What's for dinner?

Bitter Gourd / Bitter Melon / Ampalaya Salad

Having a diabetic husband has got me eating a diabetic's diet too.  Not really in the same quantity as his, but what pretty much the same as his.

I used to cook another set for me, until I realized that I better adopt his meals.  I totally forgot that I would greatly benefit from it because my father had Type 1 Diabetes and in his family tree, there are several cousins and other relatives having Type 2.  I'm not getting any younger and I think if I don't watch my eating habits, I would join their club, too.

So, yeah.  Me and Him, we're one after all.  Ampalaya, watch out.

Act on Diabetes. Now.

I've been looking around and I learned every November 14 is World Diabetes Day.  Whoa, I didn't know this when my father was still around.  Anyway, I hope there would be lots of informative drives on diabetes that time, like educational forums and the like.

There's one event about diabetes falling on the very week of World Diabetes Day.  I was getting excited and was even checking my calendar if Ace and I could attend it.  Then, my heart sank as I realized it was a convention of doctors and other health workers involved in diabetes.  I was browsing the four day event and the topics sound foreign to me.  They were medical terms.  Too bad.

This means I'll have to educate myself through just readings on the world wide web. 

Goodluck to me!

Fruits and dinner

I've read about those diabetic diet plans and how they suggest having a lot of servings of fruits, scattered over the day.  Before, I followed those meal plans, but it doesn't seem to do much to the blood sugar.  Yes, the number does decrease the count, but not to a normal level. 

Anyway, my hubby whom I will call 'Ace' from now on, recently stopped taking fruits with his meals during dinner and just took them either in the morning or as snacks.  He usually eats an apple.  However, last night, his RBS was really low at 58 that I was afraid the count would plunge further after he takes his oral medication after dinner.  So, I made him eat ripe mango, only half a cheek, just to put me to rest.

This morning, I thought he'd have normal blood sugar levels.  No.  Our FBS reads 135.  I think it's definitely the mango... plus the fact that he didn't take his usual apple cider vinegar for dinner. 

Lesson learned.  No more fruits during nighttime.  Ever.

What lowered my husband's blood sugar

In less than a month, I have read a lot, enough to test and verify the natural remedies going around the web on naturally lowering the blood sugar. 

How we managed my husband's blood sugar is by observing the following:

1. Apple Cider Vinegar - Yes, it works, believe me.  I tried this with my husband, making him drink 8 ounces of water mixed with one tablespoon of raw organic unfiltered apple cider vinegar before taking his breakfast and another one before going to bed.  The first time we tried it, his blood sugar drastically dropped almost thirty points. 
2. Tomatoes - I watched an Asian medical TV program and the doctor said eating tomatoes help revive the pancreas and make it function properly.  I've mixed raw tomatoes in my husband's salad, so I can't exactly pinpoint the exact time this worked, but together with the others, I like to believe it does work.
3. Bitter gourd or bitter melon - we were already happy when my husband's blood sugar went below 126, but the first day he took bitter gourd or bitter melon salad with his meals, it dropped to 85.  This is probably why my father kept eating this during his time.  We just didn't know how it improved his blood sugar.
4. Cinnamon - yeah, my husband's also mixing cinnamon in his coffee and this may also helped normalizing his blood sugar.
5. Exercise - before, my husband's exercise time was limited only in the morning after breakfast.  However, when we still couldn't lower the fasting blood sugar, I strongly advised him to walk the treadmill during evenings too, after dinner.  It vastly lowered his fasting blood sugar indeed.
6. Avoid fats - I read somewhere that diabetics weren't supposed to eat anything fatty because the fat protects the carbohydrates and not allowing the body to use the same but just store it in the blood stream.  After my husband avoided anything fried and stuck with raw food or steamed and boiled foods, his blood sugar lowered.  He doesn't eat chicken anymore because chicken is still very oily, even if you just boil it.  When we gave up chicken, the numbers definitely lightened up.

So far, this is what we've done.  I'll add more to the list if we discover anything else.

Just another diabetic blog

It's been almost a month since my husband was accidentally diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.  He was hospitalized for some other reason, and it was lucky his blood sugar was checked, too.  Yes, it may be the pits, but at least, we know about it, and thus could act on it. 

My father was a type 1 diabetic and I've heard of diabetes all my life.  My father's sickness was discovered when he was in his mid-twenties, and that time, I wasn't conceived yet, hahaha.  Anyway, I've heard enough about it not to be considered ignorant per se, but since my husband got the disease, I realized there isn't much I've known about diabetes.

I remember my father watched his diet and took medications, and he exercised now and then, however, he wasn't really that monitored and he didn't see his doctor that frequently.  His blood sugar wasn't under normal levels, but I thought it was because he was sick.  It's only now that I knew that my father's condition wasn't ideal because his blood sugar wasn't controlled.  I read that if one is diabetic, his blood sugar should be under normal levels if he has watched his diet, exercised and took his medications.  He died of liver cirrhosis even if he wasn't a drinker, because it's the organ his diabetes destroyed in the end.

Anyway, for my husband, his highest random blood sugar when he as first diagnosed was around 290.  He was even on insulin at first, while he was still in the hospital.  Little by little, after two weeks, it gone lower to 160s then to 140s.  Today, his random blood sugar is 85.

Taking care of my husband, I have a few regrets and questions.  Why I didn't act this way during my father's time, why we didn't monitor his sugar that vigilantly, why all of us regarded the disease as common and harmless as cough, when it was actually life threatening.  A lot of things I would have wanted to do, if I had known then. 

In this maiden post, I want to make special mention to my father, whom we somehow failed to take care because we lacked the knowledge which would have prompted us to do otherwise.