My Health, Part II - Getting Sick
My family history lead me to a near-vegetarian diet, which I followed for almost two decades. Red meat gives you heart disease and fruit, vegetables and pretend meat made out of soybeans are healthy. I felt I did moderate exercise, I got tired of going to the gym, but continued to walk and bike when I could. That should have been enough to keep me healthy, right?
In my mind I had no real healthy problems, just sleep apnea, but my mom has that, so that must be hereditary, not because I was overweight. Besides that, I also saw the chiropractor for back pain and also saw a doctor and physical therapist several times for the back pain and join pains throughout my body, but that was probably because I was getting older. We hired the neighbors to mow the lawn because I was knocked out of commission for a week due to allergies if I did it, but I always had allergies and athsma, it was nothing new. Also, around the time my first child was born, I was diagnosed with psoriasis, but it was another auto-immune disease, it just goes hand-in-hand with allergies and athsma, there was nothing I could have done about that. So, basically I was healthy, until suddenly I had a kidney stone.
After the kidney stone had passed, I brought it to the clinic to get analyzed. It was only about 2mm in diameter, amazing it could cause so much trouble! The doctor wanted to follow up with me afterwards. No big deal, he just needed to tell me that the CT scan showed there was a second stone that will eventually come out, no need to live in fear, from now on, about that! No, not just that but apparently he suspected my insulin or blood glucose was out of whack and that was the cause of the kidney stone since both my parents are type 2 diabetics.
He ran my blood and told me that my blood glucose was nearly 400 and my HbA1c was 8.5 (this was first thing in the morning, 364 is not a good fasting glucose number!).
So, in September 2013, I got the diagnosis for type 2 diabetes. I was instructed on how to eat to keep my blood sugars in check, like eating lean meat and not much red meat, I could have things like Dreamfields pasta and if I wanted to eat a bowl of cereal, it was best to have it in the evening. I should eat 500 calorie meals and snacks every 3 hours, just not more than 10-20 grams of carbs per meal or snack. Another problem to add to the list, but both my parents were diabetic, so again, those darn genes, there’s nothing I could have done, right?