This week I experienced eating hospital food for the first time in 70 years. I didn’t look forward to the food.

I don’t remember whether I liked what they served me when I was 3. But I am thankful that now it is much better than its reputation.

Whether we have diabetes or not, almost everybody will have the experience some day of eating hospital food. But those of us with diabetes do have special food needs.

My food needs are a very low-carbohydrate diet. I’ve been eating low-carb for almost exactly a year now, and in that time I shaved off another 15 pounds from the previous 141 pounds that I lost in the two years that I took Byetta.
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A diet limited to sardines might sound somewhat too restrictive. It is.

Even the most ardent health food fanatics don’t go that far. As much as I love the health benefits and taste of sardines, I almost never eat more than two cans of sardines a day. Even Keri Glassman, who wrote The Sardine Diet, is using hyperbole to make her points.

Her points are that sardines are not only delicious but also have unique properties that help us lose weight and improve our health. Food doesn’t come any better than that.
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We can’t completely trust anything, anyone, or any organization. Nowhere is this more true than for our health.

Yet we have to decide. Doing nothing is impossible.

A correspondent that I know only as “drscll” prompted these reflections. He or she asked if we could trust even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The question startled me at first, because if any part of our government is trustworthy, I’ve always thought that it was the CDC. Staffed by a dedicated group of people, many of whom put their lives on the line to control epidemics, the CDC deals in facts, not opinions or recommendations.
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We have been using mirrors for at least 8,000 years to check our appearance and to admire our features. But only now can we conveniently use them to check the health of our feet.

The newest development in this long history of mirrors can help those of us who have diabetes prevent the worst problems that diabetic neuropathy causes. About 60 to 70 percent of us have some form of neuropathy. The most common type is peripheral neuropathy, which causes pain or loss of feeling in the toes, feet, legs, hands, and arms.

We we don’t treat injuries to our feet right away, doctors may have to amputate. But if we catch little problems with our feet before they became major, people with diabetes can prevent at least half of these amputations.
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You can skip your flu shot this year — if you would rather get sick than go to work. While you hope to recover in your bed at home alone, you can reflect that you are among the 5 percent of Americans who told surveyors that they made that choice.

While you’re at it, you might also want to consider that about 35,000 of us die and 225,000 get sick enough to need a hospital bed because of the flu. If you recover, you might think about trying to get a job that you hate less that the chance of getting the flu.

As many as one-fifth of us will get the flu this year. Most of those who will get it are among the 45 percent of Americans who will skip getting their annual flu shot. Their reasons for skipping the shot are just as good as those who might have to look for a new job in this difficult economy while waiting for Congress to extend unemployment benefits.
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People seldom make me angry any more. When another driver cut me off yesterday, I didn’t even flip him the finger or honk my horn. I just figured that he was in a bigger hurry than I was.

Recently doctors have determined that when we are younger and when we are older we are happier than when we are middle-aged. That can’t be generally true, because I still remember my miserable youth.

My life instead has been one of increasing happiness. I’m much more likely to shed tears of joy, as I did on the evening of November 4, than to weep with rage.
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Even in these difficult times when almost all of us are learning how to become frugal again, money isn’t everything. Especially when it comes to our health.

For those of us who have diabetes the A1C test is the best measure that we have of the state of our health. The A1C is the only commonly available check that we have of our average blood glucose level for the past two or three months.

Those of us who are fortunate enough to have health insurance usually go to the lab at our doctor’s office or local hospital for their A1C. I know that’s what I was doing several times a year ever since my diabetes diagnosis in 1994. My health insurance provides up to two A1C tests annually for a modest $15 co-pay each time for my visit to my primary care physician.

But until now I didn’t take into account how much time getting an A1C test at the lab took out of my busy schedule. And most importantly, I didn’t realize that the lab’s results may not be right.
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When we have healthy kidneys, little or no protein appears in the urine. But protein in the urine — technically called proteinuria — is an early sign that our diabetes has damaged the kidney’s filters. It’s a strong risk factor for kidney failure where the only treatment is dialysis.

A progression from diabetes to proteinuria to kidney failure is anything but inevitable. Each step can be a heads up for change.

Now, new studies show that a drug commonly used to treat problems of circulation can also decrease proteinuria. The drug is pentoxifylline, sold under the brand names of Pentoxil and Trental.
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If you have both diabetes and depression, you probably don’t care which came first. In fact, the latest research indicates that the two conditions are a two-way street. Sometimes we get depressed first; something we get diabetes first. Does it matter?

Diabetes and depression go together. Research research found that 19 percent of people with type 2 diabetes probably suffer from major depression and an additional two-thirds of us have at least some depressive symptoms. People with diabetes are twice as likely to be depressed as other people.

This reminds me of the futile argument whether being overweight causes diabetes. I an convinced that being overweight doesn’t cause diabetes or vise versa, and in my second book, Losing Weight with Your Diabetes Medication, I devote the entire first chapter to exploring that concept.
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