Discovering the Truth About Christmas Treats

I miss the taste of the sweet treats of the season.  I was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes in May of this year, so this is the first Christmas season without sugar.    Sigh.

I'm lucky though, I can control the disease with diet and exercise and Metformin.  I don't have to do the daily blood tests.

I've learned to stop and appreciate the beauty of the treats under glass in bakeries, to breathe in and delight in the memories and emotions that rich scents of cinnamon, almond, clove, fruit evokes.  This lack has made me appreciate the real treats when I find them.  It is almost like a game.  I ask myself,  " If I could freely eat a few, select sweet treats, would this be one of them?" 

To my surprise, I find myself usually answering,  "No." 

If the tempting item is in a bag, I remind myself it is not fresh.  And fresh, straight from the oven, still gooey and steaming is the only way to eat most treats such as cookies.  I walked down the isle in overstock and remainder grocery I go to at least once a month, a store that saves my budget and me from despair, with all the baking goods to get a great deal on cans of evaporated milk, and walked right past the boxes of brownie and cake mixes with their ingredient lists of over 15 items including preservatives and fillers and multiple forms of second class sweeteners. No problem.  If I were to indulge, it would and indulgence with something homemade with love and real true ingredients.  In the grocery near my home, I walk in and the sweet smell is overpowering.  It is cloying in its overabundance, and there is something missing.  The scent of spices, butter, nutmeats and simmering fruit is absent.  There is just the smell of white flour and sugar.  This, too, I can forgo.

The piles of candy everywhere brighten with red, white, and gold wrappings.  But I can decorate with strings of popcorn and cranberries and shiny baubles;  I don't need gold boxes of chocolates,  and bowls of red and green candies.

I am pretty sure I can figure out how to make a fruit cake that is filled with the heady richness of freshly ground spices, healthy fruit and nuts and a tiny bit of honey and just enough Stevia to add some sweetness without bitterness so as delight guests and allow my own indulgence once or twice.  I am sorting through my recipes and looking for recipes I can modify so as to be able to make plates of treats to give away without exposing myself to dangerous temptation.  Many recipes I remember from my childhood were simple ones that I can adapt to use a sweetener that is natural, and with a lower glycemic index than the "white death" soaked cookies we too often think of as "Christmas cookies."  Chocolate (dyed green) and white (dyed red) cookie doughs rolled into flat sheets then layered and rolled and sliced to make pinwheel cookies were always on my mother's Christmas sideboard.  She also made almond flavored butter cookies shaped into tiny crescents with a clove stuck in each one.  Regular plain and simple cookies can be decorated with chopped fruits, nuts such as almonds that can be tinted into festive colors.   I will include clementines on the trays, and nuts, just like they did in the days of the Nutcracker. 

I will make Christmas trays of goodies for family and friends, and if so moved to do so, I may sample one bite from each type on different days, and I will allow myself to roll the tastes around, over my tongue, savor the real, true sweetness of home made delicacies without artificial anything while sharing the Holidays with the real, true sweet things in life: my family and friends.

Doctors, Gyms, and Computer Programs

In May they told me that I had diabetes because my blood tests showed a 7.5 on a scale that measures long term "sugar."  I haven't wanted to dive into figuring out all the jargon though I should.  I'm not measuring short term "sugar."  I am convinced that by next year I will be in a totally normal range, not taking Metformin, and eating normally in a veggie, whole foods sort of way.  You see yesterday I went to the Doctor.  This time my M.D. was the cutest, youngest looking physician I have seen to date.  She looked to be the same age as my daughter who is 21.  Argh.  They all look like babies!

Anyway she shared some good news with me.  On top of losing 10 lbs.,  I have also brought whatever it is that was 7.5 down to 6.8.  My other short term blood-sugar score was 108 which is apparently good.  By the next medical visit in 3 to 4 months I plan to be in good enough shape to have them let me officially go off the oral medication and control everything through diet and exercise.  The glycemic index seems to be the central good thing I've found out about. 

Now that I'm sleeping well and awakening rested after having my septum fixed, I plan to reintroduce the gym to my life.  I will beat this crap.  I will be GREAT again. 

If I'd have had the surgery a couple years ago and began breathing and sleeping better before these problems fully presented themselves, I am convinced I wouldn't have gained weight so readily and then developed the non-alcoholic fatty liver and diabetes. 

Anyway, things are moving in the right direction.  I've also found something called Perfect Diet Tracker that seems to be a great food monitoring program that calculates everything for you, is well rated, contains information for almost 90,000 foods, and is easy to use.  While it isn't for diabetes monitoring as such, it does help see sugars and carbohydrates, fats, proteins, calories, percentages, and totals. 

Breathe - Septum Surgery as a Life Changer.

Geesh, I hate writing like this, talking like this, I sound like a freaking old lady fixated on her medication, aches and pains.  But this is where I've been in my head for the past 10 days. Like Betty White says  for AARP,  I just need to "Get over it!"  And, it is important that I write this as people need to know that this surgery can be a game changer for people with sleep disturbances.

Breathing is pretty basic to life.  I've thought about the actual action of breathing a bunch over the last 10 days.  As soon as the surgery to correct my severely deviated septum was over I began to notice drastic differences in how I felt, how I breathed, and how I slept.  I was taking an opiate-based pain medication for the first 5 days after surgery and nasal passage swelling was pronounced during that time as well.  By the 6th day after surgery, with the stints still in place holding the new position of the septum while it healed, I noticed that was breathing better and I had not found myself with my mouth open and breathing through it in a day or so. 

This is also when my husband told me that I was not snoring at night.  This is absolutely amazing.  This is a really big thing to me.  Even before the apnea became apparent from the "snort, snort, choke, gasp" sequence of noises I would make several times at night and wake my husband,  I would snore like a sailor swears. 

My dad snored so loudly he shook the house.  I could hear him snore and gasp and snort in my bedroom upstairs and in the opposite corner of the big old farmhouse I grew up in.  He would take naps mid-afternoon if he could as he obviously had sleep apnea and never was able to really rest.  I appreciate how he felt, and I wonder if my deformation was inherited.  I've never broken my nose. 

I was happy that the surgery seemed to have worked better than I dared to hope it would.  Then it dawned on me how hard I had to fight to have this surgery and how long I lived half a life  because of something so simply, if not easily, remedied.  I think I am a little bit angry.

I asked my primary caregiver at least two years ago to have something done to check out my nose because of nosebleeds, sinus headaches, migraine and snoring.  She looked at my nasal passages and said things looked fine.  This year I asked at my check-up again.  It was with a different physician in the same university-based practice group.  He wanted me to use a steroid nasal spray and did not want to write a referral to an ENT specialist.  I insisted this time.   I'm glad I did.  I just hope it was in time to be able to undo some of the damage the deviated septum induced apnea caused.

I definitely will need to have another sleep study done to find out how my breathing really is.  In the last year my health has gotten worse and worse.  Two years ago I was diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver.  I needed to do more physical exercise and get some weight off, but I had no energy. I had enough energy to work half-time and do a bit of work on my own business, and that was about it.  If I kept up with dishes and laundry it was noteworthy,  and  I slept as much as I could and it was never enough. The diabetes diagnosis really was not what I wanted to hear.  I wanted to get the nose fixed, Ramp up the exercise and getmy weight down before I became diabetic.   It is all a chain-linked spiral.  I have to stop the cycle. 

I can breathe again.  I've lost 10 lbs. in the last month. Now to get to and from the gym without having to take a nap when I get back.  It will be ok.  But how much of this could have been avoided if my request to check out my nose had been taken seriously.  A CT scan should have been done before any thing else was decided. I'm definitely unsure how to proceed with medical assessments.  Major trust has been lost.

Fear and Snoring in the Old Pueblo

Posting everyday when there is no stock pile of emergency blog entries built up is a bit stupid.  So call me dumb and dip me in rum and roll me in sugar.  I have so much I wanted to convey in the preceding three days of entries about virtual worlds, but I'm trying to get so much done before this Friday that I'm writing things that I should have been ready to post in the morning 10 to 15 hours later in the evening and my writing has suffered.  I will revisit the topic but only when I can do it justice. 

So today, tonight, I write from my gut rather than my brain and promise nothing.  I'm scared.  I have surgery to correct a deviated septum on Friday.  I can't breathe through my left nostril and my right one dries out and causes nose bleeds.  I end up breathing through my mouth.  I hate being a mouth breathing idiot.  I'm sincerely hoping that after surgery and the coming week of hellish recovery when my whole facial and dental structure will be terribly sore, I will only be able to have liquids, and I will only be able to breathe through my mouth.  I may have headaches.  That is the down side. 

The up side is that will just a little bit of luck, this will be the beginning of an upward spiral.  I've been on a downward one regarding health for several years now.  I should be able to breathe and have a much better sleep experience with greatly reduced apnea.  Once I'm healed fairly well - by the end of summer - I will be able to have a sleep study done to see where I'm at per stopping breathing during the night.   Then I will have my dentist work with the apnea specialist to make a mouth piece that holds my jaw forward and keeps my airways open during sleep.  Once this is done I should feel better in many ways because I will be getting deep sleep for the first time in many, many years.

Getting sleep will give me more energy.  Getting real sleep will also get hormone production related to sleep normalized.  Leptin and cortosol are the hormones involved with sleep and sleep apnea stress that also regulate hunger and create a desire for carbohydrates and fats.

Not sleeping well makes a person not only tired but also hungry and desirous of exactly the wrong foods.  If you a person is tired, and hungry, the motivation to exercise is usually diminished.  Without enough exercise, even more weight is gained and sleep quality worsens.  It is a vicious cycle.

In the past I loved working out.  Elliptical cross-trainers and weights were my friends. But in the last few years it has been harder and harder to work out. I got a bum trainer who did not understand a foot and ankle problem I had and had me on a program that injured me.  I lost my trust of the gym and when management wouldn't work with me I became angry and disillusioned. 

By this fall I plan to be hiking at least once a week and working out 3 or 4 times a week.  I expect the diabetes I have been diagnosed with to be totally manageable with diet adjustment by the end of the year, if not sooner.  I also fully expect to have lost at least 20 to30 lbs by the end of the year too.  The weight loss will also lessen the severity of the apnea and in turn I will have more energy.  By next year at this time, I expect to be pretty healthy and much less heavy.   This path all starts with Friday's surgery.   I will overcome my fear and regain my health.

Wish me luck and hold me to it.