Health

Good Food(s) and Such

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment
Graphic by CoPilot AI

I’ve been diagnosed as a Type 2 diabetic for about eight and a half years now. As this has settled into the regularity of what I have to learn about both the disease itself and my particular response to it, the evolution of what works for me and what doesn’t work so well has taken and continues to take place.

At the first there was the “Holy Crap!” realization of the diagnosis. The internalization of what I needed right away and some of the changes I needed to make in my lifestyle. Fortunately, I am married to someone who has a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology, and knew a LOT more about food, etc. than I did (and still do….). The first several months saw some draconian changes in what and how much I ate, how much I exercised, and medical changes….including needing to inject myself with insulin every day. THAT took some “getting used to”, although I never REALLY got used to it.

Several years ago I got a new physician who led me through some more changes. For me (please, if you have diabetes and are working every day with it, don’t make changes to what you’re doing without consulting your doctor…I’m lucky..I’ve got a Real Peach!), the changes consisted of:

  1. stopping insulin,
  2. changing the number of times per day that I eat from 3 to 2, and
  3. discovering, mostly on my own, the things that I eat that have horrific effects on my blood sugar and others that have little effect, although there have been a couple of surprises.

So….

(1) I take some other medications for the diabetes, but I’m working a lot harder on managing it with diet (including weight loss…) and exercise. I have truly appreciated not having to stab myself every day with insulin. I wear a Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) monitor now, which really helps me stay relatively honest.

(2) I was brought up in Iowa and I ate three meals a day. That was the rule. Honed over the years in the military and in corporate, I ate regularly, and if someone was kind enough to bring in goodies, well, I didn’t want to hurt their feelings by not joining in the frenzy. Changing from the lifestyle of three meals a day to two meals (and minimal not-so-good-for-me goodies) meant I needed to analyze what I ate at each meal, balancing protein, sugars, carbs and calories. I had to look hard at WHEN I ate, giving my body a chance to work with what I was giving it to best metabolize effectively. Fortunately, again I had the solid advice and guidance of both my doctor and that Ph.D. who lives with me.

(3) This has meant that I have had to completely give up a couple of things that I loved (particularly pastries…..especially big ol’ glazed donuts!), and cut WAY back on several others (I’m a card-carrying choco-holic [if we actually HAD cards, that is…]). I still allow myself teensy treats of dark chocolate very occasionally , but not the way I used to.

The real surprises I have come across include:

  • I can eat cheese! I love cheese, man! I don’t go nuts with it, but it is included in my regular diet as a good source of protein, which is something I need to watch.
  • I can eat ice cream! Ice cream has an almost negligible impact on my blood sugar. Granted I need to stay away from the ice creams that have a lot of candy in them, and toppings are mostly right out, but just being able to enjoy ice cream is good enough for me.
  • I can eat pizza!…at least particular kinds of pizza. I went through a phase where I tried (I really did…) to like what I term “Faux Pizza”. You may know the kinds that I’m speaking of – interestingly concocted crusts, tweaked toppings, simulated cheese product sprinkled lightly. These did NOT cut the mustard, so to speak. Then I discovered, totally by accident, that there is a brand of pizza (I’ll not disclose the brand, but the stores are everywhere….) that I can order their double-crust pizza and it has little peak effect on my blood sugar. My usual strategy is to buy one, bake it, slice it into six pieces, and then I get one per week (invariably on Saturday night…), freezing the other pieces for subsequent Saturdays until I’m out and it is time to go and get another one.

So, WOO-HOO for cheese, ice cream and pizza!. I may sound like a little kid here, but way in there someplace is a twelve-year-old that needs placating, or life gets too gray-colored and I have to up my anti-depressants. Not something I want to do, for sure.

Anyway, I guess the point here is that this diagnosis was a real turn from healthy to not-so-healthy (as I perceived myself at the time…), but I feel that my lifestyle is much more healthy in a lot of ways now.

And THAT is a gift and a good thing!

Can I Hear You Now?

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment
Photo – James Musallam, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This condition has been going on and degrading for quite awhile. Much like the proverbial frog in slowly boiling water, it’s easy to miss (unless caused by something catastrophic, of course….).

In this case, I mean hearing loss.

As of today, I’m just less than a month away from turning 70. I’m sure this has been going on for quite awhile (an earlier life spent as a musician, which has the possibility of hurting your hearing, or not….still…). Over time, you adapt to include slight behaviors:

  • turning your “good ear” (if this is the case..) toward the person or sounds you want to focus on
  • saying “WHAT?!” a lot more frequently at home than you used to
  • sneakily cupping your ear toward the person or sounds you’re trying to hear, and
  • a really dangerous precedent, in a noisy environment, just internally giving up on trying to hear clearly and hope for enough snatches of conversation, music, whatever that will allow you to piece together some idea of what is going on, with an appropriate facial expression (hope you pick the right one…..).

With this wind-up, the next node in the story for me was realizing that I needed to do something on behalf of the hearing on my left side. The right side wasn’t a real picnic, either, but the hearing on my left side (when I cover up my “good” right ear) sounded like I was trying to discern the world through a really thick pillow. Added to that is the positional problem in my home. The way our family area is set up, my spouse always sits to my left. When we chatted, my tally of “WHAT!?” was WAY more than the usual….

So, although many audiologists offer a free hearing test as part of their community outreach efforts, I decided to go through my healthcare and insurance providers. This would make sure that test results and further medical decisions would be notated in my medical record, allowing for check-ups and amelioration, as might be needed.

So, at the beginning of this year I got a “full meal deal” hearing exam via the healthcare network. The last official one that I’d had was over nine years ago (and for which I was able to obtain the results). The comparison was pretty drastic. Hearing on both sides had degraded, but the left side much more so, validating my internal assessment.

So, an appointment was made with an audiologist to talk over options. The technology for hearing aids today is pretty awesome, I found. I also was wildly fortunate in that the audiologist I met was very well acquainted with working with the U.S. Military veterans’ community and the VA. She had previously spent ten years working at the VA and knew the system really well. In helping me submit the appropriate paperwork, along with the test results and medical recommendations, we received approval from the VA to pay for the hearing aids and a few follow-up check-ups.

It’s now been about two months since I was “fitted” with the single hearing aid for my left side. I thought it would be hard to adjust only having one, but that has been non-issue. My biggest road bump so far has been behavioral…..inserting this new activity, “putting in my hearing aid in the morning” into my nearly calcified daily routine.

I’m getting better at it though. One way I hang a carrot for myself is by introducing my brain afresh to the sounds I have been missing. I listen to music constantly, so in the morning when I’m getting ready, I pause, put on my hearing aid, and all of the sudden I can hear the music much more clearly, which makes me happy…Oh Yeah…

One last bit, kind of a PSA: do not neglect your hearing. I don’t care what age you are, but especially if you over fifty, get a baseline test. Getting some of that sound back allows you to take back a bit of the world around you.