Blood pressure down by 9% / 13%, blood glucose down 17 % after just 7 days.

Day 8
August 15, 2011
Wt. 258.8
Blood Sugar (first thing in the morning) 157
Blood Pressure 144/95 67 bpm.

Blood pressure down by 9%/13%, blood glucose down 17 % after just 7 days.

It sure looks like it is working. I was expecting my blood sugar to be higher than 157 this morning because yesterday was an odd day for eating and my first meal didn’t happen until about 4 p.m. an then along about 11 p.m. I had cantaloupe and an apple and about a cup of cold chicken and a cup of pinto beans. I would have expected my blood sugar to be up from the sugars in the fruit but instead it is only three points up from yesterday morning.

The other very good number is the blood pressure. Well, in its self 144/95 is not a great number it places me in the mild hypertension range. However, on day one, just 8 days ago, my blood pressure was 158/102 which is in the moderate hypertension range.

I am now beginning week 2 of my Mad as hell: getting rid of diabetes without drugs program and the results are beginning to show real progress. There are no drugs involved. After the first couple of days when I had several of bad headaches I have not taken any aspirin or pain medications. The only other drugs going into my system is my daily coffee and the Vardenfil (Levitra) I took yesterday.
One of the rules, number 8: Don’t become a fanatic, give yourself permission to slide a bit. Pick a day that you can have a treat and break all of the rules a little bit. At first that day can be once a week. After you are in control and Bob is history then stretch it out to once a month. It is important not to go overboard. You can have that ham sandwich and the slice of chocolate cake, but not the rest of the ham and the rest of the cake. Whatever you put in your body has to be processed and the system just doesn’t work as well as it used to.

For me that day was Saturday. I met a friend for coffee and had two large cups of coffee with raw sugar and a pastry. A little later in the day I had a couple more pastries. I can tell you that they were fantastic. I enjoyed ever single bite and crumb of them. The coffee with sugar tasted equally great. Those treats tasted especially good because they were just that-they were treats.
Back in the days before electricity, ice cream was made by hand cranking an ice cream churn. Ice was stored in ice houses and delivered. To make ice cream in the summer involved a huge amount of work. The block of ice had to be broken into chips, you put it in a churn and added salt to make it colder. Then all of the ingredients went into the container with the paddle churn and then the lid went on and everybody got a turn cranking until you had ice cream. Unless you were rich or really lucky, ice cream was a once in a while thing. A couple times during the summer-maybe. Can you imagine how good it tasted after all of that work on a hot day? It was a real TREAT. When I was a kid my Dad would make his special fudge candy. He started making it during the Great Depression and it represented having a little extra money for something special. Sugar, cocoa, vanilla, milk, nuts. Back then it might have all cost about a dollar but when you earned 12 dollars a week and had a family to feed you just didn’t squander a dollar on a plate of candy. When I was a little kid, money was still tight. We had moved to Taos, Dad was an artist, and our first couple of winters we lived on the credit a local grocery store owner, Eloy Gurule extended to us. When Dad sold a picture and had a little extra money he would make a plate of fudge and let me help. Really special times and the taste of that candy is still with me–so are some of the bad lessons about food and feeling good, but that is another blog.

The point is that we have come a very long way from treats being special and far between. We now live a life of candy. It is everywhere, even where we would least expect it and our health is suffering for it. But when you remove the treat from the every day and make it something that happens once in a while then two huge things happen. One; the treat tastes like a gift of the gods and two; our bodies can handle the insult and adapt. When it gets hammered day in and day out with an overload of sweet, energy dense goodies it breaks. The proof of that is in expanding waistlines, diabetes, heart disease, and probably a dozen other illnesses we now have as a common fact of our lives.

How am I going to celebrate my new good numbers? I’m going to go finish my cup of coffee-without sugar-have a fist sized lunch of chili and beans and go do some work. Next Saturday when I wake up, I will think of the food I most want-possibly pizza and I will go fine some restaurant that will serve it by the slice and have one or two. No more. I can hardly wait. It will be a fantastic treat and a reward for even better numbers.

More to come,
Jim