Sugar Bombed

Introduction

I am diabetic and tomorrow I have an important operation and to that end I need my blood sugar to be in a very good place. Earlier in the year I started monitoring it 24/7 and I was very dubious about it, but it has been an absolute godsend and I now wouldn't be without it. Here is that story.

The music I have included is "Lips Like Sugar" by Echo and the Bunnymen because it is a great song and mentions sugar.

Incidentally this is my 2,400th Vocal Story.

But Where Is The Sugar?

If you look at the blood sugar readings you can see that it was coming down from somewhere. That somewhere was much higher and hit this morning after I had what I thought was a healthy breakfast, but to be honest I have been having these highs when I was having cereal-based breakfasts but were fine when I had a couple of egg sandwiches.

This morning I had some Sultana Bran flakes and my blood sugar shot up to 19 (the allowable level is 4-10). Now the odd thing is that the levels don't seem to affect me, when I started on this new monitoring regime, I think I once hit 27 but that is not good, though I didn't feel bad. I had semi-skimmed milk so there was also sugar in the form of lactose and fructose involved.

The thing is if sugar remains in the bloodstream it starts to corrode your veins and arteries and then that can lead to all sorts of very bad things physically and I am trying like hell to make sure that does not happen to me.

Someone once said that diabetes just forces you to eat the way you should anyway. A nurse once told me that fruit was a no-no and my diet should ideally consist of celery, carrots and turnips. Shall we say I told my consultant and they laughed and said you have to have enjoyment in life.

My uncle is diabetic and said he had to have diabetic jam and diabetic chocolate, which I remember trying when my grandma gave me some and I thought it tasted awful. I told my uncle that you should eat real jam and real chocolate just in moderation.

I do love chocolate and sweet things and I do appreciate them when I allow myself to have them, which is probably too often.

But, anyway, back to that healthy cereal spike.

I checked the Sultana Bran box and found that 100g of cereal contains 25g of sugar. That's a quarter of what I was eating was pure sugar. Now I know all you eat is turned into sugar to enable your body to function, but why does something that purports to be good for you contain so much sugar.

I then checked a box of Fruit and Fibre. This was 20g of sugar per 100g of cereal, so that is something that is now off my list.

Porridge Oats is the only cereal food that does not have any added sugar, but porridge needs cooking, which is fine.

The Weetabix equivalent is only 4g of sugar per 100g of Wheat Biscuit so I think that should be acceptable and that may be breakfast later today (it's 3:30 am here) but I am going to visit the local supermarket cereal aisle to check out the sugar content.

The other night my blood sugar was dropping and hit 4.1 so I had two ice creams and they only raised my blood sugar to about 6.5. So it seems I can indulge as long as I don't overdo it.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading and I will keep you posted on how things go.