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Self education

letstalk1

letstalk1

Well-Known Member
Messages
308
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Other
Do you self educate yourself on Diabetes? I do I read everything I can find and everything related I like to know what I am dealing with and I want to do it right.
 
letstalk1 said:
Do you self educate yourself on Diabetes?
Click to expand...
Of course, it's absolutely essential. Unless you are extremely fortunate, no health care professional is going to do it and many of the official diabetes education courses sound as if they are bordering on the dangerous.
However, once you have amassed dozens/hundreds of books, internet sources, well informed friends etc, the important thing is to learn how to evaluate information. This is where some people become upset and confused and just need one, clear, easy to understand set of guidelines. Personally, I would recommend Diet Doctor https://www.dietdoctor.com/ for this.
In this modern world, we can access more information than has ever previously been possible, so, in our field, sorting out the "dippy-hippy" from the corrupt, from the out dated and finally finding the scientifically sound, good stuff is hard, especially when sources we might imagine to be the words of the wise ones, turn out to plain wrong for all manner of reasons. (NHS, I'm looking at you.)
For a type 2 diabetic with raised sugar levels, the important thing to remember is that nearly all of it, nearly all of the time, got there as a consequence of consuming carbohydrates. It didn't get there because you didn't have a morning walk / forgot to put cinnamon/turmeric on your porridge / gave up metformin / the weather's too hot ........ The important thing (to us at least) is to understand and focus on the fundamentals :
Learn which foods contain carbs/sugars.
Re-train yourself to avoid them and discover lots of lovely new things.

Everything I have said above relates to T2 only.
Sally
 
I remember in 1997 when first diagnosed type II I waited 5 months from the GP telling me, to seeing an endocrinologist who would actually write out a prescription because my GP at the time, by his own admission, wanted me to be seen by a specialist. Fair play, as they say, he was honest about the limit of his skills.

I didn't waste my time, I did a lot of browsing (might have been Netscape in those days) and learned several things. The endocrinologist was as much use as a wet paper bag in a thunder storm and just said "You can't believe everything you read on the internet" and then he wrote a prescription for Metformin and Atorvastatin. He told me nothing except not to cut my carbs and I might have a slight upset tummy. He never mentioned the severe diarrhea from the Metformin or the muscle pain, poor sleep and brain fog from the statin, I had to find that out all by myself. I didn't just rely on the internet, I spent a small fortune on books. That was the first and last time I saw him.

Over the last 20 years I have continued to learn, in the last 4 or 5 years mainly from members of this and other forums. I'm still learning and still looking for the most suitable way of dealing with this disease. The low carb bit suits me, even low protein, but not high fat. Exercise is good also and even periods spent in an hyperbaric chamber has an effect, albeit very temporary. The results of the learning process will be different for everyone and we will all find things that are good for us individually. I listen to everything, try lots of things, keep the best.
 
Yes, I continue to read, research and evaluate, it's my way of building my own understanding and feeling I can have some control over what's happening. Knowledge is power.

It's certainly improving my faculty for critical thinking, which can only be a good thing.
 
For me, there are two types of education:
- looking for an answer to a question and researching something I have been recommended.
- keeping up with research and other people's experience.

The former is a combination of Googling and checking what diabetes.co.uk and Diabetes UK have to say.

In addition to reading this forum for the latter, I also have some alerts set/subscribed to newsletters
- Medical News Today (filtered on diabetes)
- Lancet (filtered on diabetes)
- Glycosmedia
- Google alerts for "diabetes" and "insulin"
- Diabetes UK
- JDRF
- And a couple of blogs - Diabetes UK and BitterSweetDiabetes
 
Certainly do and I now am finding that I seem better informed than my local Health Care Professionals (or at least the one's I have met). I find this quite worrying especially when it is the GP overseeing the diabetes care in our surgery. The diabetes nurse I last saw was amazed at what I had done and had never heard of low carbing to control Type 2. To say I found this disappointing was something of an understatement. I have since attended a CCG meeting on the future of diabetes care locally as well as writing to another doctor at my surgery who has an "interest" in diabetes. Not sure if anything will come of it but...
 
There is a lot of useful information around, especially on www.dietdoctor.com

I found the two video links in my signature to be very informative. The one by Sarah Hallberg gave me a good understanding of the nature of food groups (carbs, protein and fat) and how they affect blood sugar levels. After watching that I started to use the LCHF (Low Carb High Fat) diet. The video by Jason Fung gave me the inspiration to try intermittent fasting
 
sally and james said:
Of course, it's absolutely essential. Unless you are extremely fortunate, no health care professional is going to do it and many of the official diabetes education courses sound as if they are bordering on the dangerous.
However, once you have amassed dozens/hundreds of books, internet sources, well informed friends etc, the important thing is to learn how to evaluate information. This is where some people become upset and confused and just need one, clear, easy to understand set of guidelines. Personally, I would recommend Diet Doctor https://www.dietdoctor.com/ for this.
In this modern world, we can access more information than has ever previously been possible, so, in our field, sorting out the "dippy-hippy" from the corrupt, from the out dated and finally finding the scientifically sound, good stuff is hard, especially when sources we might imagine to be the words of the wise ones, turn out to plain wrong for all manner of reasons. (NHS, I'm looking at you.)
For a type 2 diabetic with raised sugar levels, the important thing to remember is that nearly all of it, nearly all of the time, got there as a consequence of consuming carbohydrates. It didn't get there because you didn't have a morning walk / forgot to put cinnamon/turmeric on your porridge / gave up metformin / the weather's too hot ........ The important thing (to us at least) is to understand and focus on the fundamentals :
Learn which foods contain carbs/sugars.
Re-train yourself to avoid them and discover lots of lovely new things.

Everything I have said above relates to T2 only.
Sally
Click to expand...
So true , I do know some who dont do any self education and know very little about all this .
 
DavidGrahamJones said:
I remember in 1997 when first diagnosed type II I waited 5 months from the GP telling me, to seeing an endocrinologist who would actually write out a prescription because my GP at the time, by his own admission, wanted me to be seen by a specialist. Fair play, as they say, he was honest about the limit of his skills.

I didn't waste my time, I did a lot of browsing (might have been Netscape in those days) and learned several things. The endocrinologist was as much use as a wet paper bag in a thunder storm and just said "You can't believe everything you read on the internet" and then he wrote a prescription for Metformin and Atorvastatin. He told me nothing except not to cut my carbs and I might have a slight upset tummy. He never mentioned the severe diarrhea from the Metformin or the muscle pain, poor sleep and brain fog from the statin, I had to find that out all by myself. I didn't just rely on the internet, I spent a small fortune on books. That was the first and last time I saw him.

Over the last 20 years I have continued to learn, in the last 4 or 5 years mainly from members of this and other forums. I'm still learning and still looking for the most suitable way of dealing with this disease. The low carb bit suits me, even low protein, but not high fat. Exercise is good also and even periods spent in an hyperbaric chamber has an effect, albeit very temporary. The results of the learning process will be different for everyone and we will all find things that are good for us individually. I listen to everything, try lots of things, keep the best.
Click to expand...
Same here even the Diabetes nurse I saw didnt seem to care about helping much to me so I have been researching , reading , taking info as it pertains to me , read many books with a passion to understand.---------- love your Avi pic.
 
geefull said:
Yes, I continue to read, research and evaluate, it's my way of building my own understanding and feeling I can have some control over what's happening. Knowledge is power.

It's certainly improving my faculty for critical thinking, which can only be a good thing.
Click to expand...
Yes , its important.
 
Art Of Flowers said:
There is a lot of useful information around, especially on www.dietdoctor.com

I found the two video links in my signature to be very informative. The one by Sarah Hallberg gave me a good understanding of the nature of food groups (carbs, protein and fat) and how they affect blood sugar levels. After watching that I started to use the LCHF (Low Carb High Fat) diet. The video by Jason Fung gave me the inspiration to try intermittent fasting
Click to expand...
I love Dietdoctor.
 
As I have written before I got burned because I followed only the informations doctors gave me.
When I got the diabetes diagnosis luckily I decided to gather more informations.
The first thing I have done was to go to the local library and borrow all the book on diabetes I've found. I also bought a couple of books.
Then I started to read about diabetes, the complications, and I realized that the diet is the most important aspect of it.
Then I started to gather information on the web and following the forums. And I receive a nice newsletter/advertising (in dead tree format) from Roche every couple of months.

The problem as I have stated before is that I am willing to learn more and I am not scared to read a 400-page book manual, and understand it. The big problem is that some people is not willing or doesn't have the "skills" to read manuals successfully.
 
It's essential if you want to manage your diabetes well. So many medics have little time or little knowledge of the detail to be as useful as forums such as this one is. There are also sinister influences from the food industry and pharma out there which you need to balance.
 
Yes but it's early days for me. Just coming to the end of the DietDoctor book and it has certainly opened my eyes.
 
Daibell said:
It's essential if you want to manage your diabetes well. So many medics have little time or little knowledge of the detail to be as useful as forums such as this one is. There are also sinister influences from the food industry and pharma out there which you need to balance.
Click to expand...
For sure.
 
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