Prediabetes

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No_Mind
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Re: Prediabetes

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Mkoll wrote: Wed May 23, 2018 6:08 pm If you become interested in other pharmacologic modalities for anxiety and insomnia, there have been many new treatments developed apart from benzodiazepines and SSRIs. There are always other options. Finding the right regimen is a trial and error process. But if you are fine with your treatment as it is, there may not be any reason to change it---as they say: if it ain't broke, don't fix it . Just know that it may be contributing to increased appetite and weight gain and thus your prediabetic status.
The SSRI caused my weight gain .. in first two years I gained 20 kilos (44 lbs) and that caused my metabolism to slow down enough for me to gain another 15 kilos (33 lbs) over next 10 years even though I consumed very restricted diet of 2,000 calories.

I have given up SSRI for good .. after 10 or so years they stop working and I am more or less cured of my OCD (how do I suddenly get cured of life long disorders like alcoholism and OCD without any serious treatment I do not know!!)

As far as replacement for alprazolam/Xanax .. zolpidem/Ambien does not suit my needs .. I have used it for few weeks but it does not have desired effect on me.

I always keep my fingers crossed about one thing .. my insomnia may suddenly vanish (like the OCD and alcoholism) .. all three began at about the same age 21-23 .. OCD followed by insomnia followed by alcoholism and two have gone away (both went away suddenly without any substantial changes to my life)

Hopefully living on a sugar free diet will cause my weight to drop. This is the first week and I have been able to reduce my sugar consumption by 50%

I plan to give it up totally by end of this month.

:namaste:
"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”― Albert Camus
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cjmacie
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Joined: Wed Dec 26, 2012 4:49 am

Re: Prediabetes

Post by cjmacie »

No_Mind wrote: Wed May 09, 2018 5:17 pm I have prediabetes (HbA1C of 6.2)
...
"HbA1C of 6.2" – That's "6.2%". or mmol/L a bit more than 7.0 (mg/dL ca. 120 in USA measurement terms)?

That is actually a low-borderline level. It's called "pre-diabetes" these days under the influence of pharmaceutical industry's push to sell drugs. The notion that such a condition proceeds inevitably into full blown diabetes is a psychological ploy – as seen in the anxiety it causes you, which in turn dis-harmonizes the body's systems to indeed further such a progression.

1: Get re-tested. Your MD / practitioner hasn't mentioned that? Test results are often anomalous, erroneous. And evaluate relative to other perhaps out-of-normal-range blood, urine, etc. test results – i.e. careful differential diagnosis.

2: Watch out for getting lost in the flood of "advice" from all corners on generic remedies, especially about diet. There's rarely some single "magic bullet" factor that cures. Find an experienced (several decades) practitioner of classical Chinese medicine, or maybe Ayurveda, or nutritional counselor. (If Chinatown is still there in Calcutta, i.e. a population of offshore Chinese, there must be Chinese doctors around somewhere.)

Advice / treatment must take into account one's individual characteristics – body type, family and medical history, lifestyle, etc. Bell-curve type statistics are great for scientific characterization of entire populations, but often misleading in diagnosing individual cases. Many perfectly healthy, long-lived people have various measurements way off-center of the bell curve.

3: Yes. exercise, but some type involving mental/emotional (or "spiritual", if you will) stabilization as well as cardio-vascular etc. parameters. Look into QiGong / TaiJiQuan / Yoga with a competent teacher. (In Chinese tradition, such teachers were also medically trained.) Also "yoga" as the entire system – not just physical postures / exercise.

And, yes, meditation, e.g. on body parts and activities, tempered with equanimity, can open the door to realizations about habits and attitudes that feedback into harmonizing, curative processes. If not just calming the emotionally reactive panic that feed into further exacerbation of medical (and personal) problems.
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No_Mind
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Location: India

Re: Prediabetes

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cjmacie wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 9:58 am
No_Mind wrote: Wed May 09, 2018 5:17 pm I have prediabetes (HbA1C of 6.2)
...
"HbA1C of 6.2" – That's "6.2%". or mmol/L a bit more than 7.0 (mg/dL ca. 120 in USA measurement terms)?

That is actually a low-borderline level. It's called "pre-diabetes" these days under the influence of pharmaceutical industry's push to sell drugs. The notion that such a condition proceeds inevitably into full blown diabetes is a psychological ploy – as seen in the anxiety it causes you, which in turn dis-harmonizes the body's systems to indeed further such a progression.

1: Get re-tested. Your MD / practitioner hasn't mentioned that? Test results are often anomalous, erroneous. And evaluate relative to other perhaps out-of-normal-range blood, urine, etc. test results – i.e. careful differential diagnosis.
That is 6.2%. I will be getting retested but I have decided against doing that immediately. I will do it after a month of the first test on May 9 (non-hospital stay test expenses are not reimbursed by insurance here). Will be doing an old fashioned glucose fasting and PP every 2 months from mid-June which is the best way to be certain and a HbA1C every 6 months.

This test was part of screening of my liver, thyroid, complete blood count and kidney and everything else came back within normal range.
cjmacie wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 9:58 am 2: Watch out for getting lost in the flood of "advice" from all corners on generic remedies, especially about diet. There's rarely some single "magic bullet" factor that cures. Find an experienced (several decades) practitioner of classical Chinese medicine, or maybe Ayurveda, or nutritional counselor. (If Chinatown is still there in Calcutta, i.e. a population of offshore Chinese, there must be Chinese doctors around somewhere.)

Advice / treatment must take into account one's individual characteristics – body type, family and medical history, lifestyle, etc. Bell-curve type statistics are great for scientific characterization of entire populations, but often misleading in diagnosing individual cases. Many perfectly healthy, long-lived people have various measurements way off-center of the bell curve.
As far as traditional medicine goes I have decided to have bitter gourd juice (as suggested by Ven Pesala). It controls sugar very well but is awful tasting (which is why I am waiting a bit). I have faith in Chinese traditional medicine but the current practitioners of it in Calcutta maybe plain quacks and there is no way to verify.

These two weeks (mid to end May) I am focusing on giving up sugar entirely.

:namaste:
"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”― Albert Camus
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cjmacie
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Joined: Wed Dec 26, 2012 4:49 am

Re: Prediabetes

Post by cjmacie »

No_Mind wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 11:06 am ...
As far as traditional medicine goes I have decided to have bitter gourd juice (as suggested by Ven Pesala). It controls sugar very well but is awful tasting (which is why I am waiting a bit). I have faith in Chinese traditional medicine but the current practitioners of it in Calcutta maybe plain quacks and there is no way to verify.

These two weeks (mid to end May) I am focusing on giving up sugar entirely.
That seems a good direction. The bitter melon (Chinese kugua) is used more as a food but is known in classical Chinese medicine. (My former wife, from ShenYang in the PRC, used to cook it often in meals.) Here's info from that perspective:
http://www.acupuncturetoday.com/herbcen ... rmelon.php

Weaning off the sugar (in refined forms) should help too, as it's metabolically unbalancing. We get enough natural "sugars" in complex carbs and fruits to furnish the glucose that's basic to cellular metabolism.

Good luck! And don't forget to attend to the fear / worry side too. :yingyang:
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