For the first time in years, I wasn’t drunk on New Year’s Eve. Instead, I was in bed with a fever, reading Calvin and Hobbes. I’ve got covid-19. Again. Perhaps it’s not that strange. I work in a bar with an international clientele, so you could compare it to spending your days in a busy…
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There’s an old Confucian teaching, hara hachi bu, which instructs people to eat until they’re eighty percent full. It’s still practiced in Okinawa, the Japanese island with one of the world’s highest proportions of centenarians. The average BMI in Okinawa lies between 18 and 22. It’s significantly lower than in the US, where the BMI for…
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Back at work again on the weekends, I’ve noticed something interesting. When I get stressed my blood sugar spikes. I work in an Irish pub, and like most places in the hospitality industry, we’re understaffed, which makes work a bit more stressful than it used to be. Waiting a few minutes extra for a beer…
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Your insulin requirements change due to many things, so from time to time, it’s important to do a basal test to check that your long-acting insulin is set right. In my case, my insulin needs have changed a few times. First, when I exited the honeymoon, then when I started exercising, and when I stopped.…
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Insulin is the poster child for high drug prices in the US. I’ve written before about diabetics crossing the border into Canada to pick up affordable insulin, even though the original patent sold for $1 when the marvel was first discovered. Several stories about diabetics dying after rationing their insulin have garnered a lot of…
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The other day I was standing in the supermarket trying to get some toothpaste. I wanted regular toothpaste, which is hard to find these days. Instead, it’s triple flavor, advanced whitening, charcoal filters, and so on. I got really confused and fiddled several tubes before I selected the magic crystals because they sounded the coolest.…
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Reuters recently published a well-researched article series on America’s losing battle against diabetes. It was an interesting read, especially the second part that claims that the pharmaceutical industry is responsible for the ‘aggressive’ HbA1c targets that doctors promote amongst their patients. The target level is an HbA1c of 7% (53 mmol/mol) which corresponds to an…
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For the past two years, I’ve had the same thing for breakfast: a two-egg omelette with 50g of cheese. It’s perhaps not that strange that I got fed up and started to feel queasy just thinking about eggs. The reason it’s a good idea to eat the same thing every day if you have diabetes is that you can take the same insulin dose with predictable results. In the morning…
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With my morning coffee, I read an article on how raisins ‘may even help you to maintain healthy blood glucose levels’ and it left me irritated. On the forum I frequent, grapes go under the name of sugar bombs. They are, just like raisins, an excellent treatment for hypoglycemia when they quickly drive up blood…
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I’ve been eating a lot of curries lately. Might have something to do with the season. It’s grey and gloomy which makes it the perfect time for comfort food. After all, what’s better than a spicy stew on a rainy autumn day? Since I’m on a low-carb diet, rice and regular naan bread are off…
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