25 replies to this topic

[Starfish Sandy]

Sandy - have you ever had a problem underwater, either a hypo or a hyper? Or any other issue that necessitated a prompt return to the surface? I have unknowingly dived with insulin-dependent diabetics and did not see anything that made me concerned. Presumably the risk would be of a hypo rather than the reverse - can you carry fast-acting glucose underwater? And perhaps more to the point, and probably rather a silly question to someone who has been Type I all her life, do you always get adequate warning before a hypo to enable you to take action to forestall it?

Peter - I check my sugar right before going in the water - I carry glucose with me underwater and so does my dive buddy - we have a signal that is to let my buddy know I feel LOW and need to head up - thankfully I have always been able to tell that my sugar is dropping and I need to go up - It rarely happens now that I am on a pump with short acting insulin - it happened mostly when I was on a 24 hour insulin and short acting insulin together. Everyone that dives with me knows I am diabetic - I do NOT keep that a secret. If something does happen to me - I want everyone that is trying to help me to know my condition -

I dive with my sugar high - I try not to go in under 200 - as my sugar will drop with the exercise of gearing up - diving (current) and just getting excited underwater when I see something. You should see my signal for a turtle.........that burns off some calories!


Jim - I get the feeling that diabetics (type 1 or 2) might not every be able to legally see the Great Barrier reef............I know there are plenty of diabetics that probably have got to see it - but again - I fear risking my life if something happened and no one knew of my condition. When we were trying to do Australia I asked every doctor on the SPUMS board of directors the same question - sent them all the same email - with details of my condition, how often I tested, amount of dives etc - and not ONE of them said they were willing to put their name on a physical passing me to dive in their country. You have to be cleared by a doc there - NOT in the USA. It's not worth the risk of paying that kind of money and being denied at the dock. We made the best of it tho - we spent a week dry in Sydney and then flew over to Fiji and did the Aggressor - I will continue to follow up with the SPUMS doctors and hope for the best!

My SD buddies are great with my co-morbid disease - when we all first went to Fiji with Kamala- and had such issues with weight - everyone brought me chocolate so I would have something to treat any diving lows. I think we just "treated" ourselves instead of my co-morbid disease!

[Mermaid Lady]

Peter for many people the options stated above can help if you do not have full blown diabetes. They just make good sense. Eat better, lose weight, reduce stress.

I too believe that our GMO "gentically modified food supply" will reveal many underlying causes for many ailments but especially diabetes. Along with that is damage done to our bodies due to an over reliance/abuse of medicines and antibiotics.

If one person is benefited by this discussion then its been valuable. Thank you for sharing. Kamala

One of the most significant things I have done over the last few years is to severely curtail my use of prescription drugs. My rule is if it is not something produced by the body, it is probably not something worth taking. With the disclaimer that this is a choice I make for myself (each must weight risk vs benefit and make an informed choice for oneself), the results have been worth it!

[peterbj7]

Ever since I was old enough to understand I also rarely take any drugs. Even after a severe accident back in the '80's I refused "pain killers". I did try them, but they just made me feel "detached" without actually reducing the pain at all. In some ways they made it worse, because not being 100% "there" I had no external stimuli to distract me and could really focus on my pain. These days the principal "medicine" I keep, other than my diabetes meds, is a bottle of Vitamin C for when I need to fend off a cold.

[peterbj7]

I too believe that our GMO "gentically modified food supply" will reveal many underlying causes for many ailments but especially diabetes. Along with that is damage done to our bodies due to an over reliance/abuse of medicines and antibiotics

I don't fancy the idea of us all being guinea pigs for untested genetic manipulation (which is foisted on us for the sole motive of profit, whatever "justification" may be dreamed up), but my initial concern is excessive and unwarranted use of antibiotics. Farm animals are pumped full of these things, which has the sole long-term effect of causing the bugs to evolve so they are no longer susceptible to the drugs - in other words, the drugs cease to have any effect. There are people here who know far more about this than I do, but I believe antibiotics come in "classes" and some of the most common ones have now been negated, Certainly conditions which were 100% destroyed by Penicillin are now immune to pretty well all antibiotics in use, and are again killing people - in Britain people are once again dying from tuberculosis. I believe that people failing to complete courses of antibiotics (because they feel better almost immediately and see no need) has played a major role in this - to the extent that it has been proposed that failing to complete a course of antibiotics should be a criminal offence That won't happen of course as it would be impossible to enforce, but it does indicate how serious it is considered to be.

Back on GM for a moment. This has been a great evil forced on third-world countries, albeit dressed up as a great benefit. Whereas in the old days disease would take a significant proportion of a crop, there would be some left and the next year's crop would come from some of the seeds that were resown. Now they have all been converted to GM crops with far less loss due to disease. But these crops are infertile, allowing Monsanto (primarily) to make a fortune selling seeds to these communities every year. In most cases they don't have a shortage of land and simply grew more crops to allow for the losses due to disease, but now they have to raise hard currency every year just in order to have a crop the following year. These people are mostly simple (I don't mean stupid, just uneducated) and were told all the benefits up-front but not the major earth-shattering cost. Now they have destroyed their old crops and have no way of going back to the old system, and are just where Monsanto want them. This is a gigantic fraud perpetrated on people who believed they could trust the western "experts".

This is before we start considering the health issues associated with eating food that has been tampered with in ways that no-one understands, not least of all the people who did the tampering.

[peterbj7]

Sandy - I love the footnote to your posts - "known puker" I don't know anyone with that condition, do I Kamala?

[Parrotman]

This is probably getting off topic but speaking to the idea of not taking drugs if at all possible etc. I have a "condition" that my doctor calls paradoxal something or other. In essence what it means is that I react opposite to many drugs. I can not take most sedatives, cold meds or things like Sudafed. A single Sudafed will keep me awake for 3 days. I can sleep after drinking copious amounts of caffeine. Some things like Novocaine, although they will do as intended, a shot of Novacaine will numb my mouth (dental work) for sometimes up to 24 hours. Because of this I don't do drugs. I will take naturopathic supplements. A while back I was given a blood glucose test and the results where high so I took care of that through diet. I am sure that I am fortunate that I was able to handle it quickly and easily through diet. I do not take antibiotics and I won't take vaccinations for anything. We only eat organic, none antibiotic, hormone free food. Seems to work. I rarely ever even get a cold (knock on wood) Most conventional MD's would be horrified by my choice of diet/food/supplement regimen. I eat no grains of any kind, no dairy with the exception of a little cream in my coffee and low fat cheese as a condiment. I eat no sugar of any kind and I keep my carbohydrate consumption to under 20 carbs a day. I am as healthy as a horse. Have low cholesterol, normal blood glucose, good blood pressure, good triglycerides etc. My one vice is wine.. :-) I refuse to give it up. Ha!

I need to say however that I started the strict way of eating after I was diagnosed with high blood glucose. I really did not want to start taking diabetes meds so I researched and found this way of eating to be a possibility which as it turns out works for me. I have also lost a bunch of weight. Purely through my eating habits but not because I am eating to lose weight.

As with Peter, pain meds do not work on me. They make me wierd in the head but do nothing for the pain. Narcotics are a nightmare. Codeine gives me black out headaches. Darvone, parvoset (sp?) etc make me looney tunes so I don't take them. God forbid I ever need major surgery...

J

[uwfan]

... We only eat organic, none antibiotic, hormone free food. Seems to work. I rarely ever even get a cold (knock on wood) Most conventional MD's would be horrified by my choice of diet/food/supplement regimen. I eat no grains of any kind, no dairy with the exception of a little cream in my coffee and low fat cheese as a condiment. I eat no sugar of any kind and I keep my carbohydrate consumption to under 20 carbs a day. I am as healthy as a horse. Have low cholesterol, normal blood glucose, good blood pressure, good triglycerides etc. My one vice is wine.. :-) I refuse to give it up. Ha!

I have been moving toward organic, non-antibiotic, hormone free foods with no dairy and no gluten for my own health issues. I'm curious, how do you handle meals when you are on a dive trip? What requests do you make of your hosts?

[Parrotman]

... We only eat organic, none antibiotic, hormone free food. Seems to work. I rarely ever even get a cold (knock on wood) Most conventional MD's would be horrified by my choice of diet/food/supplement regimen. I eat no grains of any kind, no dairy with the exception of a little cream in my coffee and low fat cheese as a condiment. I eat no sugar of any kind and I keep my carbohydrate consumption to under 20 carbs a day. I am as healthy as a horse. Have low cholesterol, normal blood glucose, good blood pressure, good triglycerides etc. My one vice is wine.. :-) I refuse to give it up. Ha!

I have been moving toward organic, non-antibiotic, hormone free foods with no dairy and no gluten for my own health issues. I'm curious, how do you handle meals when you are on a dive trip? What requests do you make of your hosts?

The organic, non- antibiotic, hormone free part can be difficult but the rest of it is easy. Most all of the places that I dive have an abundance of local food available. I just don't eat the grain foods such as cereal and bread, and I don't eat pasta etc. Most all of the chefs are able to whip up high protein meals with green veggies and salads. I do have issues some times with liveaboards. For some reason they seem to think that breakfast should consist of high carb food and if your lucky you can get one egg and maybe a strip or two of bacon out of them That is not enough for me, especially on a diving day. Funny enough, the farther away from the U.S. it seems the easier to get healthy food as the locals do not typcially use antibiotics and hormones on the meat that they raise and in most cases they probably use very little in the way of commercial fertilizer or pesticides on there veggies.

[Starfish Sandy]

Sandy - I love the footnote to your posts - "known puker" I don't know anyone with that condition, do I Kamala?

Peter I have cleared a path many times on a dive boat announcing that I am a known puker. I can't hang on a boat bouncing in the water for very long - or bob up and down in the water waiting on folks to gear up and come in - I gotta get IN and go wait 15' down for the rest of the posse! It's okay Kamala - we both survived the Wolf Darwin crossing. I know MINE was not a pretty crossing but I survived it!

[WreckWench]

Sandy - I love the footnote to your posts - "known puker" I don't know anyone with that condition, do I Kamala?

Peter I have cleared a path many times on a dive boat announcing that I am a known puker. I can't hang on a boat bouncing in the water for very long - or bob up and down in the water waiting on folks to gear up and come in - I gotta get IN and go wait 15' down for the rest of the posse! It's okay Kamala - we both survived the Wolf Darwin crossing. I know MINE was not a pretty crossing but I survived it!

I'm not worried about you making the crossing Sandy. Peter pukes more than even you! If he eats....he pukes and the water does not need to be rough. But at least the fish love him!