As a diabetic, I feel I am somewhat educated about my condition. I also know how my body feels although not always what causes my body to feel that way. Since I am a fairly quiet person, I do not always speak up when I don't agree with my team. How should I approach this as I think I am getting very good health care?

Ate peanut butter...it came down!

Most who read my posts become very aware that I don't tend to sugar coat anything.

Maybe that is because I have been dealing with Diabetes my entire life. My Parents, Grandparents, Great-Grandparents, Uncles/Aunts and cousins all have/had diabetes, at least the overwhelming majority of them, so if you are a "normal" member of the family, you likewise have Diabetes.

It didn't mean your life was over. It didn't mean that you life was limited, it was simply a genetic trait no different then… read more

Anyone who has cats is more than familiar with ammonia odour that comes from the litter box.

If you occasionally detect the same kind of “kitty litter smell” from your sweaty clothes, shoes or a trip to the bathroom, it is likely caused because, as a diabetic, you are “successfully” following a Low Carb diet.

Our bodies want to burn carbohydrates (converted to blood sugar) for fuel because they are the “easiest” (thing) to metabolize into sugar.

But particularly if we eat low carb and are… read more

Many of us, myself included, seem to be a little tentative in totally relying on what our CGM (Libre or Dexcom being the two most common) are telling us

We seem to always "suspect" they are reading a little high, a little low or really out to lunch sometimes

So just yesterday I got to put my CGM (Libre 2) to the ultimate test - I got to compare what it has been telling me to a lab drawn A1C test (my annual A1C test)

We currently have 3 main options for testing our blood sugar

There is the… read more

OK I find this strange. How come when I want to give advice to people and use several of my own pre written information I put in my computer on my spreadsheet that I created, this site only lets me post them once a day, then let me know I already wrote something similar and it is considered spam. Yet someone who just joined for the past 2 days can advertise to people 1 by one with exact same phrases something they are wanting to buy and / or distribute, yet that is not considered spam. I have… read more

There was a bit of discussion on Henry's call to arms post about an odd reading on a meter and what it might mean

If you test long enough occasionally you will see some of the common ones

Something to the effect of "blood drop too small" or the "replace batteries"

That latter one usually pops up after you have stuck yourself and got a good drop on the strip (wasting the strip in the process)

Some will have seen TOO HIGH or LOW - not the message you want to see unless it was because of some… read more

I got mine done today, it was 9.8 I was in shock, my morning readings are good always around 100's and the last month especially I had to lower insulin units because I would wake up in the 60's, I will have a lab test result in a week where blood was drawn, today it was done at a research clinic where they only pricked my finger, so I will wait for the other ones to have a better picture, the only consolation in all this is that my previous one was above 11 and I've taken action in changing my… read more

(probably 2 parts - I do tend to Yap)

A couple of weeks back there was a discussion going on about natural products that could help us fall and stay asleep

@A DiabetesTeam Member Henry mentioned a supplement called GABA (widely available at health food/supplement places)

I had never heard of it so tuned up Google Scholar and started reading

GABA is short for Gamma Aminobutyric Acid (ya, GABA is easier) and it is a "naturally occurring" amino acid that our body produces to try and "calm down… read more

I guess everything gets a "day" now, but for us Kidney's are kind of important

Unfortunately for us the Beast we call Diabetes seems to really like destroying Kidneys - 1 in 3 of us will develop some level of Kidney Disease simply because we are Diabetic

I'm in those statistics - I have Stage 2 CKD

If I don't want to be part of that 15% of us that sees things end because of CKD then I need to "behave"

Keeping your blood sugar below 8.7 mmols/157 "as many minutes of the day as possible" will… read more