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We found 10 result(s) that match your search "diabulimia":

I've been doing some reading on diabulimia. It's not a recognized eating disorder, but it certainly sounds like it should be.

Diabulimia is a means of weight loss, primarily suffered by young women. In order to lose weight, they use far less, sometimes even no insulin and let their blood sugars run very high. It means they can eat whatever they want without it having any repercussions on their weight. I remember how skinny Olivia was when she was diagnosed, just before her 3rd birthday. She only weighed 24 lbs. Her body was eating itself.
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Some years ago, I joined an online "healthy eating forum", expecting support in eating healthy (fresh, whole, medically-appropriate) foods in reasonable amounts -- the same sort of community support one expects from a community in which people are looking to lose or maintain weight. What I found instead was a community of young women in various stages of recovery from eating disorders or disordered eating, or progressing from one type of disordered eating to another.

 

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At some time during our diabetic self-discovery, we are told that diabetes -- like most chronic illnesses -- is often accompanied by a second "D": depression. Considering the amount of time we need to put into consideration of our diets, exercise, drugs, and doctor visits -- and how much that takes out of what would otherwise be disposable income -- it's hardly surprising. Nor should it come to anyone's surprise that this level of attention to detail often smacks of another mental-health issue: obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD. It is considered "normal" -- even encouraged -- for people with diabetes to arrange our lives around our blood glucose levels, logging every single reading, every single milligram of metformin or subunit of insulin, weighing and logging every single morsel of food or fluid that passes our lips, every step of exercise, every moment of every day of our lives. (READ MORE)

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The other day, I took Olivia shopping for clothes. She'd received some money for Christmas and was eager to spend it, as 13 year-old girls are wont to do.

We schlepped down to the mall and started looking and I was appalled. Not by skimpy or slutty clothing, but by the sizes. I don't know who they are making these clothes for, but some of the size smalls would have fit my three year-old.

Olivia isn't skinny. She's built like me - busty and hippy. It's a pain in the butt to shop when you're built like that. But she only weighs 130 lbs - she's not overweight. She's normal. She's curvy. She looks like a young woman, not like a scare crow.

As I helped her pick out clothes and watched her try stuff on, I could see the discouragement and pain on her face. Nothing fit. Even larges were too snug. She was almost in tears by the end of the day. I felt so bad for her because I know exactly what she's going thru.
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While waiting for Olivia to take her swim test at Clara Barton last week, I was eavesdropping on a couple of girls standing in front of me. They scared the crap out of me.
They were both talking about how they hated having to take insulin because insulin makes you fat. "It's true," one girl said, "I read it on the internet." The other girl was amazed, but believed her readily.
Then they started discussing how they both let themselves run high - so high that their meters just say HI - in order to maintain or even lose some weight. They both said that they rarely checked themselves, maybe checked a couple of times a week, lied to their parents about the frequency of their checks and made up bg readings. At this point, my eyebrows were practically at my hairline and I was trying to unobtrusively move a little closer so I could continue to listen. (READ MORE)

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"There’s a problem with Christmas," Charlie blurted out on Wednesday after dinner.

 

He looked troubled. His face was pink and he hid his eyes from Susanne’s with his forearm as if she was Medusa.

 

"What’s the problem with Christmas?" Susanne asked.

 

He shook his head.

 

"Charlie. Tell me. What’s the problem?"

 

"I can’t say it," he mumbled, his sleeve stuffed in his mouth like a gag.

 

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I just took the single largest dose of NovoLog I have ever taken! I was sitting around in the living room thinking about what I could have for dinner. And as I was rummaging through the panty, I came across a box of instant rice. Actually it was mixture of both pasta and rice; two foods from the KING-OF-CARBS category. Not only did I have the entire 150-carbohydrate box, but I chased it with a sleeve of Ritz crackers and a glass of milk. I ended up taking 20 units of NovoLog. Since my diagnoses with Type 1 in 1994, I can't remember ever taking such a big dose. I think I'll be good on carbs for the next day or two!

Despite thinking that I would be dead on, I tested a couple hours later and was high! Even though I tested high, it didn't bother me as it usually would. It was fun for a change to pig out on carbs. Every day I take a total of about 20 units of fast acting insulin, here I was getting my whole day's worth in one meal!
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In today's environment of cheap-to-the-patient pills that can cure almost anything from a hangnail to cancer, it's sometimes difficult to make significant and often-difficult lifestyle changes on account of a disease or a medical condition. Rarely is this more evident than in the public appearance of Type 2 diabetes.

 

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To everything there is a level of precision, a degree of reliability, or a standard beyond which improvement is either unachievable, or requires huge investments of time and money well beyond the benefit of that improvement. Companies may refer to this point as "zero return on investment". Most of us just call it "good enough for jazz", "good enough for government work", or simply, "good enough".

 

It has been said that our ideal blood glucose levels "should" never vary outside the range of 80-126, ever -- but most of us don't have CGMs, none of us have glucose measurement technology with accuracy of greater than 5% (expanding that range out to 76-132) and even if we had them, we'd need infinitesimally-small amounts of ultra-fast acting insulin to keep it there every time it budged a point or two. For most of us, a two-hour postprandial reading of 140 is "good enough".

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Just as hyperglycemia is but the tip of the iceberg when discussing the physical ravages of diabetes, depression is but the most visible diagnosis of how diabetes affects our minds.

 

I'm not talking about the temporary states of anxiety or paranoia, lassitude or somnolescence, that accompany our glycemic highs and lows, but the long-term, "you should get psychological help for this" effects of living with chronic disease in general, and diabetes in particular.

 

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