Month: August 2020

The diabetes epidemic

This documentary series about diabetic complications is difficult to watch, but I think it is important to raise awareness. Brian suffers from end-stage renal disease and might lose his right foot. His story is heartbreaking. Yet it is the story of so many diabetics. Diabetes is the leading cause of amputation, preventable blindness and…
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Salt Sugar Fat: How the food giants hooked us

Salt Sugar Fat opens up with the secret Pillsbury meeting in 1999 where the heads of our largest food companies came together to discuss the budding obesity epidemic. The outcome was this: do nothing. We have all got a lot fatter since then…
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When not to dose insulin for protein

When you’re eating a very low carbohydrate diet you need to dose insulin for protein. There are however a couple of occasions where you should be careful with this. One is when you exercise after meals. I like to go for walks after lunch on most days. This means that I don’t take any insulin…
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Insulin at the end of the world

My favorite character in the apocalyptic sci-fi novel Lucifer’s Hammer is Dan Forrester. He is an astrophysicist at JPL, and when a comet hits the earth he has the presence of mind to pack books into plastic bags in his septic tank so that we can one day rebuild civilization. Dan is also diabetic and the rules of the universe don’t favor diabetics…
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A note on portion control

In my previous life, I was a carb junkie. My favorite snacks included crumpets and chocolate muffins. Since I got type 1 diabetes and went low carb I’ve had to get used to something really important: portion control. Protein is glucogenic so eating large amounts of meat and cheese can be tricky if you’re injecting…
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Don’t drop your HbA1c too fast

My first endocrinologist had a typewriter on her desk that was older than me. I was looking for a doctor that was up to date on continuous glucose monitors and second-generation insulins. My guess was that this wasn’t it. She wrote down a number on a piece of paper…
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Dosing insulin for protein

In the absence of carbohydrates in the meal, the liver turns to gluconeogenesis – the process of converting protein to glucose. I eat up to 30g of carbohydrates with every meal, and I always have to dose insulin for the protein…
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Dr Atkins New Diet Revolution

This is a great diet book. It was released in 1992, as an updated version to the 1972 original, and can easily be read today. The body hasn’t changed that much. The focus not only on weight loss but also weight maintenance, which is often forgotten…
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The art of pre-bolusing insulin

For the uninitiated, I’ll let you in on a secret. Pre-bolusing insulin is key to preventing post-mealtime spikes in blood sugar. So what is pre-bolusing? It simply means that you inject your insulin in advance before eating by up to forty minutes. This gives it enough time to hit the bloodstream and take better care….
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The last avocado

Like many of us, I lost my job in the pandemic. My unemployment payments, which consist of 40 percent of my income, have made it hard to keep myself in blueberries. The sudden tightening of funds led to some radical substitutions in my daily eating habits. Bye-bye raspberries, hello giant cabbage head is one of…
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