A Wee Walk Into Healthy Territory

Day 18
August 24, 2011
Wt. 257
Blood sugar(first thing in the morning) 147
Blood sugar(following 30 minute brisk walk) 107
Blood pressure 154/96 66bpm

A Wee Walk Into Healthy Territory

It’s been a few days since my last blog. Just amazing how work can take over your life but I also took a day off from doing numbers and not focusing my attention of our old friends, Bob and T2. Not that I lessened my resolve to make them go away or went back to the evil ways that opened the door to them. They are bad roommates and I never stop wanting them to get the hell out.

This morning I added in a bit of exercise to the program. With just the diet and schedule alone I had dropped the blood sugar to 147. If you recall from the first blog, my morning blood sugar was 285 and the next day it was down to 185. Generally it has come down a little bit every day with just a couple of spikes. Yesterday it was holding at about 163, as it had been for several days and I decided it was time to add in a morning workout to eat up some of that sugar.

I am visiting a friend who also has T2 and tells me he and Bob are real good buddies. We went for a walk this morning. Before we started we agreed that he would walk as far as he was comfortable with and then turn back. As I am more used to walking I continued for another 20 minutes. When I returned I immediately checked my blood sugar and it was down to.......(drum roll please) .....................

..........................................................107!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is inside the range of healthy people who don’t have T2. Think about it-just a half an hour–30 minutes of walking took me down 30 points. Just by making my muscles hungry for the glucose did the trick. How exciting is that?

But as the Sham Wow guy likes to say-But wait-there’s more.

There is very strong evidence that working out first thing in the morning is more effective at burning fat than a workout later in the day. The reason seems to be related to the fact that the body has limited resources to draw on. There is no food in the stomach or at the upper end of the digestive track and what remains in the gut is somewhat depleted and harder to draw energy from. The body has to first draw off the glucose in the blood for the energy it needs and then go looking for the next available resource. This would be fat in the muscle tissues and in the larder–larder is what I am calling the fat stores around the torso. It seems an appropriate name because in homes that were built in the days before refrigerators became common the larder was a place for food storage. They were adjacent to the kitchen where the food would be needed. I also like the pun. However, our goal is to empty out the larder and keep our bodies just a little hungry so that it continues to make the best possible use of the food we put into it but never has so much extra that it can put the excess into storage and raise our blood sugar levels back to where it will eventually kill us.

Speaking of killing us. Last night I did a short walk-about 10 minutes- and was talking to my friend’s partner. Her husband–I’m calling him, Humpty- died of complications of T2 and her story was the verbal equivalent of a George Romero horror movie. Humpty’s demise visibly began with neuropathy- nerve death caused by damage to the capillaries that feed the nerves. First it was burning pain in the bottoms of his feet.  He said it was like walking on hot coals-then it spread to other parts of his body. His vision failed, his organs failed, his legs swelled to twice their original size with skin as tight as a drum. His flesh began to smell as if it was rotting and all the drugs the doctors gave him couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again. And that was just the PG version side of his dying.  By the end she said it was much, much worse.

I don’t think my program would have helped him once the neuropathy set in because by the time T2 has taken such a ferociously powerful hold on the body that the nerves are dying off it is pretty late in the game to start trying to fix things. The foundation is gone, the walls are rotting and have termites, the roof is gone so it is too late for a new coat of paint in the living room.  The time to start is well before then. If your doctor has just told you that you have T2 and your blood sugar is a bit high when you went in for your physical-that would be a good time. Back when my first doctor told me I was getting into dangerous territory and my glucose level was 124–that would have been a pots and pans banging great time to start. Then when the second doctor told me I definitely had T2-that would have been a fine time to start making the changes I am now making. But even if you are well beyond where I was a couple of weeks ago when I started this blog-right now is as good a time as you’re ever going to get. Everyday you sit on the wall not doing anything is one day closer to the BIG SPLAT!!! T2 will bring you as a parting gift.

Be sure to get your doctor’s advice and approval but don’t delay. T2 is a tenacious bastard and evicting him is going to take some time, but the longer you sit and think about it-or even worse-sit and don’t think about it- the more likely you are to end up like poor old Humpty and nothing anybody can do will fix it. There you’ll be-a nasty mess all spread out on the sidewalk with good old Bob and T2 standing there looking down at you with big grins on their faces.

You may be wondering why I’ve made Bob and T2 and even the recently added Humpty into the villains of my blog. It has to do with the Mad as Hell theme here. We are responsible for opening the door and inviting them to come live with us, but to be fair to ourselves, we had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for. Giving them personas makes them real and not medical abstractions. They are identifiable, we can see them, feel them. If we think of them as really bad house guests and not as permanent residents we can do nothing about, then we can make them go away. We might have to bar the door and windows to keep them from ever coming back but as you can see from what I’ve done in just three weeks it is very possible.

More to come

Jim