Friday 6 July 2007

Rumblings - an explanation

Dr. W. gave me this explanation yesterday of why gastroparesis is made worse by high bgs........

Imagine you are a non-diabetic for a bit (I know, I WISH!!). Anyway, if you are hungry your stomach rumbles right? This is because your brain knows your blood sugar is low and prepares your stomach to receive food, by making it more active to digest the food when it gets there, hence the rumbling. When you have eaten, the brain notices a blood sugar rise and knows the food has been digested, so the stomach slows down again.

In a diabetic, we get that hunger and rumbling when our bgs are low. But if the blood sugar is high, the brain tells the stomach to slow down because it doesn't need food. Therefore, if we then eat, the food isn't digested as fast, and the combination of this and the nerve damage which has occurred as a result of consistent high bgs makes the gastroparesis worse.

Now I know this, it makes so much more sense to keep my blood sugars down. I'm still doing okay, at 12 noon I was 8.5 (153) and 2.30pm I was 11.1 (199). I am happy with these results at the moment, but know I will have to tighten them up. Let's hope it continues to improve.

3 comments:

Donna said...

Thanks for the explanation. I had been wondering what gastroparesis was all about... makes sense now.

Glad to hear your BGs are better. Keep up the good work. It sounds like you're on the right track.

Kevin said...

Seems to make sense.
Knowledge is power.
Time to leverage it!

Keep up the good work.

Chrissie in Belgium said...

I LIKE your simple explanation - did you make it simple or your doc? Anyhow thank you. Here is what I am thinking - with high bg our digestion slows and therefore our blood sugar levels rise more slowly. Is it correct that our bg rises after the food has left our stomache, ie when it reaches the small intestines. The small intestines come first and are in fact longer but thinner than the large instestine - right? Isn't it from the small intestines that most of the sugar is absorbed into our blood? Also I am wondering, if X amount of a given food raises the blood sugar by Z amount, will the Z amount remain fixed but be distributed ove a loner or shorter time period. Or does the Z amount vary depending on how long X sat in the intestines? Do you understand my question? Does the TOTAL ENERGY quantity derived from a certain food change depending on how long it took to digest? Or is it just the TIME PERIOD over which you get the energy that changes?

I went to bookcrossings and joined - but there is one problem. I checked out the specific books that were "huntable" in my area. There was nothing I wanted to read. I am a picky, picky reader! AND I give all the good books I have read to my Mom to read. I could release them after she has read them, but I am hoping my kids would then be interested..... Furthermore releasing the books which I think suck - that seems like a terrible idea. I don't even like taking them to an a second hand book store. I usually dump them. I know, I know - people like different books, but it bother me. Could you explain "controlled releasees". This is a person who has the books. How do I get their EXACT address? It just says the "European Commission". How many questions have I loaded you down with?????? If you read my last entry - same situation, but I will not let myself get flustered