Day 32—PLEASE, DON’T PLAY WITH SPIKES

I want to follow up on the blog yesterday about blood sugar spikes with a story that is dear to my heart.  Larry’s mom, who we all called Granny, had type 2 diabetes. She did not take insulin, but she did take meds. I never saw her trying to control her diet but she could have. She lived in Alabama and we lived in Tennessee and later North Carolina, so we did not see her every day. They did visit often after they retired, and we would go to Alabama on special occasions. But I do not ever remember her taking any diet precautions. This would not have meant anything to me at the time, because I knew nothing about diabetes.  But taking her blood sugar was routine. I was not on my journey at this time, so I paid very little attention to her when it came to health problems. But I do remember this. First of all, she loved sweets and food in general. When she retired she began to love new recipes and enjoyed trying them. She had a little metal file with hundreds of recipes that she constantly clipped from magazines and newspapers. After she would try them, she would write “good” at the top of the recipe. If it was really good and she knew it would become a staple for family gatherings or giveaways, she would type the recipe on an index card. If it was really, really good, she would laminate the index card. I still have a few of those today. She became known for her candies and pound cakes. She never came to visit us without bringing a pound cake. And at Christmas time she baked for days and gave her sweets away. The bank next door always looked forward to getting their “tray”. I hope you can see how special she was to our family, her church family and the community. When she died I think everyone in their small town came to the funeral and told stories of her life. She also worked in the Alabama Power office for 35 years in the small town of Warrior, and had the perfect personality for that job. This was at a time when everyone drove to the office to pay their power bill. There were no automatic withdrawals from the bank, and the power company did not send out envelopes. It was simply a card stock card with your name on it and the amount of the bill. I think they had a drop box, but she saw practically every family in the town every month. But can you see a problem here with diabetes and the foods she cooked, and her love for these foods? Yes, she had high triglycerides and high blood sugar. And our family had no idea that she was practically committing suicide, one teaspoon at a time.

Of course she had a doctor that she went to regularly, maybe once a year, maybe more. I do not know what kind of care she got from him. He may have been excellent at his job and she may have not taken his excellent advice seriously.  I just know she played around with whatever advice he was giving her. In my opinion he did not scare her enough. If I had known then what I know now, I would have been very involved in the process. I would have had no power over her decisions to follow his advice, but I would have at least asked questions about what advice he was giving her.  I was clueless, so I thought this next situation was very funny. She would go into the kitchen to get some kind of dessert that she always had on the counter, in the cupboard or in the refrigerator.  I always loved going to her house and opening all the tins and seeing what she had made. Remember I was a sugar addict at this time, so I was in heaven. But before she would eat anything full of sugar, she would take her blood sugar. She would say, “I can have this, my blood sugar is not too bad”. Or she would say, “My triglycerides were down a little at the last doctor visit, and I don’t have to see the doctor for a while, so I’ll be ok. We would all laugh. Sometimes we would even add to the problem by saying, “Granny we are going to Jack’s (across the street) to get some ice cream, can your blood sugar or triglycerides handle it”? She would laugh and say, “Let’s go”. Today this makes me want to cry. I thought of that situation so many times when I was playing with the blood sugar monitor this past week-end. When it reached 247, it scared me. Why? Because I see the whole picture now.

Our heart and the center of our family died with a heart attack. She had never had heart trouble in her life. She had controllable diabetes and arthritis, yes, but no heart problems. She was out of town in a motel room when it happened. When we got there from North Carolina, I remember Papa saying, “I don’t understand it. She was not sick at all that day. She had just enjoyed a good meal and even dessert,  and one hour later she was gone”.  We were in disbelief. We did find out that she had some symptoms a couple of days before, that could have been indicative of a heart attack, but with no previous heart problems she did not take them seriously. She thought it was indigestion. When I started on this journey of learning to read the medical signs of approaching diseases, I was also reminded of another part of her story.

It was faddish during this time to go on the Atkins diet. It was the newest craze and of course I jumped on the bandwagon. It worked really great short term. I was losing weight, and because Granny was overweight, she joined me. Let me just say that the “old” Atkins diet was very dangerous long range.  You could eat almost no carbs--even good one, unlimited meat of any kind, good or bad. You could eat processed meat that was full of toxins, and eat or drink unlimited “sugar free” anything that is full of toxins. If it was full of protein---even if it was processed with sugar---- it was acceptable---in unlimited amounts. This diet will eventually lead to health problems if you try to do it as a lifestyle. I understand that the “new” Atkins diet has changed and they are following a healthier route similar to the keto and paleo diet, which I highly recommend because it drastically limits the carbs.  If that is true that the diet has changed then that is a good thing. But anyway she went on the diet and lost 11 pounds the first two weeks. It was time for her to go for her diabetes check-up and her stats were great. Her blood sugar was way down, and so were her triglycerides. She was excited when her doctor said, “I don’t know that you are doing, but don’t stop it”. The funny thing is that he never asked her what she was doing. But did she keep on doing it?---No, and I just remember her saying, “I just don’t like meat that much”. So she was back to her bad carbs, especially her sweets.

Now on this journey, I have learned that Granny was a ticking time bomb for years. When she combined diabetes with high triglycerides and all the medications for both, along with medicine for her rheumatoid arthritis, she was creating the “perfect storm” that lead to a heart attack. And that is what happened. So if you are going to use the blood sugar monitor as a toy, I would be very cautious.  If you are going to use it to test out foods that you are not sure of, then have fun. That is what I did to begin with. While exploring all the wonderful foods, I began to eat mangos and fell in love with them. However, they raised my blood sugar more than berries, and because I was trying to stay in ketosis on a high fat diet, I quit regularly buying them. Occasionally, they might be ok, but not on a regular basis. So you see this practice can be useful, should you have questions.

Now more importantly to me, I want to tell you how high blood sugar and sugar spikes affect your brain. Quite a few health experts are now calling Alzheimer’s “Type 3 Diabetes”. I could literally write a book on this because I am learning so much about Alzheimer’s.  My motivation to learn this aspect of my health journey came from my next door neighbor who has the Alzheimer’s—and she is my age. I just started with the question “can it be cured”. Depending on the stage you are in, the answer is YES. So that brings up the question, How? And the answer is not with medication, but with diet. That is the reason you hear that it cannot be cured, because there are three basic medicines that are used to treat Alzheimer’s and none of them work past six months. Alzheimer’s is classified by stages, and there are seven of them and most of them are reversible with changes in lifestyle. When you get to stage six and seven, it is very difficult and sometimes impossible to stop the progression. But in stage 1-5 it can be arrested and cured through lifestyle changes, and a high fat diet. As I said I could write a book on all I have learned, but I want to address just the relationship between sugar spikes and Alzheimer’s. I am going to keep it as simple as I understand it. So here goes.  A synapse is a small gap at the end of a neuron that allows an electrical signal to pass from one neuron to the next. Very simply, this is how we think.  A simple example might be---you have an electrical outlet and a plug at the end of a lamp cord. If you put the plug into the socket, you get an electrical signal that allows you to turn on the lamp and have light.  These signals in your brain are constant, every second of the day. You mind never stops working. As you are thinking, you are also storing memory.  Do you know every thought you have ever had, is stored in your memory?  We cannot recall every thought, but it is still there (more later). Of course as you progress through the stages of Alzheimer’s, the synapses get clogged down with plaque made of a piece of protein called amyloid beta. As this plaque is built up, thinking gets distorted and memory, especially short term memory, is affected.  And guess what controls the buildup of amyloid beta?---Insulin. Now, there is a war going on in your body. Will my insulin molecules do their job of lowering high levels of glucose caused by overeating sugar that causes spikes, or is it going to clean up the amyloid plaque that is accumulating in my brain?  It would be like a fire station saying are we going to put out the fire in the south end of town or the north end of town, because we cannot do both at the same time.  So the plaque builds up and your memory begins to fade. Bottom line—I had to quit creating spikes by eating excessive sugar, and overeating foods, good or bad. I had to work on letting insulin do what it was designed to do. Insulin signaling is one of the most important processes in the human body. I have only touched the surface of what all it does. I mentioned controlling sugar spikes to prevent amyloid buildup, but it also supports neuron survival and building new neurons in the brain. These two facts should help you begin to make good choices. It sure has helped me. It’s a journey. Banana pudding or blueberries?  Cupcakes or strawberries?  The decision is really, do I want health or sickness, momentary pleasure, or long range---be Healthy and Happy? Life is about choices. Now there in one other way to spike your blood that does not involve eating-----you guessed it---next blog.