Why NOW Is a Great Time to Be Diabetic

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Last November, I was invited to give a talk for Diabetes Awareness Month to about 150 people at my work. What I remember the most about it was what a type 1 diabetic co-worker told me right before the talk. She said, “Hey Mario, happy sucks-to-be-us day”. I just laughed, but deep down I felt a little pity. Not because she was diabetic like me, but because of how she saw her condition. She had her blood sugar readings sent straight to her phone, and a pump attached to her that automatically injected insulin under her skin, but she still considered herself unfortunate.

This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered someone with a negative view of diabetes. It’s almost the only view I’ve seen people with and without the illness adopt. Loss, death, deprivation and bland food are common terms uttered in conversations about diabetes. It’s not that they’re wrong. They just accepted a belief – a conventional perspective.

It’s weird how something considered so terrible by most people has been one of the biggest blessings of my life. I will show you how I see this disease, and why now is a great time to be diabetic.

Because You’d Be Dead

The first reports of the symptoms of diabetes date back over 3,500 years ago. In the first century AD, the ancient Greek physician Aretaeus of Cappadocia thought diabetes was when flesh melted away and converted to urine. To diagnose patients with the disease, a common method was to taste a suspected diabetic’s urine for sweetness. Life with diabetes was “short, disgusting, and painful”, according to Aretaeus.

The chart below paints a picture of how bad it was. It shows the average life expectancy (in years) of diabetic patients attending the George Baker Clinic in Boston, Massachusetts from 1897 to 1945 before and after the discovery of insulin.

The discovery of insulin in the early 1920s was the turning point in treating diabetes that changed the world forever. Before then, children at age 10 didn’t live any longer than about three years after diagnosis. Adults at age 50 didn’t do much better with a life expectancy of about 10 years after diagnosis. In the two decades following the discovery of insulin, life expectancy had a profound surge to about 45 years for children at age 10, and about 16 years for adults at age 50. With today’s advancements, the prognosis for diabetics is even better with many people living past 75.

Before insulin, if diabetic complications didn’t kill you, you’d likely die of starvation. Frederick Madison Allen, a physician during the early 1900s, was one of the many doctors who implemented extremely low-calorie diets to regulate blood sugar levels. This was a common practice in which they prescribed patients as low as 400 calories to eat per day with no carbohydrates.

These diets were tremendously difficult to follow, and patients would break their caloric restrictions and die from diabetic complications. Patients who followed the diet faithfully became malnourished and also died, but they did live a little longer.

We’ve come a long way since then with the inventions of artificial insulin, disposable syringes, insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors. But insulin as a treatment for high blood sugar levels has only been around for 100 years. If you became diabetic any sooner over the last three millennia, you wouldn’t live long.

It’s the Ultimate Accountability Partner

When it comes to being accountable for our health, diabetics have a small but powerful advantage over nondiabetics: our daily blood sugar readings.

Why? Because they give us immediate visual and measureable feedback, and there are serious health consequences for letting it get out of control. The numbers don’t lie. They will tell you if you haven’t been exercising consistently or if eating that donut was a good idea. 

Before I became diabetic, my diet wasn’t the best. I would give in to anything that tempted me, and I was okay with it because I didn’t see anything happen to me right away. There was no feedback, at least not on that day.  It’s different now because I have something telling that I made a mistake with my blood sugar, and if I let it get out of control for too long, it can lead to serious risks to my health and take away years from my life. Nondiabetics, on the other hand, don’t have this feedback. For most of them, health status is generally indicated by their weight and appearance, and those take a long time to notice any meaningful changes.

We diabetics have the upper hand because of this built-in accountability partner. We have it for the rest of our lives and it doesn’t stop. It tells us to get up and move when we don’t feel like it, and to say no to that donut when we crave it so bad. If we listen to these daily cues, they become easier to follow, and can pay us back with vigor and longevity that’s better than a non-diabetic.

You Can Use It as an Excuse

People know little about diabetes. It’s unfortunate because the simple knowledge about how it works can save so many lives. But this is helpful because people won’t call your bluff when you want to leave an awkward party.

Most people won’t understand what you’re talking about when you say that your sugar is out of control, or if you’re low. They’ll just become concerned and let you “do whatever you need to do”.

Once, I was assigned a tight window seat on a flight. I was just diagnosed, and I was still urinating often. A man much smaller than me was sitting on the aisle-side seat and I asked him if we could trade seats because I’m diabetic and need quick access to the bathroom. He agreed and traded me without question or complaint.

I’m not saying to use this to improve your situation at the expense of others. It’s just that most people won’t question your actions when it involves taking care of yourself.

It Forces You to Build Good Habits

When you’re diabetic, you can’t do things the same way you used to before your diagnosis. You need a regimen of when to take your medication, when and how to exercise, listening to your body, and (most importantly) a complete revamp of your relationship with food. This is a perfect opportunity to introduce new positive habits through a strategy called habit stacking.

In his book, Atomic Habits, James Clear defines habit stacking as:

“After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT]”

Here are some examples of my habit stacks:

• Blood sugar correction. After my blood sugar level reaches 140, I will inject insulin to correct it.
• Meditation. After I inject my morning insulin, I will meditate for 10 minutes.
• Exercise. After the clock reaches 11:00 am, I will go to the gym at my work.
• Fasting for glucose regulation. After fifteen hours have gone by, I will eat my first meal of the day.

You must connect your desired behavior to something that you already do each day. After you get a grasp on your habit stacks, you can stack on more habits.

Building from my previous examples, my added habit stacks can look like this:

• And after I meditate, I will get my lunch ready for work.
• And after I exercise, I will eat my meal with the highest amount of starchy carbs for the day (insulin’s ability to reduce blood sugar works best after a workout).
• And after I eat, I will wait for one hour before checking my blood sugar level (one hour is about how long it takes for my insulin activity to peak and can sometimes drop my sugar faster than I expected).

These habit stack chains can go as long as you want. Would I have done this if I didn’t have diabetes? I never used to have a regimen like this, so probably not.

Diabetic Food Recommendations Are On the Right Path

When I was first diagnosed with diabetes, I was given food recommendations provided by the American Diabetes Association (ADA). They said I can eat limited amounts of bread, pasta, fruit and potato. For weeks, I couldn’t get my sugar on track while eating this stuff.

It wasn’t until I read Dr. Richard Bernstein’s book, The Diabetes Solution, and started implementing his recommendations when I started seeing progress. His plan is similar to the Keto Diet. This was in 2014 and I’ve never heard of such a diet then. I thought I came across something new, but I was wrong.

The Keto Diet has been around since the 1920s for treating seizures. It’s just gained popularity in the last few years because people have also found it incredibly effective for weight-loss, besides the benefits of reduced blood sugar levels. For decades, low-fat was the way to go, but now it’s shifting to high-fat, low-carbohydrate.

I don’t practice the Keto Diet, but modern research is unveiling the enormous benefits of eating lower amounts of carbohydrates, especially starchy sources. After seeing how this way of eating affects myself and others, I’m convinced that low-carb is how most people need to eat. Fortunately, the world is shifting closer to this ideal as more research on it is showing positive results.

The food guidelines provided by the ADA need to be updated, but I know it’ll take some time. If a government-backed entity like the ADA changed its recommendations or guidelines, it can hurt a lot of businesses that have built their models on food like high-carb products. It can get political, but they will inevitably need to adapt to this developing movement by introducing more low-carb products.

Fortunately, we don’t have to listen to the ADA or wait for hundred-year-old potato chip manufacturers to wise up. We can make informed decisions NOW, and the way many of today’s businesses are developing their food products are evolving in our favor.

It Reminds You of Your Mortality

If there’s one thing that our fluctuating blood sugar reminds us of, it’s that our bodies aren’t perfect. They’re flawed and something in them has already died – our pancreas’s ability to make insulin. Yet, we’re still here and able to continue living. It reminds us that all we have is a season pass on this planet; that we’re not invincible, and one day the rest of our bodies will catch up.

Why all this talk about death? Most people avoid thinking about it. It’s as if the thought of it will bring them closer to it. They ignore their mortality and do not confront it until too late in life – when they’re old, terminally ill, or have a near-death experience.

The ancient Stoics (who I’ve written about), constantly reminded themselves that one day they will die. But they didn’t lament over this. Reflecting on death allowed them to transcend their fear of it and “suck the marrow out of life”, as Thoreau put it. They saw death as something natural, inevitable, and necessary to complete a life. Because of this, they did not consider it something evil.

When we look at our blood sugar spike, we share this subtle reminder with the Stoics. We can train ourselves to confront the thought of death without fear. We can also remember that technology and medicine has given us a second chance, and we must make the most out of our limited time here.

You Enjoy Life More

It’s widely known that a key to happiness is to focus on less. It’s difficult to do that with so many distractions and choices. We consume ourselves with commitments, goals, and social functions. Moreover, the average diabetic makes about 300 more decisions than a non-diabetic, per day.

How are we to juggle these flaming fireballs of life?

This is another area where diabetics have an advantage. When you know what’s important in your life (i.e. blood sugar control), you’re able to live it more enjoyably. Diabetes helps with this because it provides positive boundaries. That means that decisions are easy because they’re already made for you, and they improve you. If you take your blood sugar seriously, you don’t have to think twice about most of the vices that cross your path. Decisions become a no-brainer because you know what they’ll do to your blood sugar, and this gives you more space to focus on things that actually matter to you. It’s liberating.

This doesn’t just go for diabetics, but for anyone who exercises self-control. It’s the removal of choices that adds joy and focus to one’s life. Diabetes gives us this gift, so the next time you think it sucks to be diabetic, remember that it can burden you just as easily as it can improve you.