Well, it happened. You’ve just gotten a call from the doctor’s office and your latest fasting blood work showed that your morning blood glucose reading was 185. Your mother had diabetes and you know about your aunt who ended up
Well, it happened. You’ve just gotten a call from the doctor’s office and your latest fasting blood work showed that your morning blood glucose reading was 185. Your mother had diabetes and you know about your aunt who ended up on dialysis. You’ve noticed the increase in the number of times you have had to get up at night and use the bathroom and you have been gaining weight rapidly. It’s Type 2 diabetes. Well, what is it all about? Let me share some facts with you and tips to help you cope.
There is one thing you need to know up front. There are many diagnoses a doctor might deliver that render you helpless, even hopeless.
In those cases you just have to trust that the doctor knows what he or she is doing and hope for the best. Type 2 diabetes is not like that. You can whoop it. You can take control if you really want to.
Type 2 diabetes is basically a man made disease and as such, most of the time can be “un-made” by you, with some coaching by your healthcare provider and with some basic knowledge as to what is going on. So let’s get started.
Diabetes is all about fuel
Our bodies burn fuel just like an engine and it needs to keep fuel levels in the blood within a certain range for the engine to run well. Diabetes is a condition where our bodies have an impaired ability to maintain those fuel levels in that desirable range.
The Perfect Storm
Hawaii has one of the highest diabetes rates in the country. I have pondered why this is the case and I believe that I have come up with a pretty good theory. I call it the perfect storm. I believe we have a high diabetes rate in Hawaii for three reasons:
First of all it has to do with the ancestors. We are the sons and daughters of those who survived the ages past. One reason they survived was by being efficient at energy or fuel storage. This so called “thrifty gene” has been passed down from generation to generation as a “genetic heritage.” Some people have a very strong expression of this gene in their bodies. It controls the body’s basic functions and tells the body not to waste fuel. Ages ago you might go a day or two without much food, or, you may have a prolonged fever when you need to draw on stored fuel. The body survives by having a ready reserve of fuel storage to draw from. When it comes to fuel foods (carbohydrates) our bodies will either burn it or store it. It must not waste it. That is one of the reasons why your ancestors survived and why you are here today. Some people carry the thrifty gene and some people don’t. The hard facts are that if you don’t have the “thrifty gene” you don’t get diabetes. I mention this first because it’s not all your fault. You are playing the cards you’ve been dealt in the times in which we live.
Which brings us to reason number two: From the ancient Hawaiians to the various ethnic groups that came to Hawaii to work on the plantations, the amount of energy needed for daily life was very different. Plantation workers, men and women alike, would get up at 4 in the morning, pull out a cane knife and work hard all day, and the labor was done by pure muscle. Women at that time would cook and serve foods high in energy and prepare the kaukau tins for the noon meal. These high energy foods and the amounts served have been passed down from generation to generation and great grandmothers have taught grandmothers and mother how to cook and set a table of food. A typical local family serving is a plate full with half the plate piled with rice the other half with meat and vegetables. This is seen daily in the typical local plate lunch with two scoops rice, meat, mac salad, pancit and maybe some token vegetable in the corner.
This brings us to reason number three. Hawaii still consumes plantation worker amounts of high energy food but no longer chops down cane 12 hours a day to burn off the energy it provides. We barely get up to change the TV channel. Our bodies are designed to move and work and expend energy. Thus we see we are on a collision course because of the changing of the times. When local folks still carry that “thrifty gene” and then take in three times more energy than they burn something has got to give. It’s as simple as that, it’s all about fuel.
• Meet Don Traller and other experts in managing diabetes at the Summer Bash 2007 tomorrow at Lydgate Park from 7:30 a.m. til 1 p.m. Fast for eight hours and get a free blood test and consultation to see if you are at risk for diabetes.
