New Drug discoveries for Diabetes. But you’ll still have to remember to take them in order to be Medication Adherent
The Strange Relationship of Diabetes and Sugar

January and February of 2015 have revealed several new studies regarding Diabetes and the diseases relationship to Sugar. All of the studies promote that we should give up added sugars. But there’s so much more going on here. After all, our blood cells require sugar. (This chronic disease is all about Insulin Resistance.) That’s where sugar is supposed to be: INSIDE the blood cells. We use insulin in order to push sugar into our blood cells. What we don’t need is all the extra sugar floating around in our systems. In the case of Diabetics our body’s systems don’t know what’s good for us.

For the past few years I’ve been going by the RULES for diabetics: Diabetics are told that we’re supposed to eat at least two “servings” of fruit per day. When I questioned this my doctor responded, “you have to eat something.” I did try to eat fruit daily… but I quickly found that all fruits are not created equally. You may have to experiment a little on how your own system responds. I like apples, but I have come to realize that they may be more sugary than I had noticed when I was a little younger. If, for instance, I were to eat half an apple, that would probably be okay. A whole apple eaten all at once might be the sugar equivalent of having a fifth cup of coffee. Maybe a little over the top, even though our bodies didn’t used to respond so vigorously as they do with age. Juices are verboten all together. I was making smoothies with great, healthy raw veggies and it turned out that I was mainlining glucose because there was no Protein powder added. My blood sugar was soaring into the 400s. It could have been literally quite dangerous: Death by Broccoli. So no more juices or smoothies without knowledge of what it does for me. These days when I make a smoothie it’s about the protein powder mostly. Add a little almond milk, some organic strawberries, half a banana, a splash of flax seed oil and some ice. Blend. Awesome.

Careful with the fruit. A new study indicates that FRUCTOSE (sugar from fruits) may be even worse for a diabetic than regular old white table sugar. And when you combine the two, it’s way worse than either used alone. Read about this study in Science Codex. Another study, in US NEWS, finds that we diabetics might have been better off had we more Vitamin D in our bodies. It’s hard not to believe that because it seems that it’s the cure for virtually everything. For me, it’s difficult to be medication adherent to Vitamins because the label instructs us to take them but don’t say when; as with any kind of medication or supplement we have to have a plan to take then at the same time daily if we have any hope of being medication adherent to an effective plan. I’ve heard Doctors tell their patients to “…take more Vitamin D… you’re low,” but this doesn’t really get implemented on it’s own, does it? We have to make a plan to incorporate it into our daily routine. We likely need a reminder.

Part of the problem is the spiking of your blood sugar, either high or low. You don’t want either. What you want is for your blood sugar to stay between 85 and 140. It goes up after you eat as your body works to digest the food. If it goes too low then you can pass out. It’s actually these spikes that do the most damage to your internal organs. Some researchers at Lund University are using a drug that they call DPP-4 to limit the extreme swings. Read about this in EurekAlert.

I went in to a health food supplement store about a week ago, having heard about Glucocil. It’s “natural,” it must be true, the label says so. It’s basically vitamins and such that give your body a fighting chance at keeping your circulatory system working along with managing your blood’s highs and lows. I take it with lunch and dinner as the directions on the bottle say. I believe that it may be working, though I’m really eager to see what affect it will have after a month of using it.

So far, the only difficulty is remembering to take it with my meals. I need a reminder for that. I use Medtexter to help me manage all of my medications, prescriptions or over the counter or even Vitamin D. Any med that you’re going to take needs to be taken as directed if you’re going to be medication adherent. I’ll let you know what my little Glucocil experiment yields.