I’ve been a Type I for 28 years now (since 12 y.o.). Despite this, there are no signs of complications. Control was abysmal for the first seven years (no glucometers) and pretty wonky for years after that – hypos were a common event. Sometimes I got picked up off the street. It’s only since reading a book on the epidemiology of diabetic complications a decade ago that I realised with horror the sorts of things that could happen to me if I didn’t maintain proper control. This was hammered home even more when the DCCT results were released. So only in the last decade have I been getting regular HbA1c tests.

At one stage I went ten years without any eye tests. I felt that if many of the problems with peripheral nerves and limb damage etc. originate with poor circulation then what better way to prevent the beginning of the viscious cycle than by indulging in very high levels of aerobic activity. Evidence I’ve seen suggests that such activity improves morbidity for diabetics independent of bg control. From age of diagnosis (12) until 16 I lifted weights. Then from age 18 onwards, distance running. Recently it has been mainly cycling, up to several hundred kilometers per week (before and after work, through hills). Keeping up this level of activity is very taxing. I have to be careful to get plenty of sleep. If my blood sugars are too high for too long, my muscles don’t recover in time for the next ride: If I stop riding for a while, my control is shot to hell because my sensitivity to insulin changes drastically over a period of time.

Then, when I start up again, sensitivity changes again, but in the opposite direction and so more control problems occur. Most of the time I have to test my blood sugar at 4.00am and have between two and five injections a day using three different insulins for maximum flexibility. I test my bg’s up to ten times a day. Only long experience has helped me be able to predict to some extent the effects of doing or not doing such exercise. Even so I still get into trouble: last weekend I lost consciousness from low blood sugar on a day that I *wasn’t* cycling – I had misjudged the required dose. Fortunately my body pumped in loads of adrenaline which sort of brought me round enough to help myself (orange juice). My wife was out at the time!

The dietary establishment has long argued it’s impossible, but a new study offers intriguing evidence for the idea that people on low-carbohydrate diets can actually eat more than folks on standard lowfat plans and still lose weight. Perhaps no idea is more controversial in the diet world than the contention — long espoused by the late Dr. Robert Atkins — that people on low-carbohydrate diets can consume more calories without paying a price on the scales.

Over the past year, several small studies have shown, to many experts’ surprise, that the Atkins approach actually does work better, at least in the short run. Dieters lose more than those on a standard American Heart Association plan without driving up their cholesterol levels, as many feared would happen. Skeptics contend, however, that these dieters simply must be eating less. Maybe the low-carb diets are more satisfying, so they do not get so hungry. Or perhaps the food choices are just so limited that low-carb dieters are too bored to eat a lot. Now, a small but carefully controlled study offers a strong hint that maybe Atkins was right: People on low-carb, high-fat diets actually can eat more.

The study, directed by Penelope Greene of the Harvard School of Public Health and presented at a meeting here this week of the American Association for the Study of Obesity, found that people eating an extra 300 calories a day on a very low-carb regimen lost just as much during a 12-week study as those on a standard lowfat diet. Over the course of the study, they consumed an extra 25,000 calories. That should have added up to about seven pounds.

My therapist says that depression is a disease of the brain, not a disease of the muscles. The muscles still work. So get up and work your muscles and do what ya gotta do. He says I can keep the house clean, and cook nutritious meals and do all of that other motherly stuff even when I feels like I can’t. I want to know if he’s ever experienced depression, or if he’s just going by what the books said.

I have this argument with myself everyday. For me, exercising just temporarily makes you think of the treadmill and not the sadness. The endorphines get going and help some but later, I am back to where I started. When I had my breakdown and I was waiting the 5 weeks to see a pdoc (guess you have to slit your wrists to get in any earlier), I found that I had no desire to do anything except jog. I hadn’t been jogging regularly for months, but once the depression hit I was jogging every day and sometimes twice a day.

It helped stop my brain from spinning on obsessive thoughts. In other words, the physical pain and exhaustion pushed the bad thoughts for an hour or two. My therapist was very encouraging about continuing the exercise and I believe it has helped my recovery.