Day 3 - Why do I Need Math?

In the math course that I am taking I had to ask myself where and how am I able to apply this math and why do I need this math if I am not going into a math program in university but a science program in university - and where in my life am I able to effectively use this information, or when am I ever going to use the information that I am learning in my life and the answer was staring me in the face which is diabetes

So within the Math course that I am taking we are learning how to factor polynomial equations, how to solve equations, how to create the equations out of word problems, how to graph the equations etc, and for the most part I cannot see a relevant point in my life where graphing would come into play and I cannot yet see the entire applicability of the understanding of the equations and the ability to factor the equations to solve for x or to simplify the equations to get to the main factors that are making up the equation, but in looking at the word factor it is easy to take this approach to diabetes and sugar levels where within a day there are many many many factors in play, such as insulin sensitivity, insulin dosage, insulin types, exercise, stress, foods, types of foods like fats or carbs or fibre that will either increase or decrease the rate of break down and absorption of sugar, emotional responses, depression, anxiety, sleep, positivity, socialization, negativity, anger…those are all the ones off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's more - anyways, all of those factors can and do influences the blood glucose level during each day. So like Stress+Fatty Food+Exercise+Long acting insulin+6 units of Short acting insulin = 9.8mmol/l - its obviously not that simple in regards to the addition or subtraction equation because many factors affect and influence the other factors and can make the other factors stronger or weaker causing sugar to rise or lower during the day and what this math is useful for is being able to factor out a factor that may be causing the blood sugar to be high during regular times of the day or causing the sugar to be low during regular times of a day - and in this find out an appropriate equation including all the factors to best be able to control blood sugars and keep them as stable as possible throughout ones life.

This is beyond my capability within math at this point but nonetheless there is no excuse for myself to understand and apply this math because I can use it to my benefit by creating a daily equation of what to do and when to do it based on factors that raise or lower the blood glucose levels - which most type 1 diabetics do when calculating how much insulin to inject during specific times of the day when the carb to insulin unit ratio varies between the times of the day. And in starting to understand this math and start to really apply myself in this math I can start to better myself by making the injections mathematically supported instead of a guessing game which I am essentially doing now - meaning guessing how much the exercise that I've done will affect me and thus guessing how much insulin to inject for the food that I ate during before or after exercising, but by recording the factors that I go through that have been proven to influence the sugar levels and factoring out the sugar levels or increasing or decreasing specific types of insulin at specific times of the day when/as those factors are present I can create an equation of how to best keep the sugar levels stable as those factors are present

I started to see this better as I was visiting the endocrinologist that I see, and as we were looking at the highs and low patterns and what was possibly influencing the readings she suggested decreasing or increasing types of insulin during those times of injection prior to injecting the insulin and changing around the equation of the insulin meaning changing the times and amounts of injections to best support myself when waking up or during work or while at school etc, and the way that I see this is a simplistic form of managing myself in diabetes because, especially during exercise, the sugar levels and insulin sensitivity dramatically changes and has been a struggle for myself to keep `level` as I exercise or work due to the dramatic change in insulin requirements during those specific times and I've also had difficulty finding the correct insulin dosage amounts prior to working or exercising because within an hour of rest the insulin sensitivity can change and if I do not work as hard as I worked near the end of the shift the amounts of insulin that I need when I get home and eat a meal change drastically. That being said giving self self awareness within the factors that are influencing the sugar levels is best for support and to give self that awareness the thoughts/emotions/feelings within the mind need to be eradicated as I've shown myself many times before that by allowing myself to entertain myself for a few moments I quickly forget to inject the basal rate insulin at the regular time and thus cause the sugar level to be affected differently at different times of the day/night

So when one has diabetes, math is an important subject to understand and apply at the level of factors and factoring out factors and finding factors and creating equations based on factors and sometimes unknowns so that one can create an equation for self based on ones owns needs and requirements of insulin and/or exercise etc, that include what to do when specific factors are involved in the resulting sugar levels. Essentially I wrote this because I've had a resistance to math and have struggled in the past course in math and so this is a point of motivation for myself to start to apply it in my daily living instead of simply seeing numbers on the board and only knowledge of the methods and ways to manipulate the equation to find the factors within the equation

Day 2 - Should we Trust Nutrition Labels?

As a type 1 diabetic I rely on the nutrition food labels to be accurate and concise with the information that they put on the nutrition labels and I, in some ways, need to trust that information is correct on all packages and foods, but I've found that this is not the case on all foods…there is only one instance that I've found so far that the information is misleading, but I am sure that there are more - specifically with the foods being labelled "organic" or "Healthy"

 

There is a bread that I use to make sandwiches for lunches and on the nutrition label it says "per 1 piece (40g) there are 20g of carbohydrates in each slice". This information I need to rely upon to calculate an accurate amount of insulin that I need to inject to counteract the sugar being processed in the body from the metabolizing of the carbohydrates. This bread is a bread that is descending in size throughout the package, so like there are pieces that are larger and there are pieces that are smaller than the previous one.

In order to be much more accurate I decided to buy a scale a few months ago and start to actually weigh the food that I was eating so that I could be as accurate as possible - using the weight rather than the serving size - because like with boxes of macaroni it says per 1/4 box = 60g of carbs, so I mean how do I accurately measure 1/4 of a box or estimate what 1/4 of a box is, so weighing the food that I was eating made the calculations much more accurate because I could divide the amount of food that I was eating by the serving size in g written on the nutrition label and multiply that by the amount of carbs in each serving size in grams. So back to the bread - I started to weigh out the bread and found that each time I weighed the bread, each reading was far over 80g (2 slices), the highest reading I found the bread to weigh was 150g which is nearly double what the nutrition labels says each slice weighs and thus nearly double the amount of carbohydrates in those 2 slices of bread.

Before then I did not have a scale and was still using this bread for sandwiches for lunch as work, and this could have severely fucked with the sugar levels and insulin injections throughout work - luckily though my work is a physical job and during that time I was finding the right amount of insulin to inject because of the effect of the amount of exercise the job has on the bodies sensitivity to insulin, so I had to deduct insulin from the injection due to the physical exercise - but there were times when I would have this bread on the weekends or on days when I was not physically active and inject 4 units of insulin for the 2 slices that I was eating, basing my injection off of the information on the nutrition label - my carb to unit ratio is roughly 10g/1u - when really I needed was 150/40=3.75 3.75*20=75 <- 7.5 units of insulin for the 75g of carbs in those slices of bread, and thus this would cause my sugar levels to go higher than I had expected due to the misinformation printed on the nutrition labels, …each unit of insulin reduces the sugar level by 2mmol/l so each 10g of carbs increases the sugar level by 2mmol/l which  escalated the sugar an extra 7mmol/l above my target when calculating an accurate amount of insulin to inject for what I was eating, and if you didn't know, 7mmol/l is a drastic difference in blood glucose.

So then the question is posed can we as a society trust the information printed on nutrition labels? From this example the answer is no, No because there, more or less, is always a motive behind the labels or within/as the labels themselves defined in the word `nutrients`. This bread that I gave as an example is defined as a `healthy` bread and from the starting point of wanting to look and be perceived as `healthy` they do not give accurate information - they only give accurate information on the smallest slice of bread in the package - Why? To make it look healthy, to lower the carb counts and the calorie count in on the information presented, but this improper use of the information on the nutrition labels can have severe affects on those whom are diabetic, or whom have other food illnesses, such as celiac disease where one much look at the ingredient list for any substance that has wheat or wheat based additives, and there has been times where the information printed on the ingredient label is deceiving as well, I know this because my mother has celiac disease and when she consumes gluten she throws up violently for a few hours - meaning she has bought products that has no ingredient listed on the list that has gluten in it, yet from eating that product she has reacted in such a manner, physically proving that there was in fact gluten on in the product

The entire point behind the misinformation and mislabeling of nutrition labels or food labels is due to money, for the example with the bread, the company wants to market their product as healthy and for those who are `health nuts` to buy this bread. The company clearly has enough wherewithal to understand that their consumers will be looking at the nutrition label for the `indicators` of the product being healthy such as a low calorie number or low carbohydrate number and thus accordingly only place the `1 slice serving` as the smallest piece of bread in the package allowing the label to be `acceptable`  with the lowest numbers possible yet, quite misleading and quite dangerous for those who rely heavily on and need to trust that the information presented is accurate.

 

What is the solution here? The solution would to `govern` the labels much more severely and put the labels through much more testing before they are allowed to be placed on the product. The solution would to eradicate the point of profit from the companies so that instances like this do not cause harm to life as it has with myself and with any other diabetics who are unaware of this fact, remove profit because it is from the point of profit and greed that this abuse towards life exists, and this solution is presented with the Equal Money System which can be read further in detail at http://equalmoney.org

I also suggest to read http://mayaprocess.blogspot.com/2013/03/capitalism-joke-is-on-us-food-labelling.html for more of a perspective on this issue and on the solution presented.

Post #2 - Day 56 - Diabetes pt 2 The Burden

Post from (http://paulsjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2012/06/day-56-diabetes-pt-2-burden.html)

"I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed diabetes to become a burden on my life, wherein I have created a relationship to testing blood and injecting insulin as a task that I must do every day multiple times a day, as task that is separate from me, a task that I do not want to commit myself to, allowing myself to skip doing this task every once and a while because I would rather act in self-interest that do the testing and maintain the sugar levels that I have to maintain

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see diabetes as a burden which I have to maintain and take care of myself within, in this placing the burden as something that I have to do, instead of standing equal and one to the point and living the will to care for myself as a diabetic the best way possible in being diligent at checking the blood sugar, and doing the injections daily and on time within the routine that works best for me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear facing that I am a diabetic and that my actions now are going to have consequences later on in my life which will or will not make the point of diabetes `worse` from the perspective of having to deal with other issues related to the lack of care for myself as a diabetic

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to live within self-interest still and live a life that is comfortable for only me wherein I live within the fort of my self-interest and create myself as a perceived island, because as a diabetic I will die, from what evidence has been shown, earlier than most in life, and in this not give a fuck about myself as life because I am going to die `anyways` so why not get the most out of energy while I exist here.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to live within self-interest, wherein I only consider my desires of what I want in this life, ignoring all of life and ignoring what is in fact happening on this planet to/as life, because I see diabetes as a burden, so I made the conclusion that if I must live with a burden I will attempt to find the desire of desires, not realizing that I in the mind am creating the idea of the burden, and that the idea of the burden is simply not real

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to treat the life that has been given to me like shit shown through the manifestation of/as diabetes wherein I continue to allow myself to live within self-interest even though I have proven to myself that living within self-interest while having diabetes is extremely detrimental to the health of the body because the self-interest that I have defined and lived within is eat what you want, do what you want and in this what I wanted has never been what has been best for the body thus I have treated the life that has been given to me with total disregard, and total abuse

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not stand as manifested consequence in this lifetime showing humanity that this is what happens when as we live in self-interest and only consider ourselves and not the equality of life which supports all life, wherein all life here in the physical lives in equality where each part is supporting the whole, wherein diabetes has manifested because I have only considered my desires throughout my life and not the equality that the body has lived within and existed as within/as the physical in which has supported itself in equality in order for life to be maintained, in this I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to come to this existence and accept this pre-programming where equality of life is not considered wherein each part of existence does its part to support existence, and in this acceptance become a virus to this existence as I have accepted and allowed myself to live in inequality in relation to this world wherein I am not considering the whole and what I as human am a part of the whole and that I have responsibility within/as the whole to do what is best in equality and oneness for/as the whole

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hate life because life has supposedly fucked me over with manifesting diabetes, but this hate only comes from the desire to support self-interest in inequality, because the hate stems from having to face the fact that I must let go of self-interest and do what is best for support of the body because I have manifested damage to an organ within the body and I must stand in place for that organ in order to maintain the bodies functionality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to disregard myself as life through ignoring the fact that I have diabetes, ignoring through not checking the blood sugar when I am out nor doing proper insulin when I am out, proper meaning doing insulin for what I eat when I am out and checking the carbohydrates that I am eating when I am out and doing the correct amount of insulin, but in this ignore the fact that I am a diabetic when I feel high, as my hydration depletes and I have to piss a lot, using excuses that I will be fine and that I can manage in this physical discomfort for a while and then check and manage the blood sugar later wherein I am allowing myself to harm myself as life more than what is needed, needed meaning the sugar must go up in the first place and the more meaning not correcting when I first notice that I am dehydrated and pissing a lot.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use diabetes as an excuse to not move my life in the direction that I would like to move it in, but in holding as a burden use it as an excuse to keep the life that is here  and accept the life that is here through and as being continuously `put down` wherein I accept the shit that is here because it seems as if I cannot move out of it because it feels like and seems like a burden that lasts forever, not realizing that it is me in and as the relationship that I have developed towards diabetes, being a diabetic that has caused me to look at life this way, in this it is me in relation to life that has allowed me to live this way, thus the creator of all of this burden and `put down` is only but me, in this I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to develop a relationship with myself where I am continuously putting myself down and holding myself there until I submit to this world/life/existence instead of allowing myself to develop a relationship with myself in where I support myself as life through and as the actions in which support me as life as a diabetic, in this learning how to develop a relationship with myself as life of how to support what is best for life and commit myself to supporting what is best for life as myself wherein I commit myself to eating in the proper way in which supports the body and blood sugar levels, and in which supports the best insulin sensitivity as well as lifestyle that is best for me as a diabetic, changing the lifestyle from desire and self-interest into what is best for life.

I commit myself to stop seeing diabetes as a burden which I have to cope with but instead see it as an opportunity to understand and live what is best for life in every moment in relation to health, eating and lifestyle,

I commit myself to develop an effective relationship with myself wherein I support myself as life using the tool of/as diabetes to create that relationship wherein I create that relationship to do what is best for me no matter what happens in regard to sugar levels, where I am at in this world, or who I am with, wherein I stay constant and consistent in taking care of myself as life within being a diabetic

I commit myself to show what happens in manifested consequence when one decides to live a life of self-interest and desire, and how it can be avoided by realizing and re-aligning self to the equality of life wherein every being does its part to care for existence to care for life.

I commit myself to stopping the self-interest in that which I have been living and commit myself to taking care of myself as life within/as being life and being a diabetic using myself to investigate what in fact supports the body the best in relation to lifestyle, food intake, exercise, removing all information and knowledge of what food is good and what food is bad, and simply seeing what supports the body the best according to lifestyle and the plethora of variables that life consists of."