Diabetes

I have type 2 diabetes and have had for a number of years. I don’t hide this fact, but I also haven’t advertised it to anyone who doesn’t need to know until this moment.

Recently there has been quite a lot on the news about the dangers of diabetes and the fact it is a route to a shorter life and the dangers of losing limbs and other complications. It has made me think about why I don’t really tell people and how I feel about the way the story has been covered. I got quite angry with some of the coverage. I think part of the reason for this is that those of us with type 2 diabetes are the ‘bad’ diabetics. We can all feel sorry for those with type 1 because they are the unfortunate people whose pancreas just stopped working for some unknown reason, whereas we are the ones who brought it all on ourselves by being lazy, greedy and eating all the wrong things. So we should be ashamed of ourselves. Maybe this is why I haven’t said much. Yes, I am overweight and I know I can blame nobody but myself for this, however there are much fatter people than me around who haven’t yet succumbed.

I have been fighting a battle with my weight from the age of about 13 when my mum first took me to a slimming club with her. And yet looking back at photos of myself I don’t look particularly overweight. So a habit of yoyo dieting was started, and a way of looking at my body as the enemy which never looked the way I wanted it to.

What was thought of then as healthy eating was all low fat. A low fat diet, however, can be quite unhealthy. Because what I didn’t realise all those years ago is that to make food low fat, manufacturers substitute sugar to give the flavour that is lost. We now know is that eating too much sugar puts stress on the pancreas that can cause insulin resistance and eventually lead to type 2 diabetes. So ironically my healthy eating as a teenager may have contributed to the eventual development of my diabetes.

I am not looking for sympathy here, just a little more understanding from people that I am not necessarily someone who just sits in the house and eats all day, and perhaps give a warning to some to not only watch the fat in their diet, but also the sugar.