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eldorvdo-blog · 7 years

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seyoon usually knows better than to interrupt other people’s conversations, especially those of people he doesn’t know, but there are times when he just can’t sit around and not put his two cents in. in this case, he finds himself morally obligated to. he’d feel guilty for the rest of his life if he didn’t step in and say something.

“actually... dinosaurs and humans never lived together at the same time. you’re looking at a period of, like, 65 million years between when the last of the dinosaurs dwindled out and the first of the humans started to spring up, so they definitely did not co-exist, ever. that’s just a myth.”

the little boy he’s talking to blinks in response. he can’t be any older than eight, but he seems to be pretty set in his beliefs judging by the way he gives seyoon a skeptical look. “but on the flinstones, people lived with dinosaurs!”

“the flinstones don’t know shi- uh, i mean, a-anything about dinosaurs.” it’s a nice save. “trust me on this. that’s just a silly old cartoon that doesn’t have its facts straight. you can’t trust cartoons.”

“well, my mom told me to never trust a stranger.”

seyoon shrugs. “my name’s seyoon. there! now i’m not a stranger anymore.”

the little boy seems to think this over for a second, then shrugs as well. one might find it frightening how quick a child can put all hesitance aside and believe what any adult tells them, but in this case it’s good that seyoon isn’t someone trying to bribe this kid into his van with the promise of candy and puppies. seyoon is just genuinely trying to educate. it’s the only subject he feels he knows enough information about to share and everyone’s gotta make some sort of impact on the world, don’t they? this very well may be his.

“okay! but how do you know that people didn’t live back then if you weren’t even there?”

“you weren’t even there either,” seyoon points out. “and i know this because it’s common knowledge. you can verify this yourself by just opening up a book or searching online. do you know what anthropology is?” when the child shakes his head, seyoon goes on explaining. “there are people in this world whose job it is to actually research where humankind comes from and how long we’ve been around. if we were alive during the time of the dinosaurs, i think we would’ve found that out already - but we haven’t, because we didn’t.”

the kid rubs his chin and narrows his eyes. “hm... alright then. i guess it’s probably a good thing we weren’t alive then because dinosaurs are scary and they’d probably eat us.”

“yeah, probably. some of them, anyway.”

“what do you think would’ve been more scarier to see? a t-rex or a spinosaurus?”

seyoon raises his brows and shrugs, leaning against the railing behind him. he’s come to the museum today to take a stroll and look at some of the fossils. having a full on conversation with a child wasn’t in his plans for today, but he’s glad for the conversation anyway. seyoon loves to talk, but if there’s anything he loves to talk about the most, it’s this kind of shit. “well... they’re both powerful and terrifying in their own ways. i guess i’d say spinosaurus, though, since it was even bigger than the t-rex. that’s one of my favorites.”

“me too! who do you think would win in a fight?”

“neither! spinosaurus lived in middle cretaceous africa like a hundred million years ago. t-rex lived in the late cretaceous north america 65 million years ago. they would never have been able to fight each other. they didn’t co-exist either. that’s another myth.”

the boy seems impressed. “wow, cool! you sure know a lot about dinosaurs!”

seyoon smiles and nods. many years of research have certainly paid off. “yeah, well, i think dinosaurs are cool so i like to learn about them. what about you?”

“yes! but i don’t know a lot of things like you...” the little boy huffs a little, then grabs the arm of another kid nearby. “hey! this guy knows everything about dinosaurs! i’m serious! and you were wrong about the caveman thing! he told me so.”

overhearing the discussion, a woman turns around and offers seyoon a pleasant smile. she’s obviously here with the children as part of a school group. there are a number of them scattered around the room. “do you work here?”

seyoon takes a second to mull the question over. the actual answer should be ‘no’, but he comes around often enough to know the lay of the land. part of him thinks he knows more than the actual people that work here do. he isn’t one to lie, though. at least not about this sort of thing. “well... technically, no, but i do come here to spread information sometimes.”

“oh, like a volunteer? do you do tours? my kids are here to learn about fossils but i couldn’t seem to find anything online about organizing something like that.”

“i... could. i could do that, yes.” technically. “did you want one?”

the woman seems incredibly relieved to hear this. “yes! we’d love one. are you starting one now?”

seyoon glances around the room and does a quick mental count of how many kids are in the room, then smiles again. he’s not an actual volunteer and he’s definitely not a tour guide either, but he knows a lot of information and this makes him feel confident. not to mention, he’s good at talking - that’s basically all that tour guides do. with a nod, he glances at his watch and notes the time. he’s got about an hour to kill before he’s got to head out anyway. one little lap around the museum wouldn’t hurt. “absolutely. my tour’s departing right now.”

by the time the first tour ends, he’s agreed to take another group around - this time one that consists of families, rather than just schoolchildren on a field trip. seyoon doesn’t mind saying the same thing over again. he finds it incredibly fun to be socializing with so many people and sharing so much information about the fossils in the museum and about where they came from. at the end of the second tour, he goes home. he’s got a late shift tonight so he’s got to go get ready for it.

on the way out of the museum, a woman with her young daughter stops to speak to the employee at the front desk. “thanks so much! your tour guide was absolutely amazing! we’ll definitely be coming back here.”

the guy at the desk simply furrows his brows at her. “tour guide?”

“yeah! the tall, skinny young man with the black shirt? he had a lot of information. he really knows his stuff - and he was so sweet, too! if i were you guys, i’d give him a raise!”

the guy has to stop and think for a few seconds, trying to remember someone coming in with that description (because, as far as he knows, the museum has no official tour guides at this time), then remembers seyoon.

“oh, that kid...” another pause. “that kid does NOT work here.”

#// bc the idea popped into my head and it was too cute to resist #sp #memoirs of a noodle boy

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seyoou-blog · 7 years

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“actually… dinosaurs and humans never lived together at the same time. you’re looking at a period of, like, 65 million years between when the last of the dinosaurs dwindled out and the first of the humans started to spring up, so they definitely did not co-exist, ever. that’s just a myth.”

“well, my mom told me to never trust a stranger.”

seyoon shrugs. “my name’s seyoon. there! now i’m not a stranger anymore.”

“okay! but how do you know that people didn’t live back then if you weren’t even there?”

the kid rubs his chin and narrows his eyes. “hm… alright then. i guess it’s probably a good thing we weren’t alive then because dinosaurs are scary and they’d probably eat us.”

“yeah, probably. some of them, anyway.”

“what do you think would’ve been more scarier to see? a t-rex or a spinosaurus?”

seyoon raises his brows and shrugs, leaning against the railing behind him. he’s come to the museum today to take a stroll and look at some of the fossils. having a full on conversation with a child wasn’t in his plans for today, but he’s glad for the conversation anyway. seyoon loves to talk, but if there’s anything he loves to talk about the most, it’s this kind of shit. “well… they’re both powerful and terrifying in their own ways. i guess i’d say spinosaurus, though, since it was even bigger than the t-rex. that’s one of my favorites.”

“me too! who do you think would win in a fight?”

the boy seems impressed. “wow, cool! you sure know a lot about dinosaurs!”

seyoon smiles and nods. many years of research have certainly paid off. “yeah, well, i think dinosaurs are cool so i like to learn about them. what about you?”

“yes! but i don’t know a lot of things like you…” the little boy huffs a little, then grabs the arm of another kid nearby. “hey! this guy knows everything about dinosaurs! i’m serious! and you were wrong about the caveman thing! he told me so.”

seyoon takes a second to mull the question over. the actual answer should be ‘no’, but he comes around often enough to know the lay of the land. part of him thinks he knows more than the actual people that work here do. he isn’t one to lie, though. at least not about this sort of thing. “well… technically, no, but i do come here to spread information sometimes.”

“oh, like a volunteer? do you do tours? my kids are here to learn about fossils but i couldn’t seem to find anything online about organizing something like that.”

“i… could. i could do that, yes.” technically. “did you want one?”

the woman seems incredibly relieved to hear this. “yes! we’d love one. are you starting one now?”

the guy at the desk simply furrows his brows at her. “tour guide?”

“yeah! the tall, skinny young man with the black shirt? he had a lot of information. he really knows his stuff - and he was so sweet, too! if i were you guys, i’d give him a raise!”

“oh, that kid…” another pause. “that kid does NOT work here.”

#selfpara.

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type2diabetestreatments-blog · 7 years

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Ask D'Mine: How Marriage and Cinnamon Affect Diabetes

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/ask-dmine-how-marriage-and-cinnamon-affect-diabetes/

Ask D'Mine: How Marriage and Cinnamon Affect Diabetes

Hello, Curious PWD Friends. Doesn't it just seem like everything affects your diabetes? Yup — and today we're addressing two of them, marital relationships and the much-hyped idea that cinnamon can control your blood sugars.

Welcome to this latest edition of our weekly diabetes advice column, Ask D'Mine, hosted by veteran type 1, diabetes author and community educator Wil Dubois.

Need help navigating life with diabetes? Email us at [email protected]

Phyllis from Vermont, type 2, asks: How can stress in a marriage affect blood sugars?

Wil@Ask D'Mine answers: As it turns out, in two distinct and very different ways. Now, for background, for many years I had assumed that any kind of stress messes up blood sugars for all of us. That's because I was a believer in the Caveman Effect (not to be confused with a Caveman Low). The Caveman Effect (or Cavewoman Effect) goes like this: in the old days if you were just wandering around the Pleistocene minding your own businesses, and a saber tooth tiger jumped out of the reeds, you'd scream, throw your spear into the air, and run for your frickin' life. To do that, your adrenal glands helpfully filled your blood stream with a sugary hormone called adrenaline to give you an extra little boost of speed.

If you are a caveperson running for your life this is no problem. You'll run off the sugar.

Now fast-forward 40,000 years. Instead of being in a real cave, you're in your husband's man-cave. And instead of a saber tooth tiger, your adrenaline comes from too many bills, too little money, and too little healthy conversation. You can't run away from that kind of stress. Oh, and you're not a healthy cavewoman either. You're a person with diabetes.

So this unusable adrenaline was thought to pile up and increase blood sugar across the board. The fancy word for it is "hormonal mediation," but I still prefer Caveman Effect.

However, a recent conversation with our best brain-and-diabetes guy, Dr. William Polonsky, set me straight. Dr. P tells me that "physical stress, like undergoing surgery, reliably raises blood sugars. And, for some people, emotional or mental stress seems to raise blood sugars, but not for everyone. For other people, mental stress seems to have no effect, or even lowers blood sugars!"

Wow. Who knew? Fighting with your spouse is good medication for some people with diabetes! I feel a book coming on...

Dr. P goes on to explain the conundrum of stress and diabetes: "stress does seem to reliably worsen long-term blood glucose control for most people, but not due to hormonal mediation. Instead, it is just behavior. 'I am stressed, so I don't give my diabetes the close attention it deserves,' and presto — A1C's rise. Also, it may only be certain kinds of stress and the actual timing of when the stress occurs that determines whether and how it affects blood sugars."

So the Caveman Effect still comes into play with some people some of the time, but not all people all of the time. And it looks like we need a new label for the long-term effects of stress on diabetes, which I'm going to label the Eff-it Effect. (Sorry, Dr. P).

So we now know that marriage stress can affect diabetes in two ways. The Caveman Effect might (or might not) raise your blood sugar at the time of stress, like during an argument; and the Eff-it Effect will almost certainly raise your blood sugar over time because you've taken your eye off the ball.

I guess knowing the two likely causes is a help. But neither are easily fixed. If your blood sugars are affected by the Eff-it Effect ya' just gotta slap yourself across the face and get focused on the basics of diabetes control again. If you're one of those people who suffers from the Caveman Effect, then you need to develop some new tricks to reduce your immediate stress when it hits during those 'charged' moments.

Maybe aroma therapy candles...? Maybe a massage? Or maybe you need to pick up your spear and work off some energy at the gym. Hey, it worked for our ancestors.

Brenda from Colorado, type 2, asks: Have you done any research on cinnamon? They have it in so many diabetic products and herbals nowadays. Does it really work?

Wil@Ask D'Mine answers: Cinnamon alternately generates a lot of excitement and a lot of disappointment among PWDs. When I first read that cinnamon might be the cure for diabetes, the first thing I did was run down to the nearest Cinnabon to get some of this new medicine.

That didn't work out so well for me.

One of the problems with the whole cinnamon thing is that the original study was done on six political prisoners in a maximum security lockup in Shi Lanka. OK, OK, OK. I exaggerate. But the truth is almost as bad. The first published cinnamon study back in 2003 was done in Pakistan on 60 type 2s, only half of which took the cinnamon, and the study ran just 40 days and 40 nights. No kidding. And the researchers demonstrated a respectable glucose drop. Or did they? More on that in a minute. But this was the face that launched a thousand ships. Or at least a thousand over-the-counter diabetes "supplements" with cinnamon in them.

Over the next several years following this first study, a number of other small (sometimes smaller!) studies looked at cinnamon with varying results — mainly unable to duplicate the original results.

Now, I need to interject my thoughts on clinical trials here. Well, more correctly, on the SIZE of clinical trials. I get suspicious when I read results from a small pool of participants, as very small trials are subject to errors because one or two people who have unusual reactions can throw the average results way off. I don't think it's a good idea to make sweeping statements about everyone who has diabetes if you only look at 20 of us. (Read the DiabetesMine Research Primer here for more insights on that.)

But back to cinnamon. As I said, most of the trails were very small, a fact that the mainstream media ignored or glossed over. Some were badly designed. Oh, right, and some were on rats.

Finally, in 2008, William Baker and his colleagues killed cinnamon once and for all in a meta-analysis (the same statistical torpedo that sunk Avandia) of all the assorted cinnamon trials, finding that cinnamon had only one scientifically demonstrable effect: it makes cinnamon rolls taste better. It doesn't improve A1C, it doesn't improve fasting blood glucose, and it doesn't improve lipids in either type 1s or type 2s—all claims of previous "research."

Now science aside, all you have to do is look at the comments sections of any blog posts on the cinnamon issue and you'll find lots of folks who would bet the farm on cinnamon, and who sing its praises. So what to make of that?

Well some might be "plants" from the folks making all those cinnamon supplements, but there's a whole class of people who don't want to take their medicine, but rather want to do things "naturally." (I find this silly, as most medicines are natural in the first place. Metformin is just French Lilac, aspirin is willow bark, and statins are red rice yeast.) But I think sometimes these folks have a problem with perspective. It can be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Sometimes when you start something new to help your diabetes, you do other things at the same time that you aren't even aware of. Maybe, in addition to taking cinnamon they're now more physically active. Or maybe they're eating a little better. Or maybe they lost some weight. Or maybe they're just kidding themselves.

When it comes to blood sugar numbers, I find that even my smartest, most focused patients are horrible historians. Just yesterday, one of my type 1s was telling me how he was "always" having lows around 3am, over the last few weeks. Alarmed, I started looking at his pump's basal rates. But then I looked at his CGM data. In his case, "always" turned out to be twice. In two weeks. Still, those two times made a big impression. In a similar fashion, sometimes the data we want to see makes a bigger impression than it deserves.

I know when I download my CGM it paints a worse picture on my control than I expect. Huh? I could'a sworn I was "flat-lining" my blood sugar...

A number of my type 2 patients have tried cinnamon. Some felt it didn't help. Some thought it helped a little. Some felt it made a huge difference in their diabetes control. But I couldn't see any change at all when I studied their meter downloads.

One woman I work with thought that cinnamon was doing such a great job she stopped all her prescription meds in favor of cinnamon.

Her A1C tripled.

Of course, for the most part, cinnamon is harmless. So if you want to try it, go for it. Just don't stop your other meds. Study your meter data carefully. Try to be honest with yourself on other changes in your life.

Oh...

And remember that I said the cinnamon was harmless for the most part? One last warning: while cinnamon can't be scientifically shown to lower blood sugar, it has been proven to be effective as a mild blood thinner. So if you are on Coumadin (a.k.a. Warfarin) or a similar medication for heart problems, be alert for easy bruising, etc.

The cinnamon can super-size the effects of your blood thinner.

So if you want to play with cinnamon, that's OK with me. Just play it smart. Play it safe. Keep your mind clear and focused on the facts, and remember you mileage may vary from 30 Pakistani PWDs who tried cinnamon back in 2003.

Disclaimer: This is not a medical advice column. We are PWDs freely and openly sharing the wisdom of our collected experiences — our been-there-done-that knowledge from the trenches. But we are not MDs, RNs, NPs, PAs, CDEs, or partridges in pear trees. Bottom line: we are only a small part of your total prescription. You still need the professional advice, treatment, and care of a licensed medical professional.

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

Type 2 Diabetes Treatment Type 2 Diabetes Diet Diabetes Destroyer Reviews Original Article

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