Fight Against Diabetes

I had gone to see Binayak on Tuesday and he told me, "you have never been better in life", while wrapping up the pressure monitoring machine. Pressure was 110/70 and HbA1c was 6.1. The Jardiance magic is working. Incidentally it was the World Diabetes Day also :-)  Of course I had supplemented the new line of treatment with very consistent and serious exercise. As of now I am running 4 km every alternate evening and cycling for 90 kms on the weekends. But seeing the figure of 6.1 on the AMRI report card made me feel ecstatic. I haven't felt so ecstatic since getting diabetes 15 years ago. I think my best so far has been 6.2. Now the challenge is to hold on to this and not let it go up. Binayak said he would observe my ACR after 6 months and then take a call on pressure medicines. He wants to bring it down a bit. Great. Let's see how it goes. There is an element of pain in the arms, palms to be precise, due to excessive cycling. But nothing major. The media...

From today (Thursday 24th August, 2017) I start with a new additional medicine called Jardiance 10. One tablet every morning before breakfast. I have to be aware of all the side effects and also monitor the glucose control more closely. Hence the new blog.  In February 2016 when my A1C level was 6.2 Binayak suggested that I stop taking Diamicron because it causes hypoglycemia. By November the level rose to above 7. In August I discovered it had gone up to 8.2. I had also not been able to exercise the past few months due to my Achilles pain.  Binayak said the medicine is an SGLT blocker. I googled the subject to superficially understand what that is. Our kidneys secrete this SGLT protein to reabsorb glucose from the urine and send it back to our blood system. This is nature's way of protecting us against any possible food shortage. In today's context this is causing excess glucose in our blood because supply of glucose is abundant. Hence the SGLT blocker which will no...