To the editor:
I was given some very important, perhaps life-saving information recently about diabetes that I never heard in my eight years of diabetes. I’d heard much about exercises burning up some of the excess glucose in all the body’s organs and blood, but no one ever mentioned to me something that works much better, perhaps even better than some medications. No one even explained why everyone should drink eight glasses of fluid a day, except that it’s healthy.
But today, a non-medical friend told me of something that works better than exercise. He said that when he eats very high carbohydrate pizza, he drinks a water. He explained that the reason diabetics get thirsty when their sugar is high is that the body is asking for more fluid to wash the sugar out of its blood through the kidneys. Such a lack of fluid is the cause of much kidney damage by being overworked and starved of oxygen.
No wonder my morning sugar has been frightfully and confusingly high for the past three emergency sugar test days; I wasn’t drinking anything between my pre-breakfast blood check and the two-hour-later check. But knowing the above, I’ll be drinking more all day, as it is proving to bring my sugar down to very near normal.
This blood-clearing process works much better if you’ve eaten a large, high-carb meal than a small, low-carb meal, because the kidneys can only process a certain amount of fluid per minute. Therefore, the thicker the blood, the more fluid is needed to thin it for processing. Still, it’s better to eat low-carb meals if you don’t need the extra sugar.
I’m so excited about this discovery that I feel like shouting it from the top of Haystack mountain in all directions and to the heavens above, but I’m 79 years old? Will you spare me the climb? Thank you.
