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May 22, 2008

What We're Reading: Diabetes Advice

Web Team

Have you ever gotten great advice about managing diabetes that you know you couldn’t have found in a textbook or at your doctor’s office? Elizabeth Edelman, who blogs at Diabetes Daily, knows the feeling. To help people share these sorts of helpful suggestions, she has set up a “Wikibetes” site called "Best Advice You Won’t Find in a Book."

The site collects advice on diabetes management from people with diabetes throughout the blogosphere. Each blogger is asked to post five of his or her favorite pieces of advice and link to the Wikibetes site, where the tips are collected for all to see.

The advice runs the gamut from the general to the specific and ranges over almost every aspect of diabetes management. There are tips on managing stress and keeping things in perspective as well as advice on how best to conceal insulin pumps and what foods to eat for episodes of hypoglycemia.

This blog entry was written by Assistant Editor David Golann.

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A great piece of advice from my Doctor was to minimise the amount of insulin you use to keep you Ha1C in the normal range. Other wise you will end up weighting 300 lb. This sounds like the shoe that is big on the inside and small on the outside. Insulin precisely has such an inherent contradiction. The more you use the hungrier you will be and the fatter you get and the more you will need. So find the strategy that will work in your individual case to minimise the insulin dosage and yet keep the Ha1C normal.

Posted by: CalgaryDiabetic | May 23, 2008 06:10 PM

My sister and I were talking yesterday, on line, about our diabetes. She said that her blood glucose reading have been all over the place...74 to 400, just rediculous.

Well, I suggested to her that she should take her insulin AFTER she eats her meals and snacks. I know that she takes her insulin before she actually eats, and she isn't getting the effects from her insulin that she should be getting.

Sometimes she has passed out and fallen on the floor, and her grand-daughter (who was 2 1/2 years old at the time) called 911. A miracle if ever there was one.

The times that she has passed out, she had taken her insulin before eating, and then was delayed 30 minutes or more. The effects of lower blood glucose with my sister are not pretty. I call her the "Drunken Monkey-Child", because she walks with her arms swinging wildly at her side and she slurs her words and bumps into everything...if she has something in her hands, she will drop it, several times.

Here's the advice...from me to you....If you don't want to end up like my sister, take your insulin AFTER your meals and snacks...use the blood glucose reading that you took BEFORE you ate anything....count your carbs AFTER you eat everything...and you should get good, if not better results.

Good luck and happy times to you all!!

Posted by: Gayle | May 28, 2008 07:02 PM

I need some help! My husband of almost 23 years was diagnosed with diabetes - which he has controlled with weight loss and diet changes.
However, he now says he has NO desire for sex and he blames it on the diabetes and his medication.
He takes Lisinopril for high blood pressure and ibuoprofen for arthritic type pain (he has a hard labor job). Is there any advice? - please note that I will have to check back to this blog to see answer as my addy is at work and it is a serious filter on it! What can I do to bring romance back to my marriage?

Posted by: Spouse of Diabetic | Aug 26, 2008 10:51 AM

Hi Spouse of Diabetic,

You may want to check out blogger David Spero's recent entries on sex and diabetes: "ADA Advice on Sex" and "Partners Speak Out About Sex." His entry from last year, "Sex, Intimacy, and Diabetes," may also be useful to you.

Good luck!

Posted by: Tara Dairman, Web Editor | Aug 26, 2008 11:05 AM

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