The Words Caffeine and Diabetes Sends Me Running To The Interwebs
A week or so ago I was given a bag of Hawaiian coffee that some friends of mine had brought back from Hawaii. It was a nice gesture, but the truth is I had long ago stopped making coffee. When I worked at Intel it was usually already made in the commons area and I didn’t drink it, I’d go downstairs and pay for a cup of the Starbucks kind. When I came to company where I currently work they would order some crap coffee that is truely disgusting and as I sit here and write this, I can’t even remember the name of it. It comes in these little pods, you put two in the maker, put a pot of water in the maker and you let the maker do it’s thing. It’s truly disgusting. *get’s up to go find out what kind of coffee it is* It’s Yuban.
This morning as I was at the kitchen sink washing out my cereal bowl so that I could eat breakfast, I noticed that the coffee pot was empty, I got excited, I was going to get to drink my Hawaiian coffee. I asked for help to make it (it’s a sad thing when people can’t make a pot of coffee these days because we either go to Starbucks or the coffee is in a pod and they don’t have to think in order to make it). As it was brewing, I went to get my coffee cup (yes, I have a coffee cup, I keep one at work on the off chance there’s something brewing other than Yuban, which it rarely happens).
On the way to put my coffee cup by the pot, signifying that I was going to have coffee one of my co-workers was like “you know, I read the other day on Yahoo News that caffeine can cause problems for a diabetic” (I panicked) He continued: “it causes unstableness in their blood sugars, it can cause them to go high” (at this point I was really panicked because if I couldn’t have caffeine, you might as well put a gun to my head and put me out of my misery right now).
Of course, I had to go find what he had read, I had to get the facts, because in my personal opinion, it’s bad enough that I already have to count carbs and dose for them, strangely enough, I have to do the same for protein, and God forbid if I was going to have to do something for caffeine (I’m the kid that will come into work in the morning with a 24oz can of Kronik Low Carb Energy Drink and have it gone within a hour and start on the diet coke, which usually amounts to 3+ cans a day), caffeine is what my engine runs on.
I went and found the article on Yahoo that my co-worker had read (Caffeine ups blood sugar level in diabetics: study)./ The title was scary, but I was relieved to find that in paragraph 2 it mentioned “people with type 2 diabetes” and throughout the article there was no mention of type 1 diabetes. I must say that I was relieved. The Yahoo article was fairly vague in the information it was providing and I was curious so I found an article on CBS News that went into a little more depth about the study. It’s entitled: “Diabetes Sufferers: Beware Of Caffeine - Study Shows Caffeine Elevates Blood Glucose Levels in People With Diabetes“. Again I was relieved that it only referenced Type 2 diabetics (which makes it safe for me, as far as I’m concerned, to continue drinking caffeine, because if it has an effect, I’m not going to stop drinking it to find out).
I guess what this is really all about, is how the word “diabetes” in conjunction with any other word, like “caffeine” will send me running towards the interwebs to see if it affects me in any way shape or form because people don’t have a concept of “Type1″ and “Type 2″ even if it’s clear in an article that they read what “type” it is that is affected.
Are They Purposely Pushing Us Towards A National Health Care System?
I for one am not for national health care, I don’t think that it will solve all the health care problems that we encounter, if anything it will make them worse. All one has to do is look North to Canada to see this, sure, they have a national health care system, sure all their citizens have the right and are enabled to go to the doctor, but they’re lucky if they can ever get in to see one, it’s so bad that they come to the US to see doctors. I don’t want to be in a situation where because of a national health care plan I go from 4 visits a year to my endocrinologist to 1 visit a year if I’m lucky. Furthermore, a national health care system isn’t free, you may no longer have to pay for the private insurance plan but you will have to pay higher taxes. Do we really want this?
Some people do, my guess is they don’t fully understand that what they’re asking for is higher taxes, a decrease in health care quality, decrease in access to physicians (which is where the long lines come into play, I have a problem with waiting 3 days and people are asking for a wait of 2-3 years in some cases if the US goes to a National Health Care System), not to mention that if the Government gets involved with our health care system (which I acknowledge that they already are to some extent) we’ll loose our freedom of choice when it comes to choosing what doctors we want to go to (mainly because if a national health care system goes into place we’re likely to loose our doctors to countries where the government is not so involved with the health care system. Similar to how Canadian doctors are coming to the US to practice).
I think I can say with confidence that a national health care system is a flawed idea and it can’t be fixed but can only become more flawed. But I digress.
The reason this comes up today, here and now, is because of a report that I’m just now reading on MSNBC as part of their RedTape Chronicles. The report is entitled: The doctor will see your credit now. The gist of it is a system where our credit scores determine our ability to pay our medical bills and how it will be used to . And while they say it will not be used to limit our access to health care if our credit is below par, it begs questioning. Why do this in the first place, why waste the money on putting a system into place that will supposedly “help health care providers sort through patient records and potentially make it easier to write off some unpaid bills as charity cases, rather than delinquent accounts, which would offer the hospital some accounting benefits” (according to Tim Hurley, a spokesman for Healthcare Analytics) when we know it will be abused (as everything seems to be anymore). So, reading that, the question is still begged, why spend the money to put into place a system that isn’t going to “affect” our medical care instead putting into place a system that will provide us with better medical care? Of course, once asking that question, many people begin to scream “national health care”.
So my question at the bottom of the barrel is this, is this simply a ploy to get us to run towards national health care? Because it’s certainly what it’s doing, it has people not only running towards national health care, but it has them screaming for it as well.
Time For A Change - Diabetes 365 Day 113 - Jan 26, 2008
In the past month with my general disenchanting disposition regarding diabetes, my D blog Ride to Remedy has suffered immensely. In fact, up until the other day I hadn’t touched it since Dec 8th.
Sometimes in order for me to get on track with things, I just need something to change. Thus is the case for my D blog.
I’m hoping that with the change it will be easier to maintain and that I’ll write more, plus, I’m excited about it.
I wish that changes like this could be made in my diabetes more often because I might be inclined to do something about it instead of moan and groan about the monotony of living with the same thing day in and day out.
There is no cure for diabetes…
Yet!
The bottom of the bag - Diabetes 365 Day 112 - Jan 25, 2008
Every now and then I clean out my backpack, based on the sand that’s in the bottom of it, I imagine that it hasn’t been cleaned since before my trip to the beach back in Dec.
Along with the sand were a few straggling test strips…I would’ve been more thrilled if they were some form of money *sigh*
There is no cure for diabetes…
Yet!
I don’t sneak it
I don’t know how it came about, but a couple days ago mom said something about me sneaking food, it really just pissed me off, what am I, 13 again. I yelled at her, I don’t sneak it, I straight up just eat it.
I eat a lot lately, it’s like the normal foods aren’t good enough, I need the sweets, I crave the sweets, I HAVE TO HAVE THE SWEETS! It’s been really bad the last couple of weeks. I ate a whole bag (3oz) of Knott’s Berry Farm Shortbread cookies today, the ones with the strawberry filling in them…they were so good. That was a couple hours after I ate this new flavor of Snicker’s bar, some peanut butter something or other.
I just can’t stop myself, it’s like when I tried to stop drinking the first time, the longer I went without a drink, the more I wanted one, until I finally caved and then I binged, the thing about it is, I don’t think that I’ve been withholding sweets from myself.
I don’t know what it is, I’m not hungry, I just want to eat, and yogurt or fruit isn’t good enough. I look forward to those 2 hour blood checks because that means I can eat something again. I HATE THOSE 2 HOUR BLOOD CHECKS NORMALLY! I LOATHE THEM! I WHINE AND COMPLAIN ABOUT HAVING TO DO THEM! But not lately, lately I watch the clock, counting down the minutes till I can check my blood, I’m sad when it’s only been 45 minutes or so, I’ll be like, *sigh* 1.15 hours to go until I can eat again. I actually say that, x number of hours until I can eat again…who says that kind of thing?
I went to mom tonight and told her that I had an eating problem and I withheld just how bad of an eating problem I have, I just told her about the cookies and not the snicker’s bar. She told me I needed to eat healthy snacks and stay away from the sweets. I told her I NEED the sweets, that one every now and then isn’t good enough. I hate that there’s normally no sweets in this house, although lately, there’s been the bowl of m&ms and it royally pisses me off that I have to practice self control and not eat them and maybe that’s where this whole thing spawned, because I wasn’t eating them at home, so I’d go eat sweets while I’m at work or at the movie theatres, is that sneaking it?
I have an eating problem lately…the good news is, I’m taking enough insulin to cover all that food, the bad news, not only am I gaining weight because of the food, I have to deal with a little extra weight gain because of the extra insulin being pumped into my system…insulin can cause all kinds of weight problems and I don’t want them (that may be an exaggeration, btw)
Where most people would put change, I put test strips - Diabetes 365 Day 111 - Jan 24, 2008
This is the little change thing in my car, one day the test strips kept falling out of my machine pouch and I got frustrated so I picked them all up and put them where my change would sometimes be thrown.
I didn’t do this but for a couple days maybe but that was months ago and when I was cleaning out my car this evening I was reminded that the strips were still there and needed to be carried into the house.
There is no cure for diabetes…
Yet!
Everything Suffers
You can tell that when my blog is suffering (lacking new entries) that life in general is most likely suffering. I’ve been consumed in the last month and a half, I was consumed by work in December, working long hours and working hard to get stuff done. My diabetes suffered during that time because I’d refuse to pull myself away from whatever I was doing in order to check my blood or push the buttons on my pump so that things were taken care of. I didn’t much care, my blood sugars were high due to stress, they were high because of an infection running through my body and they were high because I didn’t care to fight with them to get them down into normal ranges.
I’ve been in an “I hate diabetes” mood for over a month now, and it’s not really changing, I begrudgingly do everything I have to do. I’ll be sitting at my desk at work unwrapping a sucker and the whole time, my head is screaming “check your blood! you need to check your blood!” several times over until I finally turn my chair, grab my poker and prick my finger.
It’s an inner war with myself, and I almost feel as though I’m giving up, which is stupid, I know that, but I’m tired of loosing the battles and I feel as though I’m fighting a war that I’m never going to win.
It just kind of pisses me off, and that’s where I’ve been lately, and that’s why there hasn’t been an entry to my blog in ages, while there has been plenty to write about, there’s been no desire, I’ve been in such a rotten mood about everything that I haven’t wanted to write. And not that that’s going to change, but I might just maybe make an effort…
And don’t say you’re sorry that I’m feeling this way, because that really just kind of pisses me off, because sometimes we all just feel this way, or maybe you don’t, but I like to think that other D peeps feel this way, it makes me feel better about it.
Test Strip Landfill - Diabetes 365 Day 110 - Jan 23, 2008
I’ve been saving these for a while now, I’m kind of working on an art project that needs them.
When the project came about I was like, heck, I paid for them, I might as well get more than 5 seconds of use out of them…There’s a ton of money lying there too, a couple hundred bucks…
There is no cure for diabetes…
Yet!
New Water - Diabetes 365 Day 109 - Jan 22, 2008
I’m all about Dasani water, it’s the only kind of bottled water that I’ll drink (you may remember my pyramid of Dasani water bottles).
Well, I was walking through Target and I saw the Dasani Plus water, it’s more than just the flavored stuff, it’s got vitamins…so I thought I’d try it out. The pomegranate blackberry flavor is good. As for the vitamins, I’d have to drink more than 1 bottle to see how they’re going to help me out (not that I even read what was in there, I just saw the blackberries and decided I needed a bottle)
There is no cure for diabetes…
Yet!
Mad Money - Diabetes 365 Day 108 - Jan 21, 2008
Mad Money…you’re probably wondering what this has to do with diabetes…well, beyond the fact that one day we may all have to go rob a bank so that we can get the diabetes care and prescriptions and stuff that we need to live and live healthily, there was a funny part in the movie that immediately caught my eye as only something a diabetic wouldn’t be concerned about…and then that same thing turned into something funny.
I’m not going to share because it’s a mild spoiler, but just for this one part it’s worth seeing the movie (but realistically, the whole movie is worth going to see).
There is no cure for diabetes…
Yet!