#GardeningDiabetic

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I Recommend Yoga

Jan 17
3 min

I Recommend Yoga

I don’t know what it is. I don’t exercise like I did when I was younger. Who does? I’ve gotten older with creaks and cracks in my joints. Still, there’s just something about when I’m doing yoga. If I haven’t done yoga in a while, some good pops and cracks while I’m doing stretching yoga poses make my blood sugar decrease. As we age, our joints can't take as much stress and compression as when we were younger. The cartilage between our bones has gotten thinner with less cushio

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How to Keep Your New Year's Resolution

Jan 10
3 min

How to Keep Your New Year's Resolution

I write articles 40 or more weeks out of the year with free diabetic recipes. I pay attention to other magazines and the popular trends. Why don’t I follow along? It’s because we’re diabetic and not like the rest of the population. Our New Year’s resolution needs to be to get healthier while being able to keep this resolution all year long. At times fad diets and trendy recommendations will harm diabetics and play havoc with our blood sugar. An example is the keto diet. The l

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Insurance insanity

Jan 3
6 min

Insurance insanity

I realize that I have to have insurance. It was right around this time last year that I made my choice. I spoke with a representative and discussed my health issues. They tried to explain it to me; but unfortunately, it’s very difficult to understand. I just didn’t know what I didn’t know. It has led to the past year being a year of insurance insanity. If you work for a major corporation, you may have insurance provided for you. If you are a type one diabetic, please check in

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Working Through Diabetes

Dec 20, 2022
7 min

Working Through Diabetes

I work for myself, so I don’t answer corporations or supervisors. I work with my clients. It’s a totally different dynamic than when I earned a regular paycheck. When I worked for large businesses, there were and are some different positive and challenging scenarios of which diabetics should be aware. I used to work for Frito Lay. I was a district manager in the Birmingham, Alabama market. Eventually, I transferred to the Tuscaloosa, Alabama market. When I transferred to Tusc

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Holiday Humbugs

Dec 13, 2022
3 min

Holiday Humbugs

It’s Christmas time. I love holidays. Decorating is fun. Shopping and wrapping presents are entertaining. While I love food, my least favorite thing is all the food I can’t eat so, I’m always coming up with substitutes. Some substitutes have nothing to do with food. I love to see the lights. The rock city lights on Lookout Mountain are a great activity to go walk and see with family and friends. This really helps to work off some glucose, so I can’t eat later. Once I’ve defer

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Working a Dog into Your Life

Nov 29, 2022
3 min

Working a Dog into Your Life

One of my neighbors came by yesterday. She was walking the cutest little beagle you’ve ever seen. She has plenty of animals and didn’t need another one. Her pets wouldn’t even let it in the house. I contacted a lady in the neighborhood that works with drop off pets, Dade County Pet Project. She put an ad in the local lost and found. Meanwhile, I know someone that adores beagles; so I forwarded him a picture of the dog. He happens to be a type one diabetic; and we got onto the

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Your Body Knows Best

Nov 22, 2022
4 min

Your Body Knows Best

When we’re diagnosed diabetic, we’re told to use medicine or other forms of insulin because our body isn’t producing enough (type 2) or can’t produce any insulin (type 1). We’re given charts to use because most human brains aren’t good at actively calculating carbohydrate intake and able to figure the safe and accurate amount of insulin to take. The human body does it best. Now our bodies have gone on strike. Reality is that the closer you are to balancing your blood sugar, t

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Don’t Do It Alone

Nov 15, 2022
4 min

Don’t Do It Alone

As kids, we try foods and figure out what we like and don’t like. We think that this is a static thing that never changes. As we age, our taste buds change over time. Usually, it is due to our bodies needing particular nutrients and vitamins in certain foods. I’m seeing the same thing with insulin. It is time to change my insulin intake. Now that I have a continuous glucose monitor, CGM, I’ve started noticing a trend. The biggest trend I see is my blood sugar bottoming out ar

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A Sticky Subject

Nov 1, 2022
5 min

A Sticky Subject

I finally broke down. My curiosity got the better of me. Whenever I eat, I always want to know what effect that food has on my body. I decided to get a FreeStyle Libre 2 unit. On top of being able to check my glucose at any time, these little devices add in the ability to see how long you’re actually in a healthy blood sugar target range. It’s quite impressive and eye opening. Not only do I get to have this information at my fingertips but also, I get to keep feeling in my fi

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To Count or Not to Count Carbs, That is the Question…

Oct 25, 2022
4 min

To Count or Not to Count Carbs, That is the Question…

I’ve been watching. I have someone in my life who is a type one diabetic. He’s on an insulin pump. In order for it to give him the accurate and safe amount of insulin, he has to know how many carbs he’s consuming and enter it into his pump. The question is how do you get an accurate carb count? If you’re eating packaged food, this is much easier than when you’re cooking. You measure the serving size that is listed on the nutritional facts on the product packaging and eat only

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Did the Doctor’s Office Spike My Blood Sugar?

Oct 18, 2022
4 min

Did the Doctor’s Office Spike My Blood Sugar?

I was in a doctor's office in the hospital, when my blood sugar started to drop. I was with a client seeing the doctor for him. We were waiting for a specialist to explain an upcoming procedure. After the specialist had spoken to us and left, my blood sugar dropped to 81 mg/dL. As his fellow studying under him was leaving the office, I told him my blood sugar was dropping and asked if he could speed the process up. Now the question was how to handle this without starting a bl

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Are you really tired?

Oct 4, 2022
2 min

Are you really tired?

It’s quite interesting. Now that I have this diabetic body. I feel exhausted. But am I really tired? The biofeedback that I get from my body has changed. When I think I’m really tired, which can be quite often, I check my blood sugar. Thanks to a continuous glucose monitoring system, I can do this much more often and still have feeling in my fingertips. Thank you, technology. It’s interesting. When blood sugar runs like a normal person, that rules out two things at once. When

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Accidental Trigger

Sep 27, 2022
4 min

Accidental Trigger

We’ve talked about the ups and downs; but there are times when things are good. You’re keeping your blood sugar in a range between 70 to about 180 mg/dL. Then there’s that one thing that happens. It sets us off and triggers our blood sugar. It's the sky rocketing event just before that roller coaster ride. Recently, I was all set to go to a fantastic high school football game. It was a close score of 7 to 3. The home team won. I thought I was all set to have a great night too

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Recovering from the Ups and Downs

Sep 20, 2022
5 min

Recovering from the Ups and Downs

It seems quite wacky and arbitrary. Everything ‘s under control. Our blood sugar is doing well. Then it’s not. The highs and lows aren’t fun. When we can get a good recovery, it’s amazing! Let's look at why that can be such a challenge and how to make regular recoveries from hypoglycemic events back to a normal target range of 100 to 180 a regular occurrence. If it’s an off day and our blood sugar stays high, we're having a hyperglycemic day. It leads to exhaustion and strugg

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Grocery Challenges

Sep 13, 2022
3 min

Grocery Challenges

As I focus on changing my diet over, I’m spending more time in the grocery store again. It’s nice since we’ve got vaccines that reduce the risk of getting Covid. I don’t worry about going into a grocery store and having to wear a mask that makes it harder to breathe. I can spend more time researching food again. After all, healthy eating is determined in the grocery store but what we choose to bring into our homes. While a metamorphosis into a butterfly is highly unlikely, I’

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Food Fighting

Sep 6, 2022
4 min

Food Fighting

Food is so personal. You can take a highly logical adult and tell them a particular food is not good for them. I've suggested that they shouldn't eat that as often as they do. You would’ve thought that I told this person that I crashed into their car. They get defensive, belligerent, and angry. They are ready to fight over their freedom to choose their favorite food. I get it; but what we put in our bodies makes a huge difference in our health. Some substances cause inflammat

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Seeing the Ceramides

Aug 30, 2022
4 min

Seeing the Ceramides

I've been gone for two weeks. I needed it to take care of healthcare concerns for me and my pets. Really, I just had my mind blown! Every week, I put out a recipe to help us manage or lower our blood sugar. We're treating the symptoms because we have to keep our blood sugar low to prevent damage to our internal organs and blood vessels. Modern medicine hasn't known of the root cause of diabetes. Not only did I learn of a possible cause, but also possibly different foods, in a

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Good Morning Sunshine

Aug 9, 2022
5 min

Good Morning Sunshine

As I go about pet sitting, I always have request for photos of the fur babies I watch. Sit and stay are my favorite commands. This past week, I had nine visits to do in one day. My three morning visits were the most challenging. The cat and dogs were bundles of wiggling energy. I guess humans aren’t the only species that has the dawn phenomenon. The dawn phenomenon is when your body releases extra blood sugar in the morning. It gives us energy to get our day started and get u

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Frustrating Assumptions with Good Intentions

Aug 2, 2022
4 min

Frustrating Assumptions with Good Intentions

I used to travel a lot for work doing portrait photography. I really like to stay at Airbnb's. They were cleaner. They always had a really good refrigerator for my insulin. I used to always look around and see if I could figure out who owned each Airbnb. I talked to a few people I saw and realized they just did property management. Now being on the other side of the coin, doing that property management, I realize it’s easy to make assumptions. Going to three different cities

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Remember to Play...

Jul 26, 2022
4 min

Remember to Play...

The older we get, the less mobile we seem to be. I get caught up in what is expected behavior. Sit here. Don’t get on the floor. Don’t get your clothes dirty. The truth is the more we play and stay active the healthier we will be, When we quit moving or move less, we affect our bodies negatively in multiple ways. Motion helps keep the circulation in our body. This helps keep feeling in our extremities like our hands and feet. Circulation helps get oxygen, nutrients, electroly

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