My Diabetes - Coincidence or What? UK Newspaper Article - Why sex is good for you

I was just looking for the statistic that sex is equivalent to athletic exercise when I stumbled across this article in todays UK 'Daily Mail Online'.

The article gives ten reasons why sex is good for normal healthy people.

daily mail newspaper article Why sex good you 28th November 2013


What they didn't realise when researching this is that given a large percentage of the complications caused by or associated with diabetes are circulation related, then sex for diabetics must be even more health giving.  Lets face it, anything which increases your exercise, heart rate, carbohydrate metabolism is in my own personal experience extremely useful especially when a lot of exercise is mind numbing.

Also, depression and loneliness are frequent issues for long term diabetics, so anything which causes the release of the positive hormones and makes you feel good must help and bind you to your loved ones.

I'm not surprised that sex is good, but alas not available on Dr's prescription.

I hope you enjoy the article.

Below are Amazon UK links to one of the 1999 published book mentioned at the end of the article, and to a more recent thesis for those who like to research their topics.

                

And for USA readers, here are the Amazon links

               

I hope this does not offend peoples sensibilities no smut is intended.

TBC

My Diabetes - What did I do to try and avoid diabetic hypos

In reality it is impossible for me to avoid ever having a hypo, the real question is how can I lessen the chance of having a 'severe unexpected hypo' which would require the help from others.  What I quickly realised was that the most important thing to do was to discover 'My Hypo Early Warning Signals' so I could prevent a mild hypo from becoming something much worse.

The way I went about this was to make the conscious decision to become more aware of my internal self and my body. Before I became diabetic I didn't pay that much attention to my body. I knew:

1) If I was tired, I slept.
2) When I was hungry, I ate
3) If I ate bad food, it made my ill
4) If I I ran a long distance, I became stiff
5) If I stubbed my toe, it hurt

These were all the normal things, but I knew I had to go further.

So for a short period I kept a note book and gradually I began to notice things:

1) If I had to get up in the night to go for a pee
  --> my urine test at breakfast showed high sugars
2) If I woke up in the morning with a basketball bladder
  --> my urine test at breakfast showed high sugars
3) If I woke up in the night soaked in a cold sweat
 --> I was experiencing a night hypo and need to drink a high glucose drink
4) If I woke up in the morning with a tiny cold penis
  --> my urine test at breakfast were blue and very low
5) If I had an extremely full bladder and hadn't drank much
  --> my urine test at showed high sugars
6) When I broke out in a cold hypo sweat I smelt a kind of musk on my skin
 --> I was going hypo and needed to eat
7) If the images before my eyes started to get blotchy like looking through cloth
 --> I was going hypo and needed to eat
8) If my lips started to tingle and my chin became cold and numb
 --> I was going hypo and needed to eat
9) If I started to look red face and get a headache
  --> my urine test showed high sugars
10) If my calfs and thighs started to feel like they were full of treacle
  --> my urine test showed high sugars

This observing becomes a form of biofeedback, from evidence and feelings I very quickly became aware of my body and its needs and the signals it gave me when it was in distress.

Learning Point:

If I wanted to be in control of my diabetes, I had to know what it did to me and how those things, felt, tasted and smelled.

The most import thing I learned was:

The hypo is not my enemy trying to cut me down, its a friend warning me that I need to do something to prevent things getting worse.

TBC

My Diabetes - My First Hypo

My first hypo occurred just over an hour after the nurse left.

As she had not explained the warning signs and symptoms of a hypo and it caught me by surprise.  I had assumed that as my blood sugar was so high it would take ages to come down, but it didn't as I'd been starving myself for days.

I got up to go to the bathroom a felt a little unsteady on my feet.  Then I began to notice, what I have become to realise, are my warning signs of a hypo:

1) A cold sweat was breaking out on my arms and hands
2) The my back and my neck were soaked with this cold sweat
3) My hands were trembling and sweating
4) My lips began to tingle and my chin began to go numb
5) My penis had apparently disappeared to who knows where and was so tiny and cold it was a fiddle to urinate.
6) I began to get more light headed and feel like I was going to faint.
7) When I got back to the room Debbie asked me how I was and I said a bit faint.

Luckily, we were sharing the house with nursing colleagues who took one look at me and said, wow matey your looking very hypo.  One of them ran over to the nearby shop and bought a large bottle of lucozade(high glucose drink) and gave me medium size glass to drink and a 4 bar kitkat which I miraculously place in my mouth and devoured in a few bites.

I felt awful for around 15 minutes, and then suddenly like a switched had been switched back on I was fine, like nothing had happened.

My learning points:

1) Always have at least one bottle of high glucose energy drink or glucose tablets or chocolate with you or within reach.
2) Always make sure that you have appropriate levels of carbohydrate food available before you inject any insulin.
3) If you start to feel faint or dizzy sit down immediately, do not wait to fall over or faint as this could lead to serious injuries or may incapacitate you.
4) Always tell others if you start to feel unwell.

TBC