JOYFUL DIABETIC

How can I be joyful about my diabetes? And, more importantly, how can you be joyful? It’s simple.

My diabetes is my teacher and my governor. It’s taught me amazing things about my body—allowing me to fine-tune everything in my life from diet to exercise. If my sugar is high, I look for a cause. Perhaps its stress or maybe I have let up on my exercise regime. Or I could have caught an illness. Sometimes, of course, there’s no obvious cause. But testing my blood sugar 6-8 times a day gives me a tight feedback loop to my body that others, without the gift of diabetes, simply don’t have.

I’m rather prone to excesses. But diabetes has helped me learn and practice moderation. I can have a half a cookie or consume just one muffin a week. (I love muffins.) And I no longer drink alcohol because it just didn’t mix with my diabetes.

My mission through my blogs and speaking engagements is to show how attitude affects diabetes. Hate your disease and it will negatively affect your life. But accept it—even welcome it—and you, too, can be a joyful diabetic.

I learned years ago that the higher I rose in an organization, the less likely I was to receive feedback. It is with that background that I express my deep appreciation to my old friend Jack Coleman for his kind remarks I’ve posted below. Jack and I were privileged to manage a contract services business [...]

Little did I know that I need to be a super sleuth in managing my blood sugar. Symptom: After changing my set last Saturday my BG went way up and stayed there; however, a couple of readings were 100 and 61, so what’s going on here? Analysis/Diagnosis: I must be getting insulin as evidenced by [...]

For those of you who enjoy educational and entertaining video messages, I encourage you to visit http://www.youtube.com/user/TheJoyfulDiabetic to view my video recordings. Last September I was the guest speaker at an Adult Diabetes Boot Camp and we spent a wonderful hour together discussing diabetes. As a volunteer for our local Community TV station, CTSB, I [...]

We diabetics typically acknowledge the challenges of our disease and I’m wondering how many of us are in touch with the impact of our disease on our loved ones? Such people are dubbed Type 3 diabetics by several online newsletters and web sites. Recently, there was an informative exchange of information at Diabetes Daily. Please [...]

We all misplace things from time to time, but this is ridiculous! Over the past week I’ve lost a winter jacket that never leaves my home unless I’m wearing it, so where could it be? My wife and I have looked in every conceivable location, but no jacket has been found. If this were the [...]

To begin, I’m not talking about financial matters. Rather, I know from reading numerous articles that we diabetics are more likely to suffer from depression than others. Let’s explore what this means and what we can do about it. How do we know we’re depressed? Symptoms of depression vary greatly, thus it’s challenging to generalize. [...]