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Day 5 Exercise: Mixing It Up By Force

Day 5 Exercise: Mixing It Up By Force

Aqua Boot Camp- It's not what you think!

Day 5 of Diabetes Blog Week is all about exercise. As in; love it, hate it, what’s your motivation and does it actually motivate you to get moving? How does it affect your numbers, your insulin and the likes there of?

Yes, I exercise, but I have to be honest with you guys, I need to do it more consistently. There was a time when I did it every day. I used to walk between 10 and 20 miles a week. I’d walk 2 miles each way to work (Philadelphia proper is a walkable town) and then I’d take long 3 or 4-hour walks/hikes on the weekend. I walked to burn calories and keep blood sugars at bay; I walked to be outside, I walked to breathe the air, and most importantly, I walked to clear my mind.

I loved what it did for my head, not to mention what it did for my ass ;)

On days I couldn’t walk outside, I’d go to the gym and do an hour on the elliptical. I’d set my temporary basal rate to ½, tune into my ipod and tune out the world.

Yes, it required fiddling with my Temporary basals, and sometimes, I’d suspend my pump for an hour. But all the fiddling was worth it because I had great numbers.

Then I screwed up the ligaments in my toe and will eventually have to have surgery. Only yours truly could break her toe and tare her ligament walking UP the steps- perfectly sober. It forced me to realize that long weekend hikes would leave my foot hurting for days afterwards.

It bummed me out that I couldn’t do my long crazy walks, and I wallowed in it for a long time. But then I had a meeting with myself and basically said: STOP COMPLAINING!

I started doing the elliptical again.

Then the whole metatarsalgia thing happened and that set me back, AGAIN.

But I worked through it and kept moving.

Last year I discovered Aqua Boot camp. YES, Aqua Boot camp, and yes, I know the image that come to your head- See video at top of post.

I have to admit; I thought it was for caddies and the geriatric set too, and yeah- there are some seniors (and ironically no caddies that I'm aware of) in my class- AND THEY WILL KICK YOUR ASS! I’m Serious, they will. WHY? Because Aqua Bootcamp is TOUGH. Two hours in the pool doing aerobics and weight training. 45 minutes in the shallow end, 55 minutes in the deep-end, and a 10-minute cool down. It builds endurance and muscle tone and it burns calories like gasoline to a flame.

Aqua Boot Camp requires some scheduling, (both in the water and out,) on my part. I have to make sure I wake up early on Sunday morning, cut my basal rate by 2/3’s , and I don’t bolus for my breakfast. I also eat slightly more than usual.

I test before I leave the locker room, which is always interesting - and I like to enter the pool with a bg of about 190.

I disconnect right before I go in the pool and check my blood sugar an hour and ten minutes into my workout. By the end of the class, my numbers are in the double digits, around 70, sometimes lower. I eat a larabar immediately and wait for my numbers to rise before I hit the shower.

Yes, Aqua Boot Camp is work in every sense of the world, but I love the water; I love the calories burned, and I love being disconnected. It took some trial and error to figure the whole pump aspect out, but it's totally worth it!

Drawbacks of Aqua Bootcamp: It’s only offered at my gym twice a week, it's not a quick workout and I need something daily.

I’m considering RUMBA, Spin class, and riding my bike outside – once I figure out how to get my bike w/two flat tires to the bikes\ shop to fill/fix two flat tires.

I also want to buy a pair of roller skates (not blades, because I suck at rollerblading) but actual roller skates. I was good at rollerskating in middle school, and it's easy on the feet. Leeann’s tweets & FB Statuses about the Roller Derby and her new skates reminded me of how much fun I used to have way back when.

I won't be doing doing the Roller Derby any time soon, but I'd love to feel the sun and breeze on my face as I roller boogie the calories away, and shake my "booty to the beat" in the process~

Posted by Mr. Boy at 07.51, Add Comment
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Day 5 of Diabetes Blog Week: Saturday Snapshots

Day 5 of Diabetes Blog Week is all about SATURDAY SNAP SHOTS. As in life with diabetes via pictures.
OK I thought to myself, I can do that! All my pictures have numbers, blood, sugar and diabetes of course, as a recurring theme. But I assure you, it's not at all as gruesome as it sounds!

Check out my pics & hope you can relate!!


First thing in the morning means testing & putting my used lancet & test strip in the the big bottle of ALL. This keeps the test strip scatter to a minimum & guarantees I change my lancet at least once a day!
FYI: The above meter is NOT the one I carry on my person all the time, it's the one I keep by my bed.
OK, so at least I change that meter's lancet once a day!


Basal rate testing last Spring meant borrowing a CGM from the fantastical @ Gary Scheiner.
Sometimes things really synced up - Like, I totally felt this low as it happened, and it was amazing (and scary) to watch my numbers plummet!
Of course I very annoyed for several reasons, including having to stop my evening basal rate test, which I was 1/2 through. SON OF A BITCH!


And sometimes things didn't Sync up.


But as we all know, sometimes blood Sugar Nirvana is achieved........


EVEN


AFTER


HAVING


ONE


OF




THESE!!
Even when it's not your Birthday! ;)

Posted by Mr. Boy at 07.11, Add Comment
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Books Openly Critical of Conventional Medicine

Books Openly Critical of Conventional Medicine
There are a growing number of books that are critical of ConMed.
No-one needs to imagine that the news and views expressed in this blog about the dangers and ineffectiveness of conventional medicine is a subject that has not been widely discussed, and intensively investigated.

It is just that no such investigation has been by those who we rely upon (mistakenly) for information on matters of health - the Government, the NHS, and the Conventional Medical Establishment. Nor does our mainstream Media, for its own reasons, get involved in these matters, thereby letting us all down.

Here are just a few of these texts - the one's I have read.

The Failure of Conventional Medicine (free to read E-Book)
Steve Scrutton
The e-book asks the questions - why do we spend so much on the NHS and face so much illness and disease. The answer is in the title - the failure of conventional medicine.
http://s-scrutton.co.uk/Failure_ConMed/Introduction.html

Anatomy of an Epidemic. Magic bullets, Psychiartic Drgs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America
Robert Whittaker
This book 'investigates a medical mystery': Why has the number of adults and children disabled by mental illness skyrocketed over the past fifty years? The answer is, of course, ConMed drugs! http://robertwhitaker.org/robertwhitaker.org/Anatomy%20of%20an%20Epidemic.html

Pharmageddon
David Healy
Pharmageddon has been defined as "the prospect of a world in which medicines and medicine produce more ill-health than health, and when medical progress does more harm than good". We see the need to investigate and explore that risk and to identify the factors and features that describe it.

Dirty Medicine: The Handbook
Martin J Walker
This is Martin Walker’s 20 year follow up to his book Dirty Medicine: Science, big business and the assault on natural health care. He gives a full and detailed picture of the vested interests, their personalities, organisations and ideas that have shaped the present attack on alternatives in the field of health. "With alternative medicine under attack on all fronts, The Handbook gives us the knowledge with which to defend ourselves and fight back.

Silenced Witness: the parents story. The denial of vaccine damage by Government, Corporations and the Media. 
A book written by parents.

Prescription for Injury: the politics of Pharmaceutical Manufacture, Regulation and Prescription.
Colin Downes-Granger
This book examines the history of Benzodiazepine drugs, and the long-term damage done to patients, including the experience of the author himself.

Sacred Spark
Lisa K. Sykes
"Sacred Spark is the compelling true story of a child affected by mercury-poisoning and his minister-mother's decade-long battle to restore the light in his eyes". 
HRT: Licensed to Kill and Maim
Martin J Walker
A critique of Hormone Replacement Therapy

A Shot in the Dark: why the DPT vaccination may be hazardous to your child's health
Harris L Coulter, Barbara Loe Fisher 
Although published in 1991, the DPT vaccination is still universally used in this country
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/coulter.html

Vaccination, Social Violence and Criminality: the medical assault on the American brain
Harris L Coulter (published in 1990)
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/coulter5.html

It Makes You Sick: The politics of the NHS
Colin Thunhurst
Pluto Press 1982

The Health Scandal: your health in crisis
Vernon Coleman
Mandarin (1988)

Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis: the expropriation of health
Ivan Illich
Pelican (1976)
Yes, it goes back this far! Illich introduced the concept of Iatrogenic disease - doctor-caused disease.

If you know of a book you would like me to publish in this list, please let me know.

Posted by Mr. Boy at 05.39, Add Comment
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The Health Debate (5). An epidemic rise in chronic diseases

The Health Debate (5). An epidemic rise in chronic diseases
The mainstream Media reports regularly on two general health matters. First, they tell us about all the wonderful new 'medical breakthroughs', and new 'wonder drugs' that are on the Big Pharma horizon. We are led to believe that these new understandings and treatments will eventually banish diseases of all kinds, forever! There is usually the additional implication in these news stories - that we are all beholden to conventional medicine (ConMed) as we are all living longer largely because of its amazing successes in treating illness.

Second, the Media will often tell us, at a different point in time, about a variety of chronic diseases that are reaching, or have reached, epidemic levels.

So how can these two matters be matched up? Why are we spending more on health than ever before, yet suffering more chronic disease too?

Clearly the two stories cannot be adequately matched! So this should lead to another topic for 'the Health Debate' - but unfortunately it never does. 

What is causing this rise in chronic disease? Why is ConMed, despite its many claims, unable to deal with this rise in chronic disease? And most important, does ConMed treatment, in all its forms, contribute to this rise in chronic disease?

Certainly the increased consumption of ConMed drugs and vaccines, especially during the last 60 years (following the inauguration of the NHS), and the epidemic rise in chronic diseases, have run parallel to each other. Unfortunately, this rarely seems to register within the mainstream Media journalism. Here, for example, are just some of the possible connections between increased medication, and increased disease (there are many more, some highlighted in this blog over the last few years).

* In a previous blog in the series, the connection between HRT (hormone replacement therapy) and breast cancer was made, and the declining rate of this cancer since 2002 when prescriptions for HRT declined after it was found to cause breast and cervical cancer.

* The prodigious rise in the use of Statin drugs over the last few years is another example. Statins have only recently been associated with both diabetes, and prostate cancer - so are Statins one cause of the epidemic of both these diseases? The Media has spent enough time in recent years allowing ConMed spokesmen to tell us how 'safe' these drugs are, and how we should all be taking them : perhaps now they can spare a little time asking why they have been telling us this, when it is palpably untrue, and may be connected with an increase in both these diseases.

* The link between vaccines, especially the MMR vaccine, and the Autism epidemic is increasingly well documented, but vehemently denied by the ConMed Establishment. BBC News, and other mainstream Media outlets, appear to be afraid to take on this issue, and they currently absolutely refuse to discuss it.

* The link between incidents of extreme violence, including the many mass killings in recent years, have been associated with people who are on antidepressant drugs. Yet with each incident, the association between violence and these drugs remain studiously unasked.

* The huge rise in Dementia, including the earlier incidence of the disease in many cases, is routinely discounted by the Media as being the result of 'the population living long'. Yet the number of Big Pharma drugs that cause 'confusion' is legion. It seems likely that such drugs play a role in the increased experience of dementia diseases like Alzheimers.

There are many, many more such examples of Big Pharma drugs causing disease - certainly, they are not just simple 'side-effects'. And what is clear is that the mainstream Media are either not aware of this (and so are not doing their job properly), or they are aware, and are just not interested in investigating, and informing their readers, views and listeners about the connection.

If the Media bothered to ask just a few simple questions, it might prove to be illuminating, certainly if they were asked seriously and persistently by journalists who understood the health debate, and realised that it was important for their listeners, viewers and readers needed to know!
  • Do ConMed treatments, especially Big Pharma drugs, cause disease? Are these so-called 'side-effects' and 'adverse reactions' actually new diseases? Should we not start calling the outcomes of pharmaceutical drug-taking  'disease-inducing-effects', or DIEs?
  • Does giving Big Pharma drugs (that can cause disease) not merely make people more sick, and lead directly to these diseases becoming increasingly common? If patients take one drug for one condition, and then have to take two drugs for two conditions, and so on, is it not making us more, rather than less dependent on conventional medical services?
  • Why is ConMed and the various treatments available to it, unable to deal effectively with these diseases?
  • To what extent are the DIEs caused by ConMed drugs responsible for the rising incidence of these chronic diseases?
  • Are there other alternative medical therapies, like homeopathy, that can deal with chronic disease more safely, and more effectively? Therapies that do not cause disease in the first place?
Conventional medical drugs and vaccines are not the only reason for the phenomenal increase in chronic disease. But they are, without doubt, a very significant cause. The neglect of this issue by the mainstream Media has meant that most sick people don't realise that their health may have been compromised by the drugs and vaccines they have taken to make them well! It means that every patient who goes to his/her GP accepts the treatment he/she is given without full knowledge of the possible consequences. 

In other words, patients are not giving their 'informed consent' to medical treatment because they have not been given the information - by the ConMed Establishment, or by the Media.

The sixth part of this series on "the Health Debate" will follow shortly, and it concerns why drug testing, and drug regulation have not protected patients was dangerous drugs, and from the DIEs they cause.

If you would like to be informed when the sixth part of this series is published, why not become a 'follower', and sign up for this blog; or subscribe to it by email - and join the Health Debate.
Posted by Mr. Boy at 03.36, Add Comment
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