Browsing Tag

Living With Diabetes

Diabetes Complications

My Neuropathy

A few days ago when I finally was able to see a neurologist for the headaches that started four months ago, the first part of his examination was of my feet. I had heard of referred pain, but this seemed extreme to me, and I told him so.

The doctor replied that he would get to my head. In the meanwhile he gave me a complete examination. He used a tuning fork, similar to what musicians use. I could feel it as he went down my legs. But when he got to each of my feet, I felt nothing.

Then he worked down my legs to my feet with the side of a pin. Again, my feet I had no sensation.

He told me that I had peripheral neuropathy. And I could see it for myself. None of my other doctors had ever told me that before. Continue Reading

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People With Diabetes

Power of Prevention

The annual convention of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists — those medical specialists who treat diabetes — is underway in Houston. I’m covering the event for The Health Central Network.

The convention took over the George R. Brown Convention Center in the downtown of America’s fourth largest city. The convention center is so big that after Hurricane Katrina 7,000 refugees lived here.

In the mob of today’s convention you might imagine my surprise that the first person I made eye contact with asked if I was David Mendosa. The person who asked was Sarah Senn, who I had sent several photos for an article that she wrote about me. But we had never previously met in person.
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Diabetes Medication, Exercise For Diabetes

Choosing Exercise or Antioxidants

Based on what I’ve read recently, some of which I have reported here, I’ve grown more and more wary of the wisdom of taking supplements. Few of the them seem to help.

And now comes a new study indicating that the two most common supplements can actually work against us. Those supplements are vitamins C and E.

It seems that we have a choice of exercising or taking large doses of those supplements. We know that exercise has lots of good effects like increasing our sensitivity to insulin, which is of great importance to all of us with diabetes.
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Diabetes Testing

Vitamin D Levels in the ICU

The sickest people that some endocrinologists see have very low levels of Vitamin D. The sicker they are the lower their levels. What’s your Vitamin D level?

Australian endocrinologists, specialists in treating diabetes, performed a prospective study of the vitamin D status in ICU patients referred to the department of endocrinology at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, between January 2007 and January 2008. The mean serum level of Vitamin D among the 42 patients they examined was 16 ng/ml.

Three of these patients died. Each of them had undetectable levels of Vitamin D.

The Australian endocrinologists published their findings as correspondence in the April 30, 2009, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. Only the extract is free online. But I purchased the full-text for only $10.
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Diabetes Diet

Customized Trail Mix

Whether you are on a hike or a long car trip, only one food is better than trail mix. It’s customized trail mix.

Until yesterday the only way to get it just to your liking, however, was to go shopping for each of the ingredients you wanted and then put them together. But without a lot of calculations that few of us would bother to figure out, we wouldn’t have any idea how many calories, carbohydrates, and other nutrients those bags of trail mix would have.

Now, YouBars has expanded from their original customized nutrition bars, which last year I wrote about here. CEO Anthony Flynn offered me the chance to place an advance order for my own customized trail mix.
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Psychosocial

Shameless

Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?

Most of us can still remember those words of admonishment from our mothers years ago. And many of us berate our kids with that phrase now.

When what we do is bad — when we violate the Golden Rule — the innate sense of shame that all normal people have can lead us back to ethical behavior. This normal human emotion can bring us to maturity in our actions.

But many of us are ashamed of who we are or the diseases we have. We feel shame about the physical condition of our bodies.
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