently. I don't know if its stress, lack of exercise or a combination of factors but every morning I've been waking up with crazy high sugar levels in the morning, for no reason. My night time tests can't even shed light on what on earth is happening!

So I'm waiting for July now, so that a continual blood glucose monitor and rigorous food diary might shed light on this mystery. In the meantime, i'm just holding tight hoping my legs don't fall off (I'm only half joking.)

feeling so ill every morning makes me very aware of my own mortality; not in a morbis "I'm going to die" sort of way, but it makes me want to really take care of myself...

I swing too and fro with attempting to eat as all natural as possible, as I've heard but I also FEEL like that's what my body needs. Struggling with steady weight increase also, I figured this would mean less insulin required over all, with hopefully subsequent weight loss.

Fingers crossed!

Rx