I believe I can beat my Type I Diabetes. I’m not entirely sure how to do it but I’m on the right track.
The past two years have shown me a new way to look at disease. Imbalance, down to the vitamins and minerals, has become a fascination of mine.
Whereas before, you presented with a problem, went to the doctor to be diagnosed and sought how to deal with the disease (or output). Today, I’m looking further upstream. I’m currently experimenting with some rudimentary vitamin and mineral supplementation to help restore cellular balance. Restoring this balance can, I think, help restore the factory settings.
I’m paying a lot of attention to Vitamin A, Vitamin E, Magnesium and Iron. I’m more concerned with what’s in my water and how I’m breathing.
As hippy-dippy as this comes across - I feel it too - I think it’s more the loss of the extreme, end-all-be-all entitlement of modern medicine that hits the hardest. That’s not to belittle modern medicine. I am alive because of modern medicine. I wear an insulin pump, and bluetooth waves deposit a live feed of my blood sugars onto my phone. I am FOR this type of technology. But I also don’t want to be stuck with it.
People receive a diagnosis and become their condition. There was a time when I didn’t have diabetes. I spent the first 8 years of my life with a fully functioning pancreas. Something happened, a switch flipped, and then it was diabetes from there on out.
And, until 2 years ago, my mind never (and I mean NEVER) imagined a time without it. Isn’t that kind of messed up? Why is that so hard to see?
The more I thought about it, the more I realized it’s because diabetes, the condition, has been so well taken care of. If you have diabetes, there’s a closed loop system insulin pump and glucose monitor that measures your blood glucose and delivers the required insulin. That’s a robotic pancreas…and it’s incredible.
…But also entirely downstream of the condition. Where are the people asking “how did we get here?” and going two steps upstream to say let’s avoid this entirely.
It’s equivalent to building out the most incredible, 5-star rated, society stabilizing unemployment system a country could ever ask for. You’ve got bureaus and lawyers and civil courts and soup kitchens to address an issue that could have been fixed by giving someone a job. Unemployment is only needed if you don’t have a job. Pumps and sensors are there if you’ve got too much sugar in your blood.
We’ve built this incredible system, impressive all the same, but neglected the real problem.
All this to say, how did we get here? Why did I get diabetes and not my two sisters? Why is Type I and Type II happening more often than ever before? Are we interested in a cure? Or just a lightened sentence with the symptoms?
Where are we going as diabetics? As wonderful as having diabetes and living an entirely normal life is, there would be no reason to change the habits or actions that brought it about in the first place.
I’m interested in going upstream. I challenge you to come with me.
Have you ever thought about how you got diabetes? Like, really thought about it?
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