High blood sugar

I've just had some interesting insight.... having lived with a Diabetic over the last 6 weeks I have learned a thing or two about Diabetes and have tried very hard to understand the commonalities and differences. Knowing that I have insulin resistance, and insulin resistance is the most common cause of type 2 diabetes... I finally pieced together something.

Alright... so I eat something with sugar in it. The more "pure" it is in sugar, the more dramatic my symptoms are. I have more problems with sugar than honey I've noticed. And more problems with honey than whole grains, etc. The more complex the carb, the slower it breaks down and therefore less demand on the endocrine system to spring into action to pack away the sugars into my cells.

I have, until today, not understood what was going on with my body after I ate and why it would react so strongly to sugar. Over time, symptoms got worse because I was paying attention to them more and more, and all of my attempts to stop them failed. When a diabetic eats/drinks too much sugar, their blood sugar gets high and causes a whole symphony of symptoms. For me, my vision gets blurry, I get thirsty, my face gets flushed, I have overall malaise, I become "spacey" and can't concentrate, and I gotta pee (its a response of the kidneys to get the sugar OUT of the blood). This happens very soon after I have a high simple carbohydrate load. I panic, which then exaggerates the symptoms and causes their own chaos. Give that process two years and it is no wonder that I would start to panic when ever I started to feel like that. Once I even had post traumatic stress from an episode that took me a week to recover from!

For a diabetic, their blood sugar stays high until they inject insulin which tucks away the sugar into the body cells where it is supposed to be. They take a prescribed amount of insulin for the level of their blood sugar. For me, my pancreas still produces insulin normally. However, my cells don't respond to insulin normally. The high blood sugar levels in my blood then trigger a greater than needed production of insulin. When the insulin begins to work, there is now too much in my blood and so too much sugar is pulled out of my blood. Thus, causing hypoglycemia... or LOW blood sugar. If my blood sugar gets too low, I slip into a coma. So basically if I wanted to commit suicide, all I would need to do is eat 5 large brownies which would send my blood sugar too high and then subsequently too low to recover from. (that would be rather painful and slow process though... so don't worry!)

Normally though, my body then tries to recover from the hypoglycemia by releasing stored sugars from the liver (called glycogen). If it releases too much sugar, then the whole process starts over again.... high, low, high, low... like a seesaw, until it evens out.

Add in the massive chaos of hormones released from the hypoglycemia (that I described in a previous blog posting) to the chaos of hormones released from the hyperglycemia (the high blood sugar), and the panic... and its no wonder I am a mess. And my head KILLS. All this chaos gives me a headache, all day and night long. Hormones themselves are signals from the body used by the brain to "flip" major "switches", influencing brain function, personality, etc.

... now if only they could explain why I am loosing soooo much weight despite eating 6 times a day. I'm not kidding... literally 6-9 times... 1-2 breakfasts, 2 lunches, 2-3 dinners, and 1-3 "snacks" before I go to bed (depending on how late I go to bed). I'm SICK of eating! Most people with insulin resistance GAIN weight.