C-routine

The 24/7 C-routine of a PWD (People With Diabetes) 

Yesterday night 11.30pm, pre-bed BG was 7.5mmol/L. Injected Insulatard 12 units. 

Set alarm at 4am. Off to bed.

Woke up in my dark room at 4am (nearly dozed off by muting the alarm loll, like what I usually did).

On my cell phone's light. Check my BG, it was 4.2mmol/L. 

Insulatard has a peak action, I know, I know. I should have eaten some food which raises my BG slowly (like half a cup of milk or 1 piece of plain biscuit). 

Who on earth would want to eat something at 4am and she was not even hungry! Well, a T1D has to do this. But, I just dozed off, after seeing the number 4.2 screened on my meter.

Come, guess what was my BG when I woke up at 8am this morning? 

Jeng...Jeng...Jeng...14.5mmol/L! (Dawn phenomena due to a noctural hypoglycemia)

How do you feel like when you off to bed with a nice BG, also a nice BG at 4am, then kanasai woke up with a screwed up reading. *inhales deeply. It's just another day of T1D.

24/7 C-routine means

1. Carbs, carbs, carbs
2. Count, count, count
3. Check, check, check
4. Correct, correct, correct
5. Otherwise, I will Complicate my already very Complicated situation, and make it into real Complications.

Hopefully in the future there will be some great, safe and reasonable treatments to regenerate beta cells. Then only I can finally stop all these Cs. I appreciate all the great, excellent, wonderful insulin available currently, but inhaled insulin is something still very far from getting rid of the C-routine.  

Nevertheless, for all the PWD out there, (with my favourite homemade fries as background)

Weekly fruit prep

I have been pretty busy recently. Busy with the change-in-schedule-of-current-job-and-new-job. Let's see when I will get exhausted working in two places...I hope not.

Also, I missed my appointment to see my endo. And the appointment has to be postponed until early next month, my endo seems to be fully booked in July already. I need her to review back on my insulin doses and I want her advice on changing to analogue insulin. Die die also have to see her this month la. 

Working on tight schedule now as a dietitian, a tutor and also a volunteer. I don't even have time to draft out ideas for my blog. The recent blog idea that I came up with was one week ago, and now I kinda forgot what that idea was initially. Loll. 

Since, working life has been so far so busy (I hope I can settle down after this week!). The food that appears in my mind when I am in a rush is fast food. This is bad. Because I can't be eating fast food everyday! So, food preparations are helping me much to keep myself AWAY from eating junk food, fast food and processed food. 

I know...renting a room in a house which doesn't have a gas stove. How to cook? Cooking needs utensils and utilities. But, cutting fruits simply just requires a knife! Some fruits don't even need a knife!

Have been going to the market to buy one-person-quota fruits weekly.

Purposely bought a green banana because it ripen too fast in warm weather.

I am eating at least 2 serving of fruits everyday now. Making it as a habit. 

Oranges can be kept longer. The Pisang Berangan turned all yellow at night lolll, I bought these fruits and snapped this picture in the afternoon. Is my room too warm or what? Ending up eating 2 Banana and 1 Orange everyday for the past one week. Excellent bowel movement haha!

This week back to my hometown. More fruits available. Durians, rambutan and mangosteen season are finally in! I check my sugar like every 3 hours. Because when I want to enjoy and eat, I have to monitor and check more frequently. (I always tend to eat extra during fruits season). Fruits season can come to harm if I am reluctant to check loll.

Life as a diabetic means mindful eating

Mom cutting

Family eating from the watermelon bowl

My mom bought a big watermelon for the weather has been too hot. We were supposed to eat these cut-watermelons in the "watermelon bowl". But my mom made me eat from my own measuring cup. She was right, I wouldn't know how much I have eaten if I were to eat from this watermelon bowl. 

Well, sometimes, I eat very "emotionally". Sometimes, I almost forget about mindful eating, and I am glad that my mom pulls me back to reality every now and then loll. #lifeasadiabetic

Food and FGID

When talk about FGID (Functional Gastrointestinal Disorder), you must think I will soon talk about FODMAP (Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides and Polyol) right? 

Nah, not so soon that we jump into these poorly absorbed sugars.

Because FOOD is not just about poorly absorbed sugars :)

Food is composed of a combination of nutrients, rather than a single agent.

I think for many many years already, we all know that food plays a role in our digestive problem. But the role of food/nutrition in controlling gastrointestinal problem has not been clearly defined. I always hear the family and friends telling these: 

• I get diarrhea after drinking cow's milk, so I choose to drink homemade soy milk. Though no more diarrhea, but my stomach gets so distended like 3 months pregnant. 
• Oh I cannot eat too much watermelon, the going-to-toilet-to-pass-motion effect is very fast. (this is my mom haha)
• One small piece of mango is okay for me. But multiple small pieces, then I will be asking for troubles. (my boss's problem :p) 
• My stomach has got a lots of wind lately, keep on passing out gas below and this makes me feel so embarrassed. I tried stopping my Oat Bran powder, now the volume and frequency of gases pass out have been tremendously improved! I just can't figure out why is this so!
• I myself can drink milk, I have got no milk intolerance. But multiple times in the morning if I were to drink caffeine-containing drink, I will soon be finding toilet to pass loose stools. (this is my experience lol)

While I was a student, I have received very little training about food and digestive disorders. I do learn about how digestion of food occurs in the mouth, the passage of food in the esophagus, the digestion in stomach, small intestine and what are the works that colon do. Unfortunately, the dietary recommendations for FGIDs have been very basic or what my boss always says: Diet for digestive problems has been very rudimentary. Most of the time, we give recommendations based on experiences, or we stop taking so much of that type of my-problem-food based on common sense (like now, I stop taking caffeine-containing drink while empty stomach) rather than credible scientific evidence. 

If you're interested too, kindly search this review online!

Previously, I only do disease related dietary managements. When a person without any diseases comes and asks me about how this particular food causes digestive problems for him or what are the foods that can cause gastrointestinal upset for him, I cannot navigate and fine-tune his problem properly using diet/food therapy! Slowly, I started to gain interests in how food is related to digestive problems. 

Occasionally, for those with digestive disorders, it is not only FODMAP will irritate their guts. But a few of my patients, the type of fibres turned out to be the real culprit. There are so many types of fibres, other than the well-known insoluble and soluble fibre types. Previously I have been only thinking about: Oh! soluble fibre can help patients with cholesterol problem. But, I haven't really look into how soluble fibre can cause gastrointestinal upset for some people. Glad that now I understand way more than its role in lowering cholesterol.

I am still learning much about dietary measures for FGID patients. Wonderful news that scientific evidences of food for functional disorders have been increasingly published for these recent years. This means more and more guidelines for dietitians. And we shall no longer need to swim hard in the murky waters of "how food is related to gastrointestinal symptoms" :)