Thursday, October 22
Weight: 129.8
FBG: 109mg/dL
Thank you Pinkie and Alene. I am already really starting to feel better. I honestly think that I was fighting some sort of virus the past 10 days that made me inordinantly tired. I'm not sure if it was even food-related at all. But of course I really went off the rails and lost my **** for a few days. Par for my course, eh?
But OK, I'm feeling more stable this morning. When I am on point with eating, and limiting my drinking, my fasting blood sugar is approximately 95mg/dL. This is technically too high for optimal health, but it also technically is not associated with blood vessel damage and other diabetic complications. And most definitely my post-prandial glucose is optimal, so long as I eat the way I typically do (and the way I happen to like, so it's very sustainable). So. I might just need to settle for "good enough". Believe it or not, after years of fighting this, I might be ready to do that.
I didn't get much work done yesterday. Alene, if you're reading this, I guess I took a personal day. I was supposed to be making a video on amiodarone, a drug used to treat cardiac arrhythmia. Anywho. Didn't do that. Spent the day reading through my thread (that always makes me miss people that aren't currently active on the boards, too!), considering what changes I CAN make, and walking the dogs. It ended up a good day.
Three new things my "personal day/googling" ran me into:
1) I found this website called the "The Breathing Diabetic" and he makes a big case for breathing exercises as a method to lower blood sugar. I'm sure it's nothing magical, but the physiology of breathing/parasympathetic response and how that lowers blood pressure is quite convincing. I haven't read the research articles yet, but apparently there are at least a few clinical trials where breath work improved diabetic blood sugar control. I was super into Ziva Meditation for awhile, so getting back into breath work makes a lot of sense for me. Another aspect is breath-holding, where you practice doing that and supposedly it improves tissue oxygenation abilities. It's all quite interesting, and it just so happens that I have always loved breath-holding competitions. LOL. I was the kid in the pool begging everyone to time me while I held my breath. So I ordered a pulse oxymeter for fun (you see if you can get your oxygen sats down into the high 80's or something like that), and I ordered those mouth taping strips. Have y'all heard of this? Mouth-taping at bedtime to ensure nasal breathing during the night? It's all the rage these days, lol!! So, I'm not expecting anything super special, but this breath work/taping is a nice way for me to feel a bit more in control of my health and gives me a focus and a way to remain optimistic.
2) I'm less convinced, but sort of intrigued, by this website that described using your blood sugar as a way to "hunger" train. I've actually run across papers that showed this to be pretty effecive, and so I tried it a year or two ago. The problem was they wanted me to wait to eat until my blood sugar was below 85mg/dL. Well, that was too difficult for me. This particular article noted that problem for people with blood sugar issues and so their take on it is that you find your "personal blood sugar trigger" and wait to eat until your blood sugar is below that point. They do advocate that eventually you really focus on regular mealtimes, so it fits nicely with NoS, actually. But I am skeptical about this because a) I've always heard that diabetics have their blood sugar just KEEP going up in the morning if they don't eat, because their livers aren't listening to insulin - then the food gets a big enough insulin squirt from the pancreas to finally lower the sugar. Anyway, I'm experimenting with this on myself this morning. I woke up with 109mg/dL and I'm waiting an hour to see if it lowers. I suppose my personal trigger would be 100mg/dL to start with (they have a method to figure it out, but I know my blood sugars quite well already). The other thing I'm skeptical about with this method is that I've never found a consistent pattern with my hunger and my blood sugar. I do think it's probably there, but I think that it's my SWINGS from high to low that trigger hunger, not necessarily a steady and slow change. Anyway, I'll pay attention to these patterns in particular for a few days and see what I think. Last - my fasting blood sugar definitely changes based on my eating and alcohol, so it could be that I am missing the patterns because of that.
3) "Cutback Coach" This is an alcohol moderation texting thing. It's free for 30 days. Each Sunday they'll have me enter my alcohol moderation goals for the week (certain dry days and then drink limits on drinking days). Then each time I pour a glass of wine, I text them and they keep track and give me encouragement to stop or whatever the goal is for the day. I'll give this a try. Before I quit alcohol entirely in 2019, I had one excellent run of moderation (using a website called Moderation Management). But then, 3 months into it, I fell completely off the rails. I was so pissed that I quite entirely after that. But I am reminded how well I was doing for those 3 months. I think I'll try this again.
Oh, gosh, I gotta get these boys to school! And I'll be wearing gloves on my walk this morning! It's gotten cold!
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So I'm trying this "wait until my blood sugar is below my personalized trigger point". Harumph. I woke up at 109mg/dL (7am), then by 10am was at 102mg/dL. Went on another dog walk and blood sugar went UP to 111mg/dL. According to this plan, I should wait to eat. Well, I'm hungry! It's now 11am and my blood sugar is 108mg/dL
Eating
B: black coffee
![Mad :x](./images/smilies/icon_mad.gif)
while I watched to see if my blood sugar would drop
L: At noon, my blood sugar was down to 91mg/dL so I had my normal yogurt w/berries
pre-food: 91mg/dL
1 hour: 87mg/dL
1.5 hours: 100mg/dL
2 hours: 113mg/dL
2.5hours: 111mg/dL
So according to this silly plan, I'll wait to have my dinner until my blood sugar is less than 100mg/dL. I sort of can't believe I'm doing this funny experiment.
By about 5pm, glucose was down to 93mg/dL. So today I had to skip breakfast, but lunch and dinner ended up right on time. Weird experiment.
D: beef salad bowl and 3 onion rings
Moving
2 nice walks. Starting to feel myself again. I'm even making good progress on my current video.
I'm at Speed Skate practice with Creator. He's trying it out, since there isn't much else going on kid sport wise. Those speed skates are crazy weird! Apparently it's very painful for the ankles in the beginning.