As promised, more of the “10 things you need to know about the emotional side of diabetes” from Dr. William Polonsky of the Behavioral Diabetes Institute.

2. Overcoming Depression

Depression is a serious problem, and it can be even more serious when you have diabetes. People with diabetes are almost twice as likely to develop depression as other people. If you are depressed, diabetes can become a lot harder to handle and your blood sugars are likely to rise. When your diabetes is out of control, this can make it even harder to escape depression. It becomes a vicious circle. The good news is that there are effective treatments that can help you recover your emotional health. These treatments can also help you improve your blood sugars and feel more in control of diabetes.

• Watch for the warning signs. If you are feeling down or helpless about life, have lost your “get up and go,” or are feeling reduced interest or pleasure from the things you used to enjoy, then talk to your doctor as soon as possible.

• Take action to avoid depression. Make sure to get a good night’s sleep as often as possible, stay active, and spend time with friends each day. Include activities in your daily life that are personally rewarding and meaningful, like taking an interesting class or volunteering at a local museum. All of these can be powerful antidepressants.

• If you are depressed, don’t just wait around and hope it will go away. There are several good medications and different forms of counselling that have been proven to help people recover from depression. Speak with your doctor about getting the help you need.

While I’ve been fortunate to escape depression myself, I have met many people battling this serious problem. Having diabetes (or any illness) coupled with depression, makes life even more challenging. Please take the opportunity to put yourself first, and get the help you need. It’s not easy to ask for help, but you’ll be a stronger person for it.

They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody?

- Princess Diana

My hubby and I went to the Canadian Diabetes Association’s expo this weekend in Vancouver. My usual frustration with these expos are the depressing booths and the feeling of imminent demise from the complications of diabetes. We are battered with talk of kidney problems, eye problems, heart problems, mobility issues, foot problems, neuropathy, and on and on. We are told how to eat better, eat less, exercise more, check our blood sugars more often, ad nauseum. Sometimes I just want to run screaming from the building. I long for a bit of levity amidst all the doom and gloom.

Fortunately, this time I was surprised and inspired by listening to Dr. William Polonsky give an informative and entertaining lecture on “diabetes burnout.” Dr. Bill is a clinical psychologist who is an expert in the field of behavioral diabetes (I didn’t even know the field existed!). He talked about the emotional side of diabetes which includes the personal, social, and behavioral sides of the disease. I would love to have a DVD of his presentation. (I settled for buying his book, “Diabetes Burnout: What to Do When You Can’t Take it Anymore”).

I also picked up his pamphlet called “the emotional side of diabetes: 10 things you need to know.” I think it’s an invaluable resource and I thought I’d share some of the information here. Dr. Bill also has a website: www.behavioraldiabetes.org where you can learn more.

Anyway, here is #1 of the 10 things you need to know about the emotional side of diabetes:

1. Harnessing Your Fears

With good care, you can live a long, healthy life with diabetes. Many people think they are doomed to suffer terrible complications, but this is simply not true! Diabetes is a serious disease and some people do develop severe long-term complications, but most of these problems are preventable if you have good medical care and take good care of yourself. Feeling a little frightened is not necessarily a bad thing, but when your fears get so big that you feel helpless and hopeless, it’s time to take action. You need to harness fear to help you manage diabetes.

• Fight fear with knowledge. Learn about the powerful benefits of good diabetes care by talking to your doctor or enrolling in a diabetes education program.
• Know the real odds. Ask your doctor about what your real odds for developing complications might be, and what you can do to improve those odds.
• Stay informed. Subscribe to any of the popular diabetes magazines to keep informed about how to avoid or slow complications.
• Don’t put up with frequent lows. If you are anxious about hypoglycemia, talk to your doctor about medication changes that can help. Fear of hypoglycemia is about losing confidence in your body, worrying a serious reaction could happen at any moment. It can lead to chronically high blood sugars, eating problems and an overly restrictive lifestyle. With treatment, these problems can be resolved.
• Stay in charge. Remember that your own self-care can make a big difference to your health. You are not helpless! After all, it’s not diabetes itself that typically causes serious problems, it’s poorly-controlled diabetes. With good care, you can live a long and healthy life.

Hope you can find something relevant here. I’ll do my best to keep posting Dr. Bill’s words of wisdom!

I usually like to dispense advice in terms of what TO do instead of what NOT to do, but in this case I feel the DON’Ts are warranted. This is a work in progress, and open to suggestions and comments from all.

Things NOT to buy women as gifts:

- cleaning supplies

- weight loss books

- wrinkle cream (or should I say anti-wrinkle cream)

- cellulite treatments

- bikinis

- live animals

- dead animals

- wounded animals

- anything to do with farting

While certainly not exhaustive, it’ll be a fun list to update!

I love chocolate, especially dark chocolate. Because my chocolate consumption is limited due to the carb factor, I often resort to eating the no sugar added (nsa) chocolate. Unfortunately, the nsa chocolate is sweetened with maltitol. Maltitol is a sugar alcohol (polyol) and it doesn’t like me, nor does it like my guts.

Maltitol-sweetened foods (usually nsa candies and chocolate) do come with a warning that they make cause a laxative effect (or gastric distress, bloating, etc.) if consumed in large quantities. For me, the quantity does not have to be large and in fact, I can suffer after eating quite a small amount of maltitol on an empty stomach.

Without going into the gory details, let’s just say it’s not pretty (definitely not something to share on a first date).

I’ve tried all the major chocolate retailers and producers including Purdy’s, Charlie’s Chocolate Factory, Roger’s, Rocky Mountain Chocolate, Hershey’s, Cadbury, Daniel, and Bernard Callebaut. Every one of them uses maltitol as their sweetener of choice. Apparently, this is due to the fact that maltitol is fairly cheap, it acts similarly to sugar (except for the browning effect), and has been used as the “diabetic” sweetener of choice for years.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who is adversely affected by maltitol and would appreciate having some choices of sweetener in my nsa chocolates and candies. I would love to see one of the major chocolate producers take the lead here and produce and market an alternatively-sweetened chocolate. I’ll be first in line to buy it.

I think I gain the most insight when I see myself reflected back to me in someone else.

This can be especially true when I don’t like what I see. Take today for instance. I was listening to someone complain. And complain. And complain.

Complaining is not attractive. It makes you look old and stressed. And it makes you hard to be around.

Oh sure, we all have beefs. And we all need to hash out our beefs with a few friends. I have no problem with that. Nothing like a few hours of free friendship therapy every day. But there’s a fine line between that and the numbing drone of a whiner who is constantly looking for the bad in everything and everyone.

That is draining and literally repellent.

So I made a pact today with myself. To continue looking for the good in people. To continue to be grateful for the amazing-ness that is my life. And to enjoy every moment, even the ones spent with whiners.

Okay, I admit it. I used to suffer from extreme potty mouth. I liked all those four letter words, but especially the f-bomb. It’s just so versatile (as my hubby says).

After my first daughter was born, my husband decided it was time to put the kibosh on all the swearing. He didn’t want his precious daughter showing up at preschool swearing a blue streak. Thus, the “swear kitty” was born. This ingenious device was meant to hold all the money I had to pay each time I used a bad word (with half-price swearing during Canucks’ games). Well, after I filled the thing many times over in the first day or two, I decided to punt it and take matters into my own hands.

I stopped swearing. Well, at least under most normal circumstances and within earshot of my daughter.

But now I fear it has turned me into a swearing-prude. I really don’t like to hear curse words much anymore. Especially shouted out windows in fits of road rage, and used casually in everyday conversation in front of my kids, by oblivious teenagers. (Aren’t teenagers just 6 foot tall 2-year-olds?)

So that got me thinkin’ about other ways in which prudishness has sneaked up on me. I don’t particularly think people should live together before they get married (I lived with my husband for 5 years before we got married). I shocked myself when I realized that one. We did what? Good gracious.

Is it age, or just that my memory is failing? Who knows. But by the time my own kids are teenagers, I’m sure they’ll think I’ve completely forgotten that I was once very young and very foolish.

I’d much rather be a woman than a man. Women can cry, they can wear cute clothes, and they’re the first to be rescued off sinking ships.

- Gilda Radner

For me, the advantage to being a woman has more to do with choices. Women can work, or not. We can have babies, or not. We can stay home with the kids, or not. We can work full time, or part time, or not. We can look outside of our jobs for our identities, or not. We can lean on our men, or not. We can be independent, or not. We are allowed to share our feelings, or not. We are allowed to express ourselves, or not.

I’m not saying it’s easy to be a woman, or a person for that matter. And I know my ability to make choices is the product of my upbringing, my education, my social status, my family, my husband, my environment, my health, and so on. But I feel so lucky to be a woman.

And even luckier to be a mom. Happy Mother’s Day everyone.

Ah, the good old days … when we could go out as a family and order two adult meals and two kids’ meals. No longer. A kid’s meal just won’t do for my older daughter anymore.

Now, her meals are more expensive than mine.

It reminds me of when, as a kid, we’d go out for dinner for my dad’s birthday. We’d always go to the “fanciest” place in town. And that’s where I would always order the most expensive meal in town - the steak and lobster. My parents would always try to talk me out of it, but I would stick to my guns because that’s what I really wanted to eat.

I guess what goes around comes around.

I got some disturbing news the other day.

I’m an inch shorter than I thought I am. I won’t tell you what that magic number is, but let’s just say I don’t have a lot of excess height to play with.

That makes my BMI today 25.3 (officially overweight) as opposed to yesterday (when I thought I was taller) and my BMI was 24.5 (officially a normal weight).

Makes me want to go eat a donut.