God, this is annoying.

For years I have looking for a ‘diabetic ice cream’ - by that I mean an ice cream that was safe for Diabetics to eat.

Imagine my pleasure at finding an ice cream on sale in my local Morrisons store that proclaimed ‘Diabetic Ice Cream’, loud and proud on the packet top.

Excellent, I thought, finally a dessert that I can enjoy.

The diabetic ice cream was manufactured by a company called ‘Franks’ - new name on me, but what the hell, I thought, I’ll give it a try.

As I was putting the ice cream into my shopping cart, I thought ‘hmm, best check the kCals and carbs on the label.

What a shocker, this so-called diabetic ice cream had more calories and carbs per hundred grams than the non-diabetic ice cream next to it!!!

Obviously, I put it back on the shelf, but I am not leaving it there - I have sent an e-mail to the ice cream manufacturer asking for their explanation. If I get a reply, I will post it here. If the reply isn’t acceptable, I will notify the supermarkets accordingly.

This is nothing to do with diabetes, other than the fact that I should do more walking with my dogs on the beach.

It actually just a testing whether I can post a YouTube embeded video with screwing up the whole blog!

Anyway, here it is :

Dogs on the Beach

If my ‘dogs on the beach’ video is working OK, then I have cracked the problem!

For those dog lovers out there, the big dog is a Groenendael (Belgian Shepherd), the little one is a staffie-x.

OK, its vacation time again, and that presents a few problems for us diabetics.

I’m off to stay in a luxury villa in Vilamoura this year, but before getting on the plane there is some basic preparation to be done.

First, make sure you have all your meds with you - I need insulin, so I need to pack enough and some to spare, and also take a cooler bag for transport.

Second, make sure you can find a well stocked pharmacist near to where you are staying. Fortunately, the company I got my villa from specialise in villas in the Algarve and were able to call ahead to the villa itself and make sure I was covered.

Finally - if you are on insulin, take it in your hand luggage and take enough snacks with you to cover any dealys you may experience.

Have a nice one guys - I will! 

This was not good.

Not good at all.

I collapsed in the supermarket, broke my cheekbone, smashed my head in and seriously damaged my back.

The result was 3 days in hospital and large amounts of pain and inconvenience.

At the moment  I am still in quite a bit of pain with my back - I am pretty much unable to lie down at all. To sleep I need to sit in an armchair and prop myself up with cushions and duvets etc.

The only real relief I get is when I lie in the bath, which is why I have bought myself a set of Bathroom Ceiling Speakers

Now I can lie in the bath for hours listening to my MP3 collection.

Which once again proves that there is nothing so bad that it can’t be turned into an opportunity to indulge in some retail therapy  

If you are diabetic, one of the first things you are told about is that you should do more exercise. ‘Its good for you’ they say - ‘it will help your diabetes’, but they don’t say much more than that.

I totally understand that it IS good for me, but it seemed to me that just ‘doing’ more exercise without understanding the process fully is perhaps missing out on a few opportunities.

I wanted to know ‘how’ exercise helps - ie what is the process. I wanted to know whether different types of exercise gave different benefits. I wanted to ‘fine tune’ my exercise to get the best results.

Impressed, huh?

I guess it would be more impressive if I had actually done something about it.

Well, now I have.

I have two dogs and they have been not getting anything like the number of walks that they should have, so 3 weeks ago I decided to put a few things to rights by taking them on a LONG walk every single day - and I have

3.5 miles every single day, and boy what an effect it has had.

Firstly, a word of warning - if you are thinking of doing the same, make sure you take a source of glucose with you - I have had a couple of scares.

So here’s what happened.

I would inject my insulin, then eat my typical midday and walk the dogs.

If I didn’t do the walking, my blood sugar would return to normal between 2.5 to 3 hours after eating, so taking a walk straight after eating was the best and safest time to do it. 

My walk is not a casual stroll, but a fast ‘forced march’ walk over fields and up a reasonable sized hill. Strenuous enough to really have me breathing heavily and arriving home covered in sweat whatever the weather. It takes about 45 minutes.

I was alarmed to find that my blood sugar had dropped to dangerous levels before I arrived home! 

Wow - thats pretty bloody impressive. 

After doing a few days and finding it was a consistent reaction, I decided to try a little test. I deliberately missed my insulin injection, ate my meal, did the walk and then tested my blood sugar on return. It was lower than normal - ie lower than if I had injected insulin and not done the walk!

Now that was something to really make me sit up and take notice.

Having now done a little research it seems that the whole ‘diabetes and exercise’ subject is not fully understood yet. Some experts claim that exercise helps to make your body more receptive to the insulin that you may still be producing naturally, some claim that it makes your body produce more insulin, but there is one theory that intrigues me and seems a more likely explanation of the phenomenom.

The theory proposes that exercise allows your muscles to take up glucose WITHOUT insulin - ie there is another mechanism at work here. 

There is also a theory the ‘weight resistance’ exercise is better than aerobic exercise for achieving this.

I am going to start some more research on diabetes and exercise to see what I can discover - I’ll also do some more detailed tests using ‘yours truly’ as a guinea pig.

Watch this space. 

I have been on insulin for a few months now, and boy, do I fell better.

• I have more energy than I have had for years.
• I can pretty much eat what I want (OK, I know I shouldn’t, but if I want a dessert, I can have one as long as I inject enough insulin to cover)
• I no longer fall asleep after meals

On the downside, it really is a pain having to inject myself 4 times a day, but necessary if I want to keep my diabetes under really tight control.

The regime I have have chosen is 3 doses of ‘quick acting’ Novorapid (before each meal) and one dose of "slow acting" Levemir in the evening.

I could have gone for 2 injections a day of a mixture of slow and fast acting, but frankly my lifestyle is so irregular that this would have been problematic and left me with poor control.

Weight gain is a problem. Now all the sugar IS getting into my system, I am tending to put on weight - not good, obviously.

I am trying to comabt this by increased dog walks etc - but it is not making enough difference at the moment.

I am going to have to diet  

Well, I was supposed to be starting on insulin tomorrow - ain’t gonna happen as planned.

Got a cold, and a right stinker at that.

The problem is, when you have a cold, or any other illness, your body goes into emergency mode and this means releasing loads of glucose into the blood stream. This would no doubt be useful if my body could produce enough bloody insulin to make use of it, but it can’t, so it sucks.

So, why not start the insulin now and deal with it that way?

Its a control thing.

The very first part of the insulin ‘process’ is finding the right dosage by careful control and measurement.  This would be difficult of my cold is causing massive irregular fluctuations. Too many variables that can’t be controlled.

So, I am waiting till the cold has gone, 

If you are diabetic, you are are greater risk from cardiovascular disease even if your blood pressure is not classed as ‘high’ by normal standards, (according to the The American Journal of Medicine).
People with what is known as ‘prehypertension’ (daft word - surely ‘mild hypertension’ would be better) are still at risk of cardiovascular disease. ‘Prehypertension’ is defined as having blood pressure that is within the range of 120.80 to 139.89 mm hg.

There was no mention of who funded the research, which was done at the University of North Carolina.

If you know who funded the research, or know which pharmeceutical companies fund the University, please let is know, then we can make an informed decision on whether this should be taken seriously or not.

Nevertheless, high blood pressure is a real problem for Diabetics - so get yours checked now!

According to reports from Reuters, keeping your blood sugar under tight control improves the type of memory you need to perform your normal daily routines.

“Many of the patients with type 2 diabetes may have evidence of mild cognitive dysfunction,” Dr. Christopher M. Ryan, from University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, told Reuters Health. “Improving metabolic control and reducing fasting plasma glucose (sugar) levels can lead to an improvement in learning and memory ability.”
The study group was 145 people and the results were statistically significant.

Frankly, although interesting, this comes under the ‘no shit, Sherlock’ category of research.

Having a load of Tate and Lyle’s finest floating round your blood stream is not good - its a toxin. One of the most annoying symptoms of diabetes is the ‘falling asleep’ when a meal causes your blood sugar to go too high. So, having established that high blood sugar can cause you to go into ’shut down’ mode, it doesn’t take an expert to guess that ‘mildly’ high levels cause a few memory issues.

I guess I must be lucky, I can’t remember when I last forgot something.

OK - this ‘news’, from the Irish Newspaper, The Sunday Independant, actually reads ‘might cause Diabetes’ - but what sort of wussy headline is that.

It seems that there was a significant rise in the number of babies and small children with type 1 diabetes. There has also been an increase in the use of baby wipes, and researchers believe that these wipes may reduce the amount of minor bugs that help the immune system develop.

It sounds so stupid that it might be true, I suppose. Type 1 diabetes is believed to be caused by an immune system malfunction, so there is something to hang the theory on.
Ironic, isn’t it, all those irritating ‘guilt provoking’ ads for baby wipes, dettol, anti-septic etc might actually be shaming you into a level of cleanliness that damages you babies health.