Sometimes I think this blog should have a category called “It’s worse than you think” or “I’m really not exaggerating,” or maybe just “More scary news.” Sometimes I even get the feeling that people think I may be overstating the urgency of the diabetes epidemic. So I gathered together a few statistics for you. Continue reading
Tag Archives: diabetes prevention
Giving Your Body the Help it Needs
Some years ago, when my patient, Mrs. Price, heard me say that her blood sugar measurement had come back from the lab at 204, a single tear ran down her cheek as she said, “My eldest granddaughter is getting married next year.” A blood sugar measurement over 200 is one way to confirm a diagnosis of diabetes. Both of Mrs. Price’s parents had died in their 60’s from complications of uncontrolled diabetes, or chronically elevated high blood sugars. This is what I told her. Continue reading
My TEDx Talk
It’s been about ten years since I gave this talk at Ursuline College in Cleveland, Ohio. That’s quite a long time. I remember there weren’t enough spaces for the whole title, so it was changed from Your Health to Our Health. That also works. There’s a lot here that I still use, Continue reading
I Like My Patients to be Vertical
Throughout my years of practicing medicine, I liked to say that I preferred my patients vertical. As opposed to horizontal.
If and when I could help it, I wanted to make sure that no one got a disease that could have been prevented. Sure, accidents happen. And illnesses, sometimes serious, are diagnosed every day in the lives of people who did nothing to deserve them, and who could have done nothing to prevent them. But not all illnesses. Continue reading
Insulin: Like Money in the Bank
Have you ever considered that the amount of insulin you are capable of making over your lifetime is limited? Maybe your pancreas can make, let’s just call it 1000 pounds worth of insulin, and after that it starts to have trouble keeping up with the demand? What would happen if you used up most of your supply by the time you were 40 or 50? Then what? Then your blood sugars would probably start to rise dramatically, and you would need to start taking medicine, whether to make your remaining insulin work more efficiently, to get your pancreas to make more, or to augment your existing supplies. Continue reading