As I lie out in the sunshine in my shorts, I am more conscious than normal of my scars. One that runs some six or so inches straight up my chest, and another that runs the length of my left leg, from ankle to groin. I tell my boys I was attacked by a shark.
It is now three years since I had my heart attack, and a brilliant surgeon had to take a vein out of my leg and use it to replace the ones servicing my heart. But that quadruple heart bypass did nothing to address the underlying condition: obesity and diabetes. I didn’t do anything to address them either. Until the fear of coronavirus made me.
We need glucose for energy, but too much of that good thing rots us from the inside. Not that I took much notice. Sometimes my eyesight would lose focus and I couldn’t read a newspaper. But generally, there weren’t any obvious day-to-day symptoms, so it’s easy to just go on as if it’s not really there. And in the West, and also in places like China, type 2 diabetes has been growing fast.
According to the WHO, the number of people with diabetes globally nearly quadrupled between 1980 and 2014 — from 108 million to 422 million. It’s a disease of affluence. Bodies schooled by evolution to store energy to survive periods of famine are badly adapted to manage extended periods of plenty. Type 2 is nature’s way of saying we have had enough. Our prosperity is killing us.
So, since lockdown began, I have been on a mission. No bread, no pasta, no rice, no potatoes. And I have been pretty religious about it. I have allowed myself the breadcrumbs around a fish finger and the body of Christ, but apart from these I have cut out bread and those other foods completely. I have lost over three stone. Where low fat diets have never worked for me, low sugar (ie low carbs) really makes a difference.
Yesterday, I received a letter from my GP which said that my blood sugar average over the past three months has been 6 — compared with the 12 it was this time last year. I have dramatically reduced my diabetes medications. And, hopefully, I am getting close to pushing it into permanent state of remission.
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