The late David Mendoza wrote a nice
article for Health Central in 2014
titled “Grateful for Diabetes.” Another one that month was titled “Diabetes
without Drugs.” Both were excellent and short, and I recommend you search for and
read them. But my favorite line from both was the last words of the “Grateful”
piece: “Diabetes rocks!”
Mendoza explains “grateful” this way:
“Knowing that we have diabetes can be good for us. You may think I’m crazy,” he
says, “but some of us are thankful that we have diabetes. I wish all of us
could share this feeling.” Note: it is actually the feeling that he is grateful for, not the diabetes. It is his reaction to the knowledge that he is a
diabetic. But, having that knowledge, what action was taken? Mendoza explains it
with a story:
“Mary Ann wrote me a few months ago that when a doctor told her she had
diabetes, she didn’t know anything about it. At first, she felt shock, fear,
anger, and grief. Then, she realized that she ‘had to be the one to take
control of it’ and went on a low-carb diet, which helped her both to lose
weight and to reduce her blood sugar. ‘I’m actually grateful for the diabetes
diagnosis,’ she told me [Mendoza]. ‘It
inspired me to take control of my health’’’ (emphasis mine).
Mendoza then goes on to describe how,
“Mary Ann’s journey from a diabetes diagnosis to good health parallels his own
journey” (and mine). At the time he was diagnosed, he says, “I had an A1c of
14.4, weighed more than 300 pounds, and lacked energy.” “Today,” he says, “I
tested my A1c…and found it is 5.4. I weighed myself, as I do every morning, and
found that I now weigh 155.6 pounds. I have more energy than I had 20, 30 or even
40 years ago.”
Isn’t that inspirational? Do you
understand now why David Mendoza, and I, say, “Diabetes rocks!”?
In “Diabetes without Drugs,” Mendoza
tells more of his personal story. The lede of this piece in Health Central, and on his own website,
says flat out, “If you have Type 2 diabetes, you can manage it without any
drugs.” Mendoza doesn’t pull his punches. This is an unqualified statement, and
he is an exemplar, to be sure. I wish I did as well.
David Mendoza was diagnosed a Type 2
diabetic in 1993. He was treated by his doctor in the orthodox way for 14
years, with “experience taking a wide range of diabetes drugs, including two
different sulfonylureas, Glucophage (Metformin), and Byeta” (a GLP-1 injectable
incretin mimetic). Then in 2007, with encouragement from a friend who is a
Certified Diabetes Educator, he joined “a group,” “and for the past six years I haven’t taken any diabetes drugs, and
yet I keep my diabetes in control with an A1c level usually about 5.4. When you
manage your diabetes well, it [your A1c] is well controlled. It is normal. We
know that the normal A1c is 6.0 or below.”
“An A1c level of 6.0 or below means
that your diabetes is in remission,” Mendoza says. “It does not mean that you
have cured it. If you relax your vigilance, your A1c level will go above 6.0
again, and you will again put yourself at risk of the terrible complications of
uncontrolled diabetes.”
Mendoza doesn’t explain in this piece
what “the group” he refers to was, but I’ll venture a guess it was a group of
people who were motivated to be educated and seek mutual support to, among
other things, undertake a Very Low Carb Way of Eating. “Any lifestyle change
this fundamental is difficult,” Mendoza admits. “I had to make three big
changes in my life when I went off the diabetes drugs, and they are hard at
first. But now they are a routine part of my life, and I would never go back to
my old ways.
The changes that I had to make are
those that almost everyone who has diabetes has to make. In order of importance,
I had 1) to lose weight, 2) eat fewer carbohydrates, and 3) exercise more.”
As my readers know, my story is
similar to Mendoza’s. I was diagnosed in 1986 and treated in the orthodox way
with oral meds (3 classes, maxed out on 2)) for 16 years until my doctor
suggested I try Very Low Carb (20 net carb grams a day) to lose weight. I had
to drop the meds immediately and lost (at one point) over 180
pounds. My latest A1c was 5.6, but it has been as low as 5.0%. But I don’t do
regular exercise. It makes me sweaty and hungry. LOL
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