Diabetes

Join the Conversation on
Diabetes
28.5K people
0 stories
3.3K posts
About Diabetes
Explore Our Newsletters
What's New in Diabetes
All
Stories
Posts
Videos
Latest
Trending
Post
See full photo

Why We Need to Use Pacing Skills With Chronic Conditions

When looking at the reasons we need to pace its important to start with the autonomic nervous system (ANS), as it can both be a cause of predisposed disorders turning on, and inflammation in the body that worsens current disorders.

Next, we should also look at how our bodies make energy because that will impact any fatigue symptoms you might have. After reviewing these area’s we will gain a deeper understanding of what happens in the body that’s impacting us daily. After which we will move on to how we can learn to pace our bodies to lower symptoms.

So I wanted to post today and dive into the autonomic nervous system as it is impacted by both chronic conditions and our stress. It is through this connection that the nervous system acts as a hidden cause of predisposed disorders and through constant stress can even worsen these disorders. Numerous research studies, and Doctors like Gabor Mate and Bessel Van der Kolk, discuss this topic in great depth. And right now I just wanted to briefly review what is known about how stress affects our chronic conditions as they have thoroughly shown that stress is associated with all non-genetically inherited conditions, and that it can also be a trigger for predisposed conditions. So how did we get these conditions?

To understand it further you need to delve into predispositions. So think of your DNA strand with each gene as a light switch that your born with and all the genes you have that are not dominant are in the off position. You have them they just aren’t on. More specifically though, our DNA contains genes that are expressed (like blue eyes and blond hair) these are dominant traits that are again like light switches turned on. And others that are not expressed due to the presence of something called the epigenome. These predispositions can be turned on or off like a switch based on various lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, and mental health (Mate, 2023). This means that stress and trauma can directly impact our physical health through our genetics. For example, if someone has a predisposition to diabetes but maintains a healthy lifestyle, that predisposition may not be activated. However, if they experience high levels of stress and unhealthy habits, that predisposition could be turned on and result in diabetes. Thus, stress has a large impact on disorders that we have genetic links to and its also a catalyst. As stress can have a significant impact on chronic conditions, as it can exacerbate the existing symptoms and potentially lead to the development of new conditions that is not a predisposed condition. Chronic stress can cause physical changes in the body, such as an increase in cortisol levels, which can contribute to inflammation and tissue damage. This can lead to a range of health issues, including cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disorders, and mental health conditions.

While stress can contribute to the development or worsening of chronic conditions, it is not necessarily the sole cause. Many chronic conditions have a multifactorial etiology, meaning that they arise from a combination of genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors. However, chronic stress can be a significant contributing factor in many cases and should be addressed as part of a comprehensive treatment plan. Strategies for managing stress, such as mindfulness practices, exercise, and therapy, can all be helpful in reducing the impact of stress on chronic conditions.

That's just a little of how I understand chronic conditions and I'd love to hear about how you understand them and if you have any questions.

I also go over how pacing can help and how our chronic conditions can cause crash cycle's in our counselling practices youtube channel that you can check out here: How Does Chronic Illness Cause A Crash Cycle?

Or you can check out our online chronic health counselling: Easy Access To a Chronic Illness Therapists in Vancouver, BC...

#Fibromyalgia #ChronicFatigue #chronic #chronic pain #lupu #MentalHealth #Stress #MentalHealth #Cancer #Caregiving

(edited)

How Does Chronic Illness Cause A Crash Cycle?

A short clip on how the crash cycle effects chronic health issues and how we can end up in a cycle of symptom flares and bursts of energy. Elysia Bronson is ...
6 reactions
Post
See full photo

Motivational Monday: Making Your Thoughts Match Your Actions

“A mind is like a parachute, it doesn’t work if it isn’t open.” – Frank Zappa

Remember to stay positive and motivated throughout your journey with diabetes. Your mindset plays a crucial role in managing this condition and can greatly impact your physical health. By consistently reminding yourself that you have the power to beat this, you may be surprised to see how well your body responds and adapts to your positive thoughts and actions.

#Diabetes #DiabetesType1 #DiabetesType2 #lada #mody #ChronicIllness #MightyTogether #MentalHealth

10 reactions 5 comments
Post
See full photo

They saved my life

To some people these are just animals. To me they are my babies, the one love tha never judges just accepts you & the amount of times I owe them my life. When attempts have happened they have helped to make me realise things

The Merle pup I’m proud of has just been accepted into an assistance dog program so I very excited it will cha be my life give me more confidence and ability to go out

I’m so proud of my dogs , every day I try now to make myself worthy of being part of their lives
#Dogs #mybabies #theysavedmylife #MentalHealth #Anxiety #Depression #SuicideAttemptSurvivors #Selfharm #Love #myalways #Fibromyalgia #RaynaudsPhenomenon #dropattacks #badmobility #Diabetes #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #Psychosis #SelfharmRecovery #Selfcare #happy #mypack #smile

76 reactions 16 comments
Post
See full photo

Right now is a great time to be proud of yourself

I know that sometimes just getting out of bed can feel like an accomplishment. What are some things you've done today that you're proud of?

Also, I'm so grateful for all of you and would love to get to know you all better outside of The Mighty, so if you're on Instagram, feel free to reach out at:

www.instagram.com/thomas_of_copenhagen

~ Thanks to all. Thanks for all. ~

Speaking of thanks for all, I was hoping we could acknowledge everyone who comments below. I know it seems like a small gesture, but many people here have never opened up to anyone before and being open and honest with strangers can be quite scary. So, if we could show our gratitude by giving their comment a simple reply or heart, I’m sure they would really appreciate your team support. What do you say?

#MentalHealth #MentalHealth #Depression #Anxiety #BipolarDisorder #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #Addiction #dissociativedisorders #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder #ADHD #Fibromyalgia #EhlersDanlosSyndrome #PTSD #Cancer #RareDisease #Disability #Autism #Diabetes #EatingDisorders #ChronicIllness #ChronicPain #RheumatoidArthritis #Suicide #MightyTogether #SchizophreniaSpectrumPsychoticDisorders

103 reactions 27 comments
Post
See full photo

Things to let go of

Which one of these is the most difficult for you to let go of? Which one has been easy? If one has been easy, can you share how you did it so someone else who finds it hard can learn from your experience? If this goes right, we will have methods for letting go of all of these by the end of the day. Can we do this as a team?

Also, I'm so grateful for all of you and would love to get to know you all better outside of The Mighty, so if you're on Instagram, feel free to reach out at:

www.instagram.com/thomas_of_copenhagen

~ Thanks to all. Thanks for all. ~

Speaking of thanks for all, I was hoping we could acknowledge everyone who comments below. I know it seems like a small gesture, but many people here have never opened up to anyone before and being open and honest with strangers can be quite scary. So, if we could show our gratitude by giving their comment a simple reply or heart, I’m sure they would really appreciate your team support. What do you say?

#MentalHealth #MentalHealth #Depression #Anxiety #BipolarDisorder #BorderlineP ersonalityDisorder #Addiction #dissociativedisorders #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder #ADHD #Fibromyalgia #EhlersDanlosSyndrome #PTSD #Cancer #RareDisease #Disability #Autism #Diabetes #EatingDisorders #ChronicIllness #ChronicPain #RheumatoidArthritis #Suicide #MightyTogether #SchizophreniaSpectrumPsychoticDisorders

96 reactions 20 comments
Post
See full photo

Choose your focus

The thing about negativity is that if you look for it, you will find it. Fortunately, if you look for positivity, you will find that too. Which one will you focus on?

Also, I'm so grateful for all of you and would love to get to know you all better outside of The Mighty, so if you're on Instagram, feel free to reach out at:

www.instagram.com/thomas_of_copenhagen

~ Thanks to all. Thanks for all. ~

Speaking of thanks for all, I was hoping we could acknowledge everyone who comments below. I know it seems like a small gesture, but many people here have never opened up to anyone before and being open and honest with strangers can be quite scary. So, if we could show our gratitude by giving their comment a simple reply or heart, I’m sure they would really appreciate your team support. What do you say?

#MentalHealth #MentalHealth #Depression #Anxiety #BipolarDisorder #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #Addiction #dissociativedisorders #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder #ADHD #Fibromyalgia #EhlersDanlosSyndrome #PTSD #Cancer #RareDisease #Disability #Autism #Diabetes #EatingDisorders #ChronicIllness #ChronicPain #RheumatoidArthritis #Suicide #MightyTogether #SchizophreniaSpectrumPsychoticDisorders

36 reactions 11 comments
Post
See full photo

Motivational Monday: We’re Gonna Get Through It

“One step at a time, one foot in front of the other, I’m gonna get through this one way or the other.”- Anonymous

Whenever you feel overwhelmed and frustrated with your diabetes journey, take a pause and scale back. You’ll get through this!

Start with one goal at a time. Once you've mastered that, set a new goal. Working on one goal at a time will eventually make managing diabetes easier 💙

#Diabetes #DiabetesType1 #DiabetesType2 #lada #mody #ChronicIllness #MentalHealth #MightyTogether

14 reactions
Post

Insomnia is So Much More Than Being Unable to Sleep

I wish more people understood the complexities of living with insomnia and sleep anxiety. It is so much more than what people see on the surface like staying up late, sleeping in, daytime tiredness, and the struggle to be on time for things.

According to Cleveland Clinic, “Roughly, 1 in 3 adults worldwide have insomnia symptoms, and about 10% of adults meet the criteria for insomnia disorder,” and “About half the people with chronic insomnia also have at least one other mental health condition, like anxiety or depression”(Cleveland Clinic, Insomnia: What it is, causes, symptoms & treatment 2023). That is a LOT of people struggling to sleep at night. People are quick to judge and blame it on technology use before bed but for some of us, we’ve been struggling with sleep long before ever owning a cell phone. At least, that’s been the case for me.

Insomnia for me is crippling. It’s intense dread each time the sun begins to set. It’s an anxiety response each night when bedtime rolls around. It’s a constant battle in my mind of knowing I should go to sleep at a certain time but anxiety runs through my body as I watch the minutes and sometimes hours passing by as I lay in bed. It’s a struggle to wake up in the morning because you finally fell asleep in the wee hours of the morning with the help of a sedative which leaves you groggy and still exhausted.

Insomnia is daytime anxiety, emotional sensitivity, and irritability because of the fatigue that radiates through every cell in your body. It’s the desire to lay down and take a nap but knowing that if you do, it will just make it even harder to sleep that night. It’s snapping at those you love because the exhaustion is just too overwhelming to your nervous system. It’s anxiety and dread for events or appointments planned in the morning, not because it’s something you don’t want to do but because you know that having to get up early will wreak havoc on your body and mind.

You see when I have something in the morning and I lay down in bed the night before, my mind races. It calculates how much sleep I’ll get, how that will affect my body, mind, and mood when I’ll be able to take a nap if I can, and how I’ll be able to put on a mask for the thing I’m supposed to do. While I would love to wake up early, see the sunrise, and be productive every day, that’s not my reality or the reality for many suffering from insomnia.

I would love to be able to wake up early on Sunday mornings to go to church but instead, I’m having to weigh the costs between going or staying home to sleep.  It’s a constant fight internally between going to church but dozing off through the entire sermon, getting incredibly irritated, and needing to come home and nap anyway or just staying home to sleep in but missing out on seeing important people in my life and hearing bits and pieces of the sermon. It’s a constant battle each week trying to decide. Something that many people with insomnia have to deal with daily. Getting up early for me isn’t an issue of laziness. It’s an issue of anxiety and depression.

Not only is insomnia associated with anxiety but it can also be a result of depression too. For instance, while I have been in this long fight with Treatment-Resistant Depression, my nights are often filled with hopelessness, overwhelming sadness, and dread for the next day of waking up and facing it all again. This dread turns into anxiety which keeps me up in fear of having to face another day of the same fight.

Insomnia can also cause serious damage to one’s body too. For instance, according to Hopkins Medicine, Insomnia and poor sleep quality can lead to complications like “increased risk for heart disease, increased risk for stroke, increased risk for diabetes, excessive weight gain or obesity, depression, and increased of injury to self or others, such as a car accident caused by driving while drowsy” (John Hopkins Medicine, Insomnia). It is so much more than what one sees on the surface.

Insomnia affects so many people worldwide and is multifaceted. It’s complicated. It is crippling. And it’s incredibly infuriating for the one suffering. I just wish more people could understand or have empathy for people like me who struggle with it.

6 reactions 3 comments
Post

Do Rotator Cuffs Have Brains?

Part 1 of 2 Almost exactly a year ago, I tore my rotator cuff in my right shoulder. I was playing in the ocean in Phuket, Thailand, and got knocked down by a rogue wave. It was a rough landing, just in the exactly wrong position.

After the initial stunning pain, I just assumed that it was a bad sprain. But by the time we were visiting Chiang Mei a week later, I was in such intense pain that we went to a Thai hospital emergency room. We were there a mere hour and a half, which included a consultation with an English doctor, x-rays and a visit to the pharmacy. There I was prescribed hospital-strength Tylenol that I swear had an extra Thai kick to them. “You’re going to need a doctor in the states,” my doctor said as we left. “You definitely tore something.”

Well, four months and two orthopedic surgeons later (the first one said, “just deal with it, we see this all the time in women your age,” and prescribed medication to which I was allergic), I had surgery. It was a three-to-four-month recovery period, but I felt good enough – and bored enough – that I was eager to get back to work, so I returned in November after two-and-a-half months and a heavy regimen of physical therapy and yoga.

I was greeted with open arms, concern and support. I’ll always be grateful for that.

Here’s my question: what if I had told my employer in August that I was suffering from anxiety and depression, and I was having panic attacks on the drive home from the office? Or that my stomach was cramping up so bad from stress that I had lost 27 pounds and had early signs of ulcers and couldn’t work? Both instances would have been medical leaves approved by a psychiatrist, a trained M.D. Would I have been welcomed back so sweetly?

I can honestly say the answer is no because both those experiences happened to me before, at previous jobs. I had alerted my bosses that I would be leaving the jobs and gave plenty of notice. But my mental health had other ideas, and I had to leave early. To this day neither of those bosses have said boo to me – even when I called to apologize for having to leave my position early! Crickets.

That is an issue – our work society’s view on mental health. If it’s a physical problem, like my rotator cuff surgery, everything was fine. But a few years ago, when I was going through a lot of loss and stress in my life and my mental health issues needed attention, I was treated like a pariah.

Both bosses professed to support me and were dear friends of mine. I quite honestly don’t know what I did wrong. I was ill, and I want to clean up my side of the street. We have a policy in place in my current office that if someone isn’t feeling physically well, they should stay home. It’s a good one, since we share germs like pencils.

But what about working America at large? Why can’t mental health be seen in the same light as physical health? Why can’t we get past that barrier? Being ghosted by my ex-bosses doesn’t faze me that much anymore – I’ve put it behind me, and only bring it up here as a living, breathing example of the ignorance and hypocrisy of our society. How many Naomi Judds, tWitches and Taylor Hawkinses do we need to shine the light on the fact that mental health and addiction issues aren’t like eating mushrooms in “The Last of Us”? It’s not contagious. You can’t catch it by small droplets from your spit or a gritty deli counter. But they can be just as disastrous.

Mental health issues, and mental illnesses, need to be normalized in our human psyche, if possible. All they women I know over 50 take an antidepressant, or, as a nurse friend of mine calls it, “Vitamin P,” for Prozac. That staves off depression. Isn’t that an indication that mental issues are extremely prevalent in “normal” society?

And no, sorry non-Boomers – it’s not just women of a certain age. Mental health issues are all around us, especially in our teens, tweens and young kids. Heck, they survived the worst thing that happened to the worldwide collective in a century and *seemed* to have bounced back. Some school districts are doing a better job of monitoring their kids, and I salute them.

Meanwhile, my daughter is getting married in three weeks – that’s another story. Despite being the MOB, my fiercely independent daughter has not called on me for a lot of help. In fact, the only thing she said to me was, “I’m not going to let you do anything until you get your own stress under control.” The next day I temporarily cut back my hours at work. My family will always come first. And I have been stressed, ever since I came back to work early. My shoulder may have healed, but did the rest of my body? My current employer understood the stress I was under and was kind enough to work with me.

As a mom, I still feel all my daughters “feels,” and, of

Post

Do Rotator Cuffs Have Brains?

Part 2 of 2 course, my own. I’ve been depressed, anxious and panicky about things, sometimes all in the course of one day. I’ve been snappy and cranky, with a short fuse and a long regret.

Still, I am not falling apart completely. I am thankful for the tools I have, the skills I’ve learned and the mental health support I do have from forward-thinking medical professionals. (Not all are like my orthopedist, whom I dumped for a younger, smarter model.) It all keeps the worst symptoms of my illness under control (like wanting to hide under my bed covers every day and cry). It’s like I have a flare up of diabetes, lupus or a peanut allergy.

They’re all the same. They can all be deadly. With mental health, we’ve hidden it in our back pockets too long. Here’s a call to action to all people of all ages: Mental health issues can kill – help stop the spread. Acknowledge them if you or someone in your family is suffering. You’ll be surprised by how many open arms there are to help you.

[If you or someone you know may be struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) any time day or night, or chat online. Crisis Text Line also provides free, 24/7, confidential support via text message to people in crisis when they dial 74174.]