No Longer Taking Insulin!

That's super news, Marc! Watch your diet and you'll be off those pills before long, too.

Awesome news Marc. Im curious how much did your diet change from before you diagnosis until now?

That's great news, Marc! Your perseverance is paying off!

That's super news, Marc! Watch your diet and you'll be off those pills before long, too.

Thanks PackRat, Turtle. Bird-one: So I was diagnosed about 28 years ago. I have been on insulin (mostly on a pump) for about 20+.

When diagnosed my 12-hour fasting blood sugar was 350 and my Dr. thought I would have to go on insulin immediately. I was drinking Coke, coffee with raw sugar, juice, sweets and "typical" "American" foods / diet. Over the years I have done just about everything to manage it. I went on an oral med. With diet and exercise I was able to go off it. Then had to go back on as work, travel and perhaps a bit of laziness/complacency made a different approach easier or more practical. Glucophage was added to the Glyburide (two drugs from different manufacturers which work so well together they were in a novel approach put into the then new drug Glucovance, now known as the generic Metformin). Then we added Starlix for meal spikes. Dropped it and added slow-acting insulin, then moved to the pump. Oh yeah, also increased Metformin dosage, went to ER version to lessen stomach issues, etc.. I also warn against 4th and later generation diabetes drugs as there are better known, cheaper, safer and effective drugs. My Mother was put on Rezulin after it had been banned in the UK due to about 58 heart attack deaths and the FDA examiner who opposed it ultimately resigned after it was approved here. Certainly didn't help her overall health and I don't believe she ever should have gone on it.

When I realized I had to get serious about diet and exercise to NOT become the "stereotypical" trucker and as part of my Prostate Cancer surgery fast, no food, gradually moving back to food, I just found it easy to eat less, better, smarter, healthier. I gave up most carbs and sweets except for my morning coffee with natural vanilla bean ice cream. Will have to see if I can keep that or not. There are some indications I may be able to or may need to cut it back a bit. Time will tell. In the last few days I completely stopped the insulin and actually drank a couple hot chocolates from truck stops to keep my blood sugar up!

Things which used to require insulin no longer do! The coolest part about this is finally being "unteathered". Except for bathing and swimming and such, I have had the pump connected to my abdomen for almost 20 years. Even removed the last infusion set (insertion point) and do not plan to insert another! Of course I lost my always available "night light" but a small flashlight may fill the bill! (Could always pull the pump out and hit a button to get enough light to find the bathroom in the dark). Tradeoffs!

Happy to share what I have learned from all this. Whatever that is, anyway. I guess, mostly, anything is possible. Can't wait to tell my new Endo. @ the Mayo Clinic!

Congratulations, Marc, for such significant achievement in the restoration of your health. What an inspiration to share! I hope this new healthy baseline serves you well in your blossoming trucking career!

Oh, coffee with a 'lil ice cream is a simple pleasure after my own heart, too. Hope that one can endure for ya.

Congratulations, Marc, for such significant achievement in the restoration of your health. What an inspiration to share! I hope this new healthy baseline serves you well in your blossoming trucking career!

Oh, coffee with a 'lil ice cream is a simple pleasure after my own heart, too. Hope that one can endure for ya.

Thanks Rookie Doyenne! As a recovered Addict the coffee thing kind of feels like my "last remaining vice". It will be hard to give it up, though I did NOT stop at Walmart on the way to my weekend hotel (trainer did not want me sleeping in his truck alone and it is going two separate places for work on our 34+ break)...

I don't see why you'd have to give up coffee. I wouldn't dream of it.

I would bet that low-level endurance training would be the answer to many of your problems. Our bodies use sugars and fats as fuel. We run best on fats at low output levels like a slow jog or a slow hike uphill. We need sugars to fuel high levels of output like weightlifting and sprinting.

Your body becomes more efficient at burning whatever fuel you give it. If you give it a lot of sugars, your body will choose sugars. If you cut out the sugars, your body will become more efficient at burning fats. You must always take in some sugars, but your body will become oddly dependent on them if you take in too many. I love sweets. If I eat them, I always crave more. As long as I avoid them I won't have any cravings.

As part of my training, I do a lot of hiking up mountains. I wear a heart rate monitor and I have to keep my heart rate under 145 beats per minute. That means I'm keeping my output low enough to stay in the fat-burning zone. Any higher and my body burns sugars. I never eat within 8 - 10 hours of doing one of my climbs because I want my body to run on fat. I don't want it to have any extra sugars available. They call that fasted training. You're forcing your body to learn how to function more efficiently on fats alone.

After doing this for a while, my body has become very efficient at burning fats. I can go rather long periods of time without eating and I don't get hungry. I can spend 8+ hours carrying a heavy pack in the mountains with only a few hundred calories all day and I feel great. Burning fats more efficiently will keep your body fueled for long periods of time in the mountains. This is important for performance and also allows you to carry far less food with you, which reduces the weight you're carrying.

Diet alone will never make a person healthy. Our bodies will never function properly without significant amounts of exercise. Over millions of years, we've evolved that way. Over the past 150 years there has been a mix of factors that have led us down the wrong path:

• The medical community has revolved their business model around using pharmaceuticals to treat symptoms.
• The food industry in the U.S. takes in over $1.5 trillion each year, with healthier foods selling at a huge premium.
• Technology and economic prosperity allow us to live with little or no exercise.

Combine those factors and add our tendency to avoid exercise and we're easily led astray. They have us believing that popping pills and eating a little healthier is the answer. It's not. The medical community loses a fortune if they solve our problems and rid us of the need for their ongoing treatments. They want to control the symptoms, but they won't teach us to attack the problem at its core.

Marc, I would bet anything that if you consistently do long periods of low-output exercise while weening yourself away from sugars you would solve all of these problems completely. You would also become truly healthy and fit instead of just tip-toeing on the edge of catastrophe all the time. It would be a process you would ramp up slowly and consistently. If you ramp up too quickly you can make yourself feel much worse. But if you do it slowly your body will become more efficient at burning fats and lose its dependency on sugars, which would eliminate the erratic sugar levels and allow your body to become sensitive enough to its natural insulin production.

Consistent low-intensity exercise and taking in very little sugar is the answer. There's no avoiding exercise, though. You can not be truly healthy without it.

I don't see why you'd have to give up coffee. I wouldn't dream of it.

I would bet that low-level endurance training would be the answer to many of your problems. Our bodies use sugars and fats as fuel. We run best on fats at low output levels like a slow jog or a slow hike uphill. We need sugars to fuel high levels of output like weightlifting and sprinting.

Your body becomes more efficient at burning whatever fuel you give it. If you give it a lot of sugars, your body will choose sugars. If you cut out the sugars, your body will become more efficient at burning fats. You must always take in some sugars, but your body will become oddly dependent on them if you take in too many. I love sweets. If I eat them, I always crave more. As long as I avoid them I won't have any cravings.

As part of my training, I do a lot of hiking up mountains. I wear a heart rate monitor and I have to keep my heart rate under 145 beats per minute. That means I'm keeping my output low enough to stay in the fat-burning zone. Any higher and my body burns sugars. I never eat within 8 - 10 hours of doing one of my climbs because I want my body to run on fat. I don't want it to have any extra sugars available. They call that fasted training. You're forcing your body to learn how to function more efficiently on fats alone.

After doing this for a while, my body has become very efficient at burning fats. I can go rather long periods of time without eating and I don't get hungry. I can spend 8+ hours carrying a heavy pack in the mountains with only a few hundred calories all day and I feel great. Burning fats more efficiently will keep your body fueled for long periods of time in the mountains. This is important for performance and also allows you to carry far less food with you, which reduces the weight you're carrying.

Diet alone will never make a person healthy. Our bodies will never function properly without significant amounts of exercise. Over millions of years, we've evolved that way. Over the past 150 years there has been a mix of factors that have led us down the wrong path:

• The medical community has revolved their business model around using pharmaceuticals to treat symptoms.
• The food industry in the U.S. takes in over $1.5 trillion each year, with healthier foods selling at a huge premium.
• Technology and economic prosperity allow us to live with little or no exercise.

Combine those factors and add our tendency to avoid exercise and we're easily led astray. They have us believing that popping pills and eating a little healthier is the answer. It's not. The medical community loses a fortune if they solve our problems and rid us of the need for their ongoing treatments. They want to control the symptoms, but they won't teach us to attack the problem at its core.

Marc, I would bet anything that if you consistently do long periods of low-output exercise while weening yourself away from sugars you would solve all of these problems completely. You would also become truly healthy and fit instead of just tip-toeing on the edge of catastrophe all the time. It would be a process you would ramp up slowly and consistently. If you ramp up too quickly you can make yourself feel much worse. But if you do it slowly your body will become more efficient at burning fats and lose its dependency on sugars, which would eliminate the erratic sugar levels and allow your body to become sensitive enough to its natural insulin production.

Consistent low-intensity exercise and taking in very little sugar is the answer. There's no avoiding exercise, though. You can not be truly healthy without it.

Thanks Brett. Great info as always.

So to be clear... it's not coffee that's the "issue" - it's the natural vanilla bean ice cream I put in it. I buy Starbucks whole bean French Roast and brew it STRONG, usually using an AeroPress. It's similar to about 4 shots of espresso. Most people can't drink it without "doctoring" and it is simply how I enjoy it. Trainer makes Hills Brother's drip in cab and we drink it black.

I used to roast my own custom blend from green beans I purchased online.

Anything from that feels like a step down. The further I get from it... well... you get it!

Just finishing hotel free buffet with hotel brew and milk with a little yellow package sweetener. (My coffee grinding and brewing setup is about 50 yards away in a locked plastic storage container in the bed of my PC truck).

Methinks it notable that ice cream hits both sugar AND fat receptors. It's more the "cream" than the "sweet" for me.

Since taste buds are so hugely adaptive, I'm reminded here that my own best journey (again) is away from powdered creamers (bad trans fats) and half 'n half (higher sat fat & calories) to low fat milk in my coffee. Which is a world away from the ice cream experience..... but once planted behind a steering wheel for long hours minus the levels of physical movement I now enjoy, the motivation to trade that off jumps considerably.

Brett, any thoughts about how to integrate sustained, consistent low intensity exercise in an OTR lifestyle? Or export any of your approaches to that?

Points you made can't be stated enough in reforming perceptions about what keeps us healthy, establishing personal investiture in that and weaning reliance off the compromised role of allopathic medicine.

Targeted yoga may be an additional low-movement wellness tool worthy of consideration for diabetes management, Marc, and beyond. Every organ in the body can be worked with a yoga posture. Searching yoga & diabetes points to an emergence of quality studies showing good outcomes for blood sugar levels, lipid profiles, blood pressure, body weight and oxidative stress.

I really lack a grasp still on how even minimally adequate exercise & movement will fit into a transition to driving long hours. Not only for me, but for the dogs I hope to include. For the time being, we love our mountain terrain hikes!

Marc Lee you are a TROOPER!!! I am SO proud of you and your accomplishments, my lans thats great.

So... been an interesting journey.

In the last few months I have continually scaled back my use of insulin to manage my blood sugars. I was down to about 1/5 the amount I once took (25 units vs. around 120 units per day). Since getting on the "flash glucose monitor" (swipe with phone to read) I have been able to even better manage my levels throughout the day. Having continued my weight loss program (another 7 - 10 lbs. or so down from what my new Endocrinologist termed my "ideal weight") I have stopped taking insulin entirely and my numbers are still great!

Still taking two "big" Metformin ER's but feeling like I have almost kicked diabetes butt too! After (I still believe) kicking Prostate Cancer's butt it's 2 and 0 Team Marc Lee!