I had a visit with a diabetes dietician today. The meeting went well, but I was taken aback. I oftentimes get a vibe from health care professionals that they think I’m pretty screwed up with my diabetes management. Today the dietician said multiple times that she thought I was doing excellent. She actually said it at least twice, once using the word “great” to exalt my efforts; excellent is the word she used the second time. This was after downloading all my meter readings and hearing the tales of the last months, and the 30 years that led to those conditions.
The reason I was taken aback is because I did not get that negative vibe. If anything I got more of a “you don’t really need my help” kind of vibe. That’s a good vibe to get, and I have to get used to it. I want to be used to it.
I got a lot of handouts from that visit. One was called “Choose Your Foods / Exchange Lists for diabetes.” The reason I got that handout was because I asked about alcohol. The word exchange always bothered me for many reasons. It doesn’t seem like a real scientific unit of measure. I know exchanges translate to more precise units but two problems I have with that. That translation, or conversion more accurately, is different for each type of food so there isn’t an easy to remember standard. This book, BTW reminds me of all the big books I got as a kid. Something about them just speaks to the idea that you should stay at home in your little bubble of carb-counting and eat your fixed amounts of food without variation.
Don’t teach me how to follow a plan; especially one that I did not make. Instead, teach me how to adapt to any given situation so I can adjust appropriately if something does not follow the plan, which happens often.
Let me stop the micro rant within my primary rant and get to the point. On page 53 of this book, under “[alcohol] Selection Tips” it states that “While alcohol, by itself, does not directly affect blood glucose….”
Whoah, Nellie.
It does not directly increase your blood glucose, but it certainly affects it. Lowering is an effect, dear author.
This is the kind if confusing crap that makes it harder to manage your glucose. Had I not known any better, I might read that and think I could do shots of vodka all night and I’d be fine. Wrong. I’d be dropping into a diabetic coma while being drunk on top of it. I’ve been there. Not the coma, but all the most serious effects of low blood sugar combined with being drunk is a really trippy place to be. As great as that sounds to you recreational drug users out there, it’s not because you didn’t plan to get to that “high” and therefore not really sure when you’ll come down. You’d always wish you weren’t there if you were cognizant enough to generate that thought.
A lot of the info you get on diabetes assumes you’re in a very controlled environment. There should be more info out there for people on how to deal with all the variations. Don’t give people a static list of a bunch of food and their “exchange” amount. Teach people how to solve the problem up front and don’t try to program them into an un-shifting regimen. I hate to use the word problem, but I’m speaking entirely from a mathematical point of view. How do I adjust the scope, slide the scale, hit that curve ball?
A1Cohol.com 