Diabetes Health Talk

I hate it. Every doctor since I was in highschool - when I was a whole 5′6″ and 150 pounds of butt and boobs - told me that whatever was wrong with my body related to the fact that I was overweight. I played basketball everyday for 4 years, then when I quit that, I worked on my feet every day for 8 hours after school - even though I ate McDonalds a lot (I worked there, after all) I was in the best shape of my life. When I fell and hurt my knee my senior year? You betcha. It was because I was fat. Lose some weight, he said, and you’re knee will quit hurting.

I’m no longer anything close to 150, and haven’t been since, and I’m well used to the looks and smirks and whispers and outright statements like:

You’re blood pressure must be so high. (It’s not.)
You’re cholesterol must be through the roof! (It’s not.)
I bet you’re diabetic - you’re too heavy to be healthy.

Guess what? I’m not diabetic, and other then being out of shape (Well, round IS a shape, but I digress) and heavier then I should be by several pounds, I’m doing allright. I’ll never forget the day my skinny ass husband came home in a rampage because HIS bloodwork came back way worse then mine… I was very amused indeed, and he quit trying to get me to do gastric bypass finally.

A lot of times, however, the obesity is a symptom of the disease. In my perusal of the internets today, I came across a site called Blood Sugar 101, where there is a whole bunch of articles on Diabetes, causes and maintenance. one of those is an article called “You did NOT eat your way to Diabetes.”

While obesity and diabetes often go hand in hand, it’s incorrect to say that the latter is caused by the former. The problem comes when doctors decide that you won’t make an effort to control the disease, because you let yourself get fat. It could lead to getting poor care, so be SURE when you pick a practitioner, it is someone who is willing to work with you instead of against you, even in something that seems so simple.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t take the steps to control your weight and get in shape when diagnosed with diabetes, as Type 2 can be controllable through diet and exercise. The point is to make sure that you have a doctor who listens to you, who understands that they go hand in hand, and that one is not always the cause of the other. If you need a judge, go to the courtroom. You need help controlling your disease, get a doctor that cares.

There is a TON of info on the Sugar 101 site - I’ll go into some more in the coming days.