6 is the Magic Number: D blog Day

Today is DBlog Day, started by Gina at Diabetes Talk Fest, and like the rest of the d-blogalaxy, I’m going to add my 2 cents to the conversation (so basically 1/3 of a cent per thought.  Less than the penny I’m used too, but I know times are tough).  So, without any further ado, here is my list of 6 things I wish that people knew about diabetes.

1. How to cure it.  As far as I can tell, nobody’s figured that one out yet, but if I’m, wrong, and anybody reading this DOES in fact know how to cure it, please leave it in the comments section.  In fact, the first person to leave a [viable] cure in the comments section will win a box of alcohol swaps and a copy of the the Calorie King’s Fat & Carbohydrate Counter (2009 edition. VERY lightly used).  Anybody who knows a cure and doesn’t leave it in the comments is just a jerk.

2.  How you get it. I know some people have some ideas, and I feel pretty safe laying a decent amount of the blame on my parents’ DNA, but I wouldn’t mind a bit more speceficity than that.  Like, could I have avoided it, even with the genes that I have if I’d done things differently?  Is there anything to that whole vitamin D thing?  What if I’d slept more, or maybe slept less?  What if I didn’t lie about getting a little misty at the end of Titanic?  Or was it a done deal from the moment I was born?

3.  When you ask me how my diabetes is going, and I say “pretty well”, that’s a relative “pretty well”, on a continuum that starts at “It sucks, I wish I didn’t have it, and there are few things I wouldn’t do to get rid of it” on the positive side, to “I’m dead” on the negative side.

4.  Just because you heard something about diabetes, doesn’t mean it’s true, even if you heard it from a diabetic or a member of their family.  This isn’t really something just about diabetes, it could be applied to pretty much anything.  So, I’m taking that liberty and applying it to diabetes.  For example, to the woman who told me that whenever her friend’s blood sugar gets low, she has to run home and take insulin:  that is not true.

5. The human body and the FDA do not agree on what constitutes “sugar”. There is virtually no difference to my (or your, for that matter) body between the sugar in a potato and the sugar in candy/cake/ice cream/etc.  It’s the carbohydrates that matter.  So if one label says “50g total carbohydrate, 6g sugar” and another says “11g total carbohydrate, 10g sugar” the first one is WAY worse for me than the second, all else being equal.  Not that I can’t eat either one, just that the likelihood that I will be able to administer the right amount of insulin to a) keep me from spiking out of my desired range and b) not then send me dropping below my desired range is much greater with the first.

6. You might get it. I don’t say this to be mean or threatening. I say it because it really is worth learning about diabetes, even if no one you know has it, because chances are either you or someone close to you is going to get it.  So the better informed/more compassionate you are now, the better off you’ll be when that day comes.  It’s a life-changer no matter what, but as with anything else, knowledge is power.