Controlling My Diabetes

Image from Pixaby

Hello Everyone,

I have been dealing with diabetes for many years and I wanted to share a little bit about how I deal with this disease.

First let me tell you a little bit about the disease itself. I want to say that the opinions here are my own based on what I have learned about this disease over the years.

I suffer from what is referred to as Type 2 Diabetes. What that means is that my body does not produce enough insulin.

As I understand it, Type 2 diabetes is a three fold disease.

  1. Your pancreas does not produce enough insulin to offset the amount of carbohydrates that are consumed. All carbs are the issue for diabetics not just sugar. Although sugar is considered empty carbs with little to no nutritional value.
  2. Your body develops a condition called insulin resistance. What that means is that your body does not know how to use the insulin that it does produce.
  3. Your liver produces glucose to give you the energy you need to go about your life. With diabetics this production can be out of control.

Many Type 2 Diabetics can control their disease with a carefully planned diet. I did this for many years until my blood glucose was no longer responding to the restricted diet. When that happened I needed to take medications.

For many more years I took a medication called Metformin and I still do. When that was no longer enough I was forced to begin insulin therapy. I was taking 2 different kins of insulin. The first one was a long acting insulin which I injected once a day. I also took a fast acting insulin before each meal. In addition to that I was injecting an insulin resistance drug before meals.

I did this for a few years until my doctor prescribed an insulin pump about 15 years ago. I am currently on my third pump, a Mini Med 770G pump from Medtronic. It attaches to my body through an infusion set. There is another devise that attaches to my body that reads my blood glucose and feeds it directly to my pump.

Image from Medtronic Website

This has made a very big difference in my diabetes control. The measure used to determine the effectiveness of your therapy is a test called A1C. The range of this test to avoid damage to your body from diabetes is under 7.0. Before my pump my A1C was in the 9 and up range. Since I began using the pump my level has dropped to between 6.5 and 6.9.

If you have diabetes and are struggling to keep it under control, I would recommend talking to your doctor of diabetic educator about getting an insulin pump.

I have been a diabetic for many years and have successfully managed it with the help of my doctor and diabetic educator. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me. I will be happy to help.

To Our Mutual Health
Steven Ackerman
Long Term Healthy Diabetic