MAYOR BLOOMBERG AND ME: STRANGE BEDFELLOWS!

You may have read today that the latest "Hizzoner" of my old hometown has decided to take a stand against salt...

http://cbs5.com/health/bloomberg.war.on.2.920740.html

...and, after a bit of reflection, I've decided that I think he's on the right track with this. If US food manufacturers reduce the salt content of foods by fifty percent over a ten-year period, we will probably see healthier Americans by that time. Excess, hidden salt is in just about everything we eat, even in "sweet" foods like cake and candy. On the more obvious side of things, have you ever noticed the sodium content in your average can of soup? It's pretty scary how high that number can go.

I know that we are all responsible adults who can, and do, make good decisions for ourselves---and this is why the "nanny state" comment by one respondent to the above article sort of made me a little sad. Let's be honest: as consumers, we need all the help we can get. If someone in our government offers to assist us in acquiring and maintaining good health, why not gracefully accept the offer? Doing so doesn't seem "nanny state" to me (and it's not as if the good mayor is saying, "Hey! There's this stuff we've developed---we're calling it Soylent Green! You're gonna eat it!").

We're busy people. It's often easiest for us to purchase ready-to-serve items from the supermarket to help us save time in meal preparation, and these are the very items that are highest in sodium. Some of us would rather have the convenience than the health benefit, but we can have both. Bloomberg's proposal makes this clear.

Anyway, Hizzoner's idea got me thinking about the other "hidden" thing in foods: sugar. It's bloody EVERYWHERE. Because it is in everything we eat, and exists in great excess in prepared foods, our population is at great health risk for...you guessed it...diabetes. You can pick up just about any food in the supermarket, read the label, and find sugar in it. Here are some of its other names:

Beet sugar

Brown sugar

Cane sugar

Concentrated grape juice

Confectioner’s sugar

Corn sweeteners

Corn syrup

Cane juice

Demerara sugar

Dextrin

Dextrose

Fructose

Fruit juice concentrate

Galactose

Glucose

High-fructose corn syrup

Honey

Invert sugar

Lactose

Malt

Maltitol

Maltodextrin

Maltose

Mannitol

Maple cream

Maple sugar

Maple syrup

Molasses

Powdered sugar

Rapadura

Raw sugar

Sorbitol

Sorghum

Sucrose

Table sugar

Turbinado sugar

White sugar

Xylitol

Read labels, friends. Please. You don't need all this in your food! In any case, the less processed a food is, the better it is for you.

Another thing you can do to help minimize the amount of sugars you ingest is to eat foods that are lower on the glycemic index. For those of you who might not have heard this term, the glycemic index is a way to quantify the impact of carbohydrates on blood glucose levels. Certain foods that act as sugars (such as watermelon, grapes, potatoes, corn, white rice) are high-glycemic foods. Most other fruits and vegetables---as well as proteins, nuts, and whole grains---are low-glycemic foods. I love using barley as a substitute for rice; it is an excellent low-glycemic grain choice. Here is a link that's helped me learn more about the glycemic index:

http://www.glycemicindex.com

I hope you find this helpful, too.

PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE....BUT IT SURE TRIES MY PATIENCE TO BE PATIENT!

Hiya, peeps!

I'm sorry I've been gone so long. There have been a few earth-shattering events here at the Brown household---for one, my husband Matt is going to tour Italy as the auxiliary keyboardist for a band called Circa:, which features ex-Yes men Tony Kaye and Billy Sherwood, as well as drummer Jay Schellen and guitarist Jimmy Haun. Woohooo! It's all very exciting, and Matt's still in shock that he was asked to play. Here's a link for those who may be interested: http://www.circahq.com/


In the matter of diabetes, the last two weeks or so have been....frustrating, to say the least. My blood glucose levels have been all over the place, although I have been eating well, walking, and taking my medications. I have not lost any weight for over a month. According to my doctor, I will probably not lose any weight until my A1C gets down from 10.2 to a healthier level, like 6.5 or less. In March, I will have my quarterly battery of tests, and I will see if I've improved. If I begin to drop more weight before then, that will be a good indication that I am successfully controlling my diabetes.

But lately I've wanted to hurl my glucometer out the window because of those erratic blood glucose levels. My doctor believes that one of my meds must be fine-tuned, so I have spent the last half month trying to find the magic formula in the daily amount of glyburide I take. I am only allowed a certain daily amount of my other oral med, Metformin, which I divide into three daily doses of 1000, 500, and 1000 milligrams. But my doc has allowed me to tweak my glyburide dosage to customize it. He started me off with 2.5 milligrams taken twice a day, and I've been playing with it since then, gradually increasing the amount taken, and adding a third daily dose. The maximum daily dosage of glyburide is 20 milligrams a day, and I'm not even close to that number. Slow and steady wins the race, right? Sure---but, dammit, the "crashes" when my blood glucose goes below 70, combined with the 200-plus highs, are a recipe for misery. Between the downs and ups I feel like shit, I get cranky, I have screaming headaches, nausea, cold sweats, dizziness, weakness, body aches, excessive thirst, and I just want to say "Fuck it", throw the meds out, eat everything in sight....and kick my zafu and zabuton. Hard.

And then I remember what I have learned via Buddhist training, about suffering and doing one thing at a time, here and now. So, I suffer. What is that? Well, suffering is part of chronic illness. Will I continually suffer or be in pain? I don't know. Is there a chance that I'll have some moments during which I'll stop suffering? Very likely, but I can't tell you when they'll be. How do I feel now, right this second? Not bad, actually. I'll go test my blood and see what my levels are.

Okay! My levels are 128, two hours after dinner. Pretty good there, me!

Now, if these levels rise two hours from now for no apparent reason, or if they plummet and I crash out, the only thing I can do is address the issue as it happens at that moment. All I can do is be diligent in maintaining my healthy lifestyle of eating well and walking, and couple that with the trial-and-error process of adjusting the glyburide...and accept that all this is an adjustment period that requires patience. If, in the next few weeks, I just can't achieve a normal rise and fall of blood sugar, I will call my doctor and we will try something else. It's small steps for me all the way. Freaking does no good, and can do me harm, as stress increases blood glucose levels. As a matter of fact, the upset I've felt over the last couple of weeks most likely sent that stack right through the roof.

Time to sit.

MANY THANKS TO DMITRY, THE MIRACLE WORKER

Hello, all! I'm back, and the 'puter is running beautifully once more. Dmitry really knows his stuff when it comes to techie things. Me, I'm a Luddite...or, when confronted with anything more complicated than "insert Tab A into Slot B", my tomboyishness flees and Betty Boop takes over. Therefore, I am very grateful for D's assistance, and to show my appreciation of his talents, I plan to buy him a small gift this weekend. Problem is, I just can't bring myself to purchase the one thing I know he really loves: frogs' legs. Yow.

It was a very difficult afternoon today---I had an appointment, but mass transit was problematic and it took me almost three hours to reach my doc's office. I'm wiped out as I type, so this entry will end here. I need sleeeeeeeeeeeep....

UH, OH....

Well, folks...my computer has some issues; in fact, it's funkier than Bootsy Collins and needs lots of work. I am bringing the machine to Dmitry The Mad Russian Genius (my co-worker and friend) who will lay his healing hands on it and make it all better. I'll have it back by Monday.

Until then, I wish you all an enjoyable few days!

THE DAWN PHENOMENON

Hi, youse folks! Hope your week is going well.

As I started taking better care of myself and adjusting to the oral diabetes meds, I noticed something that seemed kind of odd. My fasting glucose levels (the measure of my blood sugars upon arising) appeared quite high---over 160---when they should have been much lower. I had no idea what was happening, so I went on the Interwebs and did a bit of research. Turns out that this is a common event for diabetics; it's called---you guessed it---the dawn phenomenon. What apparently happens as I sleep is that certain hormones come to visit my liver and make it shell out glucose so I can have some sort of energy to use for when I wake up. At the same time, these hormones hold my insulin hostage so it can't handle the excess glucose, and BAM!...up go the numbers.

There are different treatment approaches for the dawn phenomenon, including adjustment of meds, exercise early in the day and not later, and the one that appealed to me the most: a small snack before bed. Basically, I'd been eating my last meal of the day in the early evening and not eating anything after that. My rationale was that if I was trying to lose weight, I shouldn't consume anything after 7 PM. In this case, however, something to eat before I turned in could possibly be more helpful than harmful. I decided to try it out.

For the last five days or so, I have had one stick of lowfat string cheese right before sleep. And, wouldn't you know it---so far, so good. My morning readings have been in between 73 and 88. When I see my doc again in two weeks, I'll find out if I've solved the issue, or if he wants to tweak anything else in my treatment. I hope he'll just leave me with my cheese and call it a day.

There's another kind of dawn phenomenon I've been experiencing lately, too: during these last few days, I've awakened feeling much better than I have in a very long time; in years, it seems. After the alarm clock buzzes (and after I have swatted the snooze button twice, as is my normal morning habit), I turn it off and simply feel...grateful. Thankful. I can take care of my health, and I'm fortunate to still have some health for which I am able to care. I have health insurance, unlike so many others. I have supportive people in my life who teach me something each day. Matt is patient and always helps me. Even our three Qats (with apologies to B. Kliban!) are my own personal cheering squad, so I salute these three little purr-factories named Naima, Brooklyn, and Lerxst. Thank you, loveys, for all your comfort and cuddling.



Oh! Before I forget, my buddy Timmo thought it would be a good idea to tell you that I pronounce Tasia as "TAY-zhuh", not "TAH-zhah". I think this is because he called me "TAH-zhah" for a year before he figured it out (I just didn't have the heart to tell him, model of tact and politeness that I am).

BE NICE, BE KIND...AND BE HEALTHY

Many thanks to Pam and Cheryl for your kind words! I am glad you visited---please come back again when you'd like to.

I wanted to take a moment to explain a little more about the Intention-Setting Ceremony Matt and I attended at the Against The Stream Buddhist Meditation Society on New Year's Eve, and what it meant for me. Each of us who were there named our intentions for the coming year, and lit a candle. My intentions were to take care of my diabetes and health, to be more compassionate to others, and to not speak evilly of others---this last, of course, means to engage only in skillful speech. No gossiping allowed. And I'm a born and bred Brooklynite who is part Italian, for God's sake. Do any of you know how difficult it can be to keep one of us from jabbering on about someone else?

But one thing I learned from gossiping is that it always ended up making me feel lousy. Now, when I say "gossiping", I don't mean speaking with care about a friend for whom you're concerned because they are sick, and the like---I mean catty, useless talking. And yet, even as I nattered on about this person or that, I felt awful. I knew it was wrong and unfair, even if the person about whom I was speaking wasn't a very nice or kind person. It hurt to do it, but I kept right on doing it because it was a kind of addiction in a sense.

Gossiping also drags out a whole lot of other feelings, including anger. At least for me it did. I already have a lot of anger in me from a past which I haven't yet resolved, and gossiping just added to the load. I obsessed over other people's words and behavior, and it would bring me to a height of pissed-offness that made me grit my teeth so that my jaw hurt afterwards. And boy, could I justify it: "His politics are all wrong, so he's The Enemy!" On the heels of this justification, I kept renewing this behavior, solidifying it, by being absolutely confrontational with others. Okay, don't let me sugar-coat it: I was a Number-One Bitch.

I've already told a few people that I am sorry for the way I have acted. They have accepted my apologies; in doing so, they have treated me better than I had treated them. They have taught me, and I'm grateful for the lesson.

And---boy howdy!---besides the cultivation and nurturing of compassion, there are other benefits to ridding myself of the gossiping and unskillful speech habit: in stopping the blathering, I am less angry. When I'm less angry, I'm less stressed. Less stress means lower blood glucose readings. So, skillful speech to me also means a skillful life.


I'd like to include a link to a website at which I'm a moderator. It's called Eunoia, and it's a fun place to be. It also had its day regarding unskillful speech, but it appears that that's behind it now! Here's the link: http://afunplacetobe.myfreeforum.org/

For anyone who may be interested in Noah Levine and the Against The Stream Buddhist Meditation Society, please visit this link: http://www.againstthestream.org/

GREETINGS!

Hello, all! I'm new at this blogging thing, so please bear with me. I'm also relatively new at diabetes and at Buddhism, so do let me begin by saying I am hardly an authority on either subject; I'm still learning about them. I'll cut to the chase and give you the story; here's Part 1:

I learned that I had Type II (adult onset) diabetes during a routine physical on April 3, 2007, two days after my 45th birthday. At that time, I was in the midst of a year's worth of disability for fibromyalgia and psoriatic arthritis, so the diabetes diagnosis was just another explanation for my feeling like hell. I remember that I was relieved that there was a reason for my excessive thirst and chronic candida, as well as the other charming symptoms of this disease, so I immediately made an appointment with an endocrinologist, took some tests, met with a nutritionist, got my free blood glucose meter in the mail (for those who don't know, the meter companies give 'em away because they charge up the wazoo for the test strips you need to purchase in order to check your blood glucose levels), and started to take care of myself. And then two months into it, I got rebellious and stopped giving a damn...until December 8, 2008, when my vision just crapped out on me at work and I couldn't see anything on my computer screen. Diabetes can wreck your vision, you see, and one of the symptoms of high glucose levels is blurred vision. The bell went off in my head.

I left work, went home, dug out my old meter, bought some new test strips, and tested my blood sugar. Now, normal readings for me are 110 or less before meals, and 140 or less after meals. My reading was 300. Scared the hell out of me. Okay, I thought, I can't see much of anything right now. This is REAL. If I don't do something now, I'll be facing things like organ failure and some other fun things down the line.

So, it was back to the doctor for tests, admonition, and some new medications (I don't take insulin; I take those old classics called Metformin and Glyburide). The tests revealed that my kidneys were not damaged despite the neglect, and I was so relieved to hear this that I almost cried. However, one test which gives a diabetic patient an average of their glucose level for two to three months--called the A1C--put me at 10.2; a healthy level for a diabetic is 6.5 or lower. Yikes. My triglycerides were off the scale, as were my LDL (the bad cholesterol) levels. My HDLs (good cholesterol) were too low. The only good things I had going for me were that my blood pressure was great from diligently taking my BP meds for years, and that I didn't smoke (I quit three years ago). Oh, did I mention that I am about 90 pounds overweight?

Since I went back to the doctor, I have been caring for myself. I have my blood glucose under control. I am eating well and dropping weight. I take my meds faithfully. My vision is still blurry; it will take more time to improve, but even so, I feel better than I have in a very long time. In a few weeks, I will have more tests and see the results of my self-care, and I look forward to that.

Okay, here's Part 2:

I have considered myself a Buddhist for about three years, although I didn't really do much with it. I practiced zazen (shikantaza, or "just sitting" meditation) on my own, and then for the space of a few months I went to sit with Brad Warner, the punk-bassist Zen master, over at the Hill Street Center in Santa Monica. Brad is a scream, and I think much of the Buddhist community doesn't really understand him because his approach to Buddhism is not what most people, Buddhist or not, expect. Maybe they shouldn't expect anything. Anyway, as much as I enjoyed sitting with Brad, I didn't feel as if he was the teacher for me. This is no slam against Brad; he is a wonderful teacher for so many others, and just because he didn't work out for me doesn't mean he sucks.

I continued my practice on my own until about a month ago, when my husband Matt and I decided to visit the Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society Center, located on Melrose in Los Angeles and established by by Noah Levine. The first time we went there to meditate, Noah was away, so we didn't have the opportunity to hear him speak or meditate with him until New Year's Eve, when the Center held a New Year's Intention-Setting ceremony and offered people the opportunity to receive the Five Buddhist Precepts and take the Three Refuges. Matt and I decided we wanted to deepen our commitment to Buddhism, so we attended.

Here are the Five:

1. I undertake the training rule to abstain from taking life.

2. I undertake the training rule to abstain from taking what is not given.

3. I undertake the training rule to abstain from sexual misconduct.

4. I undertake the training rule to abstain from false speech.

5. I undertake the training rule to abstain from drinks and drugs that cause heedlessness.

It will be interesting to see how I---an all too human person!---interpret and follow these rules. What about euthanasia? Abortion? Stealing food if you are starving and broke? Killing in self-defense? White lies?

One thing about the ceremony that I really loved is that we took The Three Refuges in the original Pali language:

Buddham saranam gacchami (to the Buddha [Buddha nature—the ideal or highest spiritual potential that exists within all beings] for refuge I go)

Dhammam saranam gacchami (to the Dharma [teachings] for refuge I go)

Sangham saranam gacchami (to the Sangha [community] for refuge I go)

Dutiyampi Buddham saranam gacchami (For the second time ... [repeated for each of the three])

Tatiyampi Buddham saranam gacchami (For the third time ... [repeated for each of the three])


At this time, Matt and I want to continue to attend meditations at Against the Stream, so that is what we will do.

So...how do diabetes and Buddhism combine in my life? Diabetes is something that keeps me in the present moment, at each step of my self-care throughout each day. And in caring for myself every day, mindfulness is present as a big ol' smack upside the head. It hurts so good. LOL!

Whew! That's all for now.