My first diabetes video blog!

Hey everyone. Tad Roberts here, and I’m really excited because today is a day of firsts, my first video blog. And for my first video blog, I want to go back to the basic topic of my first written blog post. It’s a topic that’s very near and dear to my heart, and I’m very passionate about it. The topic is diabetes education.

It’s been said that we learn something new every day. But that isn’t always the case. When faced with something we don’t like, too often we stop learning and, worse, we stop wanting to learn.

So, today I want to talk about the importance and benefits of diabetes education, but I’m going to come at it from a slightly different angle today.

I’ve always argued that good diabetes self-management starts with knowledge of diabetes in general and how diabetes affects the average person. Then, once we have that down, we have to learn about our diabetes and how diabetes is affecting us because each of us is different. Although we share a lot of similarities, your diabetes is not the same as my diabetes, even if we’re both type 1s.

You may be saying, “Hey, I know all about diabetes, but that doesn’t help me much. I’m still having control problems.” Maybe that’s true, and, well, maybe it isn’t. Do you really think that you know all you need to know about diabetes?

I’ve been doing this successfully for nearly a quarter of a century, and lightbulbs still go off sometimes. I’m still learning because I always stay in a receptive mindset for lessons yet to be learned. I believe that is one of the biggest keys to our success, but I will get more into that in a minute.

But I do know that there are many out there that have been diabetic for a long long time and still have a very primitive understanding of what diabetes is doing to us on a biological level.

I also know that there are many who resist learning about diabetes because investing time in study is perceived as another big win for diabetes. It’s an admission of some kind of power diabetes has over us. It already takes up so much of our lives. The last thing we alI want to do is spend more time thinking about diabetes.

But this is where we often get it all backwards. We spend time learning about diabetes so we can reach a point where we aren’t imprisoned by it and don’t have to devote so much time and energy trying to manage it. Yes, there is a time investment that must be made, but it pays off huge when we finally learn to control our diabetes and we take back control of our lives.

The more we know, the easier it gets. The more we know, the more power we have. The more we know, the more sense it all makes.

Now I’m hesitant to use the word easy here, because even in the best of situations, diabetes is still a big challenge. But for most of us, it is a manageable one.

 

Perception Isn’t Reality:

I think it helps a bit if we tweak our perception of diabetes. We tend to think of diabetes as some giant monster or nefarious entity that has control over us. We have to kill that image in our minds because it isn’t helpful and diabetes isn’t some monster – Here’s a news flash: diabetes is just a cluster of biological symptoms that many of us share. It isn’t something actively trying to destroy you, ruin you, or end your life. Yes, these symptoms suck, bring a lot of work into our lives, and have the ability to cause very unpleasant complications for us.

But by transforming diabetes into something tantamount to a mythological creature, we give it more power than it deserves, and by doing so, we place ourselves in a perpetual lifelong battle and a perpetual defensive posture. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a tough way to spend the rest of our lives.

What we have to do is learn to manage those symptoms and bring them under our control as much as possible – which really is a lot. We have more control than we think. We have more power than we think.

And that, my friends, is where diabetes education comes in.

 

Getting Educated:

So, you may be asking, how do I start learning more about diabetes? Do I just Google diabetes and start reading everything I find? Well, that is certainly one tactic you could use, but I tend to be a little more structured in my approach. I divide diabetes education into 2 parts – external, or the general, and internal, or the specific; that is, our diabetes.

For Part 1, the external, I really like books. Now I know a lot of you out there like e-books because you can read them on your phones. Personally, I like something tangible with real paper pages, something I can hold in my hands and carry around with me. In the end, it doesn’t matter what form you choose. Just go search out books that teach about managing your type of diabetes. Read as many as you can, and read them over and over.

If you’re like me and don’t have a brain that’s exactly wired for science, the science involved in diabetes self-management can get a little confusing. That’s why re-reading often is so important. Sometimes it might click on the 3rd reading and sometimes it might be weeks later when something in your own diabetes management illustrates first-hand the point being made. But you have to believe that if you stay diligent, it will start to make sense.

There are some really amazing books on the market right now that can help teach you about what’s happening on a biological level within your body. We have to understand that. Otherwise, everything we’re doing is just a shot in the dark.

Now there’s one book in particular that I really like. It’s titled Think Like a Pancreas. It’s written by a CDE named Gary Scheiner, and it really is a veritable font of amazing information and insight on diabetes self-management. And personally, I think it’s a great read whether your type 1 or type 2 because the author really teaches you about what diabetes is and, again, the science and biology behind what’s happening in our bodies. He does a very good job at making the complex comprehensible.

I first read this book about a year or so ago, long after I’d already figured out the keys to my own self-management. And I remember thinking as I read it that I could have shaved years off of my own diabetes education if I had been introduced to that book earlier.

For the record, I do not know Gary Scheiner, I’ve never spoken with him, nor has anyone asked me to endorse his book on my blog. I just really think it’s a great resource for diabetics.

If you’re a diabetic interested in becoming more athletic but are concerned about how exercise might impact your diabetes, look for books by Dr. Sheri Colberg. She’s another one I really like and who does a great job teaching about our condition in a very digestible and easy to understand manner.

Ultimately, the big point is to read and to learn. So go search out books that will educate you about diabetes. And don’t feel like doing this is some big win for diabetes. We read to benefit our lives all the time. Sometimes it’s to advance ourselves in the professional world; other times, it’s to better understand a topic of particular interest; and yes, sometimes we read and learn to better deal with the unpleasant in our lives. But is each of these cases, our lives are made better by the effort put in.

Focus on the better life that awaits you when your newfound knowledge helps you see diabetes self-management through a brand new set of eyes.

But remember, learning about diabetes in general is only half of the task. We have to take that information learned and find out how it factors into our personal diabetes self-management because we may all have diabetes, but diabetes is not the same for each of us.

Just looking at type 1s, there are so many variables that differentiate one from the next: The amount of insulin still being produced by the pancreas, the degree of insulin resistance, activity levels, age, stress levels, hormone levels, and the presence of complications are all factors that can affect a type 1’s diabetes self-management.

So Part 2 of our diabetes education, the internal, moves us from studying a book to studying ourselves. And this part is all about cause and effect relationships. When I workout with weights, this is the effect I see on my blood sugar levels; however, when I do really intense cardio, I may see this result. When I drink too much caffeine late at night, this is the effect I see. When I eat a giant bowl of Cocoa Puffs right before shooting a video blog, this is the effect I see on my blood sugar levels. We have to start studying ourselves from a somewhat scientific perspective.

Here’s a big tip: Keep a notebook and make notes every single day. I started doing this 24 years ago, and it really helped me identify a number of cause and effect relationships between my diet, activity, and insulin dosages.

Our memories tend to be less than perfect. So by taking notes on observations we make, we create a detailed record of information to guide us in our personal self-evaluation. Over time, we’ll begin to chart patterns that will be very eye-opening, and we’ll discover truths that may have eluded us for years because we weren’t using the constant feedback received from our bodies.

Every little one of those lessons will move you one step closer to regaining your freedom and a life that doesn’t feel like a prison sentence.

I may have my off days with diabetes, but I never feel and though it has control over me, or that it is a monster trying to do me in. I deal with the challenges of diabetes every day, but I lead a pretty normal life.

 

Your Assignment:

Which brings me to my challenge to you. I want you to try something that I think can be very beneficial to your diabetes education and to your overall happiness – I call it the “One Fact a Day Challenge.”

Each day as part of your internal education, I want you to try and learn just one new thing about your diabetes. It may be some small revelation that comes from eating a food for the first time. Or, it may be the recognition of a cause and effect relationship between some activity you’re engaged in and your blood sugar levels. Or it may be just a supposition that comes from a pattern you’re seeing and you want to test your theory further.

Think about it: If you could learn one new thing about your diabetes every day, in a few years you would have a veritable PhD in diabetes self-management.

Now, the truth is you’re not going to learn one new fact every single day. But that doesn’t matter, because what if you actually only learned 3 new things each week? That would be over 150 conceptual bullets in your diabetes self-management arsenal. With all of that knowledge at your fingertips, how could your diabetes control not get better and much much easier?

So we take on this “One Fact a Day Challenge” to learn about our diabetes. But, there’s another reason that’s equally as important. You see, by doing this, we put ourselves in a positive, open, proactive mindset. We open our minds to learning and to information that we may have been ignoring for years because we just didn’t want to think about it. When we remove our self-inflicted blindness, we place ourselves in the optimal state for mastering control of diabetes and taking back control of our lives.

Do it long enough, and it will change the way you see diabetes. The monster will be killed and you will begin to see diabetes for what it is – just a cluster of symptoms that you can, for the most part, keep under control.

Yes, those symptoms may give us some grief, but overall you will learn to keep consistent control, and that’s the goal we have to have – not unattainable perfection, nothing in diabetes self-management is perfect, but consistency is.

I did it, and I know you can too.

So, go learn about diabetes and then learn about your diabetes. I’ll see you next month.

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The audio version of this video blog is now available below:

 

 
For more of my thoughts on diabetes education, see my first blog post here:
Know Thyself: The Secret to Self-Management is Inside You