Lancet Change - St Swithun's Day

Today, July 15th, is St Swithun's Day.

When I first started learning about diabetes on misc.health.diabetes I discovered that most of the old-timers changed their lancets rarely. Most could not remember the last time they changed it, because they only bothered if it started to get dull or they were testing someone else.

Consequently, the practice of announcing that it was time for the annual lancet change on St Swithun's Day became traditional. Whether the change was needed or not.

So I have decided to continue the tradition.

Today is lancet-change day; even if your lancet is nearly brand new and has only been in use for a few months or a few hundred tests. I must admit I can't remember when I last changed mine.

I intend to hold a small ceremony, involving a nice glass of Shiraz, an hour after dinner before I test :-)

PS. For those who are changing their lancets every time they test, please read Painless Pricks.

Cheers, Alan

Everything in Moderation - Except Laughter.

Testimonials

This is a request for feed-back from any readers, past or present, here or on various diabetes forums, who believe that reading my ideas may have helped you.

I don't intend to make requests like this often, this is the first and only. But at this time some testimonials could be rather useful for me.

I started this blog just under three years ago. It grew from a need to find a way to archive some of the responses I was making on the ADA forum and other less active forums. I needed a way to be able to refer newly diagnosed people to some basic ideas. I found I was repeatedly typing much the same suggestions each day to each new person. As a two-finger typist that was getting to be a bit of a chore. Using the blog I could change that to a brief greeting and "please read Getting Started". Yeah, I know, I'm just lazy. But it worked and it let me write to many more people.

Slowly, it grew. I added the contents index on the side-bar because this blog is not just an occasional collection of my thoughts and opinions but also a reference source for myself and others who choose to use it that way. I recently added site-meter and was quite surprised to find that the blog is averaging 4000 different visitors a month, with 10,000 page views. One in four are repeat visitors; although the majority are from the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand visitors have come from over 60 countries.

A number of people suggested that I should collect some of these ideas in a book intended for type 2 diabetics who do not have web access or who are uncomfortable with using the internet. I started drafting that book last Christmas, but I have found it a slow process because it is a new experience for me. This blog is the only form of published writing I have ever done; I find I am continually revising the presentation and content of the book.

However, I expect to finish it within a couple of months. Then I will need to decide whether to seek a publisher or to self-publish; another field in which I am a babe in the woods. But I can learn.

It could help a great deal if I can present a publisher with a few testimonials from past readers, or, if I self-publish, I could include those testimonials in the opening pages.

If you decide to post a comment, be aware that I will presume that in posting you are giving permission to include that comment, or a section from it, in the appropriate section of the book. I will be contacting those who have sent private emails in the past to seek their permission. For those who wish to comment but don't wish to post it here, I can be contacted direct at loralgt@gmail.com

Thanks in advance,

Cheers, Alan

Everything in Moderation - Except Laughter.

Choices, Consequences and Responsibility

Life is full of choices. Diabetes is one of those conditions where we are presented with many choices. From the start we have to choose who to listen to, who to ignore, what foods to eat, what exercise to do, what medications to take; the list goes on and on.

Naturally we seek qualified professional advice to help us make those choices. Some of us place our lives in the hands of those advisors, some of us use them as just one source of information and seek input from others such as other diabetics, support groups, forums, the internet, blogs, books and similar to assist us.

But that has dangers. There is an awful lot of dangerous nonsense on the web. That is particularly true concerning diabetes, diet and medications. So we must filter those sources using common sense, research and our medical advisors to pick the good information from the rubbish.

There is no doubt that our medical advisors should be our first port of call and the source of the best information. We should value that source above all others. But sometimes that is not always true. Our medical advisors can only offer advice based on their training and professional experience; however, that training syllabus may not always be up to date. If it is current, the research leading to that training may still be continuing, making new discoveries that change the basic premises that advice is based on.

For example, the diagnostic blood glucose levels for diabetes have been steadily reducing over the past few decades. I was not diagnosed for several years when my fasting blood glucose levels were around 7.9mmol/l(140) but a diagnostic fasting blood glucose of 8 applied in Australia. Of course, when I was finally diagnosed the official level had come down to 7(126).

Similarly the guidelines for good blood glucose levels are slowly being reduced. Despite that I see many people reporting their doctors quoting the old ADA guidelines of 2hr post-meal BGs of less than 180 as "tight control" or that it does not matter how high the peak BG spike is, provided that your 2hr BGs have returned to an acceptable level. I mentioned earlier the nonsense we hear from many official sources about our vital need for lots of "good, healthy" carbohydrates.

If those examples are representative of the quality of advice you are receiving from professional sources, try this small test. A multi-choice question for you.

Choose one answer.

Who or which of the following may go blind, lose a limb, suffer kidney failure or have a heart attack if the advice from your Doctor, your Dietician, your Diabetes Educator or the ADA/NHS/DA (Diabetes Australia) is discovered to be incorrect in ten years time?

A. Your Doctor

B. Your Diabetes Educator.

C. Your Dietician

D. The ADA/NHS/DA

C. You.

D. Me.

D. None of the above.

You may use the following links as reference materials while considering your answer:

Research Connecting Organ Damage with Blood Sugar Level

Blood Glucose Targets

Cheers, Alan

Everything in Moderation - Except Laughter.