Rich, so sorry to hear about your illness, and here's hoping for a speedy and complete recovery. We, and our nation, need more like you in this fight.

I'm kicking myself as I was going to tell you to check your blood sugars several times before but felt it a bit too invasive for me to do so. I worried about you because you have a heart and you are working tirelessly. THAT IS DANGEROUS!!!!!!!!!!

Remember when I was absent from the blog for about 6 months to a year? It was because I was diagnosed with an AVERAGE blood sugar of 325. Fasting 225. HbA1c of 12.1. (100% of patients with those numbers are blind in 8 years).

It is likely that you can reverse far more of your condition then you are led to believe by the popular press.

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My road to reversal:

-I googled hundreds of peer reviewed papers on Diabetes.

-I found that what has been learned these last 15 years is NOT what trickles down to most local doctors offices.

-Blood sugars are high for 3 reasons:

1) Insufficient Insulin.
2) Insulin Resistance in muscle. (80% of sugar is taken up by skeletal muscle)
3) Countering hormones (due to stress)

Number 3 is no namby pamby "oh stress is unhealthy". It IMMEDIATELY makes blood sugars soar. More on that later and how to prevent it.

Number 2 I healed via bodybuilding,jogging, Supplementation, and DIET. I am now not only NOT Insulin Resistant, but off the charts Insulin Sensitive.

(Number 3) While recovering I did not let my blood sugars rise. I checked my blood sugars constantly (cost me a few grand. I could offer advice on how to do it a bit more cheaply). Whenever it went above 120 I jogged. This sometimes meant jogging for hours a day.

After thousands of measurements I found that my sugars were responding immediately to exercise EXCEPT when anything was wrong with my gums. (ANYTHING. Even the slightest non perfection in the gums and teeth. Research these past months has now confirmed that by the way.)

Also ANYTIME I became angry at Republicans it soared. Worse yet, my blood sugar curves became exercise RESISTANT!

In addition full relaxation was critical. That meant 15 minutes of slow bio feedback breathing at night to ensure the 20 or so minutes of deep sleep older folks get. If you are not falling into those last few minutes of actual DEEP sleep each night then your sugars will grow.

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While the amount of Insulin circulating in me is VERY low, my sugars are completely normal.

FASTING: 83

HbA1c: 5.3

Post Meal: 90% of 1000 cal meals (with 100 grams of Carbohydrates) do NOT raise my blood sugar above 115 at ANY time after the meal and after 1 1/2 hours I am back to the 80s.

If my Doc had measured my sugars earlier I could have avoided further damage to my pancreas. Its a vicious circle: High sugars damage the pancreas so that the pancreas loses yet more of its ability to lower sugars. That means higher sugars which damage the pancreas further.

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Those numbers are occurring now while I do NOT actively lower my sugars. That is, I do weightlift 3 times per week and do jog 3-4 times per week but for a half year I no longer have to run out after a meal. I still watch every peak however as once ever few weeks something pisses me off. After 50 some perfect meals below 115 a poster here did that and I shot to 150! (I ran around the block for 5 minutes and it was back to 104. I checked again 20 minutes later and it was lower. Waited another 20 minutes and checked. Still lower.)

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I've just scratched the surface but I wanted to offer you real hope for improvement. Remember too that I am on NO drugs or Insulin. NONE. I am not opposed to them but they should be the second line of defense.

I also understand that you are dealing with insufficient insulin so you have probably been put on Insulin already. Still, I have found this topic pretty poorly handled by many local Doctors,but beautifully by medical researchers. Please contact me at my democrats.com email address if you have any questions.

Love ya,

Jim

P.S. The Life Extension Protocol for Diabetes at www.lef.com has worked wonderfully. I also put my sister on the one for rheumatoid arthritis and cut her Celebrex in half. Her doctors where shocked when her new blood tests came back and her markers for inflammation had dropped like rocks. There should have been no surprise however since this is simply all the NEW medical findings being put to use.

P.S.S. The main thing to remember is that you have HIGHT BLOOD SUGAR FIRST not Type 1 Diabetes first. High blood sugar comes from several sources. Some of them are amenable to change. Change them and the severity of what your may not be able to change is lessoned enormously. You may still need Insulin but the lessoned dose will be kind to your entire system.

I'm very sorry to hear about your misfortune. Diabetes runs in my dad's family, but so far I have been fortunate.

Rest assured you will be in my prayers, and I wish you the very best of luck with any future treatments.

Don't give up hope, and you know you can always find support on this site.

Good Luck!

Terry

If anyone waits until their FASTING blood sugar reaches 125 (the definition for Diabetes) before taking action, they have waited too long!

Some or lots of damage has been done.

I'd recommend the following tests:

Fasting Blood Sugar: Your pancreas wants you down in the mid 80s.

HbA1C: Truly normal Blood Sugars lead to a value of 5.0 plus or minus a few tenths.

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NOTE: You can get classic Diabetic complications WITHOUT having Diabetes.

Complications: vision, kidney, heart problems stem from high sugars NOT a clinical diagnoses of Diabetes.

You can have a far larger reserve than I have for controlling blood sugars, but if you don't sleep, eat wrong, stress out, have gum problems, etc. your sugars can rise to damaging levels.

YOU MAY HAVE THE GENETIC PREDISPOSITION TO NEVER GO FURTHER DOWN HILL AS FAR AS BLOOD SUGARS ARE CONCERNED HOWEVER, YOUR HIGHER THAN HEALTHY BLOOD SUGARS CAN CAUSE THE SAME DAMAGE AS OCCURS IN PEOPLE WITH DIABETES.

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THE common denominator in folks who live to be 100 (regardless if they took care of themselves or not) is:

-LOW INSULIN
-LOW BLOOD SUGAR

Wait and see, in the coming years blood sugar will be the new number to watch. More so than Cholesterol in fact.

I should have mentioned that Type 2 Diabetes can creep up on you for a decade WITHOUT the two tests mentioned above showing it!

You would need to add a FASTING INSULIN test to discover that.

Also even if you don't have the genetic predisposition to Diabetes and never degrade in blood sugars, you may be accomplishing that via LARGE amounts of insulin being secreted from your pancreas. That however is damaging to the heart.

The best course is to test every year:

FASTING BLOOD SUGAR

FASTING INSULIN

HbA1C

If any system starts to degrade you can do something about it before it starts destroying other systems.

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DO NOT GO BY THE VALUES GENERALLY ASSUMED TO BE FINE.

Peer reviewed papers reveal a different story.

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Also, there is a reluctance to make a diagnoses of Diabetes because of the stigma attached (employment, insurance, etc.) This means waiting to tell patients until there essentially no way for them to reverse the condition. I would rather know so I can mitigate damages.

Once "Diagnosed" you carry the title DIABETIC for life. Hope you had insurance beforehand.

I'm so sorry to hear this news.

Know that you have a lot of support here.
Jim has done so much research on the subject that
I know you will get lots of good information and help
from him.

You are a big part of our community here, and your tireless
efforts on behalf of your candidates are amazing.
I too, miss Edwards.

I'm sending good, positive thoughts and prayers your way.

Hugs,
Karin