My Diabetes - Can A Diabetic Have A Sex Life? Part 5

Almost everybody at some stage in their life, has a light to moderate hypo from too much exercise, skipping meals or too much to drink.

• pale skin around the eyes

• cold sweats

• tingling of the lips and tongue

• shaky hands

• unsteady on your feet

• difficulty in concentrating

Learning Point:

• Test your blood sugar before

• Eat sufficient fast acting carbohydrates to ensure you don't go hypo

• If in doubt have a bit extra and adjust for it afterwards

A difficulty for diabetics is that excursion hypo is pretty similar to a insulin hypo and there is nothing that will stop you and your partner quicker than either of you worrying that the sweat and clammy skin are down to an impending hypo. 

TBC

My Diabetes - My Favorite Tipple Lucozade

By far the lifesaver for me over the past 32 years has been the humble glucose energy drink "Lucozade".

It is remarkably fast acting at bringing up my blood sugar and not giving me rampant indigestion and I tend to use it when doing work around the house, garden, sex and crazy sports.

I know all the theories about slow release carbohydrates being better for me, and that I should reduce my insulin to do tasks but it always left me exhausted and feeling hypo.

Not only does the mixture of the insulin and the lucozade enable me to get on and do the most difficult jobs it also changes my muscle shape and tone in an afternoon.  Whereas my partner and others spend weeks at the gym and are often left tired and drained by exercise (they have burnt their reserves of glycogen etc) I am left feeling bulked up and ready for more action.

You may think after consuming 30g+ of lucozade and doing some heavy work that my blood sugar would rise after I stop, it seems sensible.  But it doesn't, the blood sugar stays at a reasonable level as my body goes about repairing, refreshing and building muscle my body and the effect last for days or longer.  But if I laze about it all goes back to being untoned.

Mind you I go through quite a bit of it so tend to buy in bulk packs:

Here is a link for Amazon UK 12 x 330ml pack:

And Amazon USA 24 x 330ml pack:

Thats if you can't pick it up in your local store.

In fact a large percentage of the hypos I had when I first became diabetic were post exercise (of any sort) where I had reduced my insulin only to find I need extra carbs as I was going hypo. Then my blood sugar shot through the roof as I had high carbs and reduced insulin. So I had to take a little insulin and I'd bounce back and forth like a game of hyper & hypo ping-pong.

I've also noticed that maintaining my insulin level but using lucozade, my recovery time post-exercise using the is significantly shorter than my non diabetic friends and as they tend to wilt as I just seem to get more in shape, fitter, stronger and more irritating as I want to continue.

But each to their own, this is just how I deal with it.

TBC

My Diabetes - How I Deal With Eating Out

Having explained the difficulties I have experienced with eating out the question is what I have done to try and avoid the pitfalls.  The thing to remember is that its only the carbohydrates that are the issue and have to be taken in balance with my insulin.

If its a night out my partner wants to do with her golf friends that she knows will have no real meal time, then I gracefully decline.  It's nice for the non-diabetics to have a normal mealtime without having to worry about me eating on time.

If I want or need to attend then:

• I eat my carbohydrate allowance as a meal before going out. This is usually something very really simple, fish fingers and oven chips. 
• I then attend the meal and eat everything that doesn't contain carbohydrates in the main course.
• Quite often I get to eat some of the pudding, as it often arrives several hours late and about the right time for my mid evening snack.

As always I carry 3 or 4 biscuit bars (12 - 15 carbs) in my pockets and a bottle of lucozade in the car.  I always carry more carbs than I need for the event so that in the event of a breakdown etc I know I have enough to take me through to the next lunchtime. 

There have been many times when I have been told categorically that the meal will be on time, and that we will be sat down to eat by 7pm only for the fickle finger of fate to step in and mess things up.  So although I often end up paying for a meal I don't get to eat all of, its worth it for my health and my peace of mind.

Learning Points

• Unless I'm cooking the food it may be late
• My urgency has the potential to be an emergency if not planned for
• I don't expect other non-diabetics to understand and even if the do they may not be in control
• I always carry plenty of food and never leave the house without it
• As soon as I get home I test my blood and if its high I taken an extra few units of short acting insulin to bring it back down gracefully

Exercise, Blood Sugar and Blood Pressure

Even before I was diabetic I knew that after a long run, I would look pale round the eyes despite having a red face and my hands would tremor.  This is hypoglycaemia in a non diabetic brought on by my burning of all of the bodies reserves too quickly for my body to break down its fats and other substances in the liver and muscles into usable glucose.

If I was not diabetic my body would reduce its insulin production and releases glucose for the remaining insulin to use when I start to exercise.  Insulin is like a catalyst your body needs it to break down sugars.  However as a diabetic on insulin my insulin level will be constant so if I do anything that requires extra energy, and I need to balance it with extra sugars.

Playing Squash

Before I became diabetic I liked the occasional game of tennis or squash.  I'd arranged to meet somebody, book a court, turn up with a bottle of water and play and afterwards I would have a sweet snack.

As a diabetic I can't do this:

1. To play squash I must either reduce my insulin (to prevent me burning to much carbohydrate), this requires forward planning. 
2. Or I drink a high carbohydrate drink before, during and after the game.

Okay thats seems simple enough, choose 1 or 2.  Unfortunately its not that simple.  In both cases diabetic control depends heavily on the reliability of your partner and the time of day of the game,

In both case if my squash partner doesn't arrive on time then I will have to begin exercising myself, i.e. go for a run in order to make up for the lack of a game.

All of the doctors have always told me to reduce my insulin before sport or heavy work that brings me out in a sweat.  I do this only very very occasionally, the reason is quite simple people are unreliable and get caught in traffic, forget or possibly decide not to bother to play.  I may also decide not to do the heavy work if the weather is too bad.  With little insulin in my blood my sugar will go high, and stay high for a long time.

So I tend to have a small mouthful of lucozade just before a game or heavy work and another just as it progresses.  For squash I am ready, if they don't turn up I have a modest bit of exercise to do, to get my blood sugar down.  If they do turn up i'm ready to play.

I also noted from observation, that with the reduced insulin plan it took me longer to recover and I noticed little in the way of physical benefits.  Whereas taking my normal insulin and topping up with high carbohydrate drinks to exercise, feels like watching a Popeye cartoon with spinach (if you don't know about Popeye type it into youtube).  My muscles swell and become more toned and my recovery time is vastly improved and my stamina lasts for days.

Warning, playing with my insulin level is not for the faint hearted and I acknowledge it can be dangerous, so I always have carbo's in my pockets and check my blood levels before and after sport for the some time.  Also tell the other person what you are planning to do and what to do if you start talking nonsense and falling around.

Learning Point

Reducing my insulin allows me to do exercise without lots of extra carbs

Eating or drinking extra carbs allows you to do extra exercise

Doing neither can lead to hypo if you exercise, or high blood sugar if you don't

TBC

My Diabetes : Diabetes Does Not Stop Me Having Fun ! Here's Safe Free-fall Flying :-)

Okay enough of the Diabetes management stuff for a few minutes.

One thing I have never let my diabetes do is to prevent me from doing crazy things.  However, given that a vast majority of injuries in fun sports are often caused to people trying to save somebody else who has gotten themselves into difficulty, since I've been diabetic I've tried not to put others at risk for my stupidities.

Free-fall Parachuting is fun but, as we diabetics know if your sick it could be a bit of a problem trying to consume a large amount of glucose in the back of a bobbing light aircraft whilst still throwing up... I haven't done that by the way I just like to plan ahead ;-)

Also, in reality as a newbie the amount of time you actually free-fall for yourself is pretty short, then a lot of dangling.

So here's a great way I got the flying free-fall fun of the wind in my face in a serious vertical Airkix wind tunnel.  Nothing got hurt (not even my pride with the silly hat they made me wear), and if I need to stop, I could just step out of the airflow.

If you have a recently diagnosed young diabetic (or oldie young at heart) who thinks he'll never be able to do anything remotely silly again, I thoroughly recommend it and I've been diabetic for 32 years and it hasn't stopped me.

My Diabetes - Safe Airkix Free-fall Flying Fun

Malcolm

My Diabetes - Riding my hypoglycemia 'hypo' bicycle

I view learning to become an Insulin Dependent Diabetic is like learning to ride my first bicycle. When I got my bike I thought I just get on and ride like everybody else, but this is not what happened.  I remember being frustrated that I couldn't ride a bike like my brothers and everybody was giving me advice and telling me how to do it:

sit on the seat and peddle you'll be fine (oops crash)
just peddle and move forward and you'll be fine (oops crash)
try sitting up straight (oops crash)
keep you hands tight on the handle bar grips (oops sideways crash)
going down hill will help you get your balance (oops crash)

Eventually my mother held the back of the seat just enough to stop me leaning too far on one side or the other.  Suddenly I had balance and was peddling and moving forward safe in the knowledge that she was holding me.

Then she shouted out I looked round realise she was no longer holding me (oops crash).  Then over time it became second nature, I can even ride without your hands, then get really cocky.. oops crash.

Controlling my diabetes was like this.  The professionals were very matter of fact.  They said if I:

1) Test my urine for sugars and write it in the diary
2) Inject the prescribed amount of insulin at the set time
3) Ate the right quantity of food
4) Exercise

Then everything would be okay and fine.

I did exactly what I was told to do and some days it worked and my blood sugars were low, and other days my blood sugars were high.  If I took the bus up the long hill to home I would be fine, but if I walked up the hill I'd be shaking like a leaf.

The real question for me was how to square this diabetic circle.  Like all medical instructions they seemed to be very rigid and inflexible.  It may sound incredibly straight forward to a dietician, or a specialist nurse or and doctor but real life is not that straight forward and simple.

TBC

My Diabetes - The nurse arrived with Insulin

I was advised by the Doctor to go home and that a 'diabetes specialist nurse' would visit me that afternoon and explain all about testing my urine with reagent tablets and how to take insulin.

When she arrived she quickly showed me how to test my urine by placing a quantity of urine in a test tube and dropping in a reagent tablet.  The tablet fizzed violently and the initial blue liquid turned bright orange.  By way of learning curve, I also discovered you should not hold the test tube in your hand as the reaction generates a lot of heat.  Orange I discovered was very bad, it meant large quantities of sugar were still in my urine.

The nurse then drew up a quantity of insulin into a syringe showed me how to pucker up the skin on my thigh and told me to stick the needle in pull back to make sure there was no blood (so I was injecting directly into a vein) and then squeeze in the syringe.  Although as a nurse I had given injections I discovered it was quite different doing it on yourself.

She then wrote some numbers down on a pad for how much Insulin I should inject daily and when to test my urine, then she gave me a note to take to my doctor, and said you might want to eat something if you start to feel hungry. She asked me if I had any questions, and I said no and she left, never to be seen again by me.

My Learning Points:

1) Once I was diagnosed with diabetes, things happened quickly, one minute I was fine, next I was diabetic forever.

2) The professionals I spoke to often assumed that the last professional had fully briefed me and had told you everything I needed to know. In reality they had not as they too had assumed somebody else had already done it.

3) The professionals asked me if I had any questions, but as I'd never had diabetes before I had no idea what questions I needed to ask so answered no.

4) If you take insulin and don't eat then it is a very quick way to get a very low blood sugar commonly known as a hypo.

TBC