What is lifestyle Change for a patient with Diabetes?
A patient with Type 2 Diabetes is usually given a lot of information but rarely given tools to understand why they have to change. We have been given education, an Indian patient told me, but we never received it.
You can use your discretion and cheat, someone may advise but that is not a good advice. Avoid all that is bad for you.. If you dont understand your body, how can you succeed in your everyday life?
Today at a pool party at the house of an affluent young family (the husband was celebrating his 38th birthday), I saw a friend of mine using his concept of understanding his body and I could see why his Diabetes is under so well a control.
This photograph shows some of the food that was available at the party. Even not taking into consideration the cake and the desserts, the party was catered at around 30 dollars per person.
Every one was having the time of their lives, all sorts of drinks, lots and lots of food and thumping Caribbean music.
What was our friend, we will call him Papa J, doing?
Succumbing to the temptation of succulent food available? Imbibing on the various liquors?
Let me share with you his Laboratory tests from this last week
HgbA1c a measure of Diabetes Control 5.9 %
Total Cholesterol 106 mg/dl (2.74 mmol/l)
Triglycerides 144 mg/dl (1.62)
These values are absolutely normal and in a patient with diabetes indicate EXCELLENT control of the metabolic dysfunction.
He was practicing without him being conscious of it, his adherence to his knowledge of his body and weaning himself of the riches of the society which gave him Diabetes in the first place.
Attachment usually follows pleasure, the more an object/person gives us pleasure, the more desire for it. The sensation from the pleasure will sink into our subconscious mind as memory and craving. The more one has the I-sense (identification of oneself with external objects), the more pleasure he will seek or the more he will be attached to the external world.
Papa J has detached himself from the pleasures that he has made his body not crave, despite it being available, because he knows that it is that attachment that makes for a bad dysfunction of his body. No excuses were made, oh, this is a birthday, and I will have just a glass wine and a piece of cake and a piece of barbecued rib.
I watched him, keeping a good distance from all that was offered. Nor was he feeling isolated while the rest of us were digging into taste that would make us more addicted to the food that causes our metabolic dysfunction even worse.
Weakening of these bonds to the external world is the liberating experience. In case of Papa J, his Diabetes is better controlled than 99 per cent of the Americans, not to mention a Cholesterol level in an enviable range! (He is not on any ant cholesterol medications)
Understanding your own body is necessary for the welfare of your body. Papa J was not following any dietitian's advice but he knew he has to do this for the good of his body and the laboratory tests show and his own doctor cannot believe how well they are. Neither he nor the medications are given undue credit, the credit goes to Papa J and his Rejection of Ignorance about is own body
Papa J is an inspiration for all of us, including those people who have Diabetes.
