Stress-O-Meter

  It's hard to deny that we all live a hectic and extremely fast paced life. With juggling multiple schedules, managing work, family, pets, and life's obstacles; where does diet and exercise fit in to our day?!?! When you are stressed out; your blood sugar naturally rises. So what if you are a diabetic? Now what happens to your already elevated suagr? And.. What about dinner? Do you get to go home and cook a well balanced meal every evening? If you can do that, God bless you! For many of us, eating on the run is more frequent that most of us would admit. Eating in our car is even more common for some of us!
  So with that being said; stress, eating on the run, and food choices are a HUGE problem for everyone, especially diabetics. How do we manage a busy lifestyle, cooking healthy, and getting that 15-30 minute workout in during the week? I know my family and I have not yet mastered how to alleviate our unwarranted stress. It take a family effort to make our ship sail smoothly every day. Do you ever wake up in the morning and just wish you didn't have to immediately start stressing about the day ahead? Although there is no medicine or quick fix for living with stress; there are some recommended resources for you to read.


  Joseph P. Napora, PhD, LCSW-C wrote a great book titled: Stress-Free Diabetes.
Stress-Free Diabetes covers:

• Stress and the body and the mind
• Being emotionally smart
• Essential people skills
• Setting realistic goals
• Staying grounded and mindful
• Anticipating problems and solving them
• The importance of humor

This information was located at www.shopdiabetes.org . This book goes into detail and explains some creative way to manage stress while living successfully with diabetes.

Also, another great resource is visiting www.JDRF.org . They are my go-to site. I have supported JDRF for many years and 100% believe that they are an amazing global organization that supports diabetes research. Their site and volunteers offer so many ipportunities and resources for diabetics. I love taking on the role of delivering Bags of Hope to newly diagnosed diabetics. If you or someone you know is a newly diagnosed type 1, send them my way!!

Kid's First Diabetes Second

I just finished reading the book Kids First, Diabetes Second, by Leighann Calentine. I would definitely reccoment this book to a newly diagnosed family! It comes from a mom of a young diabetic, just like me. It definitely gives many suggestions and insights to show that we all go through very similar day-to-day issues and experiences with our diabetic.

I knew I'd enjoy this book when I read page 8. Leighann stated
" I can't think of many medical conditions other than type 1 diabetes where the patient, or for young patients, the parents, manke any number of life-and-death decisions daily. other medical conditions are overseen by a doctor who prescribes a method of treatment and expects you to follow a very specific protocol. With type 1 diabetes, the care team trains you then sets you free."

This is exactly right. we get roughly 2-3 days of training on the hospital (not like we aren't watching every move our little kiddo is making at that time and still in a blur with what is going on), then they send us home to keep our child alive by every single carb count, injection, sugar check, middle of the night monitoring, etc.. This is such a life shock to us that we felt so lost and helpless. This is where JDRF stepped in for me and my family. They gave us a Bag of Hope, and introduced us to other diabetics in our area. We were able to 'fit in' our own skin by learning other habits and ideas from other diabetics. We felt like we had our own new family!

Over the past 8 years, my JDRF and diabetic family has grown tremendously. I am very fortunate as Mrs. West Virginia International to have opportunities to travel the state and meet so many newly diagnosed type 1's, as well as what I call 'ole pros' at diabetes. I still learn new information and tips every week. It doesn't matter how long you've been a diabetic, there are always new things to learn in daily living; even if it's just a new recipe to try out!

I highly recomment trying to reach out to a newly diagnosed type 1 and refer them to us at JDRF. We have 100 chapters and 7 affiliates WORLD WIDE!! We can get your support, education, and mentorship where ever you are. If you don't have a support group in your area, I will make one for you.

Google's contacts for Daibetics!!

http://www.wdtv.com/wdtv.cfm?func=view&section=5-News&item=Google-Contacts-Could-Change-the-Way-for-Diabetics-17047

I ran across this on a news channel this morning and couldn't believe my eyes 'no pun intended'!! Could this be real? Will a diabetic be able to just wear contact and have a CGM? I pray this is works.

I read into this a little futher with the Wall Street Journal and this is what was said. (compliments of Rolfe Winkler and Andrew Morse)

On Monday, the two companies said Novartis's Alcon eye-care division would license and commercialize "smart lens" technology designed by Google[x], a development team at the search engine giant. Financial details of the partnership weren't provided.

The smart lenses, which Google unveiled in January, are part of a growing number of wearable technology and software products used to monitor health and fitness. Last month, Google debuted its Google Fit platform to track health metrics, such as sleep and exercise, on devices running its Android mobile operating system.

The lenses contain a tiny sensor that relays data on glucose contained in tears via an equally tiny antenna. In a news release earlier this year, Google described the electronics in the lenses as being "so small they look like bits of glitter" and said the antenna is thinner than human hair.

Novartis Chief Executive Joe Jimenez said the move toward wearable health technology, like the smart lenses, was part of a broader trend to involve patients in managing their own health. Such technology has the potential to lower the cost of managing chronic disease.

"This will be a very important growth area in the future," Mr. Jimenez said in an interview. He added that the smart lens technology had the potential to become a "large revenue stream" for the company.

Monitoring glucose levels through the lenses could prove to be easier and more comprehensive than current techniques, which generally require diabetics to prick their fingers for droplets of blood.

About 382 million people—one in every 19—around the world have diabetes, a class of diseases in which the body is unable to deal with sugar, usually because of inadequate or no production of insulin. In the U.S., more than 29 million people, or 9.3% of the population, suffer from the disease, according to the American Diabetes Association.

Mr. Jimenez said the smart lenses may also be used can also correct vision in a manner similar to the lenses on autofocus cameras.

Novartis hopes to have a prototype available for research-and-development reviews by early 2015.

I am excited to keep up to date with this information to see where it goes.

What are your thoughts?

No More Carb Confusion

I came across this articel on the One Touch website. I thought it was pretty interesteing with their spin on Carbohydate info. I suggest surfing their website. They do have some good info available!!!

http://www.onetouch.com/articles/nomorecarbs?cat=

Just One More Bite!!

Why is it that diabetics are constantly hungry? My daughter thinks she needs to eat all day and often times, finds herself constantly thinking about food. It's already unfair that diabetics can't eat like the rest of the worls, but then they get stuck with obsessing about food all day too!

Recent studies show that higher sugar levels will cause unecesary hunger. The body gets confused in that it thinks it needs more food when that'a the farthest thing you need right? Kidney-Cares.org said that you can help manage ot by doing theese three tricks:

How to manage constant hunger in Diabetes?
1. Prevent stomach from being empty:
Stomach hunger occurs when diabetic's stomach is empty, even if they have ingested enough calories and nutrients. Therefore, preventing stomach from being empty is very essential. To achieve this purpose, Diabetes patients can eat some foods like raw vegetables, pulpy fruits or grains which can stay in the belly longer. Besides, according to study, these foods take up more space than do sweets, tats and most proteins.
2. Avoid eyeball hunger
Make your food various. Food is not just fuel, but also a major source of pleasure and comfort. With simplex foods, you stomach maybe satisfied, but you may still have a strong desire to eat when you see other kinds of foods. Therefore, try to enrich your food types, not just amount.
3. Eat slowly
Eat slowly and try to drink much more water while eating which will help to full stomach.
Constant hunger is caused by insufficient consumption of blood sugar, so the above management only helps to remit control it, not remove it. If you want to get this symptom removed, helping our body to use blood sugar is essential.


William Lee Dubois, Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism, answered

Yes. No. Sort of. Well, ok, here’s the deal. The shinbone’s connected to the thighbone, the thighbone’s connected to the…. Diabetes can cause high blood sugar, and high blood sugar can give you the munchies. So diabetes doesn’t, by itself, make you hungry. It’s the high blood sugar that can come from out-of-control diabetes that does.

Which is crazy, if you think about it. For the most part, the human body does a really great job of maintaining a stable state using a process of small adjustments and counter-adjustments called homeostasis. In the case of blood sugar, the body normally keeps the sugar level just right by balancing little squirts of insulin from the pancreas with little squirts of sugar from the liver. If the liver is running low on its sugar stores your body will give you an advanced head’s up that you need to refuel by sending out hunger signals.
Where things get weird is that if your blood sugar is already high, the last thing you need is more sugar (in the form of food), right? But in fact, high blood sugar does cause hunger, even though you do not need more food. This is caused largely by a miss-communication within the body’s sugar homeostasis system.
Every cell in your body relies on sugar from the blood for food, but they need insulin to get to the sugar. It’s insulin that moves sugar from the blood to the cells. If there is not enough insulin, or if it isn’t working very well, sugar piles up in the blood while at the same time, it’s not getting into the cells where it’s needed.
Being in a state of high blood sugar is sort of like starving to death in the Chef Boyardee warehouse because you don’t have a can opener.
The cells don’t really realize that there is a ton of sugar just beyond their membranes; all they know is that they are not getting any and so they send out the message: let’s eat!

So... Basically, there is eally not a ton of help for feeling so hungry all of the time. Try to do your best in having fluids with you to sip to keep something on your tummy. The higher your sugars are, the more hungry you'll be.

Let's keep on hoping that JDRF finds us a cure for this life threatening disease. I urge you to go to www.JDRF.org if you haven't been there yet. They are a vast resource of knowledge!!!

The love/hate relationship of hypo and hyper glycemia.

Well.. What can we say about highs and lows, other than they stink!!

I have had to endure a few hypoglycemic episodes myself, but they are far and few between. I couldn't begin to imagine living with frequent highs and lows on a regular or even a daily basis. This is the typical cookie cutter explanation of both hypo ad hyperglycemia:

Compliments of www.JDRF.org

Hyperglycemia Too high a level of glucose (sugar) in the blood; a sign that diabetes is out of control. Many things can cause hyperglycemia. It occurs when the body does not have enough insulin or cannot use the insulin it does have to turn glucose into energy. Signs of hyperglycemia are great thirst, dry mouth, and a need to urinate often. For people with type 1 diabetes, hyperglycemia may lead to diabetic ketoacidosis.

Hypoglycemia Too low a level of glucose (sugar) in the blood. This occurs when a person with diabetes has injected too much insulin, eaten too little food, or has exercised without extra food. A person with hypoglycemia may feel nervous, shaky, weak, or sweaty, and have a headache, blurred vision, and hunger. Taking small amounts of sugar, sweet juice, or food with sugar will usually help the person feel better within 10 to 15 minutes. See: Insulin Shock.

What are your symptoms? My daughter's biggest symptom wit her lows are itchy stomach.. She jitters her hands and scratched her belly. I've never heard of another diabetic with the itchiness. I'd love to hear more about what you feel!!

What about your highs? Do you think the symptoms are all the same? I have noticed that when a diabetic is 'high', their breath smells really sweet. Maddy doesn't urinate alot though with her highs. The most common side effects are blurred vision, stomach ache, and extreme thirst.

Ten things NOT to say to a diabetic (compliments of JDRF)

Ten things NOT to say to a diabetic
I ran across this article this morning and throught it was great!!  We, as a whole, have many questions to ask people with different complications and illnesses, and sometimes they may come across as offensive or insensitive. We have had a few of these asked to us with Maddy's diabetes. I thought I'd share with you to see what you thought.