My Diabetes - Can A Diabetic Have A Sex Life? Part 6 Viagra, Cialis & Levitra

There is no point in taking expensive erectile disfunction pills like:

Viagra, Cialis or Levitra
If you are planning to ingest large quantities of alcohol with the romantic meal etc. I don't know why alcohol has such a deleterious effect on these pills, but it does.

Also, as I've mentioned previously alcohol prevents the body from using its own energy stores so their is an increased risk of hypo which again will kill off the effect of the pills.

Learning Points:

• Alcohol and Viagra, Cialis or Levitra don't mix

• If you have to drink, do some test to find the right balance for you

• Make sure you have sufficient carbs 

• Viagra, Cialis or Levitra will make your heart beat faster and burn more carbs

TBC

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 - Can A Diabetic Have A Sex Life? Part 4 Viagra, Cialis & Levitra

So what 'Daddies Little Helpers':

• Viagra

• Cialis ( tadalafil )

• Levitra

• etc

Unless you have taken an appropriate amount of carbohydrate and continue to do so during the exercise session none of these pills will help. They will only increase the blood pressure to nether regions, if you are not hypo, and are engaging actively. 

So before reaching for the pill draw its important to get the planning and the provisions correct.

Learning Points:

• These pills need carbohydrates to work
• These pills take time to work 
• During the 30 mins to 1 hour lead time your blood sugar needs to be higher
• If you frequently have hypos these pills are unlikely to help
• If you frequently have hypos these pills my make it worse
• Plan -- Don't Fail

TBC

My Diabetes - Can A Diabetic Have A Sex Life? Part 3

Ignoring all of the emotional content for the time being, its important that a diabetic views sex as exercise, and like any exercise provisions of the extra carbohydrates is crucial.  So ignoring the biology, one has to seriously decide is this a:

• short sprint with no warm-up (hopefully by mutual consent :-)

• ten minutes warm-up then a short walk

• ten minutes warm-up then a long walk

• twenty minute warm-up and a short walk

• twenty minute warm-up and a long walk

• thirty minute warm-up and short walk

• thirty minute warm-up and long walk

• .....

And then there are the marathons for the younger members who don't have work to go to or kids to take everywhere and do all nighters at the festivals. LOL
Using the sports example each of the scenarios will require different preparation and unless planned well in advance and catered for the outcomes could be good or not so good.

• Try and test your blood fifteen - twenty mins before

• If low I drink a quantity of lucozade beforehand, if high I drink a mouthful.  I'm afraid slow release dry wheat biscuits will not suffice

• I always try to ensure I have a bottle close at hand to top up

• I always had some longer lasting 'biscuit' or cake to eat afterwards to ensure there is no post exercise hypo

• If I start to run out of steam I top up 

My best advise if this is all new to you (don't worry nobody ever told me about sex and diabetes) is to keep a little diary:

Time and Date?

blood sugar before?

carbs taken?

warm up time?

walk or run time?

Did you feel hypo?

What were the symptoms?

Headache?

blood sugar after?

It isn't necessary to do this for a long time, but a pattern will emerge quite quickly.

In fact I'll create a tiny database to go on the iPad/iPhone for people to try out, and I'll make it password protected.

TBC

My Diabetes - Can A Diabetic Have A Sex Life? Part 2

Well it didn't take me more than a few hilariously bad attempts to realise that the Doctors and medical experts obsession with achieving and maintaining a constant low blood sugar was not going to do much for my sex life with the cocktail sausage and the damp squib being but a couple available options without appropriate planning and preparation.

The first thing a diabetic needs is a sensitive and sympathetic partner with a sense of humour and who won't take it personally if there is a bedroom failure. I always smile when people say sex is something to be taken seriously 'really' only with your clothes on.  Otherwise you may as well be mud wrestling with warm white chocolate for the mess it makes and the grunting and the sweating and thats before you've even switch the television off.  LOL

The first thing to consider is that if I have a severe hypo whilst playing at missionaries, then I will become a literal deadweight. The more energetically one goes about such things the more sudden is the decline. I imagine many partners do not take lightly to being squashed, although for others it may be what they are seeking. Now you may have pretended for a few moments in the past that you have become a dead weight, but the real thing is much much heavier and more scary and difficult to move, to breath as any judo enthusiast will tell you and unlike the films people tend not to collapse in convenient positions so they can be easily rolled off.

But I've jumped in at the deep end, as we men have occasionally been accused of doing.  It was deliberate.

TBC

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 - Can A Diabetic Have A Sex Life? Part 1

As a male diabetic I can tell you Type 1 Diabetes and sex has all the makings of a comedy of errors for a number of physiological reasons and you may as well try walking a tightrope with a blind fold on if you don't make preparations.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, blood pressure and blood sugar are linked and given that a certain crucial part of my male anatomy is literally pumped up by blood pressure, it does take much imagination to realise that if my blood sugar drops then my blood pressure also drops and so does any chance of operating the crucial anatomy.

So if I stoke up on carbohydrates beforehand, I just need a bread role to play hunt the hotdog.  But if I fail to have sufficient carbohydrates it will end in a case of find the cold cocktail sausage. ;-) LOL

Now for non diabetics this isn't an issue, unless they get drunk, because getting drunk on an empty stomach will make you hypo and therefore liable to be playing in cocktail sausage territory.

So before having sex I need a cunning plan.

A sad side effect of this is it takes most of the spontaneity out of the event, because this is the only true case of the business saying:

" If you fail to plan you plan to fail " and your attempts will very much end with a damp squib.

 Arg, but I hear people say, have some extra carbohydrates.  But like with the squash game I regaled you with in a previous blog, if you take loads of carbohydrates and your partner says "sorry I have a headache" then you'll definitely get one too from a very high blood sugar and be up all night peeing honey and figuring out how you can put such a high reading in your diabetic record for the nurse or doctor to comment on.

So what to do?

TBC