Inconvenient Health

Accepting responsibility for one’s personal health is a theme that I’ve noticed frequently popping up in my life recently.  I’ve noticed that on a general basis, tending to one’s health in a short term context is much more widely practiced in society than tending to one’s health in a long term context.  Most people seem willing to take small, short term precautions (such as getting more sleep, drinking tea or taking vitamins) to prevent a cold or flu, but taking precautions (such as regular exercise, a healthy diet or wearing sunscreen) to prevent long term health problems such as heart disease or cancer, is much less practiced.  Maybe this is a result of societies need for instant gratification, a tendency to ignore long term pain if the short term gain is rewarding enough, maybe it’s rooted in the naive belief that “it’ll never happen to me”, or maybe my theories about society are completely wrong.  Whatever the cause of this attitude, I can’t help but feel that this blasé approach to our health is extremely ignorant and dangerous.     

I’m an employee of Leave the Pack Behind, a tobacco awareness organization present on campus’ across the nation, and I was recently talking with a friend about his smoking habits (we’ll call him John).  Having been bombarded since youth with “smoking is bad for you” messages, John is pretty tired of the same old reprimand, and he made a comment that really stuck with me:

“Smokers aren’t stupid. We know smoking’s bad for us, but repeatedly telling us that it is won't make us want to stop.”

But why do we knowingly do things that harm our health?  Why is knowing something is bad for us not a good enough reason to make us want to stop? I don’t mean to only target smokers, this question pertains to nearly everyone: anyone who eats fast food on a regular basis, or who rarely exercises, or who eats junk food, drinks pop or energy drinks, goes tanning or simply foregoes sunscreen.  We know all these things (plus many more) are bad for our health, yet I have never met a person who isn’t guilty of doing at least one thing on that list.  Sometimes our reason for doing these things is indulgence (we love the taste of good ol' fast food fries), other times it is mere laziness (going to the gym can be so inconvenient).  I know from a diabetic perspective that my blood sugars are not perfect 100% of the time, not even 90% of the time.  Why do I sometimes decide to eat 30 grams of carbs worth of dried mango when my blood sugar is 11.0 mmol/g, even though I know that my insulin won’t work fast enough to bring my blood sugars down and combat the carbs? Why do I fail to pay enough attention to my blood sugars on days when I’m really busy? Why is my health not my number one priority all the time, including on those busy days? 

It is ignorant and irresponsible to ignore our health in the present.  Our futures quite literally depend on it.  Aside from the obvious selfish reasons for wanting a long, healthy life, the burden of our poor health in the future will not fall on us but instead on our children and our grandchildren.  Ontario’s new Ministry of Health Promotion, which focuses on increasing health awareness, is, I believe, a baby step towards improving the health of the nation, but health begins on an individual level.  I think my friend’s comment about smokers exemplifies that statement.  Just because someone has educated us about the risks or health concerns of a particular habit doesn’t mean we’re going to stop doing that habit. Nobody can force us to take our health seriously, it is a personal responsibility we bear on a 24/7 basis.   Only caring about it 50% of the time or 75% of the time is not enough.  I know I will try harder to take control of my own health, to consciously think about it and make it a number one priority.  Will you? 

"To keep the body in good health is a duty... otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear."

- Buddha

A Technology I Cannot Live Without

 I am enrolled in a course this semester called Technology and Society, and I recently had to write a paper on my relationship with a technology of my choice.  Of course my diabetes somehow factored in to the assignment and this is what I came up with...

There are more technologies in the world, from the wheel to the Smartphone, than a single person can list. Our list grows substantially when we extend our definition of technology to include almost every man-made tool, whether it physical, social, economic or political.  Despite the magnitude of this list, I can say with utter certainty that there is a single technology in the world that I cannot live without.  I say this with no exaggeration, as one is inclined to do when describing one’s love of chocolate or one’s affection towards one’s bike. I am always plugged in to this technology and it travels with me everywhere, yet it is not my cell phone, laptop, iPad or any other mobile device.  Despite being a new, highly sophisticated technology, not very many people own one, nor would they want to.  Yet for a select group of society this device is in high demand.  This technology is my insulin pump, and every drop of insulin it injects allows me to live.

My stylishly zebra print insuling pump

Eight years ago, having only been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes for one year, my relationship with insulin pumps began when I replaced my daily needle injections with the promising technology of the pump.  A pump was beneficial for many reasons, but at twelve years old I was mainly attracted to the flexibility that it offered.  When injecting insulin via needles, I had to follow a strict dietary regime that dictated I ate the same amount of carbohydrates at the same time every day in order to balance the insulin doses.  Pumps, however, are designed to mimic a functioning pancreas’ role in regulating blood sugars.  They do this by secreting small amounts of insulin throughout the day to prevent naturally rising blood sugars and large amounts with food intake to combat carbohydrates.  Therefore my pump allowed me to eat fewer or more carbohydrates at irregular times of the day while still maintaining good blood sugar control.  At twelve years old, the ability to eat both a piece of cake and pizza at my friend’s birthday party, rather than having to chose the one with less carbohydrates, was incredibly liberating.

An insulin pump looks like a pager with a tube sticking out the side which attaches to an infusion site that enters the body. Since my first blissful experience with a pump, I have upgraded to a newer and smaller model which has further enhanced blood sugar control.  Despite the advantages of the pump, I have always battled with the annoyance of its omnipresence.  Many people complain of being constantly hooked to their phone, but I literally know how it feels to be continually attached to a piece of technology.  At times I wish I could have a break from my pump’s ubiquity, but that would mean a break from diabetes which is one break I will simply not experience. 

My belief in a cure is strong, however, and I hope that one day within my lifetime somebody will be writing their perspective paper on the cure for type 1 diabetes. Until that day, I will continue to depend on my important piece of technology, and focus on the life saving abilities which make this particular technology a blessing.  

Zip Lining Through Diabetes

I recently spent a week at a cottage in northern Quebec where I had the chance to explore an aerial park and enjoy the beautiful scenery from way up in the trees.  Aerial parks are a truly exhilarating experience because although they are safe and have all the necessary safety precautions in place, you still experience those terrifying but exhilarating ‘what if’ moments when your mind starts to wander to the worst case scenarios.  This particular aerial park was tiered by beginning lower to the ground and gradually becoming higher and higher throughout the three courses.  There were also 14 amazing zip lines, one of which spanned 850 feet across a lake.        

Although the park is designed for people of all abilities, and I didn’t find it particularly difficult to navigate through the various ropes and ladders, I was definitely using muscles that I don’t use on a regular basis, and as a result my blood sugars were running on the low side the entire time, despite setting a temporary basal rate of 0 units for the 3 ½ hours it took to complete the aerial park courses.  In the case of the aerial park, when you are wearing a harness similar to one you’d wear for rock climbing, I found a fanny pack (however retro that may seem) was the best choice for storing my tester and sugar supply.  Where a backpack would throw off my balance and not allow me the ease of sneaking through some of the smaller parts of the park, I barely noticed that I was wearing a fanny pack at all, but it was still able to hold enough supplies to keep me safe the entire experience.    

I’d like to think that for that day, equipped with my fanny pack, I was the most retro diabetic in all of Northern Quebec.  Whereas I may have been self conscious of the added bulk of the fanny pack in the past, I barely noticed it that day and had an amazing aerial park experience.