The Passing of a Good friend

This last couple of weeks has been rough emotionally and physically draining. A neighbor and friend passed away. It was two weeks ago she was here in my living room animated, laughing, joking around and talking about the changes she was making to be healthier. We talked about what she would get on our next shopping trip the first of the month when her food stamps came in, much more nutritious foods, with juices and water instead of soda and energy drinks. Her new pain management doctor had given her great advice on how to ease her physical pain, and exercises that would strengthen her muscles to ease the pain in her joints. She was looking forward and excited about the changes she would make. She had manic depressive disorder, epilepsy, and was frequently in a lot of pain. She had many doctors give her so many pills just to mask the pains, but they kept wanting to give her the newer drugs that were supposed to help with her epilepsy as well as help the other problems. But they just were not working the way they were supposed to and her seizures were becoming more frequent. Her primary doctor had given her several tests, and even after a small stroke they were not addressing the problems she had. Perhaps she didn't tell all the doctors she had all of her problems, but I think she tried. I just don’t think the psychiatric people took her seriously. She knew which meds she should or shouldn’t take together, she kept logs as to what she had taken and when, written in crayon in large letters because she couldn't see well and needed glasses badly. She was only 33 years old, was a widow for the last 5 ½ years, and had gone from being a recluse to a socially active person in the last year since she began going to group therapy and had met other neighbors besides me. But she had also begun to come to our houses to see us instead of the other way around, and we never suspected she had gone from just being messy to hording. She had to depend on her father and friends for money, she couldn't drive because of the epilepsy, and her garbage pick-up had been shut off, her phone was off, her AC had gone out and she had been without water because her pump had gone out months ago until just recently. Her father often let her house go into foreclosure and that scared her tremendously. She had her cats for company and her friends in online chats when she had a phone. But for the last month she had no phone and often came here to call her dad to ask for help. The temperature was 115o F on the last day I saw her. She was found dead on the floor the next morning only because the man who fixed her AC couldn't get an answer and her friend went inside to see why she wouldn't answer the door. We still are waiting on the autopsy to know for sure what it was that caused her death; the memorial service was last weekend. I still look for her to come with her tiny tap at the door or her phone text of something funny or complaining about something or someone. She was the most giving and loving person, even though she had nothing she would take in a stray cat, use the last of her food stamp money to get a neighbor’s child some milk, and let a friend put his camper in her yard and use her electric even though he never had money to pay for it. She trusted even when it was not merited. I am going to miss her, her comedic way of dealing with problems and her way of changing to fit whoever her friends needed her to be at the time. She told each of us only portions of her problems, no one had the complete story. She grieved for her husband often, and now hopefully she is with him again. I look out my back window and wish she was coming through the gate we put in for her. Coming to borrow some cat food, some food for herself, or ask for a ride, or for some money for her doctor appointment, or to see if she could use my phone, or complain about her family fighting and wished they all could get along. She said it was the constant bickering that kept her here and not with them in California, but she was lonely and her cats were her children. May they find good homes; I couldn't take them, even though I wanted to. I will miss her.

Stopping Type II Diabetes, Is it Possible?

There is so much information on the Internet about diabetes that is contrary to other information about diabetes, it can drive you crazy trying to figure it all out. Each person is different, each body reacts differently to the many different treatments, medications and foods. Each of us needs to watch our glucose levels as we eat different foods and when we eat them. There is a fairly new science, called nutrigenomics, not a new idea, but current science is just now getting around to studying it.

I only heard about nutrigenomics watching a program on P.B.S.: "Blood Sugar Solution" by Dr. Mark Hyman. Nutrigenomics can be defined as the study of the relationships between dietary factors and individual genes. Like I said it is not a new concept, in 400BC, Hippocrates told physicians to ‘Leave your drugs in the chemist’s pot if you can heal your patient with food.’ It is very similar to the Eastern medicine teachings of the Ayurveda Diet (Indian Alternative or Holistic Medicine). That the cells of the foods we eat effect the cells of our bodies in profound ways. Some give them information to turn on "storage" mode so that we store fat because we must be starving. Most of the fast foods and convenience foods fit into that category, as do refined flour, refined sugars, and all the things made with chemicals. Not all have fat listed on their nutrition labels, it isn't fat that makes us fat, it is the wrong kinds of foods. 


Some doctors and researchers think we should live strictly from a vegetarian diet, others tell us to eat fewer carbohydrates. I think that we were meant to be omnivorous, eating both plants and animals. A balance of foods, proteins, vegetables and fruits, dairy, grains and good fats is necessary. Of course there are those who have sensitivities and allergies to some foods, including dairy, nuts and gluten from any grain. Some are real, some are perceived because people have read about them but never have been tested for them. 


Each of us came from ancestors from various parts of the world, our genes learned to work properly from the foods those ancestors ate. If you have several different areas your ancestors came from, it can be hard to determine which diets to follow. I would say it depends how long it has been since they left that diet, how many generations and if too many generations have passed, just follow the general diet plan and experiment with foods to see how your glucose levels and body reacts. Like plants, our cells also learn to adapt slowly over time to the growing conditions they are given, slowly as in more than one or even two generations. Change that is too fast creates misfiring messages for our body to understand. Poor nutrition to our body, is like not giving a tropical plant enough water, it will die or deform.  All of our ancestors, only a few generations ago, ate only organically grown local foods, there was no refrigeration or fast way to get products to market and keep them fresh. They canned, and preserved the foods of summer to last throughout the winter. They ate only meat, dairy and eggs from animals that were grass fed, or game and freshly caught fish with seasonal fruits and vegetables, or the same foods preserved. These foods had no chemicals with long unpronounceable names, they had no preservatives other than salt, they were not genetically modified or from animals kept in pens that ate only genetically modified grains or garbage. 


Environmental toxins can also turn on the fat storage system and store those same toxins in it!  Toxins like pesticides and herbicides  screw up your thyroid, and make it work overtime or under perform. They can create a disease in your pancreas, gallbladder, liver and kidneys.  They affect every cell in your body; they can cause genetic mutations. Even babies are now being born with these toxins in their systems because of their mothers diets.


When I go to the grocery store I now read labels on everything, it began with trying to lose weight, then my diabetes and then my husbands high cholesterol. I have discovered for everything they take out, they add something else that is not good for you to enhance flavor or texture.  So many of these bad foods and additives act to trigger your immune system and cause even more problems with arthritis, frequent infections and colds, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and all inflammatory diseases. I look for foods with the fewest ingredients and nothing I don't know what it is. Absolutely no high fructose corn syrup because not only is it made from genetically modified corn and refined to being super sweet, it raises blood glucose very quickly with no value what so ever. Real cane sugar also raises the blood glucose level, but it does so slower. Eating foods that taste super sweet, either from sugars or artificial sweeteners make you crave more food, especially salty foods, which makes you crave sweets, and it becomes a vicious cycle. 


No matter how much I want to plant a big garden, or raise farm animals, the old body just doesn't work the way it once did. I do use containers for some fresh vegetables and fruits, and try to buy organically grown meats, as these are much better tasting and offer far more nutrition than most fresh foods in the grocery stores. Crops that are genetically modified for high yield rather than nutritious value are so lacking in the vitamins and minerals we need, that they too can turn on our starvation mode. So we still need to add supplements; multiple vitamins, vitamin D, and fish oil omega 3's, as well as others depending on our system.  According to the science, feeding our cells the right kinds of foods we can over come diseases like diabetes, arthritis, inflammatory diseases, cancers, and more. This seems like common sense to me, we were not meant to consume all these strange chemicals.


My meal plan is to eat 3 meals and 3 mini meals. All containing the proper amounts of protein, fast acting carbohydrates and slow acting carbohydrates. Just in different amounts. I find the healthiest foods I can, and the largest variety I can, including seeds and nuts. For those who prefer to count calories, you need to eat 10 calories for each pound of your ideal weight to get enough nutrients and not increase your chances of going into that starvation mode. Never less than 1200 calories a day for an adult. But it has to be the right foods. 


Now, I will tell you I know all of this and still do not always stick to what I know is good for me. But this blog is going to help me stick to the best foods and stick with my meal plan, to see how much healthier I can get and how much weight I can lose. (It is embarrassing to tell you how much I weigh, but I have recently lost 10 pounds since the last high blood sugar scare.) 


If you want to join me and report how you too are doing, please post in the comment section below. Thank you for helping me to stay on track by supporting my blog. :)

Hemophilia, Is It on the Rise, Or has it Gone Undetected?

When our grandson was only six months old, he was teething and his mouth would not stop bleeding. Local hospitals just kept sending him home thinking this is a first time mother who is nervous, they kept telling her it would stop, the bleeding didn’t stop. After several trips to two different hospitals, a lot of internet searching and some strong insistence by his mother, she got them to test him for hemophilia. They had to send the blood tests off to a lab because their lab didn’t test for such things. They discovered he did have severe hemophilia, no family history on either side of the family, and since doctors think it is too rare to test for, this lead to a rush to the closest hospital that treats hemophilia, a helicopter flight for treatment for him with his mother, while his dad had to drive the five hour trip. They did tests, they surgically inserted a port to give him medicine to stop the bleeding and once they determined the kind of medicine he needed they sent him home. So now there were two very scared parents, and one sick little boy, three sets of grandparents, aunts and uncles all very worried. But the hospital had set them up with a Hemophilia Nurse to come to the house to give him his treatments daily.

It wasn’t long and his port began to have problems, he had to be taken back to the hospital. A young family with little money was now rushing back across their state to the hemophilia ward for more surgery. Remember any surgery causes bleeding and this is so dangerous in a child, whose blood will not clot, but the port had shifted and he was bleeding internally. Luckily several family members chipped in so that they had a working car, gas money and money to live on while there, as well as pay their bills while dad was off work. It was at the hospital the parents met other parents who had been in similar situations. No family history of hemophilia and none lived near the hospital when their child was diagnosed. Some, like our son and daughter-in-law, could not afford to be off work to accompany their child but did so at peril of losing everything. Every bleed is potentially life threatening. Every treatment is very expensive, as are the hospital bills.

We learned there are many forms of hemophilia and some in women are never diagnosed because doctors never think to check. It is a genetic mutation disease, and usually strikes males. In our grandsons case they had no insurance and so the parents could not afford to be tested, they showed no symptoms. So they cannot take the chance of having a second child. 

This is the kind of disease that once diagnosed without the new Healthcare Reform Act making insurers accept pre-existing conditions in a couple of years, they have to remain on state healthcare all their lives.

It is assumed that the disease is passed from mother to child. However I have questions about this, and not a single explanation in the research I have read explains why so many children seem to have parents with no symptoms. It is another of those questions where I keep asking “are you sure the grandfather’s exposure to Agent Orange had nothing to do with this?” His first wife had multiple miscarriages, a still birth, one child born with only a partial stomach that went undetected and died in a few weeks, and the son that lived was born prematurely and his lungs were not developed. I also had two miscarriages. All of the research being done on Hemophilia is centered around the old belief that it had to come from the mother, but since Agent Orange can cause other abnormalities, diseases and cancers in the children and grandchildren of Vietnam vets, and there seems to be an increase in cases in the last twenty years, I still keep asking.  The company who made Agent Orange still produces many herbicides used by homeowners, cities, counties and agriculture. It has the same ingredients in them just at lower concentrations.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange. I am looking for more information and asking more questions all of the time, it seems like more than a coincidence to me.

Because of their experience of the many rushed trips to the hospital, and after talking to the nurses who came to give our grandson his injections they moved closer to a Hemophilia Center, a hospital that has the specialized care needed for this disease. But that took finding a new job and a place they could afford as close to the hospital yet in a safe neighborhood as they could find. It also lead to our kids, (I am so proud of them for this), starting up a Non-Profit to help other families who make the mad rush to a hospital, have no money or personal care items with them, and sometimes even don’t have on clothes that fit a change in weather. Below is the link to see their story and where donations can be made.

Their non-profit is: http://www.thedevynthomasfoundation.org/. They help many families who are referred to them by the hospital and the nursing agency who does the homecare visits. There are also links to agencies to help families to learn about hemophilia and how to find treatment centers.

If you or your child has a problem with blood clotting, long term bleeding, do ask to be tested. There is help available once it is diagnosed. 


Our Grandson is now 2 1/2 and has had many scares with several visits to the hospital. Keeping a toddler from bumping himself is quite a job, and nearly impossible because in all other ways he is an active normal 2 1/2 year old boy. He gets his daily infusions and often several a day when a bruise becomes a major bleed and a limb or joint swells to 3 times its normal size. we never get used to the gut wrenching fear of a bleed, knowing the damage it is causing his joints. This will be a lifelong struggle for all involved. 

DIABETES DIAGNOSIS

The other day I called an old friend to catch up. We hadn’t talked in a few months. She began to tell me how hard of a time that she and her husband were having since he had been diagnosed with diabetes.

Boy, did this sound familiar. A few years ago when I was diagnosed I had gone through the same things. The doctor tells you how high your glucose count is and gives you a prescription and sends you home. You were in shock, no matter how much you actually know, or don’t know, about diabetes, your blood sugar is high and you can’t think. Even though I had worked in dietary kitchens, taken dietary courses, nutrition classes, I could not remember anything. So you think, if I just don’t eat, it has to come down, forget just not eating anything with sugar, you mean eat NOTHING. You check your blood sugar levels way more than is necessary because nothing is happening, and you don’t understand, you are starving, still drinking gallons of water, and the glucose count is still way too high. After a couple of days you decide you have to eat, so you eat only meat, but of course you are still hungry, you have no energy and you are still SOOO thirsty. You call the doctor back, and the nurse tells you to come back in, they check your glucose, it’s still high. But this time you ask “what can I eat?” Only to be told you will need to go to a class to learn how to handle your disease, and to eat six small meals a day and avoid sweets. Your mind is screaming “SIX meals a day, of WHAT?” But, you still are not thinking clearly and leave. You head to the grocery store to look for foods you can eat. You don’t know what you are looking for but ask directions to the diabetic section. Obviously this must be wrong, the only things here are sugar free “sweets”, things that would normally have added sugar. OK, so does that mean anything that isn’t sweet you can eat? No, that’s not what it means and you have a few weeks before that class begins, now what do you do?

I got lucky, and met a woman who saw me looking at the ingredients on packages and was kind enough to tell me she had to do that too, because she was a diabetic. I think I almost grabbed her and kissed her. I explained I was recently diagnosed and I had not been able to get my glucose below 300mg/dl yet. Her eyes got wide, so I knew this was worse than I had thought. She asked if I was on insulin, “no” I replied. She asked what I had been eating, I told her. She slowly smiled. She said “let me take you through the store, and I will help you shop.” She put her frozen food back in the freezer and off we went, me saying I didn’t want to be such a bother, while nearly hanging on to this woman who seemed like my salvation. We went back to the fresh produce section, and she began explaining to me that I should avoid ‘white’ foods except cauliflower. I asked if that meant the skins or the inside of the foods? She laughed. She explained that she meant things like white potatoes, bleached grains, and processed foods. She said that eating six small meals meant just eating smaller portions at regular meals of normal foods like fresh meat, fruits and vegetables, and even whole grain breads, and to have snacks in between and at bedtime that always consisted of a balance of protein and carbohydrates. So we shopped and she showed me the hidden sugars on the ingredient lists like fructose, dextrose, corn syrup, honey, and more. Then she showed me the whole grain breads and how some said whole grain, but not all had the first ingredient listed as whole wheat flour, but rather enriched flour, those were no good. It had to be whole grain flour, or whole wheat flour as the first ingredient. She then told me to watch carefully the packages that said “low fat” because most added sugar to make up for the flavor lost when they removed the fat, don’t buy them. Once she established I knew how to cook, she was able to explain that everything but meat turns into a carbohydrate, or sugar. So when making a meal be sure there is some kind of protein at every one of the six meals, it didn’t have to be from meat, it could come from fish, dairy, eggs, beans, nuts, or legumes. But that the last three also contained carbohydrates. I knew that, but it just wasn’t registering in my sugar brain fog. But I left the store, with foods I felt safe eating and thanking her over and over again. She had also told me to avoid that section labeled “diabetic”, it all tasted bad anyhow.

So I began my routine, and ate healthier, yet still was having trouble with the snack part and always being hungry. A week later when my blood sugars were still way up there, the doctor put me on insulin. I freaked. I had given shots to animals and people before, but right now my eyes were so bad everything was blurry, and when I picked up the prescription I couldn’t understand the dosing instructions, they made no sense. I couldn't see the needles to read the increments. High blood sugar also changes your eyes so they will not focus while it is high, a major problem when you are sitting there with a needle and tiny vial of insulin. It was after the pharmacy had closed, I sat there crying until I looked up and saw the magnet from my insurance company on the refrigerator with a 24 hour nurse help line in big bold numbers. I called. By the time I was finally able to read my insurance number from my card the frustration was too much and I was crying when the nurse came on the line. She was so patient, kind and helpful, I can’t tell you how valuable she was. She first asked how high my blood sugar was, when I was diagnosed and all about my medications. She talked me through feeling the marks on the needle and how to fill it and give myself my insulin. She then began telling me about how and why I needed to eat what, and when. It turns out not eating now while taking the insulin could kill me as much as not taking the insulin. Oh, goody here come the tears again. She asked me to get a piece of paper and pen, and she began to give me a diet plan asking what foods I had in the house, and was happy with most of my choices. (Thank you again lady in the grocery store.) After we did one day worth of meals, the nurse explained that my main meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner should be about 30 to 45 grams of carbohydrates per meal with about 4oz. of protein. My snacks were to be 15-20 grams of carbohydrate and 1-2 ounces of protein. If I was still hungry between meals, she told me to eat protein until we could get the blood sugar down. She suggested soy nuts, or another nut, because it would also satisfy my craving for crunchy snacks, but not to eat salted ones because that would only make me want more sweets. She called me back every evening that week to ask what my numbers were, what I had eaten and to see if I had any questions or were having any problems giving myself the insulin. I was having a problem with the insulin, because I just couldn’t see, but my husband was able to give me the shots.

That nurse called me twice a week the following week, and once a week after that. When I was able to get my blood sugar down to 100 and was slowly taken off the insulin, she still called me once a month. They sent me so much information, and when my eyes got so I could see, I really began doing research online. I discovered many of my online friends also were diabetic and they helped me a lot too.

The nurse also suggested I purchase a week’s worth of ready-made meals, of the healthy kind, in the frozen food section where I could read how many carbohydrates were in each one, and I could learn to see portion sizes. This actually did help me, because I needed to lose some weight.

So, the point of this week’s blog is to help the next person diagnosed, who is lost, and to remind you it is nothing to be ashamed of. Not just fat people but skinny people get diagnosed with diabetes. The signs are constant thirst, blurred vision, frequent urination, a sudden drop in weight, or being hungry all the time, always being tired, irritability, and other seemingly minor symptoms that alone would seem like nothing. If you have any doubts, check with your doctor. Then remember to ask for information.

There are hundreds of websites now dedicated to teaching you about your disease, there are social networks where you can ask your friends for help, even get a buddy to work with you the way the nurse did with me, the companies that make the glucose meters all have excellent information and will send you free meters with a few test strips to try them out. The test strips are expensive, and do have expiration dates, so if you are low on money make sure you spread these requests out so not to have the test strips expire before you can use them. I discovered when I didn’t have insurance that Accu-Chek, my favorite meter company, had a program for those who were low income and had no insurance to help with the cost of the strips. So call your meter company and explain the situation! There is help when you ask for it.

The reason I like the Accu-Chek meter is because it takes a drum of test strips instead of placing them in individually. The arthritis in my hands often made me drop the single test strip and ruin it because I couldn’t hang on to it. It worked best for me, other meters work fine too. Ask you pharmacist which ones are the cheapest to buy the test strips for if you do not have insurance.

Please feel free to pass around this information; each of us needs help when we are diagnosed no matter how much experience we have had with helping others with the disease. If you see someone struggling to read ingredients in the grocery store, you might just offer to help them.