Let's not beat about the bush, 2013 was crap. It should have been a marvellous 12 months - our first full year with Daisy, a period of glorious weather during the summer, a bit more of the garden under control and no major disasters in the house. Reality was different. I struggled through the whole year in a fog of what seemed like perpetual exhaustion.
If you never got a reply to a friendly email, never got a birthday/Christmas card, if I didn't visit your blog, or I just seemed to ignore you and left you thinking I didn't give a sh*t about you then I am very sorry; last year there were so many things I wanted to do but never had the energy to accomplish.
At first I put the tiredness down to having done way too much since early-2007 when Management and I decided to up sticks and relocate 350 miles north. The 'cure' for that was to do less in the garden, ensure LP did all the heavy work, and get out on the fells more.
That plan didn't work and fundamentally I felt as fit as the proverbial fiddle (apart from being tired all the time) so I put the malaise down to a dreadful cold I'd had in October 2012. 'Post Viral Fatigue' - that'll be it then. I even had a phone appointment with a GP who agreed with me: Eat well, make time for hobbies, be nice to yourself, all great advice which I followed. Didn't make any difference.
Eventually (mid January) I went to see a GP who was helpful and understanding. He was working on 'diagnosis by elimination' and did a load of blood tests. I was surprised and not very happy to learn I had a Blood Glucose level which just tipped me into the '
at risk of developing diabetes' band. My weight is right in the middle of the 'correct' range for my age & height, BMI is 22. Blood pressure is low. Cholesterol is fine. Don't smoke, drink or play with recreational pharmaceuticals so I didn't tick any of the obvious 'risk factor boxes'. However, given how much orange juice I have consumed over the years I reckon I've brought this on myself with my sugar intake and immediately made changes to my diet in the hope when I have another HbA1c test in three months time the results will be healthier. Not a drop of juice has passed my lips since:}
As per usual, I've done a great deal of my own research (
Google Scholar is wonderful :} ) and found that diabetes treatment and prevention is a confusing minefield. NHS advice is not the same as that from Diabetes UK and both are polar opposite to currently perceived best practise in Europe. The one place I did find articulate reasoning was the
global Diabetes Forum. Despite the mixed messages, when offered a place on a "Walking Away From Diabetes" programme run by Cumbria NHS, I went to Whitehaven in atrocious conditions to spend the afternoon in an overheated airless room in a health centre. The idea was education on how to stop pre-diabetes becoming diabetes.
Diabetes Educator: The amount of sugar you eat has NO effect on your Blood Glucose level. You must walk at least 10,000 steps each day and you must reduce your Saturated Fat intake to an absolute minimum.
Jayne: I walk, on average, 12,000 steps a day. I already have a low fat diet. Given I'm already meeting/exceeding these recommendations, are there any tools I can take away with me today that will help me avoid developing diabetes?
(coincidentally I'd bought a pedometer at Christmas)
Diabetes Educator: {shrugs} Not really, some people are just unlucky.
Jayne: Do you mean that regardless of what I do, I'm going to develop diabetes anyway?
Diabetes Educator: Probably
I had been told earlier in the session that doing 15,000 steps one day confers no 'credit' towards tomorrow if the weather was too dreadful to go for a proper walk. Instead, as I had neither a treadmill or static bike at home I should not sit down in the evenings to watch TV. I must stand up in front of the television and march on the spot to make up my 10,000. There was no interest in the fact I've got a large garden and often work very hard outdoors. Being bluntly informed I was probably going to develop diabetes regardless of what I did was fairly devastating even if the Educator is likely to be wrong because she knows stuff all about me. If
that's the NHS-sponsored advice then I should have shares in whatever
Pharma companies make insulin drugs. It's no wonder that 'experts' reckon by 2020 over 4 million Britons will have this horrible condition that will consume 10% of the already-stretched NHS budget.
I'm placing my faith and future health in our own research and common sense.
Through my own research I found the work done by
Newcastle University on reversing diabetes. As weight loss is a key part of this I can understand where the instruction to cut down on fat comes from. However, in October the
BMJ reported that Saturated fat is not the major issue,
[quote]
... a “low fat” diet showed the greatest decrease in energy
expenditure, an unhealthy lipid pattern, and increased insulin
resistance (a precursor to diabetes) compared with a low carbohydrate
and low glycaemic index (GI) diet.
... the government’s obsession with levels of total cholesterol “has led to
the over-medication of millions of people with statins and has diverted
our attention from the more egregious risk factor of atherogenic
dyslipidaemia” (an unfavourable ratio of blood fats).
There's much more, and the
responses/comments from medical profession are just as interesting.
So for the last month it's been low GI carbs, lots of veggies and good quality protein and I already feel better. I have more energy, am more alert, feel more like "me". I'd to lose nearly a stone but will do it gently, that way I'm more likely to keep the weight off. I've never had to diet in my life but I've seen what yo-yo dieting does to people and it's not an inviting situation.