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I Did Not Cause My Condition

lucylocket61

Expert
Messages
6,394
Location
Wrexham
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
I didnt not cause my type 2 diabetes.

I did not eat or lazy my way to type 2 diabetes through any fault of my own. It is not my fault my body cant process carbs correctly.

I can say this 100% because:

My risk of becoming diabetic was unknown. And for many people, their risk of becoming diabetic is also unknown. There are no tests yet to show risk before it starts.

I am in the position of one who who smoked before the link to smoking and cancers etc was known. The medical profession encouraged smoking. Those who were worried were dismissed as talking nonsense.

If eating carbs causes diabetes then everyone would become diabetic. This does not happen.

Type 2 diabetics have faulty insulin responses. Unbeknownst to them, their body is struggling for years with no symptoms or tests which can pick it up. So how can they be to blame?

It is not the ingestion of carbs themselves in the general public which is the issue, its the response of the bodies of those who have impaired insulin function or reaction which is the problem.

Its time for people to stop blaming themselves when they had no knowledge, or way of knowing what their body would do.

Most people can stuff themselves full of carbs every day and not become diabetic. Lets stop blaming the ones who have a faulty response to those carbs. We dont blame those who are gluten or lactose intolerant for having eaten foods containing milk or wheat and say they should have avoided them just in case they had an issue with it in the future.

The lack of logic and reason among people is astonishing.
 
Ah, @Lucylocket 2106, you are right to push back against the blame game.
Over 52 years on insulin I have seen how some doctors blame their patients for diabetes control not being up to 'doctor' standard. Not all doctors and other health professionals mind you, but enough to leave some scars!!
Health professionals can also be very conservative; it took 20 years for the medical profession to finally and fully acknowledge that a certain stomach bug could cause stomach ulcers.
Yes, it has been shown that a percentage of those adults who consume over a certain amount of soft drink/sugary beverages per week develop T2D. But are Government initiatives against processed foods enough? Sugar taxes might, just might reduce sugary soft-drink usage but replacing sugary soft-drinks with ones artificially flavoured is a con. Artificial sweeteners tend to increase insulin resistance by their effect on the gut biome. And acidic soft drink is still not good for dental health!! see static.diabetesaustralia.com.au Position Statement: Health levy on sugar-sweetened beverages Feb 2017 and diabetes.org.br "Artificial sweeteners induce glucose intolerance by altering gut biome" Suez et al Nature 2014.
Advertising of soft drinks and other processed foods are plentiful on many media and exposure to the public from a young age upwards is well known.
And as with many other aspects of life saying "no" to things that are unwise for us to take or do is not always easy!!!
Yes, @Lucylocket 2106, those of us with diabetes did not ask for our health condition to be thrust upon us. We can strive to do as well and stay as healthy as possible. We are not nuisances to be dismissed or used as guinea pigs.
And as a community we do have a right to a voice.
The protest against the absurd postcode lottery regarding provision of Libre devices to diabetics in UK is an example.
And I find it sad and almost comical that the type of diabetic diet proposed wayback when insulin was first successfully extracted and used on humans is now in resurgence. (see award to Digital Diabetes Technologies)
Big Food has subverted health professions and Governments to believe that for many of us that high carb diets are the optimum. (see blog of Jennifer Elliott). That Big Food is so influential is a travesty.
Such a resurgence in application of the low carb diet is a revelation in this age of more and more detailed diabetes research and technological advancement. All the research in the world for the majority of diabetics it seems to me is only fully relevant when diabetics are brave enough to try it. Not that I am expressing ingratitude, just wary of who takes the praise for success.
End of rant!!!
 
Totally agree with you @lucylocket61

The thing I don't understand is why doctors don't test insulin levels when they are faced with an obese patient. If I had known I had IR I would have read up about it and done something about it years ago. I am so upset about all the wasted years where I couldn't do anything through fatigue and getting ever fatter.


Yes!! thanks for posting this, I recently wrote on another thread that these drinks were the biggest cause of my own obesity and I got replies saying surely it was the fatty sugary foods that made me fat. Fact was I drank a lot of diet drinks because I was trying to lose weight on a calorie controlled diet so I didn't have huge amounts of fatty and sugary stuff.

If I could go back in time and tell my young self one thing it would be to never touch a diet drink ever. If you drink a sugary drink you may put on weight. You can lose that again. If you regularly drink diet drinks the effects take years to show up but your metabolism changes, you get fatty liver, you mess up your gut and it takes many years to put things right. I have been trying to put things right for 11 years and am still not there yet (I have been T2 for 7 years)

I have said that diet drinks are bad many times on this forum and have been ridiculed for it at times. I don't say it as an excuse for my own obesity and T2. I say it to warn others not to do what I have done. It usually falls on deaf ears, people just don't want to hear it, they prefer to see me as a glutton who deserved what I got. I never was that person. Thank you for highlighting the issue too. I really fear for the next generation as I see them reach for diet drinks as a healthier alternative to sugary ones. The partnership between DUK and Britvic won't help at all. Fruit juices are bad too even for non D's, it's far better to eat fruit than to drink it and this has been known for years. The healthiest drink is water and it's the only one we really need, though tea and coffee are on my own list now too.
 
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I believe that I was entirely responsible for my diagnosis. I was overweight for several years and took too little exercise. Who else should I blame? It was my fault, I knew the risks but ignored them.
It is true that some people can live an unhealthy lifestyle and be completely unaffected, but a 95 year old who has smoked 60 a day and is fit and well does not mean that smoking is safe, just that they are lucky.
Being overweight and unfit does not mean that you will get diabetes, just that you have an increased chance of doing so. Being slim, fit and healthy does not mean that you definitely will not get diabetes, just that you have a reduced chance of doing so.
It is a bit like crossing the road with your eyes shut - you may well be fine, but your chances of being hit are somewhat increased.

I would never blame anyone else for their lifestyle choices, that is for them to do or not themselves. However, I do blame myself for any issues that I may have. I don't spend any time thinking about this, I enjoyed my previous lifestyle enormously and have no regrets. I also enjoy my newer, more healthy lifestyle too. My choices, nobody else's.

Anyone who has developed T2 whilst fit and healthy is truly unlucky, like a non-smoking lung cancer victim. However, most people diagnosed with T2 are overweight, unfit and generally unhealthy. Does that make it bad luck?

Medical advice often changes but nobody needs a doctor or government minister to tell them that lack of exercise and carrying too many pounds (particularly around the waist) can result in health issues, whether that is diabetes, heart disease, cancer or something else.
 
midnightrider said:
Anyone who has developed T2 whilst fit and healthy is truly unlucky, l
Click to expand...
This isn't how I see it at all. The chances are that the 'fit and healthy person' made exactly the same diet and exercise choices as me. In my book they are the lucky ones because they didn't have unknown IR for 20 years which made them obese and unhealthy.
 

Zand - Why don't doctors test insulin levels for obese patients? My saddening belief is the vast majority of GPs see insulin as being something you only worry about if there doesn't seem to be enough of it.

Whislt we may feel at times our doctors, and GPs in particular, have let us down at some point or another, I do think, for many, it's their education that has let them down. By the time a junior doctor has firmly identified an area of interest, in which they want to specialise, they are already chasing down the rabbit hole to gain further qualifications to move up the carer ladder.

The crashingly sad reality is once doctors then leave the furtherance pathway (become Consultants or whatever), their clinical loads are such that their ability to keep moving forward is limited, and many can just get their CPD requirements fulfilled on a year-by-year basis.

I feel for doctors sometimes. Other times, I feel quite angry and let down on behalf of so many.
 

Very interesting. My diet has always been good. Everything made from scratch with healthy ingredients and lots of plant based recipes and staying clear of processed foods. However, although I’m slim, i have for years consumed diet drinks. Partly because I don’t have tea or coffee and need some caffeine from time to time, but also because it is nice to have something other than water if you are out for a ‘coffee’. It makes sense that artificial sweeteners could screw up my system, although they don’t seem to alter my BG level. I find it hard to give up but maybe I need to try harder.....and stick to water and wine! I guess with years of shift work and diet drinks, my future was never going to look rosy despite how slim I am
 

Hi @midnightrider, I was chatting to a man yesterday and medical conditions came up, he said he had the same as me, type 1, but after me asking about it ( I thought wow, someone to talk to with the same condition) he thought he was type 1 because he pricks his finger's. he only takes tablets, Metformin, so he would be type 2, also, he had loss 3 stone in weight, so good on him for turning things around.
 
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I don't think anyone is to blame.

Everyone's circumstances are different and I don't think it's useful to blame yourself. It is what it is. If you're meant to get it you will.

Nobody asks for this. Nobody intentionally goes down this route. For me I can see the path (reasons I would rather not say.) and I firmly believe the medical profession are the root cause in my case at least.
 
My paternal grandmother had T2 very late in life, two of my brothers and a sister have T2, we have all developed it our 60s.
 
The global medical/healthcare community has a lot to shoulder for their persistent refusal to acknowledge that chronic excessive insulin is a key driver of T2D. Their decades of warning/ridicule/dismissal of effective strategies that lowers insulin greatly contributed to the current obesity/T2D burden.
 
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I blame prednisolone and the unavoidable need to take it. But even so I am a little miffed with the doctors who knowing that prednisolone can cause diabetes never over the many years I was taking it carried out the necessary tests until I reported loss of feeling in my feet and hands.
 
midnightrider said:
I knew the risks but ignored them.
Click to expand...

and that is the point of my post and thread. I am speaking of those of us who did not know the risks, who were urged to eat more and more carbs, who were not tested until the damage was done.

and were even pre-diabetic but either not told or, like me, told by their doctor that it was nothing to worry about.
 
GPs don't test for insulin for several reasons but include ignorance of the difference in insulin levels between T1 and T2 patients. How many realise that overweight T2s will typically have too much insulin and then go ahead and prescribe insulin when tablets fail. Some GPs have not heard of the C-Peptide test and just assume 'T2', like mine did, with no tests; just a urine test strip. I doubt that a lot of GP diabetes training explains the blood level insulin differences between T1 and a typical T2 requiring different treatment and hence the need for testing to differentiate. We see DUK funding diabetes research when the basics that are already known are not taught to the medical profession.
 
I don't know if it's the normal thing to do now but my doctor looks up any complaint on his computer. He doesn't Google it you understand but has some professional portal, presumably NHS based, which describes symptoms, a range of treatments, tests, etc etc. So if the doctor doesn't know how to decide if a patient is type 1 or type 2 or whatever, they can look it up and a flow diagram takes them through diagnosis.
 

@midnightrider
You may have lived a certain lifestyle (I don’t know, because I don’t know the details).
But there are many many other people out there who live similar lifestyles.
Not all of them get fat, or ill, or develop diabetes.

You can blame yourself for a lot of things, but I wouldn’t waste your time shouldering the blame for whatever it is that makes you a T2 when the person sitting beside you on the sofa, living the exact same lifestyle, doesn’t get T2.
We say ‘gosh, how lucky they are’ and ‘what good genes they must have’.
While simultaneously saying ‘gosh, I brought it all on myself! I was a fool. It is all my fault!’
Talk about double standards!

Of course, I’m not saying that living an ‘unhealthy lifestyle’ is a good idea.
(Though I would be curious to know what a ‘healthy lifestyle’ actually is, this week, since it seems to change with the wind and the latest Fad.)

I am saying that self blame is illogical, a waste of time, and unfair to other T2s who get tarred by the same brush.
 
I totally agree and would never blame myself! I think you are also right about carbs too. I was reading another post earlier, someone newly diagnosed and talking about diet, the same old don’t eat carbs thing come up and somebody posted that carbs make you fat, if that was the case everyone would be fat!
 
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