Good morning! Today, I am planning on eating a luncheon out.
I'll be eating with my nutritionist, who's presenting a lecturer on Sugar Addiction. Since I have decided that I definitely have that, I signed up to go listen. I think the lecturer will tell us about agave syrup, maple sugar, honey, and a host of other sweeteners to use alternatively to processed white or brown cane sugar. Maybe that is what she will do. That's fine, I will listen and get what I can out of it. I am so stubborn that it will be difficult for me to implement any new info that I get, but I'll try if it makes sense.
When I was about eleven years old, my mother thought I might have a thyroid disorder and took me too the doctor. Our doctor at that time, Dr Eiseman, was a wonderful doctor who had his office in an old white brick house that he'd bought and transformed into consulting rooms, waiting room, and laboratory. He had his own lab technician. Dr Eiseman had worked in the tropics and knew all about parasites and tropical diseases, a skill which came in handy in Brownsville, Texas, gateway to Mexico.
Well, they came up with the diagnosis of no thyroid problems, but a very very high blood sugar reading. No sugar in the urine, as yet. Now, in those days there was no Type 2 Diabetes, my children. Why not? Because nobody had invented a drug to take care of it. Lucky for me.
Dr. Eiseman sat me and my mother down and said that I had to go on a strict diet. I had to stick on it for a year, and then see how I was doing. No sweets,sugar, honey, no starch, no bread, no potatoes, no soda pop, no nothing except eggs,fish, chicken, beef, pork, shrimps, oysters, and mostly green vegetables. No fruit. My mother was a tyrant and stuck to that diet for me one hundred percent for a year. I remember going to parties where the hostess's mother had to cook me a meat patty while the others ate spaghetti. I drank my iced tea plain (and learned to love it that way).
After the year had gone by, Dr. Eiseman checked my blood glucose again. Perfect function. You know how they do it: give you a glass of "lemonade" laced with tons of sugar...wait, take blood again. So the doctor told me that for the next six months I might have one of the following: one dessert a day, or, one piece of bread a day. I chose the one piece of bread because the only thing I still missed was that one piece of toast for breakfast with my egg. Six months later, still functioning perfectly. Released.
Now, why did that work? Ask any ancient Greek physician. It worked because my pancreas was put on vacation for that year and a half. Worn out at the age of eleven, it had the chance to get some rest, rebuild itself, and reset its controls. It worked, my friends. And has continued to work for seventy years.
And that is why I hate the Diabetes Type 2 drugs that work by flogging the pancreas to work harder. Yes, they do, folks. Ask your doctor or better yet read, read, read. I have been asking my pancreas to work harder over the last few years by eating too many rich foods and specifically sweets. After a lifetime of perfect readings, my triglycerides have begun to rise and the ominous little word "Prediabetic" has begun to appear on my computer generated doctor reports. "Why do you put that there?" I ask the doctor. "Isn't everybody prediabetic until they are diabetic?" Apparently not so. He wants me on the pills. Flog, flog away. I say NO.
So, I shall bring up these issues with the nutritionist and the lecturer today if we get a chance to ask. Or, I won't. Sugar is sugar, though there is no doubt that over the long span some sugars are less healthy, some more. My need is just to expand my power and learn that at the dessert bar and the candy counter and the cookie plate, just as at the drug prescription, I need to just say NO. YAZZYBEL
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