D.J. Jones, a veteran technology writer from New York City, was a fat kid, a fat teen, and subsequently an obese man. (He skipped right past the category of overweight man because he was nearly 300 pounds by the time he turned 18.) After more than 20 years as a Type 2 diabetic who watched as his health grew progressively worse, he had a stroke not long after he turned 49. Determined to improve his health and extend his life, he changed his diet and began a journey that has made him fitter at 50 years old than he was at 40, 30, or even 20. "Beating Diabetes" chronicles both his road to sickness and his path to wellness.
D.J. Jones, a veteran technology writer from New York City, was a fat kid, a fat teen, and subsequently an obese man. (He skipped right past the category of overweight man because he was nearly 300 pounds by the time he turned 18.) After more than 20 years as a Type 2 diabetic who watched as his health grew progressively worse, he had a stroke not long after he turned 49. Determined to improve his health and extend his life, he changed his diet and began a journey that has made him fitter at 50 years old than he was at 40, 30, or even 20. "Beating Diabetes" chronicles both his road to sickness and his path to wellness.
I
don't remember exactly when I was diagnosed with diabetes. But I do recall that it was some time during my early twenties.
What does that mean? Throughout the remainder of my twenties, all of my thirties, and pretty much all of my forties, I lived with what I had been told was a chronic, progressive disease. Although I could try to manage it with drugs like Metformin and insulin, it was essentially a life (or should I say death) sentence. The most depressing part of the conventional wisdom: My diabetic condition and its follow-on health problems would get worse as I got older.
But three months after my 49th birthday, after having suffered a stroke I attribute to the worsening of my diabetic condition, I set out to prove that the conventional wisdom is a lie. Ā As I sat in the hospital working to regain the use of my paralyzed left arm and leg, I promised myself that I would not reach my 50th birthday and still be diabetic. I had some serious work to do and changes to make.Ā I am happy to say that, as I compose these words, I have kept my promise to myself.
Now, still a few months shy of 50, I can happily and proudly say that I am a former diabetic and a formerly obese person.
Ā I am clear about the fact that I'm still predisposed to insulin resistance.
That means I still have to be careful about what I put in my mouth as well as the timing of when I eat. But the level of control I maintain over my blood sugar has put me in the ānormalā category.Ā My hemoglobin A1C, the primary clinical measure of how successful Iāve been at keeping my blood sugar levels within a healthy range over a roughly three-month period, says 'm no longer considered diabetic or even pre-diabetic.
Well, what is hemoglobin A1C, you ask?
Letās start with hemoglobin, which is the protein in our red blood cells that carries oxygen and gives the blood its color. Hemoglobin has a natural tendency to bond with the sugar in your blood; the more sugar, the more bonding that takes place. Scientists are aware that the extent of hemoglobin-sugar bonding, known as glycation, is a reliable indicator of the amount of sugar the blood cells have been exposed to. The A1C is shown as the percentage of blood cells in a blood sample that have become glycated.
Glycation, past a certain amount, is detrimental to your health because of the laundry list of complications that it triggers. It starts killing you by degrading the functioning of your cardiovascular system. From there, it damages many of your vital organs because degraded blood vessels limit the organsā supply of oxygen- and nutrient-rich blood, or the overly glycated blood itself acts as a toxin that damages the organsā cells.
One of the earliest effects of hemoglobin-sugar bonding is similar to what happens when a sugary drink like lemonade is spilled on linoleum and not thoroughly cleaned up.
The sugar forms a sticky coating that causes the blood cells to stick together and be more predisposed to forming clots. The cardiovascular system is designed for blood cells to flow through the capillaries in an orderly, single file line like a group of schoolchildren on a field trip.
If too many of the blood cells have become glycated, they stick together, bunch up, and donāt flow the way they should. Suddenly, thereās havoc in the line to leave the museum and get back on the school bus.
As high blood sugar remains uncorrected, glycation leads to inflammation that degrades the blood vesselsā structures. One instantiation of this is the formation of deposits on the walls of the blood vessels as well as inside the blood vesselsā layers. The material that comprises the deposits, known as advanced glycation end-products, or AGEs, are what cause hardening of the arteries and high blood pressure. Whatās more, these plaque deposits act as obstructions in the cardiovascular roadways, increasing the odds of life-threatening traffic jams.
The formation of these AGE plaques in the blood vessels of the brain are what trigger the gray matter deterioration and cognitive decline weāve come to know as Alzheimerās Disease. The connection between this form of dementia and chronic high blood sugar has led some researchers to start referring to Alzheimerās as Type 3 diabetes.
I want no parts of that.
My aim is to make sure that my A1C never again goes higher than one- or two-tenths of a point above five. (According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, an A1C reading below 5.7 is considered normal; people with readings between 5.7 andĀ 6.4 are said to be pre-diabetic; 6.5 and above is full-blown diabetes.)
I remember the myriad times over the years when my doctor would inform me, with a very concerned (and frankly condescending) tone, that my A1C was way too high.
He wasn't lying. As I recall, at one point, it was above 12.
To be honest, I never even should have made it to the point when I had the stroke. I remember an incident from my younger days:Ā I had an ingrown toenail that was causing pain in my foot that would not let up. I went to the emergency room, only to find out that my blood sugar was above 800 milligrams per deciliter. Though I was clueless about how serious that was, the doctors were in a state of panic.
Hereās why: For every deciliter (roughly 3.4 ounces) of blood, there should be an amount of glucose (the form of sugar the body can convert into energy) ranging from 80 to about 110 milligramsāperhaps even 120 or 130 after a meal.
Ā Eight hundred is a level high enough to be toxic to the bodyās cells, including the ones in the brain. Long story short, it should have killed me.
That was back in the days when I still drank soda all the time and would chug orange juice because of an intuitive (but misguided) sense that it was a healthier alternative to carbonated beverages.
Now that I'm here, post-diabetes, and I'm looking back on the period of my life when I struggled with the effects of insulin resistance, I can happily say that the jailer that held me prisoner inside my own body no longer has me shackled. My blood isnāt a super sugary mess that is ruining my health and threatening my life
One of the things that came along with gaining control over my blood sugar and the hormone insulin has been control over my body weight.
Hereās a brief statement of my personal history:
I was a fat boy.
I was a fat teen.
I was never an overweight man; by the time I reached adulthood I was well into the morbidly obese category.
After I stopped playing sports in my junior year of high school, my days as a relatively healthy, active young person were over. Until recently, I never knew what it was to be anything resembling fit.
Ā I thank God that He gave me the gift of time to get my mind right. And to paraphrase the words of a classic Parliament Funkadelic song, Free your mind and the rest will follow. It took a little bit of time, but I freed my mind from chemical dependence on sugar. The rest has indeed followed.
Ā
Beating Diabetes by D.J. Jones is about Diabetes and his journey conquering Diabetes. He talks about his life experience being diabetic, getting diagnosed with diabetes early in his life.Ā
Like the author, I was also a fat kid growing up, but I was fat but healthy. But when I passed my teenage I started getting more fat. As a teenager, I loved sugar and gluten-rich food it started to worry me and my mother getting diagnosed with diabetes also made me limit my food and started exercising. Like the author, we should act before it is too late.Ā
The author also talks about energy drink addiction. I think energy drink is one of the main reason for diabetes in younger people. Most of the children today are addicted to energy drinks like Pepsi, Coke and Mountain Due. And most of these companies also sells sugar-free versions of their energy drinks which is still unhealthy and healthy fruit juices that only contain up to 20 per cent of genuine fruit pulp.
The author also talks about his mission to being healthier and taking diabetes. And he also talks about the problems with the American diet and in my opinion, every people are built differently and we should give priority to choosing our diet than choosing our clothing.Ā
It was an informative good read and I had less knowledge about diabetes googling about it is another nightmare, so I'm glad I read this. The book is around 100 pages. Even though the book is short the author did a great job including a lot of information about diabetes. As we know most of the youth in our generation are addicted to sugar, they need to be informed about diabetes. So I would gladly recommend it to everyone who is looking for ways to know more about diabetes.