Diabetes upside down
Last June, Julianne Pohl got out of bed half an hour earlier, laced up her running shoes and took the first steps toward turning her health around.
Her doctor had recently delivered a diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes after a routine health screening.
“I felt the gamut of emotions, including shame, fear and failure,” said the 41-year-old technical writer and mother of two. “I decided the only way to make that go away was to take charge and make some changes in a serious fashion.”
By October, the formerly rundown Half Moon Bay resident transformed herself from reluctant walker into 5K runner.
By early 2009 she had lost 75 pounds and brought her blood sugar levels into a normal range. “I hated exercise, and I can’t say that I love it today,” she said. “But I do love the way I feel after exercising, and my energy level is way up.”
That’s a point Mills-Peninsula registered nurse and diabetes educator Cindy Rudolph emphasizes about the benefits of taking such a diagnosis to heart.
“It’s not about punishing yourself with diet and exercise,” she said, “Positive changes will give you more energy. You’ll sleep better, lower your stress and feel well.”
Rudolph and other Mills-Peninsula diabetes educators were instrumental in helping Pohl refine her dietary plan and increase her exercise routine gradually to make a real difference in her condition.
“Cindy helped me understand what was behind the changes in my diet and the importance of almost daily activity if I was serious about taking control.”
Today, she devotedly weighs her portions and tracks her meals. Healthy choices and the help of medication have given her a brighter outlook on living with a condition that can have serious side effects.
Some of those side effects – kidney failure, nerve damage and retinopathy, which can lead to blindness – can be avoided by controlling sugar levels in people with Type 2 diabetes, according to Mills-Peninsula endocrinologist Beatty Ramsay, M.D.
“New research is focused on whether tight control of blood sugar also helps lower the risk of cardiovascular disease, but there’s no conclusive evidence,” he said.
“We do know that controlling high blood pressure and lipids has repeatedly been shown to lower risk of cardiovascular events in people with Type 2 diabetes.”
That’s why Pohl monitors her A1c levels, as well as her cholesterol and triglycerides. Her A1c is now at 5.7 – down from 9.5 at diagnosis. And her triglycerides went from 321 to 68.
“A1c is the sugar that coats the red blood cells,” Rudolph explains. “This test is done every three months and gives us a good indication of the average blood sugar. As soon as the A1c goes up – so does the risk of complications.”
Often, Type 2 diabetes is the result of overeating, weight gain and lack of exercise in people who may be genetically predisposed, Rudolph said.
“But if you catch it early, you can reverse a lot of it,” she says. “Small changes pay off tremendously.”
Those changes include substituting healthy foods for those high in simple carbohydrates and sugars, cutting portions in half and doing at least 20 minutes of exercise five days a week.
While not everyone manages to make those changes, Pohl has found an online community of people on a similar mission. She tracks her daily challenges on a blog she started after her diagnosis at oppositelife.blogspot.com.
“I’m doing the opposite of what I used to do with respect to food and fitness every day,” she writes. “And it’s creating a new me.”
Mills-Peninsula offers Diabetes Weight Management classes, consultations with dietitians and opportunities to take part in medical trials through the Dorothy L. and James E. Frank Diabetes Research Institute.
For more information, visit www.millspeninsula.
org/diabetes.
The Diabetes Research Institute is funded in part by a gift from Dorothy L. and James E. Frank.
